Australoid race

The Australoid race is a broad racial classification. The concept originated with a typological method of racial classification. They were described as having dark skin with wavy hair, in the case of the Veddoid race of South Asia (including the eponymous Vedda people indigenous to Sri Lanka) and Aboriginal Australians, or hair ranging from straight to kinky in the case of the Melanesian group.

According to this model of classification, Australoid peoples ranged throughout Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Australia, New Guinea, Melanesia, the Andaman Islands and the Indian peninsula, as well as parts of the Middle East.

In the Out of Africa theory, the ancestors of the Australoids, the Proto-Australoids, are thought to have been the first branch off from the Proto-Capoids to migrate from Africa about 60,000 BCE. This migration is hypothesized to have taken place along the now submerged continental shelf of the northern shore of the Indian Ocean, reaching Australia about 50,000 BCE. However, the suggested Proto-Australoid–Proto-Capoid link has been contested.