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CIVILIZATION
AUSTRALIANABORIGINAL
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By Craig Benjamin
CIVILIZATION ON ASECLUDED CONTINENT
AUSTRALIANABORIGINAL
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Even as vast agrarian
civilizations began to appearin Afro-Eurasia and theAmericas, other parts ofthe world pursued moretraditional lifeways. In
Australia, Aboriginal peoplecontinued the foraging lifeof their ancestors untilEuropean colonists arrivedlate in the 18th century.
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The foraging life
For the first 240,000 years of our existence, all humans pursued nomadic
foraging for their survival. Around 11,000 years ago, some communities
began to adopt agriculture and live in one place. This “agricultural revolu-
tion” sent human history spiraling along different paths. In those regions
where agriculture appeared, population densities increased. Early agrarian-
era villages evolved into towns and cities, and by 3000 BCE complex
states started to emerge in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Over the centuries that
followed, the increasingly powerful leaders of these early states learned
to control larger regions and more and more resources, until huge agrarian
civilizations covered large regions of the Afro-Eurasian world zone and,
later, the Americas.
In many other places on Earth, however, humans continued to follow the
foraging, nomadic lifeways of our ancestors, neither adopting agriculture
nor building states and civilizations.
In regions dominated by agrarian civilizations, historical change began to
occur at a faster and more intense pace than in those parts of the world that
never adopted farming. In Australia, Aboriginal people continued to pursue
their perfectly adapted foraging lifeways until European colonists turned up
on the continent just 250 years ago.
Lifeways in the
Australasian world zoneThe Australasian world zone consists of the mountainous and heavily vege-
tated island of New Guinea, the vast continent of Australia, and the large island
of Tasmania, all located along the southwestern edge of the Pacific Basin. In
the jungles of New Guinea, first occupied 60,000 years ago, humans began to
occupy 60,000 years ago, humans pursued foraging lifeways until small-scale
farming started to appear around 5000 BCE. Hundreds of villages were built
in the forests close to the farms, but none of these evolved into towns or
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states, and power in these communities remained consensual rather than
coercive. Yet the agricultural practices pursued there were sophisticated:
New Guinea farmers appear to have understood the principles of crop rota-
tion, mulching, and tilling the soil long before Eurasian farmers did.
In Australia, the ancestors of the Aboriginal people arrived by sea from
South East Asia somewhere between 60,000 and 50,000 years ago. Even
at the height of the last ice age, when sea levels were lower, this migrationto Australia required the crossing of several wide ocean straits. So the first
Aboriginal people advanced boat-building and navigational skills that made
them among the most technologically sophisticated people on Earth at that
time. During the “Era of Agrarian Civilizations” (roughly 2000 BCE to 1000 CE),
the Aboriginal population probably numbered somewhere between 300,000
and 750,000, with the densest concentrations living in the southeast of the
continent. They spoke up to 750 different dialects but similarities suggest
that all of these languages had a common origin. Such a variety of dialects
might suggest a wide range of lifeways, but virtually all indigenous Austra-
lian communities engaged in very similar cultural practices.
Whether in the harsh interior of Australia, in the great tracts of eastern
bushland, or along the coasts, the overwhelming majority of Aboriginals
remained seminomadic foragers from the time they first migrated to the
continent until the arrival of Europeans at the end of the 18th century. Each
group had its own traditional territories, which were defined by geographic
markers like rivers, mountains, and lakes, and the well-being of these lands
was fundamental to the success of the people. Aboriginal foragers fished
with fishbone-tipped spears, hunted kangaroos with wooden weapons
like the boomerang or woomera (a spear-thrower), and used wooden and
stone digging sticks to access nutritious roots and insects living just below
ground. At sacred sites across the landscape, elders passed on oral creation
stories from the Dreamtime (or the Dreaming), when humans, animals,
and spirits all emerged and populated the land. Indigenous Australians cared
for their environments in the manner of foraging peoples everywhere,
although paleo-Aboriginals were unwittingly responsible for the extinction
of many large animal species in Australia, and their practice of “firestick
farming” (using fire to control vegetation and encourage habitats for certain
game animals) contributed to the eventual desertification of the continent.
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Music and dance were critical to the spiritual practices of Aboriginals. Both
men and women gathered together regularly to perform ritualized dance-
like ceremonies, accompanied by vocalists, percussionists, and musicians,
at large ceremonial gatherings called “corroborees.” Corroborees had to
be held where resources were plentiful, such as in the foothills of the Aus-
tralian Alps when the large Bogong moth swarmed between September and
November. By feasting on the moths, the people of the region were able to
hold big gatherings at which they exchanged ideas and information, formedmarriages, engaged with seldom seen acquaintances, conducted rituals,
and played games. Gifts were also exchanged, because gift giving was an
important way of cementing social relations within these larger networks,
using the principle of reciprocity to maintain strong ties. These corroborees
helped ensure survival and ongoing communal relationships through
exchanges of materials and ideas.
One exception to this nomadic lifeway was the Gunditjmara people of the
Murray-Darling Basin in the southeast of the continent, who appear to have
supported a sedentary culture through eel farming. The Gunditjmara are
an excellent example of an affluent foraging lifeway — a community thatlives in such a resource-rich region that it is able to abandon nomadism and
become sedentary while still pursuing foraging. Archaeologists have found
evidence of the remains of hundreds of permanent huts, 75 square kilome-
ters (45 square miles) of artificial channels and ponds for farming eels,
and trees used for smoking the meat to facilitate its transportation to other
parts of southeastern Australia. The Gunditjmara lived in large, permanent
villages and had powerful chiefs. In other words, even though they were
not agriculturists, they adopted many of the social and political features of
agrarian society. These discoveries have seriously challenged some of the
more traditional understanding of Aboriginal lifeways.
Despite this example of affluent foraging, and the relative proximity of
northern Australia to farmers in New Guinea and nearby islands, Australian
Aboriginals never made the transition to agriculture. A range of geographic,
climatic, and social theories, none of them wholly convincing, have been
promoted to try and explain the fact that when European explorers arrived in
Australia, the continent was populated entirely by foragers. The most likely
explanation is that Aboriginal Australians lived in a land of relative plenty,
and that with such an abundance of resources there was simply no attrac-
tion in abandoning a successful nomadic lifeway for a more demanding and
stressful lifeway based, for example, on the cultivation of yams and taro.
To this day some traditional aboriginal groups enjoy foraging and prefer the
taste of “bush tucker” (foraged foods) to commercial, processed foods.
So, although resource abundance and well-adapted technologies definitely
led to some local examples of affluent foraging, this alone was insufficient
to tip these communities over into full-scale farming.
Australian Aboriginal cave art
Australian Aboriginal rock art dates back to at least 40,000 BCE, and perhaps
earlier. Recent research suggests that there was no gradual evolution of
technique, but rather that artistic ability appeared suddenly and explosively.
Although specialists have been able to sequence chronologically the thou-
sands of known examples, aboriginal rock art sites tend to be dynamic and
represent images accumulated over thousands of years. In western ArnhemLand, local environmental and climatic changes are clearly represented in
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the art. A dry era is represented by depictions of extinct ancient crocodiles;
the subsequent wetter Estuarine-era art shows rising river levels, barra-
mundi, saltwater crocodiles, and the extraordinary Rainbow Serpent; and
the later Freshwater period features images of geese and goose feathers.
Sometime in the last 3,000 years, Aboriginal artists began painting X-ray
images of freshwater fauna, revealing the internal anatomy of various
birds and reptiles.
The Aboriginal people of western Arnhem have their own more spiritual
sequence for the rock art. They attribute the oldest images to the Mimi people,
who they believe inhabited the land during the Dreaming, before the Rain-
bow Serpent created the people. The Mimi taught the Aboriginals how to
survive in the region, and then became spirit beings. Aboriginals themselves
created the more recent art. The Wandjina paintings of the Kimberley depict
the powerful creator spirits, who control the elemental forces of nature
such as the wind, storms, and floods. These gods are shown in human form,
but with large bodies outlined in red, having huge dark eyes and no mouths,
and wearing halos of clouds and lightning.
Paleolithic lifeways in theEra of Agrarian Civilizations
Tasmania, a large island off the south coast of eastern Australia, was once
connected geologically to the mainland. The experience of Aboriginal
Tasmanians provides valuable insight into the reason foraging lifeways per-
sisted for so long in Australia. Once sea levels rose and isolated Tasmanian
populations, smaller, simpler social structures quickly appeared there.
Archaeology shows us that some technologies that existed earlier in the
island’s history, such as the use of needles and other bone tools, and
fishing, seem to have vanished in the thousand years or so before the arrival
of Europeans. One reason might be that innovating — and even preserving
— complex technologies is much harder to do within small, isolated popula-
tions simply because collective learning is much more limited. But we
should not necessarily think of these changes as signs of technological
decline, for they might also have represented clever adaptations to climatic
changes and to trying to survive in social isolation. Abandoning fishing
and focusing instead on acquiring foodstuffs richer in fats, including seals
and seabirds, might have been a smart ecological choice.
The same is true of all the Aboriginal communities isolated from the rest
of the world on the vast Australian island-continent. It would be a mistakesimply to think of Aboriginals as somehow stuck in a Paleolithic time warp.
Archaeological research in Australia reveals a long history of innovative
adaptations to changes, including climate change. The rock art we discussed
above clearly shows us that lifeways changed profoundly in response to
changing climate conditions. The experience of the Gunditjmara suggests
that the transition to sedentism was occurring in Southeast Australia in
ways similar to that which preceded the emergence of agriculture in other
parts of the world like the Fertile Crescent. There is also evidence that
the Aboriginal population might have doubled or even tripled during the last
2,000 years before the arrival of Europeans. New types of tools appeared
during this period, notably fishhooks made of shells in regions where fishingbecame more intensive. There is also growing evidence of increasing inter-
connections over large areas: Materials from southern Queensland, and
stone axes from the Mount Isa range, turn up in sites in southern Australia.
Ochre mines in western Australia produced so much ochre that interregion-
al trade, rather than local demand, must have driven production.
When we consider the lifeways of Australian Aboriginals during the Era
of Agrarian Civilizations, we are not so much observing humans trapped in
Paleolithic times as communities practicing sophisticated adaptations to
a range of environments and changing climates. We don’t know how this
culture would have evolved had Europeans not arrived suddenly to interrupt
the flow of collective learning and historical change.
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Sources
Bellwood, Peter, and Peter Hiscock. The Human Past: World Prehistory and
the Development of Human Societies. London: Thames and Hudson, 2005.
Callaway, Ewen. 2011. “First Aboriginal Genome Sequenced.” Nature,
September 22. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110922/full/
news.2011.551.html.doi:10.1038/news.2011.551
Edwards, W.H. An Introduction to Aboriginal Societies. 2nd ed. Sydney:
Social Science Press. 2004.
The Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
History, Society, and Culture. Edited by David Horton. Canberra: Aboriginal
Studies Press, 1994.
University of Copenhagen. 2011. “Aboriginal Australians: The First
Explorers.” Science Daily . September 22. http://www.sciencedaily.com/
releases/2011/09/110922141858.htm
Image credits
Australian Aboriginal sculpture,
National Museum of Australia
A 1930 photograph of an Australian Aborigine
© E.O. Hoppé/CORBIS
Aboriginal rock painting of Dreamtime figures
© Charles & Josette Lenars/CORBIS
Aboriginal rock painting of barramundi fish
© Charles & Josette Lenars/CORBIS