Origin Of Aboriginal Occupation

Theories On The Date Of Origin For Australia’s And America’s Indigenous Occupation

Sep 26, 2006 Tyson Woorama

How long have Aboriginal people lived in Australia And America? Well, that depends on your cultural and political point of view.

For many of us, Aboriginal people have always been here, and always will be. From this viewpoint, we never "arrived" from another place, but were created as a part of this place. Still, the figures of 40 000 years for Australia, and 18 000 years for America, are most often quoted by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike, adding to the mystique and exotica of tourist-oriented native packaging.

For a long time the figure of 38 000 years was the accepted figure for Australia. But then in 1995, the figure was pushed up to 60 000 based on findings from Kakadu in the Northern Territory. Then findings from the Jinmium monolith pushed the figure up to 75 000, then 116 000, followed by a dating of ochre samples from ancient art dating back to 176 000 years ago.

So now a lot of people are starting to say, "Aboriginal people arrived in Australia 176 000 years ago." So-called "scientific objectivity" in this viewpoint is a ridiculous proposition, as it is clearly still tied up with the vested interests of western hegemony, requiring an "arrival date" that can brand indigenous people as colonists, thus legitimising western colonisation itself.

This is why it is so important for western academics to discount Aboriginal astronomy as mere "mythology". In America and Canada, native astronomical texts are the calendars and records that date back to far before twelve thousand years ago, when western academics assert that Indians first occupied America by means of some kind of "ice bridge" from Europe. For example, Mohawk solar texts count the winters back to 33,120 years ago. This pretty much shatters the illusion of recent native arrival during the ice age.

However, fossilized footprints (pictured) dated only 18 000 years ago are still cited by western scientists as "evidence" of more recent migration.

The problem here is that the myth of "recent native occupation" has been used as a justification for European invasion and ongoing denial and extinguishment of native title. This is why, no matter how far Western scientists continue to push back the date of Indigenous "arrival" based on new "evidence", they will continue to insist on there being a date. "Always" is not a concept that colonists are comfortable with.

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