Aboriginal craft in Australia: 5 sites, one dating fight
Axes, fish traps and an eel farm. Every one has a date. Several of the dates have a fight attached.
Five dates on one ruler. One of them is hatched because it is under dispute.
Years ago, at least. Sources in the sections below.
Five places. Three agreed dates. One date under attack. One trap with no date at all.
Start in the tropical north and end in the cool south-east. The craft changes as you go: first an axe, then a fish trap, then a whole eel farm.
What does not change is the paperwork. Every age comes with a lab report, and every lab report comes with a rival.
The route is a reading order, not a road. Nobody claims anyone walked from stop 1 to stop 5. We drew the line, so we label the line as inferred.
Five sites, north to south-east: a reading order, not a road
Pins: 1 Madjedbebe, 2 Nawarla Gabarnmang, 3 Ngunnhu at Brewarrina, 4 Lake Mungo, 5 Budj Bim. Positions approximate.
Madjedbebe is 65,000 years old, says the paper. Not so fast, say the critics.
In 2017 a team dug a rock shelter on Mirarr land near Kakadu. The lowest layer held axe heads with ground edges, grinding stones and ground ochre. They dated it to about 65,000 years ago using a method that measures when sand grains last saw daylight.
The Mirarr Traditional Owners were partners in the dig. Other archaeologists say the date is too old. They think people arrived under 50,000 years ago, and that heavy artefacts may have sunk through loose sand into older layers.
The dig team has replied in print. The sand has declined to comment.
Contested. Clarkson and colleagues (Nature, 2017): about 65,000, give or take 6,000. O'Connell, Allen and colleagues (PNAS, 2018): under about 50,000. Both are peer-reviewed.
How old are the first Australians? Three published answers, one sandy hole
Years ago. Hatched: a claim under dispute. Soft ends: an upper limit, not a point. Sources: Clarkson et al. 2017; O'Connell et al. 2018; UQ 2017
A 35,400-year-old axe was found from a helicopter. Well, the shelter was.
In 2006, Jawoyn Association staff spotted this large rock shelter from the air. In 2010 a team dug a small square and found part of an axe. Its edge had been ground sharp, and four radiocarbon dates agree on about 35,400 years.
The stone came from a quarry about 40 kilometres away. Someone carried it, shaped it and kept it. That is a supply chain with no shipping line.
Documented: Geneste and colleagues, Australian Archaeology, 2010. At the time the oldest known ground-edge tools were dated 22,000 to 30,000 years, from Japan and northern Australia. Stop 1 now claims older.
The 2010 axe beat the old record by 5,400 to 13,400 years
Years ago. The gap is plain subtraction from the cited dates. Source: Geneste et al. 2010; Monash University release via ScienceDaily.
Ngunnhu may be the oldest human-made structure on Earth. Birth certificate: pending.
On the Barwon River at Brewarrina, rows of stones form pools that funnel fish. The Ngemba Wayilwan account says the ancestor Baiame threw a net over the river and the traps follow its shape. The traps joined the National Heritage List in 2005.
People in Brewarrina say the traps are at least 40,000 years old. ANU archaeologist Duncan Wright says there is no reliable radiocarbon date, and the evidence suggests they are younger. He adds that the true age could still be older.
A site can be sacred, in use, nationally listed and undated. Only the last one is a problem for a textbook.
Contested. Local claim: 40,000+ years. Archaeological view: no reliable date, probably more recent, possibly older. The Baiame story is a living tradition and is reported here as what the Ngemba say, not as an event.
The claim is 40,000 years. The record is zero radiocarbon dates
Years ago. Soft bar: a claim without a lab date. Sources: Wright (ANU) as quoted by ICSF; Global Voices 2026; Unmonumental.
Lake Mungo: a 40,000-year-old burial, and a 43-year wait to bring Mungo Man home.
At Lake Mungo in western New South Wales, geologist Jim Bowler found Mungo Lady, who had been cremated and buried. In 1974 he found Mungo Man, laid on his back with his hands crossed and covered in red ochre. The ochre likely came from about 200 kilometres away.
The remains went to the Australian National University in Canberra for study. Local Aboriginal communities campaigned for decades to have them back. Mungo Lady returned in 1992. Mungo Man returned in 2017, two years after ANU apologised for the grief his removal caused.
A 1999 team dated Mungo Man to 62,000 years. A 2003 panel using four labs agreed on 40,000 to 42,000. The 62,000 was the exciting number. The 40,000 was the one four labs could agree on.
Documented: the 2003 panel (Bowler and colleagues, Nature). The 1999 figure is the earlier rival estimate that panel set aside. The reburial place is not public. The 43 years is 1974 to 2017.
62,000 or 40,000? Four labs picked 40,000 to 42,000
Years ago. Sources: Mungo National Park (Visit Mungo); National Museum of Australia citing Bowler et al. 2003; AAP/ABC/SBS reports 2017.
Budj Bim is an eel farm at least 6,600 years old, with a UNESCO plaque and a Gunditjmara owner.
A volcano called Budj Bim sent lava across south-west Victoria. The Gunditjmara built stone channels, weirs and ponds in the lava country to hold kooyang, the short-finned eel. They wove baskets from river reeds and spear grass to sort the eels by size.
One channel has been radiocarbon dated to at least 6,600 years. UNESCO listed the landscape in July 2019, the first Australian listing made solely for Aboriginal cultural values. Gunditj Mirring chair Denise Lovett said it recognises "significance to all of humanity".
Some of the system is still in use. That is a longer service record than most warranties.
Documented: McNiven and colleagues, Journal of Archaeological Science, 2012; UNESCO inscription 2019. The creation story, that the ancestral being Budj Bim revealed himself in the eruption, is the Gunditjmara account and is reported here as theirs.
The channel is 6,600 years old. The dam wall is a newcomer at 500
Years ago. Sources: ANSTO 2019; Ian McNiven in The Conversation; UNESCO World Heritage listing 1577.
Same lava, same eels, different paperwork
Then · at least 6,600 years ago
- Stone channels, weirs and ponds in the lava flow.
- Woven baskets from reeds and spear grass, sorting eels by size.
- Stone houses beside the wetlands.
- A government mission set up near the traps in 1868. Trapping continued.
Now · 2019 onward
- UNESCO World Heritage listing, July 2019.
- Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners co-manage Budj Bim National Park.
- Ranger-led tours; Gunditjmara tours have run since 1999.
- Mount Eccles has its Gunditjmara name back.
Sources: UNESCO WHC 1577; Parks Victoria; ORIC "Recognising Budj Bim"; Atlas Obscura; Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.
The people with the longest record are 3.2% of the census
people said yes to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander question in 2021. That is 3.2% of the population.
ABS 2021 Censusgrowth from 649,171 in 2016. Part is births. Part is people changing how they answer, which the ABS says can happen.
ABS 2021 Census; ABS panel reportof the rise came from "non-demographic factors", the ABS phrase for not births, deaths or migration.
ABS, counts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australianspeople speak one of 167 Indigenous languages at home. The first release said 78,656. The ABS corrected itself, which is more than most dating disputes manage.
ABS media release, with correctionyears, at least, for the oldest dated Budj Bim channel. Some of the system is still in use.
ANSTO 2019; UNESCOThree tellers, three clocks, and none of them agree on the date.
The community says one thing, the lab says another, and the global story borrows whatever number fits the timeline. Each has a reason. Each has a date.
We did not read a foreign textbook. We read the papers textbooks quote. The 2017 Madjedbebe paper presents its date as a new minimum for modern humans leaving Africa, so the Australian site travels abroad as a point on a global clock.
Interpretation: the clock travels further than the Country does. A separate argument runs inside Australia. Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu (2014) says early Aboriginal people were farmers. Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe (2021) answer that the evidence shows highly successful hunter-gatherers, and that farming is not a prize. Reviewers report Pascoe welcomed the critique.
Who gets to say how old: three versions on one sheet
Community and heritage listings
- Ngunnhu: 40,000+ years (local claim).
- National Heritage List, 2005.
- Budj Bim: 6,600 years, UNESCO 2019.
Labs and journals
- Madjedbebe: 65,000 or under 50,000.
- Mungo Man: 62,000, then 40,000 to 42,000.
- Ngunnhu: no reliable date.
The global timeline
- Dates used as markers for leaving Africa.
- Madjedbebe paper: new minimum for dispersal across south Asia.
- Local names and custodians travel less.
The third column is our reading of the 2017 paper's framing, not a survey of textbooks.
The sand is patient. The journals are not.
The oldest ground-edge axe technology on record was first reported from Aboriginal Country in 2010 at 35,400 years, then pushed to about 65,000 in 2017, and that 65,000 date is still being argued in journals, so the "official" age of Australian craft depends on which paper you read.
Supporting: Clarkson et al. 2017; O'Connell et al. 2018; Geneste et al. 2010