18,000

1. Harvesting grass seeds is integral to Aboriginal socio-economic life on the large grasslands. The seeds were ground and baked or roasted and eaten whole.

2. Art at Ubirr in Kakadu National Park (Northern Territory, 300 kms east of Darwin) depicts now extinct animals, the Thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), and Zaglossus (the long-beaked echidna).

20,000

1. Rising seas partially submerge Sahul, the landmass that connects Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania, creating separate islands for each.

2. Aboriginal people were dispersed across the entire continent, occupying places as remote as rock shelters on the Franklin River in south-west Tasmania and at Birrigai in the ranges of the Australian Capital Territory, which surrounds Canberra, the national capital.

3. Some 10% of Tasmania is covered by glacial ice. Kutikina Cave on the Franklin River is occupied by Tasmanian Aboriginal people at the height of the last ice age.

22,000

1. In deep caves under the Nullarbor Plains at Koonalda (at the western edge of South Australia, about 50 kms from the ocean), Aboriginal people mine flint and leave grooved designs on the cave walls. This is early evidence of the close relationship of art and work in Aboriginal life.

2. Aboriginal people living at Malangangarr in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, use ground-edge grooved axes. Australian technology leads the world.

3. Age of a rock-shelter on the Kings Tableland near Wentworth Falls, NSW.

   

26,000

1. Age of bones found in sediment at the Willandra Lakes Region of far western NSW.

2. The body of a woman from Lake Mungo provides the earliest evidence in the world of ritual cremation. The body is prepared with ochre before cremation.

28,000

1. Age of a charcoal drawing found at Narwala Gabarnmung, in the Northern Territory, assumed to be Australia’s oldest known rock art specimen and one of the earliest examples of human art on the planet ^[1]. The art was only found in 2012. Because it was made with charcoal, radiocarbon dating could be used to determine its age with a higher degree of confidence.

30,000

1. Oldest evidence of bread making in the world at Cuddy Springs (ancient lake located between Marra Creek and Macquarie River, near Carinda, western NSW).

2. A man from the Lake Mungo area (south-west NSW) is buried in a shallow grave. His forearm bones are stained pink from ochre. This is one of the earliest known burials of a distinctly modern people.

3. Aboriginal people were living around the now extinct lakes of the Willandra Lakes system. Evidence shows signs of spiritual and creative life and technology linked to much later Aboriginal culture.

4. Devils’ Lair in southernmost Western Australia is home to Aboriginal people who leave bone tool artefacts, including unique bone-beads of split-pointed macropod shin bones. The cave is occupied from this time to 6,000 BP.

30,700

1. Age of fireplaces (such as underground oven) at Lake Mungo National Park, NSW.

2. Aboriginal people living at the Keilor site (20 kms north-west of Melbourne) in Victoria.

35,000

1. Age of a oldest known camping site found in the Pilbara region, Western Australia, near the Jugaling Rock Shelter. The site belongs to a mining lease jointly owned by Rio Tinto and Hancock Prospecting. Both companies refuse to permanently exclude the site from mining ^[2].

2. Carved tools discovered in Riwi Cave in the southern Kimberley region of Western Australia are thought to be between 35,000 and 46,000 years old which would make them the oldest artifacts of their type found in Australia. Archaeologists excavated eight tools made from kangaroo bone in the early 1990s. They might have been used as spear tips or for weaving baskets or working skins.

37,000

1. Papuan and Aboriginal groups split, long before the continents are finally cut off from each other (around 8,000 years ago).^[3]

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References