Signs of Indigenous Australia ritual performed 12,000 years ago
Researchers in partnership with the GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation (GLaWAC) unearthed evidence of rituals dating back 12,000 years ago in caves in southeastern Australia.
The archaeological find, published today in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, is from the time that the last Ice Age ended. It reveals insights into the heritage, going back 500 generations, of one of the planet’s oldest living cultures.
Archaeologists uncovered two small fireplaces, each with a single shaped stick embedded in them. The sticks are stems of she-oak, or Casuarina – a pine native to Australia. Chemical analysis shows that the sticks had been smeared with human or animal fat, and date to between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago.
The link to modern practices came from nineteenth century ethnographers who documented such fireplaces and ritual practices of GunaiKurnai medicine men and women, who are known as mulla-mullung.
In the ritual, something belonging to a sick person is fastened to the end of a throwing stick smeared in human or kangaroo fat. The stick is then stuck in the ground and a fire lit beneath it. Mulla-mullung chant the name of the sick person. Once the stick falls, the ritual is complete.
