Barngalla, Ramindjeri, Ngarrindjeri tribes people first on Karta (Kangaroo Island) tens of thousands years ago

James Tylor's interpretation of Kangaroo Island as Karta (Island of the Dead) of Aboriginal mythology.

Aboriginal people from Ngarrindjeri, Ramindjeri and Barngalla tribes would have been the first to reach Karta Pintingka (“place of the dead” in Kaurna) or Kangaroo Island possibly tens of thousands of years ago when the South Australian island was still attached to the Australian continent.

Sea levels began to rise about 10,000 years ago and nearly 2,000 to 5,000 years ago the island became completely isolated. Shell middens and stone tools definitely show Aboriginal people living on Kangaroo Island as long as 16,000 years ago and they may have only disappeared from the island as a remnant small group as recently as 2,000 years ago.

Early European explorers believed the island to be uninhabited but hammer stones were found at Hawk’s Nest near Murray's Lagoon in 1903 followed in the 1930s by Aboriginal campsites around the island, including one near the fur seal colony of Cape du Couedic. These had grown to 120 by 1958.

Hundreds of pebble choppers, horsehoof cores and hammer stone tools were found. A size difference between the Kartan (after the name for the island among the mainland Ramindjeri tribe) and Seton tools (with mainland influence) suggest a scenario where Aboriginal people left the island before the water was too deep to cross, returning again at low sea level, bringing the Seton industry tools with them.

The archaic element among the tools pointed to the early Aboriginal occupation of the island. The dingo never reached Kangaroo Island – another pointer to its long isolation from the mainland, with no Aboriginal water craft able to make the dangerous Backstairs Passage crossing.

Karta Pintingka or island of the dead became associated by Aboriginal tribes in the southern part of the Australian mainland around the Murray River with Ngurunderi, a creation being from the Dreamtime, who crossed to the island and travelled to the Milky Way. The spirits of the dead were believed to follow his track to the afterlife in the sky.