Indigenous Australians dreamtime knowledge

[Apech]

Scientific research often reaffirms what is in an oral history. This has been particularly so in Australia where cultural stories – often referred to as Dreamtime stories – that describe land movements and floods fit in with what later becomes known about seismic and glacial shifts from the geological record. For example, Associate Professor Nick Reid and Professor Patrick D. Nunn have analysed stories from Indigenous coastal communities and have seen a thread of discussions about the rise of tidal waters that occurred between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago. And these are the newer stories.

 

Other stories collected from around Cairns showed that stories recalled a time when the land covered the area that is now the Great Barrier Reef and stories from the Yorke Peninsula reference a time when there was no Spencer Gulf (it is now 50m below sea level). Reid and Nunn hypothesise that this could make these stories over 12,000 years old.

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/22/indigenous-australians-know-were-the-oldest-living-culture-its-in-our-dreamtime

[silent thunder]

I'd put my money on the Yorke Peninsula reference being even older.

Nice article... thanks for sharing.

[Nungali]

Right up my alley  ... but I wonder why this is such a surprise ?   I mean we know they were here when that happened , we know they retain history orally ( and this is a 'general event ' not  some complex 'gossip' where  details change ) and we know some of this oral history / memory can go back through multiple generations . 

 

Uncle Link told me about Bundjalung history, they started up north but lost land due to sea rising  and moved out.   Also, various groups hunting rights have continued over the flooded land and are now in fishing rights and are worked out, out at sea,  by visual triangulation from shore.   Someone mapped some of it and  compared it to the sea floor maps -   where the boundaries seem based on the old land watersheds. 

 

Also, on this continent they lived through eras of tidal waves, volcanoes, glaciation,  sea level rise,  desertification , climate change  .... 

 

Also their understanding of human psychology .... developed over 40,000 is astounding  (if you can interpret it ! )

 

The problem has been whitey dumbing it down ( and in most cases receiving  the 101 version first and never bothering to look deeper, so get no more )  .... the translated word 'Dreamtime' and its modern usage is a classic example. 

[Nungali]

Good article though ! 

 

I wrote a similar one years back ;  '  Indigenous Agriculture and Technology in Australia '    for the Australian Bio-dynamic Agriculture magazine .

 

It featured such things as   (little known about back then , and certainly NEVER taught when I was at school )  mentioned in the article , including the worlds oldest operating mine , stone villages, food harvesting processing and storing in underground silos,  'fire stick farming' to develop pastures , aquaculture ,   we are only just now starting to realize the medicinal knowledge they had .....

 

Blushwood !   ( I know I keep posting this , but just ignore it if you already read ) 

 

“In preclinical trials we injected it into our models and within five minutes, you see a purpling of the area that looks like a bruise,” Boyle, from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute said.

 

“About 24 hours later, the tumour area goes black, a couple of days later you see a scab, and at around the 1.5 week mark, the scab falls off, leaving clean skin with no tumour there. The speed certainly surprised me.”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/08/cancer-tumours-destroyed-by-berry-queensland-rainforest