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STUDENT OUTCOME The student creates an individual reflective piece of work to express their understanding of the story.

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Aboriginal people had no chiefs or other centralized institutions of social or political control. In various measures, Aboriginal societies exhibited both hierarchical and egalitarian tendencies, but they were classless; an egalitarian ethos predominated, the subordinate status of women notwithstanding. However, there is evidence in some areas, such as northeast Arnhem Land, Bathurst and Melville islands, western Cape York Peninsula, and among the Aranda of central Australia, that strong leaders akin to the Melanesian “Big Man” existed and their preeminence in ritual matters carried over into the secular domain.

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The worldview of Aboriginal peoples centred on “the Dreaming,” or “dream-time,” a complex and comprehensive concept embodying the past, present, and future as well as virtually every aspect of life. It includes the creative era at the dawn of time, when mythic beings shaped the land and populated it with flora, fauna, and human beings and left behind the rules for social life. After their physical death and transformation into heavenly or earthly bodies, the indestructible creative beings withdrew from the earth into the spiritual realm.

As Aboriginal people understand it, the Dreaming beings retained control of all power and fertility, which they would release automatically into the human realm as long as humans followed their blueprint; this included the regular performance of rituals to ensure a continued flow of life-giving power. Spirit beings were used as messengers to communicate with the living and to introduce new knowledge into human society. Through dreams and other states of altered consciousness, the living could come into contact with the spiritual realm and gain strength from it. Diversefeatures of the landscape provided tangible proofs of the reality and world-creating powers of the Dreaming beings, and a rich complex of myths, dances, rituals, and objects bound the human, spiritual, and physical realms together into a single cosmic order. Despite the uncertainties involved in getting a living, Aboriginal people had a strong sense of self and a religious confidence in their ability to cope with and control their physical and social world.

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Just as there was no one-to-one relationship between language and tribe, cultural differences did not correlate closely with ecological zones. The blurring of such boundaries accords with strong cultural emphases on diffusion and the expansion of networks of relationships through kinship, marriage alliance, exchange, and religious activities. Greater emphasis on maintaining boundaries, together with higher levels of ethnocentrism and intergroup conflict, were more likely (but not invariably) to be found in resource-rich areas with higher population densities.

According to traditional scholarship, Aboriginal people were hunter-gatherers who grew no crops and did not domesticate animals (apart from the dingo), so they were directly dependent on their natural environment. On the other hand, some historians and archaeologists in the 21st century argued that Aboriginal people employed agricultural practices that were far too sophisticated to be characterized as hunting and gathering. Nevertheless, the conventional interpretation holds that the Aboriginal people, though nomadic, had a very strong sense of attachment to sites and areas in their home territory, where most of their hunting and gathering was done. The need to balance population with resources meant that most of the time people were dispersed into small food-gathering groups. But several times a year, when food resources permitted, large gatherings would be organized, and much of the social and religious business of the society would be transacted over a two- to three-week period of intense social activity. This rhythm of aggregation and dispersal was fundamental, but over much of this dry continent ecological factors made dispersal the predominant fact of life.

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Visions: Indigenous Languages and Linguistics

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Visions: Indigenous Languages and Linguistics

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Visions: Indigenous Languages and Linguistics

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By the time of European settlement in 1788, Aboriginal peoples had occupied and utilized the entire continent and adapted successfully to a large range of ecological and climatic conditions, from wet temperate and tropical rainforests to extremely arid deserts. Population densities ranged from roughly 1 to 8 square miles (2.6 to 20.7 square km) per person in fertile riverine and coastal areas to more than 35 square miles (90 square km) per person in the vast interior deserts. Estimates of Aboriginal population vary from 300,000 to more than 1,000,000.

More than 200 different Aboriginal languages were spoken (and hundreds of dialects; see also Australian Aboriginal languages), and most Aboriginal people were bilingual or multilingual. Both languages (or dialects) and groups of people were associated with stretches of territory. The largest entities recognized by the people were language-named groups, sometimes referred to by Europeans as “tribes.” There may have been as many as 500 such named, territorially anchored groups. Their members shared cultural features and interacted more with one another than with members of different groups. These groups were not, however, political or economic entities, and, while language names may have been commonly used by groups as labels for one another, individual and group identity was grounded in much more locally oriented affiliations and memberships. There was no consciousness of a shared national identity. However, the worldview of Aboriginal peoples tended to be expansive, with a perception of society as a community of common understandings and behaviours shared well beyond the confines of the local group.

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It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years. On the basis of research at the Nauwalabila I and Madjedbebe archaeological sites in the Northern Territory, however, some scientists have claimed that early humans arrived considerably sooner, perhaps as early as 65,000 to 80,000 years ago. That conclusion is consistent with the argument made by some scholars that the migration of anatomically modern humans out of Africa and adjacent areas of Southwest Asia to South and Southeast Asia along the so-called Southern Route predated migration to Europe. Other scholars question the earlier dating of human arrival in Australia, which is based on the use of optically stimulated luminescence (measurement of the last time the sand in question was exposed to sunlight), because the Northern Territory sites are in areas of termite activity, which can displace artifacts downward to older levels.

In either case, the first settlement would have occurred during an era of lowered sea levels, when there were more-coextensive land bridges between Asia and Australia. Watercraft must have been used for some passages, however, such as those between Bali and Lombok and between Timorand Greater Australia, because they entail distances greater than 120 miles (200 km). This is the earliest confirmed seafaring in the world. By about 35,000 years ago all of the continent had been occupied, including the southwest and southeast corners (Tasmania became an island when sea levels rose sometime between 13,500 and 8,000 years ago, thus isolating Aboriginal people who lived there from the mainland) as well as the highlands of the island of New Guinea. Archaeological evidence suggests that occupation of the interior of Australia by Aboriginal peoples during the harsh climatic regime of the last glacial maximum (between 30,000 and 18,000 years ago) was highly dynamic, and all arid landscapes were permanently occupied only roughly 10,000 years ago.

The dingo, a type of wild dog, appeared in Australia only 5,000 to 3,000 years ago, which postdates the time that Aboriginal people began hafting small stone implements into composite tools some 8,000 years ago. Whereas the dingo was introduced from Southeast Asia, the small implements appear to be independent inventions from within Australia. Within the past 1,500–3,000 years, other important changes occurred at the general continental level: population increases, the exploitation of new habitats, more efficient resource exploitation, and an increase in the exchange of valued items over wide areas.

There is evidence for complex social behaviours much earlier, however, including cremation before 40,000 years ago, personal ornamentation (shell beads) by 30,000 years ago, and long-distance trade in objects before 10,000 years ago. It has not yet been ascertained whether there were single or multiple waves of migration into Australia, although recent genetic evidence indicates multiple donor groups, whether from a single heterogeneous migration or multiple waves. While there is no doubt that only anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) have ever occupied Australia, skulls found in the southeast suggest to some the existence of two distinct physical types. However, most now accept that there was a wide range of variation in pre-European populations. It has also been argued that one group on the Murray River practiced a form of cosmetic cranial deformation that led to their different appearance. Some have posited that Aboriginal cultures have one of the longest deep-time chronologies of any groups on Earth.

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To an Aboriginal Australian, homeland is not just where you are born. It is where you will die and be buried. It is the center of gravity, heart and soul, beginning and end. While covering this month's story on these first Australians, photographer Amy Toensing was invited to document a ceremony not performed in many years, to bring the souls of ancestors back home

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An Aboriginal Homecoming | National Geographic

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It has long been conventionally held that Australia is the only continent where the entire Indigenous population maintained a single kind of adaptation—hunting and gathering—into modern times. Some scholars now argue, however, that there is evidence of the early practice of both agriculture and aquaculture by Aboriginal peoples. This finding raises questions regarding the traditional viewpoint that presents Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples as perhaps unique in the degree of contrast between the complexity of their social organization and religious life and the relative simplicity of their material technologies. (For a discussion of the names given to the Indigenous peoples of Australia, see Researcher’s Note: Britannica usage standards: Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia.)

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Australian Aboriginal peoples, one of the two distinct groups of Indigenous peoples of Australia, the other being the Torres Strait Islander peoples.