Australian Govt Priorities

The Federal Government said it had recently allocated $500,000 over two years to improve Indigenous heritage protection and Indigenous involvement in the the decision-making process over the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

This compares to $48.7 million committed in 2018 to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the arrival of Captain Cook, or the $500 million put aside in February to redevelop of the Australian War Memorial.

Meanwhile the oldest human remains ever found in Australia, dating back to at least 42,000 years old are being secretly hidden with no consultation from the traditional owners of the land.

But there are fears that history could soon be reburied and lost forever, with a NSW government proposal to rebury the 108 remains in secret, unmarked graves across 26 sites in the World Heritage Listed area.

https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2021/07/27/oldest-human-remains-could-be-lost-forever?fbclid=IwAR29Yn4BzKATmgnufhlFM0OSd2QNe–Z-CUEcP9vBOcB7X7bhXeMq3sxxpQ

A special ceremony returning the 42,000-year-old remains of Mungo Man, and the other ancestors, was held in Nov 2017 at Lake Mungo, after a 43-year battle.

https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2017/11/20/mungo-mans-historic-return-celebrated-song-and-dance?cid=inbody:oldest-human-remains-could-be-lost-forever

Sahul – the early Australian civilisation

We know it is more than 60,000 years since the first people entered the continent of Sahul—the giant landmass that connected New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania when sea levels were lower than today.

But where the earliest people moved across the landscape, how fast they moved, and how many were involved, have been shrouded in mystery.

Our latest research, published today shows the establishment of populations in every part of this giant continent could have occurred in as little as 5,000 years. And the entire population of Sahul could have been as high as 6.4 million people.

Read More…

Oldest Story in the World ?

Long ago, four giant beings arrived in southeast Australia. Three strode out to other parts of the continent, but one crouched in place. His body transformed into a volcano called Budj Bim, and his teeth became the lava the volcano spat out.

Now, scientists say this tale—told by the Aboriginal Gunditjmara people of the area—may have some basis in fact. About 37,000 years ago, Budj Bim and another nearby volcano formed through a rapid series of eruptions, new evidence reveals, suggesting the legend may be the oldest story still being told today.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/aboriginal-tale-ancient-volcano-oldest-story-ever-told?fbclid=IwAR33O-mhmWsy7zE5mei9P7My3ljLfXgY5zyUdrDkH5iNpShdtsbGu_gWcLk

Australia’s Stonehenge near Mullimbiby

What made Mullumbimby special was the rumour that it was built upon what was long ago a worldwide headquarters of stone circles. Today, the large number of remaining, disturbed standing stones possibly point to the existence of a world-wide centre of learning in the distant past.

The great number of stones point to the existence of a now destroyed, mega-structure. The Stone Age equivalent of Egypt’s the Library of Alexandria. It conceivably operated for well over a hundred thousand years and functioned as a centralised theroracratic academia from the beginning of the Pleistocene glaciation until the European invasion when it was scattered and its people driven away or killed. Reference : http://www.patestos.com/the-facts.html?fbclid=IwAR0qiQDc84dpfwYauBGtahs182kJZmnWuxrtfOqu1AmxCzea00C7onOGa9s

World’s oldest stone axes found in Kakadu

The The Out of Africa theory, like all theories, remains valid until proven wrong. However the theory is not the only one and there is much contradictory evidence.

The general public believe that the ‘Out of Africa’ case is closed and in the early 1980s, Alan Wilson, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, further refined traditional anthropological thinking with his work with PhD students Rebecca Cann and Mark Stoneking on the so-called “Mitochondrial Eve” hypothesis

Wilson and Cann secured bragging rights  in perpetuity, science had once again provided certainty and an African ancestry. Or so it seemed.

But not long after their paper was published Rebecca Cann realised they were mistaken. In 1982 she examined the mitochondrial DNA of 112 Indigenous people, including twelve full-descent Aboriginals, and the results were in total opposition to what they assumed was fully resolved.

Nevertheless, Cann was obliged to contradict a central tenet of their paper, stating that “mitochondrial DNA puts the origin of Homo sapiens much further back and indicates that the Australian Aboriginals arose 400,000 years ago from two distinct lineages, far earlier than any other racial type.”⁸ Not only was the emergence of Aboriginal Homo sapiens “far earlier”⁹ than any Africans, she provided a sequence and motherland.

The Australian racial group has a much higher number of mutations than any other racial group, which suggests that the Australians split off from a common ancestor about 400,000 years ago. By the same theory, the Mongoloid originated about 100,000 years ago, and the Negroid and Caucasian groups about 40,000 years ago.

One major significance of this new discovery is that archaeologists will have to recalibrate previous assumptions about the journey out of Africa by modern humans. Most academics believe the trek began between 80,000 and 100,000 years ago, but until now there was no solid evidence that humans had reached south-east Asia – let alone Australia – for anything beyond 50,000 years.

“Now we know humans were living in northern Australia a minimum of 65,000 years ago, the search will be on to discover each of the steps they took on the way,” Professor Clarkson said.

Gobekli Tepe is covered in Australian Aboriginal art work

Bruce R Fenton’s new book The Forgotten Exodus: The Into Africa Theory of Human Evolution provides fascinating research supporting the Out of Australia theory – scroll to 1h for the meat of the argument

Mankinds Ancient Origins Out of Africa Theory is Wrong

The “Out of Africa” theory has long been used in the field of paleoanthropology (the study of the origins and predecessors of the present human species, using fossils and other remains), to explain the geographic origin of modern day humans. In the absence of an absolute consensus in this area of research, most paleoanthropologists agree with the basic theory, which postulates that the very first Homo sapiens emerged in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and eventually set forth from their homeland to conquer the world.

It’s considered a nice story, very compelling even, and certainly, there are many archaeological sites and genetic studies which tend to favour it as fact. But the question remains, is it true?

For over a century, research scientists across the globe have given the impression to the public that they require only a few final details to perfect their popular consensus model for human evolution. This book, however, the result of three years of investigation into cutting edge archaeological and genetic data, is set to displace the existing scientific paradigm in human evolution. It potentially marks the end of the ‘Out of Africa Theory’ of human origins.

49,000 year old Axes found in Australia

Even mainstream archaeology is moving inexorably to the conclusion that maybe, just possibly (only a hypothesis though) humans originated in Australia.

Professor O’Connor said evidence suggests the technology was developed in Australia “after people arrived” (sic) around 50,000 years ago.

“We know that they didn’t have axes where they came from. There’s no axes in the islands to our north. They arrived in Australia and innovated axes,” she said.

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2017/article/archaeologists-find-world-s-oldest-axe-in-australia

Maybe we did not all come Out of Africa ?

DNA research is rapidly coming to the conclusion that maybe not all humans came Out of Africa., and certainly a lot longer ago than the 40-60,000 years previously preached as “historical fact”.

Whether our ‘mystery’ DNA is local or of distant origins, it does seem odd that scientists who have supposedly mapped the entire human genome are still finding traces of a ‘new,’ previously unknown human lineage in our blood.

More details in this article

 

 

 

 

 

9000 year old stone houses in WA

 

There are 2,500 registered Aboriginal heritage sites on the Burrup peninsula and surrounding islands, which are located near Karratha, 1,525km north of Perth.

The area is also home to the US$2bn North West Shelf gas project, the largest oil and gas development in Australia.

The entry to the largest heritage site, a valley containing close to a million rock carvings dating back 40,000 years, is within a kilometre of a fertiliser plant. Last year the WA government removed a large umbrella heritage listing for the peninsula because it complicated development applications.

The research done by McDonald and her team was co-funded by Rio Tinto, which has a mining lease within the national heritage area, and Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation.

More here

 

First Australian Farming and Settlement

 

The story I always got as a schoolkid was that the First Australians were simple hunter gatherers and nomads. We were told that aboriginal people created no permanent dwellings, that they didn’t bother to cultivate the land, that they didn’t have the technology to build dams nor to herd wild animals.

But it turns out that all of this just isn’t true.

I am just reading Bruce Pascoe’s book Dark Emu which completely dispels this myth, a myth that was clearly promulgated by the first settlers in order to justify the theft of land from traditional landowners.

By reading some of the original white explorer’s diaries Bruce has uncovered 100s of examples of first australian animal husbandry, agriculture, cereal production and storeage, well building and permanent settlements.

For example Sturt’s group were within 2 days of dying of starvation and thirst in the middle of the Stony Desert, when they were greeted by a group of 400 Aboriginals who offered them farmed roast duck, cakes made from millet and three newly constructed buildings for their use while they recovered to continue their journey.

Sturt and many other explorers documented all of this in great detail, including large scale harvests and driving through 9 miles of haystacks !

Archeologists have recently accepted that the oldest man made stone structures discovered to date on the planet are the 40,000 year old stone fish traps at Brewarrina, and 32,000 year old grindstones meaning the First Australians were the first bakers in the world !!

Like Bruce I find  it incredible that this culture is so underestimated in Australia. As he says if this was in Texas or Britain there would a Tourist bus running to the site every 15 minutes !

Listen to his interviews on ABC radio here and here