Aboriginal people in arid areas of South Australia 49,000 years ago: confirmed by fossil find in Flinders Ranges
Original Aboriginal nation areas including what became South Australia.
From the map, edited by D.R. Horton, by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Studies, 1994, Canberra.
Aboriginal people arrived in the arid interior of what is now South Australia 49,000 years ago – 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. This was confirmed from artefacts and fossils found in 2016 at Warratyi, a rock shelter in the Flinders Ranges, 550 kilometres north of Adelaide.
Among the Aboriginal groups who aligned themselves to different areas were the Anangu, Adnyamathanha, Akenta, Amarak, Bungandidj, Didyari, Erawirung, Kaurna, Kothatha Mula, Maralinga, Tjarutja, Mirning, Mulbarapa, Nurungga, Ngaanyatjarra, Ngadjuri, Ngarrindjeri, Nukunu, Parnkalla, Peramangk, Pitjantakatjara, Ramindjeri, Spinifex people and Warki.
Extended family groups from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara of the central desert to the Ngarrindjeri of the Coorong maintained a complex tradition of oral history, trade and industry that spanned what is now called South Australia.
Giles Hamm, a consultant archaeologist and doctoral student at La Trobe University, found the Warratyi rock shelter in 2016 with local Adnyamathanha elder Clifford Coulthard while surveying gorges in the northern Flinders Ranges.
Dating of artefacts and fossils from Warratyi indicates human settlement between 49,000 and 46,000 years ago. It shows people moved through central Australia and used key technologies such as stone axes and ochre much earlier than previously thought.
Archaeological evidence also shows the first reliably dated evidence of human interaction with megafauna. The only previous site in Australia where megafauna remains and human artefacts had been found together was at Cuddie Springs, NSW, but its dating has been disputed.
Artefacts excavated at the site also push back the earliest-known dates on the development of key bone and stone axe technologies and the use of ochre in Australia.
Working with the Adnyamathanha people over nine years, Hamm and colleagues recovered from the one-metre-deep excavations around 4,300 artefacts and 200 bone fragments from 16 mammals and one reptile.
The previous oldest-known site in the arid zone, at Puritjarra in western Central Australia, is around 38,000 years old. The Warratyi discovery puts people moving south from the northern part of the continent to the southern interior a lot sooner than was thought.
It also pushed back the dates on technologies such as bone needles (40,000-38,000 years ago), wood-handled stone tools (at least 24,000 years ago), gypsum use (40,000-33,000 years ago) and axes (about 38,000 years). It was likely the climate was more favourable when Aboriginal people arrived in what is now South Australia.
