Deep Time History of Australia: Research Assignment

Aboriginal people were already living in Australia’s interior 49,000 years ago, according to an incredible series of new archaeological discoveries.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA—ABC News reports that a rock shelter in the arid interior of South Australia may have been inhabited 49,000 years ago. Giles Hamm of La Trobe University and Adnyamathanha elder Clifford Coulthard were conducting surveys in the Flinders Ranges when they found the site, known as Warratyi, near a spring surrounded by rock art.

The speed at which the first Aboriginal settlers spread across Australia has been underlined by the discovery of an ancient rock shelter north of Adelaide.

The Warratyi rock shelter in the Flinders Ranges, 550km north of Adelaide, is an impressive place.

The South Australian cave is a natural geological feature and it stands out from the surrounding ridges. It’s located in a strategic position, elevated high above the local landscape, giving it a commanding view of the gorge below.

An unassuming rock shelter in the Flinders Ranges has been revealed as the oldest known evidence of Aboriginal Australian settlement, thanks in part to advanced nuclear techniques, technology and scientists.

THE discovery of tool fragments and bones of a giant wombat-like creature in the Flinders Ranges, reveals hunters existed up to 49,000 years ago in Australia’s arid interior — 10,000 years earlier than first thought.

Elucidating the material culture of early people in arid Australia and the nature of their environmental interactions is essential for understanding the adaptability of populations and the potential causes of megafaunal extinctions 5040 thousand years ago

A rock shelter in the Flinders Range, called Warratyi, has proven to be an important site.
Learn how dating of artefacts and fossils from the site has changed our previous conceptions of human settlement and technology, and even our interactions with megafauna.

The National-Heritage listed Baiame’s Ngunnhu, also known as the Brewarrina Fish Traps, are a marvel of ancient engineering and cultural significance.

The Brewarrina Fish Traps, or as they are traditionally known Baiame’s Ngunnhu, are a complex network of river stones arranged to form ponds and channels that catch fish as they travel downstream. Known as one of the oldest human-made structures in the world, the traps are located in the Barwon River on the outskirts of Brewarrina.

Madjedbebe, rock shelter archaeological site in Northern Territory, Australia, that archaeological evidence suggests is among the oldest Aboriginal sites on the continent, with an estimated age of more than 50,000 years.

Archaeological excavations at a site near Kakadu National Park have pushed back the date of human arrival in Australia by up to 18,000 years. So how did scientists come up with that date?

Madjedbebe Archaeological Site, Northern Territory Near the border of western Arnhem Land and Kakadu National Park in Australia’s ‘top end’, Madjedbebe rock shelter (formerly known as Malakunanja II) is the oldest archaeological site in Australia,…

At least 65,000 years ago: Archaeological evidence of first peoples on the Australian continent

The western Arnhem Land site of Madjedbebe – a site hitherto erroneously named Malakunanja II in scientific and popular literature but identified as Madjedbebe by senior Mirarr Traditional Owners – is widely recognised as one of Australia’s oldest dated human occupation sites (Roberts et al. 1990a:153, 1998; Allen and O’Connell 2014; Clarkson et al. 2017).

Madjedbebe (formerly known as Malakunanja II) is a sandstone rock shelter in Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia, said to be the site of the oldest evidence of human habitation in the country.

A team of archaeologists and dating specialists have new proof that Aboriginal people have been in Australia for at least 65,000 years — much longer than the 47,000 years believed by some archaeologists. The new findings have been published in Nature magazine this week.

Newly discovered rock art panels depict how ancient Aboriginal
ancestors envisioned climate change and creation

Aborigines arrived in Australia up to 20,000 years earlier than previously believed, with new research backing their claims to the world’s oldest culture — but implicating them in the disappearance of prehistoric megafauna.

Here we report the results of new excavations conducted at Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in northern Australia. Artefacts in primary depositional context are concentrated in three dense bands, with the stratigraphic integrity of the deposit demonstrated by artefact refits and by optical dating and other analyses of the sediments.

Ancient plant foods that were eaten by the First Australians 65,000 years ago have been found preserved in charcoal in Arnhem Land.