To begin with, most people know now that Australia's aborigine population has been resident on the continent for at least 50,000 years. Studies of DNA samples from hair collected in the 19th century show that there was continuous genetic isolation for the Australian population for about 50,000 years. This is amazing confirmation for the Aboriginal population, whose ancient culture and mysteries are the most well-documented of all ancient cultures.
Did you know, for example, that ancient Australians were scraping images of people and animals into rocks as much as 20,000 years ago? Scientists say these rock carvings were ritualistic but I think they were probably used for teaching. We have found the remains of ancient campsites. The petroglyphs would have been great resources for holding annual schools for members of clans and tribes. They didn't need a writing system because the Aborigines had a fantastic oral tradition.
Scientists now know that Aborigine oral tradition is very accurate going back at least 7,000 years. They have handed down memories of things long past far longer than there has been writing in western civilizations. The earliest known forms of writing are only about 6,000 years old. Given the huge number of petroglyphs found throughout Australia, I would say that the Aborigines had worked out a successful basic education system while other peoples were wandering the Earth, looking for the next valley to conquer.
Just how long ago did the original Australians arrive in their land? We thought for several generations that they hit the northern Australian shore about 50,000 years ago. But recent finds suggest that people have been living in Australian as much as 65,000 years. We don't know if those earliest people were the ancestors of today's Aborigines but they must have been closely related.
But one question people ask is, if there have been people in Australia for tens of thousands of years then why didn't they build a great civilization? I'm not so sure we are right to assume they didn't build a great civilization. For example, did you know that Australia has many places that are compared to England's Stonehenge? These Australian stone henges all have one trait in common: they are ancient Neolithic monuments that were put into place by Aborigines and used as places of ritual for thousands of years. Just because the Aborigines didn't build walled cities and wage fantastic wars doesn't mean they didn't evolve culturally and socially. In fact they did exactly that.
We know there are different Aborigine tribes and clans, and they have different languages and dialects. That means they must have grown apart over the millennia. But why didn't they fight great wars and build vast empires? One possible explanation is that Australia has been sensitive to climate change, perhaps more so than other parts of the world. During times when the ice age was sucking fresh water out of the world, native Australians retreated to well-watered refuges along rivers in rich, fertile valleys. They lived in relative isolation from each other.
Of course, another reason why they didn't build up a huge technological civilization. Australian aboriginal peoples did use natural minerals in rock art pigments but they never developed metallurgy. We have to assume they never found a need for anything better than their stone tools. But lacking metals doesn't prevent people from building cities. There were civilizations in South America that built vast cities without the use of metals. And Neolithic villages dating back to more than 10,000 years have been discovered across the Middle East.
Archaeologists have found evidence that ancient clans fought wars in Australia thousands of years ago. But the prehistoric Aborigines never developed the bow and arrow. Nor did they have an opportunity to domestic the horse or any four-footed animals. And so they lived mostly as hunter-gatherers. Without the rise of cities their ideas of property were quite different from those of the great civilizations on other continents. They had no needs for empires, nor any need for organized agriculture and animal husbandry.
Even so the Australian peoples recorded important events in their rock art. In addition to battles they also recorded changes in climate and ecology. Archaeologists have documented the shift in rock art subjects as the more ancient animal populations were replaced by new animal populations. All in all, Australia was a dynamic, constantly changing prehistoric landscape. I think that because there were fewer people in Australia there was less need for conflict and conquest. Whatever their differences were the Aborigines were able to co-exist with each other far better than other peoples around the world, which saw the slaughter of whole tribes and nations.
I wish we knew more about ancient Australia. I'm sure there is some bad with the good but it is a completely fascinating land. And if we could only look at Australia as a new frontier waiting to be watered and planted with native forests, I think we could achieve a lot toward fighting global warming without destroying its ancient beauty and heritage.
