Which culture can claim to be one of the world’s oldest still in existence?
We’ve all heard of the long-reigning cultures of the Chinese, the Mayan, or the Vikings. And some of us have heard of the Abyssinians in eastern Africa, or the Pandyan of the ancient state of Tamil in South India. But did you know there’s another culture, still in existence, that outlasts all these cultures combined?
Welcome to Not Trivial! A podcast that takes a deeper dive into the stories behind the trivia questions you may or may not have heard at the pub. My name is Liz, and I’ve been a trivia nerd since I was young. My parents and I would play Trivial Pursuit very often. I’ve hosted and played pub trivia, and I’m a collector of random history, language, and world culture facts. One of my greatest passions is sharing what I’ve collected with others. I’m hopeful this podcast makes the trivia questions feel less trivial, and more important to understanding how the past creates the present, and subsequently the future. Let’s get started…
If we’re going to talk about one of the world’s oldest cultures, then we’re going to have to start with the world’s oldest communities. Because culture is human, and is born of a human community’s perspective of their world, their environment, and each other. We’re actually going to start really far back today. Did you know that the current geological epoch we’re living in is called the Holocene? Well, it is. And the Holocene started about 11,700 years ago. The Holocene correlates with the last maximum axial tilt of the Earth towards the Sun, and corresponds with the rapid proliferation, growth, and impacts of the human species worldwide, including all of its written history, technological revolutions, development of major civilizations, and overall significant transition towards urban living in the present.
The Earth was a very different place that long ago. In Europe, sea levels rose significantly enough to produce more bogs. North Africa experienced monsoons and the Sahara was a savannah. The Middle East was warmer and wetter, giving eventual rise to the Fertile Crescent. Central Asia was glacier-like for the most part. The Indian subcontinent would waffle between monsoons and arid conditions. China and other parts of East Asia experienced abrupt cooling, followed by a lot of precipitation. In North America, the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada went through a massive drought lasting a century. South America went through multiple sea level rises, resulting in the expansion of mangrove forests.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, humans are a product of their environment. And nowadays, that may mean a two-parent household, whether military service is compulsory, or being a rice-based vs wheat-based diet. But almost 12,000 years ago, it’s more about literally what the Earth was going through and how a species like humans could have not only evolved but simply survived. By the time of the Holocene, animal and plant life hadn’t really changed much. And yet, human development changed significantly during this current epoch. Places like Jericho in Palestine and Gobekli Tepe in Turkey were being built. Humans were branching out into either being hunter-gatherers or food cultivators and developing animal husbandry.
Most of us are aware that modern humans evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago. But we’re also aware that those early humans eventually migrated out of Africa and into Europe, Asia, and eventually the Pacific and the Americas. While the West has long studied rock art in caves like Lascaux, or tried to fathom the origins of the Nazca Lines in Peru, one human community has been left alone to develop over tens of thousands of years. Our topic today is all about the Aboriginal Australians. They migrated to the landmass of Australia at least 65,000 years ago. And when the Holocene started 11,700 years ago, they were cut off.
That doesn’t mean they were without connection to anyone who lived outside of the continent, but it does mean their culture was left to evolve on its own terms without much external influence. But let’s get this next fact out of the way entirely: it is not a monoculture. There have been more than 400 Aboriginal languages, though now only 13 traditional languages are being taught for children to learn. If there were more than 400 different languages, that means there were hundreds of tribes. Dispersing across the Australian continent over time, the ancient people expanded and differentiated into distinct groups, each with its own language and culture.
People like the Anangu of the western deserts of Australia, people like the Koori of southeastern Australia, people like the Murri of the northern region of Australia, and people like the Palawah of Tasmania. There are more group names than this, but even these four tribes have their own culture that to an outsider may have been wholly unfamiliar. Aboriginal Australians have a broadly shared, though complex, genetic history, and it is only in the last two hundred years that they have been defined and started to self-identify as a single group, socio-politically. Even the word ‘aboriginal’ has become less common, since it’s seen as the way colonizing peoples have described the natives of Australia. From here on out, we’ll use the term ‘indigenous Australians’.
One cultural throughline for most indigenous Australians is a deep connection to the land. Traditional cultural beliefs are passed down and shared by dancing, stories, songlines and art—especially Papunya Tula (dot painting)—collectively telling the story of creation known as The Dreamtime. Additionally, traditional healers were also custodians of important Dreaming stories as well as their medical roles. For example, in The Dreamtime of most regions, a spirit creates the earth then tells the humans to treat the animals and the earth in a way which is respectful to land. For a people like the Murri or others living in the North, it is commonly said to be a huge snake or snakes that weaved its way through the earth and sky making the mountains and oceans. But in other places, like for the Koori of the southeast, the spirits who created the world are known as wandjina rain and water spirits.
Indigenous people have had incredibly strong oral traditions in their culture. And the lore of indigenous Australians has carried over the rules and bylaws of how a tribe, or mob, is supposed to interact both with each other and the nature around them. For many indigenous cultures, the night sky is a repository of stories and law. A constellation used almost everywhere in Australian culture is the "Emu in the Sky". In Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, north of Sydney, are extensive rock engravings of the Guringai people who lived there, including representations of the creator-hero Daramulan and his emu-wife. An engraving shows an emu in the same pose and orientation as the Emu in the Sky constellation. Daramulan is also a constellation and is known as a shapeshifter in Australian lore. But these same constellations to one tribe are a different lore character to another tribe.
The Yolŋu people of northern Australia say that the constellation of Orion, which they call Julpan (or Djulpan), is a canoe. They tell the story of three brothers who went fishing, and one of them ate a sawfish that was forbidden under their law. Seeing this, the Sun-woman, Walu, made a waterspout that carried him and his two brothers and their canoe up into the sky. The three stars that line in the constellation's centre, which form Orion's Belt in Western mythology, are the three brothers; the Orion Nebula above them is the forbidden fish; and the bright stars Betelgeuse and Rigel are the bow and stern of the canoe. This is an example of astronomical legends underpinning the ethical and social codes that people use on Earth.
The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades are also a strong constellation used in Australian lore. The story describes a male ancestral being who pursues seven sisters across the middle of the Australian continent from west to east, where the sisters turn into stars. Each regional tribe may have a different name for the sisters, both individually or as a group, and for the pursuer or hunter. There is also a strong tradition of associating the Sun with a female entity and the Moon with a male one. Some tribes say the Sun-woman lights the fires of each day, just as a female of the tribe starts the fires for cooking. More than one tribe has a story about the Moon-man, who was once slender and athletic, but grows fat and lazy and is harangued by his wives.
Astrology is vital to understanding the indigenous cultures of Australia, because these stories represent how tribes made decisions to look for food sources or move to a new area. Let’s talk about food sources now, because this is the most fascinating to me. Bush tucker, or bush food, is any food native to Australia. There are bigger animals like kangaroo, crocodile, and emu, but also less well-known foods: witchetty grubs, quandong, kutjera, and native yams and greens, as well as herbs like lemon myrtle. Quandong is a fruit, commonly called a desert peach, and can be cooked down to make pie filling or fresh juice. The seed (kernel) inside the quandong’s tough shell can be extracted to be crushed into a paste, and then be used on sore gums or an oral gum boil to ease pain. Kutjera is also called the desert raisin, but looks a lot more like a tomato before they dry out. These fruits have a strong, pungent taste of tamarillo and caramel that makes them popular for use in sauces and condiments. They can be obtained either whole or ground, with the ground product (sold as "kutjera powder") easily added to bread mixes, salads, sauces, cheese dishes, chutneys, stews or mixed into butter.
With much of bush tucker being unsafe or unpalatable raw, food was processed by cooking on open fires, boiling in bark containers, pounding vegetables and seeds, or hanging bags in running water. Especially in the more densely colonised areas of south-eastern Australia, the introduction of non-native foods resulted in an almost complete abandonment of native foods by the tribes. This impact on traditional foods was further accentuated by the loss of traditional lands, which has resulted in reduced access to native foods by tribes, and destruction of native habitat for agriculture. In a landscape that many would consider inhabitable, indigenous Australians have been able to thrive on native foods for tens of thousands of years. Any skilled forager today would be able to spot the telltale signs of a native plant, and also know exactly how much to pick, what is ripe and what isn’t, and how best to leave the plant so it can continue producing ripe fruit.
Food is medicine quite literally out in the bush. Generally, bush medicine in Australia is made from plant materials, such as bark, leaves and seeds, although animal products were used as well. A major component of traditional medicine is herbal medicine, which is the use of natural plant substances to treat or prevent illness. Indigenous remedies vary among the many groups in different parts of the country. There is no single set of indigenous medicines and remedies, just as there is no single language. Leaves from specific trees and bushes can be gathered to create pituri, which is used as a stimulant. Leaves from the emu bush can be used to help symptoms of the common cold or flu. The stinging nettle has been used to treat paralysis and rheumatism. Various species of eucalyptus have also been used as part of herbal medicine.
One medicine developed in eastern Australia, from the soft corkwood tree, was used by Allied troops in World War II to help soldiers from getting seasick, especially sailing across the choppy English Channel on D-Day. The same medicine was further studied and found to be incredibly useful in producing other drugs, previously used for eye surgeries. There’s much that invading colonizers have taken from indigenous Australians, not only their native medicine or cultural traditions. Much of the richness of native culture and language was eradicated due to the forced removal of Australians from their land. The phrase ‘the Stolen Generation’ refers to a time during the early 20th century when indigenous Australians were forced to learn English and deny themselves their culture. Incredibly similar to what happened to Native Americans and First Peoples in both the US and Canada.
But much of what we still know about indigenous Australian culture, including the various languages and foods and sports and music is due to a gargantuan effort to heal the wounds of colonization and reclaim what existed for millenia before foreigners came. Speaking of sports and music… You’ve probably heard of the didgeridoo, which is considered the national instrument of indegenous Australians. It began as an instrument of the men of Northern Australia, but has since been widely adopted. It’s possible the didgeridoo is about 1500-2000 years old. Clapping sticks are much more common, helping dancing or singing groups to maintain their rhythm.
Woggalbaliri is a traditional indigenous sport, best described as a ‘cooperative kicking volley game’. The aim? To see how long the ball (of possum fur) can be kept in the air before touching the ground. Coreeda is a style of folk wrestling practiced in Australia and is based on Aboriginal combat sports that existed in the pre-colonial period before the 19th century. It’s a style of wrestling that utilizes a yellow 4.5 meter diameter circle that has black and red borders, Coreeda is often compared to sports as diverse as capoeira and sumo. One highly popular sport in Australia is Aussie Rules Football, commonly referred to as footy. It’s a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field. There are many Indigenous AFL players at professional level, with approximately one in ten players being of Indigenous origin as of 2007.
Ceremonies have been a part of indigenous culture since the beginning, and still play a vital part in society. In many regions they play an important part in educating children, passing on the lore of their people, spiritual beliefs and survival skills; some ceremonies are a rite of passage for adolescents; other ceremonies are around marriage, death or burial. Most include dance, song, rituals and elaborate body decoration and/or costume. Certain stories are individually "owned" by a group, and in some cases dances, body decoration and symbols in a ceremony pass on these stories only within the group, so it is vital that these ceremonies are remembered and performed correctly. Men and women have different roles, and are sometimes appointed as guardians of a sacred site, whose role it is to care for the site and the spiritual beings who live there, achieved partly by performing ceremonies. The terms “men’s business” and “women’s business” are sometimes used; neither have greater spiritual needs or responsibilities than the other, but jointly ensure that sacred practices are passed on. Men often conduct ceremonies, but women are also guardians of special knowledge, hold great spiritual power within a group, and conduct ceremonies. Participation in ceremonies can also be restricted by age, family group, language group, but are sometimes open to all, depending on the purpose of the ceremony.
By sharing some examples of indigenous Australian ceremonies, you may get a sense of what values and beliefs are most important to each tribe. But there are also more universal ceremonies, which are similar to many other cultures around the world. For example, a bora is an initiation ceremony in which young boys become men. This is a ceremony sustained by tribes in the East, sometimes involving circumcision or body modification in the form of etching or superficially cutting images or words into the skin. Women and children were generally not permitted. Another example that is well-known is the bunya feast. Representatives from many different groups from across southern Queensland and northern New South Wales would meet to discuss important issues relating to the environment, social relationships, politics and Dreaming lore, feasting and sharing dance ceremonies. Many conflicts would be settled at this event, and consequences for breaches of laws were discussed.
A corroboree is a ceremonial meeting for Australian people, interacting with the Dreaming and accompanied by song and dance. They differ from group to group, and may be sacred and private. This word ‘corroboree’ is one that stems from a native language, but has been Westernized by colonizing settlers to describe the ceremony. The inma is a cultural ceremony of Aṉangu women of Central Australia, involving song and dance and embodying the stories and designs of the tjukurrpa (Ancestral Law, or Dreamtime). The ceremony carries camaraderie, joy, playfulness and seriousness, and may last for hours. Sometimes certain herbs can be burned, giving off heavy smoke, which is used as a way to cleanse the area or people within it. It’s very common at births, circumcisions, and currently is very common as part of the welcoming ceremony to non-native Australians entering indigenous lands. This sounds similar to what many in the Southwest of the US know as smudging. However, in the US sagebrush is used in smudging, whereas in Australia, it’s the emu bush leaves that are used.
The most widely known ceremony, often incredibly misunderstood and warped by foreigners, is the walkabout. To the Western world, this phrase conjures up images of being out in the bush for the purposes of finding clarity or vision. Clarity around one’s place in the world, sense of self, or general enlightenment. However, in indigenous culture, Australian adolescents thousands of years ago would not have needed to do this. They were brought up on the land, they knew their place, other ceremonies marked rites of passage and importance. It’s only once colonizers came to Australia, and brought their cattles with them, that the term started being used. If indigenous men worked at cattle stations out in the bush, and the work dried up as annual weather patterns changed, they would simply return to living off the land. As they had always known how to do. And when anyone might ask where they were, the response was simply: walkabout.
Sorry to disappoint you all on that one! What’s next is absolutely fascinating though… Language! Most Australian languages are commonly held to belong to the Pama–Nyungan family. The vast majority of the Australian landmass is where Pama-Nyungan languages are spoken. However, there are 12-15 other language families huddled around each other in the north. There’s linguists who argue that these non-related northern languages are ones that wandered over time from Southeast Asia, specifically from places like the islands of Malaysia and Indonesia. Although to be clear, this migration of language was thousands of years ago. The language that currently exist in Indonesia and Malaysia are not ultimately related.
A common feature of many Australian languages is that they display so-called avoidance speech, special speech registers used only in the presence of certain close relatives. These registers share the phonology and grammar of the standard language, but the lexicon is different and usually very restricted. There are also commonly speech taboos during extended periods of mourning or initiation that have led to numerous sign languages. Australia also stands out as being almost entirely free of fricative consonants, even of the otherwise universal [s]. Fricative consonants that English often uses: s, z, f, v, th, sh. Australian languages don’t use these. Besides the lack of fricatives, the most striking feature of Australian speech sounds is the large number of places of articulation, i.e. from where in your mouth the speech sound comes from.
15% of people in Australia’s Northern Territory speaks an indigenous language. One of the largest groups of languages still spoken today. But another language family and ethnically different group of people are also recognized by Australia to be indigenous. The Torres Strait Islanders. It’s a smaller population, but almost 70% of Torres Strait islanders speak their indigenous language. The Torres Strait refers to the tiny islands between the very most northern tip of Australia and Papua New Guinea. Torres Strait Islanders are more related, both linguistically and genetically, to tribes of Papua New Guinea. That’s a place that linguists and anthropologists love to study because it is so richly diverse. The exact opposite of a monoculture, even on such small landmasses and islands.
Torres Strait Islanders also have a distinct culture. The islands have long history of trade and interactions with explorers from other parts of the globe, both east and west, which has influenced their lifestyle and culture. They plant tobacco, hunt for crab and turtle and reef fish. They are the only indigenous tribe in the world who make turtleshell masks. Elaborate headdresses are created and used often in ceremonial dances. They have a long tradition of woodcarving as well. Singing and dancing is their literature, so much attention is paid to the detail of costumes and masks worn during specific dances. Many stories are about the weather, the ocean, myths and legends, and important events that tell the history of a tribe. However, the have very similar storytelling using celestial constellations. All the way down to the men in a canoe for the constellation Westerners know as Orion.
How Australians relate to their collective history with indigenous tribes can vary. The major broadcasting channels often display a notice before crime series or shows where injuries to bodies occurs. Most television stations use a disclaimer warning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers that the program may contain images and voices of dead Indigenous people. This is very important to those indigenous people who abide by that ancient law of their tribes. However, like many indigenous peoples the world over, they are also marginalized and discriminated against. When trying to rent an apartment, when applying for jobs, when performing their work. The old stereotype is of someone who is often drunk, possibly violent, probably uneducated, involved in crime, and has maybe received much of the federal government’s welfare. But in much more recent years, a whopping 80% of Australians surveyed, said that its native population is an important one to take care of. So, there’s hope!
And that’s the deep dive into indigenous Australians and their diverse cultural practices. The answer to the trivia question: Which culture can claim to be one of the world’s oldest still in existence? Stay tuned for a brief look at four famous Australians and how they shaped modern Australia.
Cathy Astrid Salome Freeman was born in 1973 in Queensland. She is a former sprinter and has competed at numerous international events. Freeman was the first Indigenous Australian person to become a Commonwealth Games gold medalist at age 16 in 1990. At the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Canada, Freeman won gold in both the 200 m and 400 m. She also won the silver medal at the 1996 Olympics and came first at the 1997 World Championships in the 400 m event. She became the Olympic champion for the women's 400 metres at the 2000 Summer Olympics, at which she had lit the Olympic Flame. Her personal best of 48.63 seconds currently ranks her as the ninth-fastest woman of all time in the 400m. She is of the Kuku-yalanji and Birri-gubba peoples.
Edward Koiki Mabo was born in 1936 in the Torres Strait Islands. He is known for his role in campaigning for Indigenous land rights in Australia, in particular the landmark decision of the High Court of Australia that recognised that indigenous rights to land had continued after the British Crown acquired sovereignty and that the international law doctrine of terra nullius was not applicable to Australian domestic law. Mabo worked on pearling boats, as a cane cutter, and as a railway worker, becoming a gardener at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland at age 31. In 1981 a land rights conference was held at James Cook University and Mabo gave a speech in which he explained the land inheritance system on Murray Island. The significance of this in terms of Australian common law doctrine was noted by one of the attendees, a lawyer, who suggested there should be a test case to claim land rights through the court system. Ten years later, on 3 June 1992, the High Court announced its historic decision to recognise the land rights of Indigenous Australians. It is commonly called simply ‘Mabo’ in Australia.
Neville Thomas Bonner was born in 1922 in New South Wales. He ultimately became the first indigenous Australian to become a member of Parliament. He joined the Liberal Party in 1967 and held local office in the party. Following the resignation of Senator Annabelle Rankin in 1971, Bonner was chosen to fill the casual vacancy and he became the first Indigenous Australian to sit in the Australian Parliament. He was elected in his own right in 1972, 1974, 1975, and 1980. In 1981 Bonner was the only government voice opposing a bill put forth that would allow drilling in the Great Barrier Reef. After losing in an election in 1983, he was appointed to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as chairman. Neville Bonner was an elder of the Jagera people.
Albert Namatjira was born in 1902 in Northern Territory. A member of the Western Arrernte people, Namatjira was born and raised at the remote Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission, 126 km west-southwest from Alice Springs. As a pioneer of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, he was arguably one of the most famous Indigenous Australians of his generation. He was the first Aboriginal artist to receive popularity from a wide Australian audience. Namatjira's richly detailed, Western art-influenced watercolours of the outback departed significantly from the abstract designs and symbols of traditional Aboriginal art, and inspired the Hermannsburg School of painting. He became a household name in Australia and reproductions of his works hung in many homes throughout the nation. Namatjira was the first recorded Northern Territory Aboriginal person to be freed from restrictions that made Aboriginal people wards of the state when he was granted full rights of citizenship in 1957. This gave him the right to vote in national, state and territory elections, gave him freedom of movement and freed him from restrictions on buying alcohol; but, in the Northern Territory, he still had limited land rights. However, Namatjira remained poorly treated by the government. At the time of his death Namatjira had painted a total of around 2,000 paintings. Namatjira's work is on public display in some of Australia's major art galleries.
I hope you enjoyed this little tale of all things Australian, other than the colonizers! Another episode of Not Trivial is coming soon, so please subscribe - available wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you!