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Australian Aboriginals: Origins, Arrival & Culture

Bunyip is a whitefella designation of an essentially animist concept inside Indigenous cosmology. Whitefellas don't accommodate a spiritual mode of existence outside some bookbound flatland of the imaginal. The spirits that inhabit water sources coexist absolutely with the physical mundane but are not part of the same liminal sphere of existence. The bunyip is a dwelling spirit of place, not a physical objective phenomenon, although it can make manifest physical consequences.

The idea that Indigenous people drew their concept of this spirit from bones in the landscape and oral lore pertaining to megafauna can only come from a whitefella worldview. ie whitefellas do not understand bunyip in its proper cultural context, for if they did they would not make this error of designation.

Mungoman could probably say it more succinctly. Oh wait; he did. Anyway, that's my thoughts as best I can manage in this ridiculously limited language.

To get a clearer idea, read up on the Tjukurrpa. I like this effort at classification, so far, from a recentish journal paper.
"... a highly ramified and multi-faceted concept, albeit one with great internal coherence. "
Source: https://openresearch-repository.anu...8997/2/01_Goddard_What_does_Jukurrpa_2015.pdf

Note: Tjukurrpa is not the same thing as the English word dreaming. That is a poor metaphor first presented in 1953 as a carrier for the fairly limited understanding of one whitefella academic. Its longevity is testament to how little progress has been made in the past 66 years and to how ill-prepared European languages are to accommodate this ancient and very Asian cosmology.
 
Bunyip is a whitefella designation of an essentially animist concept inside Indigenous cosmology. Whitefellas don't accommodate a spiritual mode of existence outside some bookbound flatland of the imaginal. The spirits that inhabit water sources coexist absolutely with the physical mundane but are not part of the same liminal sphere of existence. The bunyip is a dwelling spirit of place, not a physical objective phenomenon, although it can make manifest physical consequences.

The idea that Indigenous people drew their concept of this spirit from bones in the landscape and oral lore pertaining to megafauna can only come from a whitefella worldview. ie whitefellas do not understand bunyip in its proper cultural context, for if they did they would not make this error of designation.

Mungoman could probably say it more succinctly. Oh wait; he did. Anyway, that's my thoughts as best I can manage in this ridiculously limited language.

To get a clearer idea, read up on the Tjukurrpa. I like this effort at classification, so far, from a recentish journal paper.
"... a highly ramified and multi-faceted concept, albeit one with great internal coherence. "
Source: https://openresearch-repository.anu...8997/2/01_Goddard_What_does_Jukurrpa_2015.pdf

Note: Tjukurrpa is not the same thing as the English word dreaming. That is a poor metaphor first presented in 1953 as a carrier for the fairly limited understanding of one whitefella academic. Its longevity is testament to how little progress has been made in the past 66 years and to how ill-prepared European languages are to accommodate this ancient and very Asian cosmology.


Many thanks Skinny. Your Eloquence does you proud mate.
 
https://australia.icomos.org/publications/charters/

I think the Burra charter to be a very helpful document in cultural heritage, given as it incldes the landscape as well as man made things...and how they interact.

I did a bit of work on the Great Southern Road (Sydney to Melbourne) Kondoru, and the Charter was never very far away.

Guidance concerning the Road, plus the Fabric of the road was imperative - I would say that we left alone 99.9% of it - mainly for it's historic value. Just short of Goulburn, a convict stockade had been built so quite a few musket balls were found - plus there was worked sandstone on the culverts...beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and all tucked out of the way so in pretty good shape still

Yeah, I know...200 years history isn't much, is it, but it's all we gubbas have got.
 
The oldest story ever told?

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.

The study raises a provocative possibility, says Sean Ulm, an archaeologist at James Cook University, Cairns, who was not involved with the work. “It is an interesting proposition to think about these traditions extending for tens of thousands of years.” But he and others urge caution, as no other stories passed down orally are believed to have survived that long.

It’s not clear how long the Gunditjmara have lived in the southwest corner of what is now the Australian state of Victoria. Until now, the oldest accepted evidence for human occupation dates back no more than about 13,000 years.

But geologist Erin Matchan at the University of Melbourne says that in the 1940s, archaeologists reported finding a stone ax near the region’s ancient Tower Hill volcano. The ax shows humans lived there before the eruption because it was found buried beneath the volcanic rocks.

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

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.

The study raises a provocative possibility, says Sean Ulm, an archaeologist at James Cook University, Cairns, who was not involved with the work. “It is an interesting proposition to think about these traditions extending for tens of thousands of years.” But he and others urge caution, as no other stories passed down orally are believed to have survived that long.

It’s not clear how long the Gunditjmara have lived in the southwest corner of what is now the Australian state of Victoria. Until now, the oldest accepted evidence for human occupation dates back no more than about 13,000 years.

But geologist Erin Matchan at the University of Melbourne says that in the 1940s, archaeologists reported finding a stone ax near the region’s ancient Tower Hill volcano. The ax shows humans lived there before the eruption because it was found buried beneath the volcanic rocks.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/aboriginal-tale-ancient-volcano-oldest-story-ever-told


I know of the story of this Big Old Fella who came down from the desert to Kingston S.E. ( Mount Gambier), and because he was hungry, he dug an oven and lit it. He left it so that the embers would cook down just right and went hunting.

He got a little wallaby and came back to his fire, only to find that water had poured in and put his cooking fire out. That got him cranky because he was looking forward to a feed of wallaby.

So he dug another oven and lit it up and waited for the fire to burn down to coals - but it too had water pour in and put his fire out.

By this time He was biting his beard with anger and so He went and dug another oven for his fire. Now, by this time it was getting late and he wasn't looking forward to going to sleep hungry if it happened again.

It happened again with water pouring into his cooking oven...well, he started roaring and hitting things and generally carrying on and decided there and then to go back to the Desert, where cooking fires don't go out .

This is a story I heard of, to explain the three extinct volcanoes that are next to each other down mount Gambier way, and the reason why they are full of water was because the local spirit didn't want him there.

I got told that those volcanoes were active about 28,000 years ago.
 
Been waiting for Gordo to bring it back to Australia for years. He did a great solo podcast about his trip to the Western deserts and caves a couple of years ago.

Show notes:

This week we welcome to the show speaker, educator, lawyer, anthropologist, activist and Bardi woman, Munya Andrews. Munya joins us for an exploration of the concepts in her book, Journey into Dreamtime, as well as related notions in ecology, politics and philosophy. Excellent stuff!

Munya's website, Evolve Communities. https://www.evolves.com.au/
Munya's book, Journey into Dreamtime. https://www.evolves.com.au/dreamtime-...
Munya's webinar on The Dreamtime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuzqo...
 
This is a lengthy article which might be of interest.

Aboriginal Monsters and their Hidden Meanings

Source: ancient-origins.net
Date: 29 February, 2020

A rich inventory of monstrous figures exists throughout Aboriginal Australia. The specific form that their wickedness takes depends to a considerable extent on their location.

In the Australian Central and Western Deserts there are roaming Ogres, Bogeymen and Bogey women, Cannibal Babies, Baby-Guzzlers, Sorcerers, and spinifex and feather-slippered Spirit Beings able to dispatch victims with a single fatal garrote. There are lustful old men who, wishing to satiate their unbridled sexual appetites, relentlessly pursue beautiful nubile young girls through the night sky and on land – and other monstrous beings, too.

Arnhem Land , in Australia’s north, is the abode of malevolent shades and vampire-like Wind and Shooting Star Spirit Beings. There are also murderous, humanoid fish-maidens who live in deep waterholes and rockholes, biding their time to rise up, grab and drown unsuspecting human children or adults who stray close to the water’s edge. Certain sorcerers gleefully dismember their victims limb by limb, and there are other monstrous entities as well, living parallel lives to the human beings residing in the same places.

The existence of such Evil Beings is an unremarkable phenomenon, given that most religious and mythological traditions possess their own demons and supernatural entities. Monstrous beings are allegorical in nature, personifying evil.

In the Christian tradition, we need to look no further than Satan. In the Tanakh, ‘The Adversary’, as a figure in the Hebrew Bible is sometimes described in English translation, fulfils a similar role. Often, akin to many of the Monstrous Beings that inhabit Aboriginal Australia , these evil supernatural entities are tricksters, shape-changers and shape-shifters.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-australia/aboriginal-monsters-0013351
 
This is a lengthy article which might be of interest.

Aboriginal Monsters and their Hidden Meanings

Source: ancient-origins.net
Date: 29 February, 2020

A rich inventory of monstrous figures exists throughout Aboriginal Australia. The specific form that their wickedness takes depends to a considerable extent on their location.

In the Australian Central and Western Deserts there are roaming Ogres, Bogeymen and Bogey women, Cannibal Babies, Baby-Guzzlers, Sorcerers, and spinifex and feather-slippered Spirit Beings able to dispatch victims with a single fatal garrote. There are lustful old men who, wishing to satiate their unbridled sexual appetites, relentlessly pursue beautiful nubile young girls through the night sky and on land – and other monstrous beings, too.

Arnhem Land , in Australia’s north, is the abode of malevolent shades and vampire-like Wind and Shooting Star Spirit Beings. There are also murderous, humanoid fish-maidens who live in deep waterholes and rockholes, biding their time to rise up, grab and drown unsuspecting human children or adults who stray close to the water’s edge. Certain sorcerers gleefully dismember their victims limb by limb, and there are other monstrous entities as well, living parallel lives to the human beings residing in the same places.

The existence of such Evil Beings is an unremarkable phenomenon, given that most religious and mythological traditions possess their own demons and supernatural entities. Monstrous beings are allegorical in nature, personifying evil.

In the Christian tradition, we need to look no further than Satan. In the Tanakh, ‘The Adversary’, as a figure in the Hebrew Bible is sometimes described in English translation, fulfils a similar role. Often, akin to many of the Monstrous Beings that inhabit Aboriginal Australia , these evil supernatural entities are tricksters, shape-changers and shape-shifters.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-australia/aboriginal-monsters-0013351


It all keeps us on the straight and narrow, doesn't it, and these malevolent forces are determined by the extent of our imagination, and so, what we learn as a young'n, we carry with us.


The rewards for good behaviour, and adverse reactions to unsocial behaviour, and the Australian Aboriginal, has had tens of thousands of years to hone their society so that it basically takes care of its self through mutual respect, but harsh punishment when the transgression threatens to tear the warp and weft of that society. Then we have 'Pay Back", which does not fuck around. A couple of spear thrusts through both thigh muscles places the transgressor completely at the mercy of the society.

What a lesson to be learnt, with the time it takes to heal. No hunting, you don't eat much at all, no antibiotics - you walking like an old old man, you can't shit properly - a complete lack of respect that you can't walk away from.

But then there would be the little tendernesses shown, the tucker left close by...maybe some Old Woman who cleans up the wounds for you, the surreptitious acknowledgement of family...

Now, if this young fella had learnt his lesson as a young'n, he wouldn't have wound up with these scars of penalty paid, for all to see.

So yeah, these Scary Ones are there and they live just on the otherside of reality, waiting for those cheeky buggers....And yes, I reckon that they're all still here. Your opinion may vary.
 
So yeah, these Scary Ones are there and they live just on the otherside of reality, waiting for those cheeky buggers....And yes, I reckon that they're all still here.
Terrific read!

Surely there are parallels with many cultures.

In Scotland, you were brought up with the threat that, if you misbehaved, 'the bogeyman will get you'! :eek:
 
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There was an interesting interview with anthropologist Yasmin Musharbash about the book I've listed below on ABC Radio Sydney:

Interview on ABC Radio at 1 hour 37 minutes

Monster Anthropology in Australasia and Beyond
Editors: Musharbash, Y., Presterudstuen, G. (Eds.)

Offering a dialogue between anthropology and literature, culture, and media, this book presents fine-grained ethnographic vignettes of monsters dwelling in the contemporary world. These monsters hail from Aboriginal Australia, the Pacific, Asia, and Europe, and their presence is inextricably intertwined with the lives of those they haunt.
 
Something I find very interesting: the idea that prehistoric megafauna are preserved in the oral history of Australian Aboriginals ...

This newly published research further reinforces the notion that Australia's earliest human inhabitants coexisted with the now-extinct megafauna. It also suggests the megafauna extinctions had more to do with environmental changes than human predation.

NOTE: There's also the matter of the newly-discovered biggest species of "giant kangaroo" ever found ...
Scientists Reveal The First Australians Coexisted With Humongous Lizards And Kangaroos

When people first arrived in what is now Queensland, they would have found the land inhabited by massive animals including goannas 6 metres (20 feet) long and kangaroos twice as tall as a human.

We have studied fossil bones of these animals for the past decade. Our findings, published today in Nature Communications, shed new light on the mystery of what drove these ancient megafauna to extinction.

The first bones were found by the Barada Barna people during cultural heritage surveys on their traditional lands about 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Mackay, at South Walker Creek Mine.

Our study shares the first reliable glimpse of the giants that roamed the Australian tropics between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago.

These megafauna were the largest land animals to live in Australia since the time of the dinosaurs. Understanding the ecological role they played and the environmental impact of their loss remains their most valuable untold story.

While megafauna lived at South Walker Creek, people had arrived on the continent and were spreading across it. Our study adds new evidence to the ongoing megafauna extinction debate, but importantly underscores how much is left to learn from the fossil record. ...

Why did these megafauna become extinct? It has been argued that the extinctions were due to over-hunting by humans, and occurred shortly after people arrived in Australia.

However, this theory is not supported by our finding that a diverse collection of these ancient giants still survived 40,000 years ago, after humans had spread around the continent. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/the-fi...th-three-tonne-marsupials-and-6-meter-lizards
 
Here are the bibliographic particulars and abstract of the published research report ...

The full report is accessible at the link.

Extinction of eastern Sahul megafauna coincides with sustained environmental deterioration
Scott A. Hocknull, Richard Lewis, Lee J. Arnold, Tim Pietsch, Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Gilbert J. Price, Patrick Moss, Rachel Wood, Anthony Dosseto, Julien Louys, Jon Olley & Rochelle A. Lawrence
Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 2250 (2020)
Abstract
Explanations for the Upper Pleistocene extinction of megafauna from Sahul (Australia and New Guinea) remain unresolved. Extinction hypotheses have advanced climate or human-driven scenarios, in spite of over three quarters of Sahul lacking reliable biogeographic or chronologic data. Here we present new megafauna from north-eastern Australia that suffered extinction sometime after 40,100 (±1700) years ago. Megafauna fossils preserved alongside leaves, seeds, pollen and insects, indicate a sclerophyllous forest with heathy understorey that was home to aquatic and terrestrial carnivorous reptiles and megaherbivores, including the world’s largest kangaroo. Megafauna species diversity is greater compared to southern sites of similar age, which is contrary to expectations if extinctions followed proposed migration routes for people across Sahul. Our results do not support rapid or synchronous human-mediated continental-wide extinction, or the proposed timing of peak extinction events. Instead, megafauna extinctions coincide with regionally staggered spatio-temporal deterioration in hydroclimate coupled with sustained environmental change.

SOURCE & FULL REPORT:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15785-w
 
Aboriginal Australians Dined on Moths 2,000 Years Ago

A collaboration between researchers from Monash University and traditional land owners of the Gunaikurnai people has uncovered tools used to prepare Bogong moths as food in what’s now Victoria, Australia, some 2,000 years ago.

bogong_moth.jpg


Pictured here are a single moth (left) and thousands of moths resting on a rock (right).

In 2019, the team excavated Cloggs Cave, near Buchan in eastern Victoria, for the first time in 50 years. Inside, researchers found a small, roughly 11-ounce grinding stone dated to between 1,600 and 2,100 years ago. They used a technique known as biochemical staining to identify collagen and protein remains from Bogong moths on the stone—the first conclusive archaeological evidence of insect food remnants on a stone artifact in the world.


The grindstone was portable enough for ancient Indigenous people to carry it on their travels. Its owners may have used the stone to grind the insects into cakes or pastes that could then be smoked and preserved. Another popular cooking technique was roasting the moths in a fire.

screen_shot_2021-02-18_at_124041_pm.png


The tool’s discovery confirms long-held oral histories, showing that Aboriginal families have harvested, cooked and feasted on Bogong months for upward of 65 generations.

Pettina Love, a member of the Bundjalung Nation Aboriginal community who conducted a study about the safety of eating the moths when she was a PhD student at La Trobe University, noted in 2011 that some people continue the practice today.

“The favored method of cooking is BBQ,” she said in a statement. “Opinions vary about the taste. Some people report a peanut butter flavor and others saying they have a sweet aftertaste like nectar.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/moths-used-food-australia-2000-years-ago-180977048/

maximus otter
 
New research has identified and mapped the pathways allowing the rapid dissemination of humans throughout Sahul (the once-singular landmass that's now Australia and New Guinea).
First Human Inhabitants of Australia Followed “Superhighways” Across the Continent

The best path across the desert is rarely the straightest. For the first human inhabitants of Sahul — the super-continent that underlies modern Australia and New Guinea — camping at the next spring, stream, or rock shelter allowed them to thrive for hundreds of generations. Those who successfully traversed the landmarks made their way across the continent, spreading from their landfall in the Northwest across the continent, making their way to all corners of Australia and New Guinea.

By simulating the physiology and decisions of early way-finders, an international team* of archaeologists, geographers, ecologists, and computer scientists has mapped the probable “superhighways” that led to the first peopling of the Australian continent some 50,000-70,000 years ago. Their study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, is the largest reconstruction of a network of human migration paths into a new landscape. It is also the first to apply rigorous computational analysis at the continental scale, testing 125 billion possible pathways. ...
FULL STORY (With Illustrative Map):
https://scitechdaily.com/first-huma...-followed-superhighways-across-the-continent/
 
Here are the bibliographic details and abstract from the published study on human dispersal throughout Sahul.

Crabtree, S.A., White, D.A., Bradshaw, C.J.A. et al.
Landscape rules predict optimal superhighways for the first peopling of Sahul.
Nat Hum Behav (2021).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01106-8

Abstract
Archaeological data and demographic modelling suggest that the peopling of Sahul required substantial populations, occurred rapidly within a few thousand years and encompassed environments ranging from hyper-arid deserts to temperate uplands and tropical rainforests. How this migration occurred and how humans responded to the physical environments they encountered have, however, remained largely speculative. By constructing a high-resolution digital elevation model for Sahul and coupling it with fine-scale viewshed analysis of landscape prominence, least-cost pedestrian travel modelling and high-performance computing, we create over 125 billion potential migratory pathways, whereby the most parsimonious routes traversed emerge. Our analysis revealed several major pathways—superhighways—transecting the continent, that we evaluated using archaeological data. These results suggest that the earliest Australian ancestors adopted a set of fundamental rules shaped by physiological capacity, attraction to visually prominent landscape features and freshwater distribution to maximize survival, even without previous experience of the landscapes they encountered.

SOURCE: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01106-8
 
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