The Australian Aborigines

ARGUMENT

The first human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have occurred between 42,000 and 48,000 years ago, the inhabitants being known as the Australian aborigines.

This paper is not intended to be analytical, but a documentation on the most important aspects of a very complex cultural group; the purpose is to explain who the Aborigines are, where they are from, what they believe and what they have become. The essay’s principle is to explore the essence of the Aborigines’ culture as a source of and guide to transforming our own world view. While not romanticizing the past or suggesting a return to the life of the hunter/gatherer this work will enable you to enter into the mentality of the oldest continuous culture on earth and gain insight into our own relationship with the earth and to each other.

I decided on this theme because it is always fascinating to discover new cultures; realizing the importance of a way of life different from ours, gives another point of view on how to appreciate life and people. The Australian Aborigines are a good example of living according to traditions which they still consider as essential characteristics to preserve their identity. This feature makes them unique, sustaining their status as natives. Their culture is endangered like that of the Native Americans who are forced to live in reservations and whose number is starting to go down, but their struggle to survive is commendable and determines other people to sustain their cause.

We must try to understand our complexity as people through celebrating diversity, and diversity means accepting people as they are and appreciating their values. We exist as a whole and to guarantee the proper functioning of this complex entity one should make the attempt to explore as much as possible the variety of the world.

The Aborigines could be considered a symbol of the efforts made to try to keep the distinctiveness in a world where change improves or worsens life.

Introduction

The word Aborigine is derived from Latin and means "from the beginning". The word was first used in Italy and Greece to describe people who lived there, natives or old inhabitants, not newcomers, or invaders.

The name aborigine was given to the native Australians by the Europeans. This is not the name they called themselves. ”They prefer to call themselves: Koori.”

The Aborigines of Australia are a relatively well-known culture. They are one of the oldest cultures that are still in existence today.” In some resources you may see the word Aborigines spelled with a lowercase "A". This refers to all people belonging to an ancient culture. When spelled with an uppercase A, this refers to only the Aborigines of Australia”. Of the estimated 300,000 Aborigines once living in the Australian bush, there are only 76,000 part-Aborigines, and 45,000 full blooded Aborigines today. Their culture has stayed alive through many harsh years of unfair treatment towards Aborigines.

Australia may well be the home of the world’s first people. Stone tools discovered in a quarry near Penrith, New South Wales, in 1971 show that humans lived in Australia at least twelve thousand years before they appeared in Europe.

So far three early sites have been discovered in Australia, the Penrith one being dated about forty-seven thousand years old, a Western Australian site forty thousand years old and another in Lake Mungo, New South Wales, thirty-five thousand years old. “To put this in perspective, so that we can appreciate the time scales, since the first fleet arrived in 1788 there have only been 8 generations of settlers. On the other hand, there have been in excess of 18,500 generations of aboriginals!!!”

History

More than 30,000 years ago the population of the world was small, and people lived in family groups, hunting, fishing and food gathering. There where no cultivated crops, animals were not herded for food and metalworking was yet to be discovered.