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06:28It's thought that the degeneration here that's occurred in the arm bone is a result of throwing
06:35the spear repetitively over a few decades and slowly wearing down the joints.
06:42Here's his other ulna and you can see he preferred the use of his right arm and you've got quite
06:47a bit of modification going on there.
06:50Caused a fair bit of pain in his arm and you can imagine him sitting on the loonet rubbing
06:55that joint late at night.
07:02Just the way he was buried I could not be found around Munger.
07:08That's suggestion that he was probably a chief within the tribe, so that's how I imagine Munger
07:14man to be very important in the tribe, the leader, buried like that.
07:20For his burial Munger man was covered in highly prized red ochre and ritually laid out indicating
07:30a belief in the afterlife.
07:36This could be the earliest evidence of spiritual belief in the world.
07:45You know, these ancient people have I guess had a second life in a way and they've brought
07:50all this information and knowledge about significance and the antiquity and the complexity of the
07:57lifestyles these people lived.
07:58Like, each individual has an individual story of their life in that system as it changed
08:03over 42,000, 45,000 years.
08:07That's why I believe, that's why these human minds are coming out.
08:10To teach us, teach the scientific world about how the people adapted to those dramatic climatic
08:18changes over those, all those years and that continuous connection to country.
08:24We as Aboriginal people had all those years and we've still got to the country we live in.
08:36The earliest evidence of human occupation in Australia dates to over 50,000 years ago.
08:46That's ten times as old as the pyramids of ancient Egypt.
08:52Neanderthals, not homo sapiens, dominated Europe.
08:58And people won't arrive in the Americas for another 30,000 years.
09:10How did Mungo men and his ancestors come to be in Greater Australia so early in human history?
09:20Where did they come from?
09:27Scientists have discovered through DNA analysis that his ancestors were the first modern people
09:35to leave Africa over 70,000 years ago.
09:42They migrated along the edge of Asia for thousands of years, until finally confronted by the open
09:51seas separating Asia from Greater Australia.
10:00For the first time in their journey, there was no more land to be seen.
10:11Like astronauts launching into space without knowing there is a planet to sustain them.
10:18Our ancestors made the first open ocean crossing in human history.
10:25We are now yn angrily'r fourn on masks, antenna.
10:37That's the only стрocyt sap.
10:41It was n Rams nepri threat.
10:52You joined Mungo, our Dopini.
11:26In Gumbelania, in Arnhem Lane, there is a dreaming story that echoes that first sea voyage and explains the spread
11:35of people across the continent.
11:48Oh, wow.
11:51Creation mother.
11:52In Gumbelania.
11:53In Gumbelania.
11:55In Gumbelania.
11:55In Gumbelania.
11:57In Gumbelania.
11:58She actually came from far north somewhere.
12:03Kukbe, we say in our language, Kukbe.
12:06Yeah.
12:07That's where she came.
12:09Yeah.
12:10Start her journey.
12:11These stories of Yungana, for example, match up beautifully with the archaeological story that's being told in this region.
12:18And so archaeologists who've been excavating in quite nearby in Kakadu National Park and in Arnhem Land are finding quite
12:25old dates.
12:27Some of them, you know, up to 50, 60,000 years old, that people were living here and, you know,
12:32hunting and so forth.
12:34And what they're suggesting is that people probably came from the north, like you say in Ghana did, and came
12:40across the ocean from the islands and settled in Australia about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.
12:46So I guess, you know, I'd be interested to hear what you think of that.
12:50She actually may become far, somewhere.
12:54Fervent.
12:57See these, they all stringy bag, dilly bag.
13:02The one she was carrying lots and lots and lots of babies.
13:18When the sea was calm, wind was calmed down, that's where she start travel.
13:29Then she came somewhere on the coastline.
13:32Then she stopped.
13:38She put one first, baby.
13:42Gave him a language, moieties, skin names, clams, ceremony.
13:51First one.
13:59Then she traveled halfway somewhere number two.
14:03Give him a different language, different clan, different ceremony.
14:13Then someone, far south, is traveling, putting these babies.
14:41The first Australians found a virgin continent whose plants and animals had been evolving in isolation for 65 million years.
14:55What you see today in this area is nothing like what people would have come across when they first got
15:00to Australia.
15:04It would have been a totally different and totally foreign environment for them.
15:09That includes totally new animals.
15:12You know, crossing rivers, when you know that these giant crocodiles are in them, it would have just been terrifying.
15:26But ironically, even today, it's the plants that get people more than the animals.
15:30You know, it's eating the wrong berry or eating the wrong piece of fruit that can kill you or can
15:35make you really, really sick.
15:37So there would have been a lot of that sort of experimentation going on in the early days of working
15:41out what they can eat, what they can't eat and what it does to you.
15:50So people today are amazing with their knowledge of bush foods and bush medicines.
15:56And that's built up over a very long period of time and something that the new people into the country
16:01wouldn't have had.
16:06That is a huge human challenge and one that we're just starting to understand.
16:13You know, we're just starting to get hints at how complicated life was for people when they first got here
16:17and hints at how they managed to survive.
16:20It's extraordinary they didn't get back in their boats and go home again.
16:23You know, after they saw some of the things they saw here.
16:29The main predators they encountered were not mammals, but reptiles like Megalania.
16:38Over six metres long and weighing more than a tonne, Megalania was the largest predator people have ever known.
16:50People saw strange new creatures hopping instead of walking.
16:58And giant flightless birds like Jenny Ornis, five times the weight of an emu.
17:08The latest fossil evidence tells us that Jenny Ornis has been extinct for 40,000 years.
17:17My father say, like we say for Jawa is a big bird, a very dark.
17:23A very dark.
17:25A very dark wang.
17:27Yeah.
17:28This bird is a different, it's big.
17:31And he's been walking on this Jawa land long time ago.
17:36Much bigger than emu beak, eh?
17:38Emu too small for him, he's a big bird that walked this country and all my ancestors saw him.
17:46And I came to come to this beautiful flat rock to draw him.
17:55This is the only representation of Jenny Ornis that we know of.
17:58The main features are particularly the head, which is distinctly un-emu like.
18:05It's got this very solid beak coming right up pretty well in line with the skull.
18:09It's then also got huge thighs and relatively short legs for the size of the thighs.
18:17And again, when you get down to the feet, they're just massive.
18:20Unlike an emu, which when they depict emu feet, they have a long, sharp pointed claw.
18:28Jenny Ornis doesn't.
18:29It has a very short, blunt claw.
18:31So it's by eliminating the attributes of an emu that we get to, well, what else could it be?
18:40And the nearest thing that looks like that is reconstructions of Jenny Ornis.
18:49Whoever painted this had seen the bird, they knew the bird.
18:55The oldest dated painting in the world is around 40,000 years old.
19:02If Jenny Ornis went extinct 40,000 years ago,
19:06then this could be one of the oldest paintings ever made.
19:27Ancient rock art across the continent shows that from early on,
19:31our ancestors engraved and painted what they saw around them.
19:40It was a way of making the strange familiar.
19:45It was a way of making it.
19:53Everywhere people created monuments of meaning and beauty.
19:58None more spectacular than Gabarnmung on the Arnhem Land Platter.
20:04Rediscovered just three years ago.
20:15Right from the very beginning, when the first ancestors came here, they made roots in their country, in their places.
20:23So what we're dealing with is not just a place where people are just wandering and following game as if
20:30they themselves are animals chasing other animals.
20:33We're dealing with people who are making roots in their own environments, with their ancestors, creating meaning in the landscape.
20:41So what we're doing is learning to do is long ago and they were living the way here in the
21:01landscape.
21:04You're living here for living in the living of a living here.
21:12It's an old boomerang.
21:15Old people used to hook a spear and chuck it and spear the kangaroo.
21:23All right.
21:25But they left it there.
21:27We are not allowed to get it.
21:30This year, it's a clever state.
21:35One is gone.
21:36As they hit it together, a big feast and a corollary, dancing.
21:42Maybe a young man to be initiated.
21:46Or maybe just a big feast.
21:49That one will go for ceremony.
21:52So they left it here too.
21:59Margaret's people lived in the Gabarnmarn rock shelter for at least 48,000 years.
22:16It's just, I don't know how, but they made it to stay beautiful forever.
22:27Look at his five hands.
22:31There.
22:33There's that hand there.
22:35My great-great-grandfather.
22:42In our culture, we feel our ancestors are here.
22:46And for these Nini, they did look after all inside the cave.
22:53They say, look after this country for me.
22:56And my father said, you're not to leave the place.
23:00Come back and check on this country all the time.
23:17It's beautiful, all that place.
23:22Chao and elders have invited archaeologists from France and Australia to study Gabarnmarn.
23:35They have just discovered the rock shelter was painstakingly hollowed out tens of thousands of years ago.
23:47Come on, Archie, we've got something to show you here.
23:50All right, my son.
23:52See the pillars on the other side, the stone pillars?
23:56A long time ago, here was the same as what you can see over there.
24:01But the ancestors, they started from the outside and they started taking these blocks of rock out.
24:07And one at a time, they pushed the pillars away and they removed them.
24:10And then slowly they came in like this, until now, when this is the last one that was left from
24:18that work that they were doing.
24:20Oh, it's amazing. Good one.
24:2440,000 years before Stonehenge was constructed in Britain, Margaret's ancestors were removing pillar after pillar to engineer a site
24:35of great cultural significance.
24:39Jean-Jacques worked that one out with his skills, with his eyes.
24:42Yeah.
24:44They're very good.
24:45I thank you.
24:46I thank you.
24:47I thank you.
24:58The main entrance to the site was a grand stone archway, which has now collapsed.
25:12Before, before, there was a grand arch that was attached to this point.
25:21So that's what it used to look like a long time ago.
25:24This one here.
25:24This one here.
25:24Yeah.
25:25That used to be like it is here, but a big archway here.
25:30Oh, come on.
25:31So that when the ancestors walked through, that's what it looked like.
25:35Oh, come on.
25:36That's really good news, eh?
25:39Yeah, very good news.
26:02Margaret's ancestors were much more than monumental stonemasons.
26:09They also invented technologies that radically changed their access to resources.
26:18Ground edge tools first appeared in Europe with the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago.
26:30Margaret's ancestors were making ground edge tools over 35,000 years ago.
26:42That piece of axe there used to be attached to a bigger rock, to a whole axe.
26:47Yeah.
26:48And the ancestors, they made that axe by grinding up the stone against another stone.
26:53And that piece there was broken off when they were trying to sharpen it or something like that.
26:59That came from a spot close like that.
27:04But 35,000 years ago, when that one was made, that wasn't a hole in the ground.
27:09That was the surface of the site.
27:13It was a long way lower than what it is today.
27:15Mm-hmm.
27:16And then over thousands of years, the ancestors, they built fires, the wind blew up, blew in the sand, the
27:22dust.
27:22Yeah.
27:22And the soil built up and built up and buried this one.
27:26It covered it up with soil.
27:28Yeah.
27:28And the charcoal that was next to that one, right next to it and above it and underneath it,
27:34we did carbon baking on that charcoal.
27:36Yeah.
27:36And that's how we know how old it is.
27:39Grinding an axe allows the same stone to be used again and again.
27:46But these axes were not just efficient tools.
27:50They could also be ceremonial objects of great beauty.
27:58We found another axe.
28:01It's complete.
28:02Look.
28:03It's really a very well-present tool.
28:06You see?
28:07Oh, it's really beautiful.
28:08It is beautiful.
28:10You see on the other side?
28:12Yeah.
28:13And it is very fine-grained, stone.
28:16Yeah.
28:17And really, really beautiful.
28:19And the handle was on this side.
28:21The axe is short.
28:22Yeah.
28:22You know?
28:23I know.
28:23You remember from your ancestors?
28:25Yeah, I remember.
28:25My daddy told me a lot of story about stone knife and stone axe.
28:30It was a handle they had.
28:32The handle was made of wood?
28:35Yeah.
28:36Wood.
28:36What of wood.
28:37And stick it together with a honey bee.
28:39Honey bee?
28:40Yes.
28:41With strong glue.
28:42Yes.
28:42All tight.
28:44And then tie it up with a string bark.
28:47And make it stronger to hit sugar bag and kangaroo as they cut the bones.
28:52You know?
28:52So that's the bones.
28:57I think they were very useful.
28:59Yeah.
29:00That's what my grandpa told me.
29:02Mm-hmm.
29:16If Margaret wasn't here, we'd just have rocks and soil.
29:24But we're not just dealing with bits of stone that's in the ground.
29:27We're dealing with something that is meaningful from the ancestors.
29:31That's meaningful today.
29:33Mm-hmm.
29:35It's revealing aspects of your story.
29:38You're special people.
29:41And in those cracks, all of me, they stay.
29:45Every morning as they come, they are guiding them all the time.
29:52In Western Europe, when we study the stone, when we study an archaeological site, the things
29:59are cold.
30:02Here, they are really living.
30:05It's between moral and intellectual and something very spiritual dimension.
30:11And here, really, I learned from Margaret.
30:17That's the difference.
30:22They are magic people that they look through the stone and the dirt.
30:31But to me, my grandparents, they are here.
30:38Yeah.
30:39Yeah.
30:49Yeah.
30:52Yeah.
30:53Yeah.
30:55Yeah.
30:57Yeah.
31:07Yeah.
31:08There are many millions of ancient artworks across greater Australia.
31:16the continent is like a giant canvas with each work offering a unique insight into a time long
31:25ago in Marujoga our ancestors created the first image of the human face in history
31:57with around 1 million engravings over 300 square kilometers Marujoga is the largest gallery in the
32:11world archaeologist Ken Mulvaney is working with one with you elder Wilfred Hicks to piece together
32:18the story of these ancient self-portraits Wilfred has a bad leg injury and cannot walk the distance
32:31so he has brought Ivandale to accompany him oh my god and you know kind of a manga yo
32:46I got an onion go for another way we don't know you hear it a young boy
33:10I've been unit the faces I was talking about there's one really interesting one just down here and I'll show
33:18you there's 70 odd faces that I'm aware of across the archipelago each of them are individual you
33:27notice the classic face with the central dots concentric ring but what's nice about this one
33:33it's actually got two faces incorporated in it and it's using that that early style geometric designs
33:40which use the dots and the lines dividing up space incorporating that along with the faces
33:47the early art is really complex in its design elements what people thought originally well it was
33:54simple that developed into more complex art well that's not the case here it was complex right from
34:00the start and continued the way through we know from geological studies how slow the weathering rate
34:08of these rocks are and they are amongst the slowest that have been measured anywhere in the world you
34:15can't actually see the individual peck marks anymore they've actually weathered away and for that degree of
34:22weathering I'm confident of that this has taken tens of millennia so something like this is at
34:31least 25,000 and could be as old as 35,000 years for the first time in human history people
34:46saw
34:46their own eyes in their own creation
35:04a lot of spiritual issues that is still on this land here and they are alive that's why you've got
35:12to
35:13talk to the land when you come here those rocks are very precious for us they leave things as a
35:26Bible to
35:27us and when we see it we know what it's all about when they go to cultural law there are
35:34taught all that
35:3835,000 years ago Wilfred and Ivan's ancestors were living in a very different environment
35:49back then the sea was 70 meters below the level it is today
35:57Muruyuga was not a peninsula jutting into the ocean but a hill rising above a large plain
36:04marine an environment rich with resources people were coming back to the same location to produce
36:22these faces they're not across the whole landscape they're at very specific places but usually near where
36:29there's water and we've got that large water hole just up from here and presumably before the sea levels
36:36came in this would have been a nice access valley off the plains where they were hunting the kangaroos
36:41and emu and coming back in here for the water
36:54clearly the people who were producing them had a joy in the way they were doing out because they're just
37:01just spectacular stuff
37:05there is nowhere else in the world that has that longevity of art production in the same technique it is
37:13it's phenomenal
37:35today muruyuga is the site of the largest gas refinery in the southern hemisphere
37:52just a few hundred meters away in an unmarked jumble of rocks is a prehistoric masterpiece
38:02there's another ancient face and people who appear to be climbing poles
38:11incredibly both the face and the climbers are also engraved 800 kilometers away in maru country in the
38:20little sandy desert showing a long-distance connection from very early on
38:43look at that really old oh really really old all fighting away hmm so timmy this
38:55this one here was the one which is really hard to see yeah but very very special because it's
39:04actually got a line and it's got a human figure actually climbing up yeah but incredibly on the
39:13left hand side we have a human figure in side profile climbing up a pole they actually are exactly the
39:22same as the climbing figures found 800 kilometers away you know no longer who you have water about the
39:33dinner a country so my question is how come we've got the same picture here really really early and all
39:43the
39:43way over to the coast do you think maybe someone traveled or it's the same jukur or the same jukur
39:52from coastal site to end up here because everything all coming from that end
40:14here too is an archaic face something amazing it's got eyes mouth
40:25and it's actually got a mother hand lifted up to the side and it almost looks like that famous depiction
40:35the screen it's incredibly emotive incredibly strong
40:42it's telling us it's telling us that people are representing symbolically whole range of emotions and a whole range of
40:51probably religious belief systems which are part of this early occupation of the deserts
40:59archaic faces were engraved over thousands of kilometers right across the deserts of west and central australia a cultural connection
41:11over vast distances a connection that's mapped in dreaming tracks
41:26all these maru men jeffrey stewart jimmy morgan and timmy patterson were raised in the western desert before any contact
41:37with modern australia
41:41their parents live fully traditional lives just like their ancient ancestors
41:51in their language in their belief system in their culture and law there is a direct connection going back tens
42:00of thousands of years
42:15that's a direct connection Jaipura
42:22back at Najipurma
42:24and each of them had crossed the borders all over the case
42:29it
42:29quer
42:30your
42:30but
42:31yeah
42:31yeahgh
42:38like my little time they wait here they take another game could include you know
42:45many other way okay
42:49couple couple that they take a little bit of a little bit in a little man
42:54now they can be a little bit more like you know what do you buy and go now
43:00but nothing in order to tell the stories about the seven sisters
43:16just as their ancestors have done for thousands of years the men repeat the
43:23dreaming stories about ancestral beings that created the deserts of Australia
43:28the paths they forged the mountains animals and laws they made when they're awesome creative
43:39period ended many dreaming beings ascended to the sky to become stars
44:05people shared those narrative they actually knew the precise locations of where ancestral
44:12beings went where they made waters where they met other ancestral beings and where
44:17they actually reside in places like this through things like song lines and through
44:22very very detailed maps of country that kind of information exchange over thousands of
44:30kilometres is extreme even at the global level that's an amazing amount of information shared
44:37by people over an area half the size of Australia truly incredible there were hundreds of dreaming
44:47tracks that crisscrossed the continent they could take physical form as maps often in prominent places
45:24here we have heavily pecked circles and these pecked circles are actually joined together with little
45:31pathways making a major pathway through here the way people represent waters are either circles like
45:38this or concentric circles and they're actually joined by lines because they're small valleys so this in
45:46fact is a very very early Aboriginal map of waters for this remote part of the Western Desert it's it's
45:55old it's extremely old we're not
45:58talking maps from the time of Columbus we're not talking about maps from the time of Christ or the
46:04Phoenicians or even the beginning of agriculture we're talking about maps which are probably tens of thousands of
46:11years old these are in fact the earliest maps that we know of in the world maps that show country
46:19that
46:20people lived used and enjoyed and created narratives of their ancestral beings anyone standing on this range would
46:31see where the waters were located in this range but then as we look towards the west and we can
46:37see that rise on the horizon
46:38that's actually the DERBA ranges and that is showing the location and direction of major waters including springs
46:51this is prominent this is meant to be seen this is a blueprint for survival in the desert environment of
46:58Australia
47:14the maps followed water and dreaming tracks but they were also long-distance highways for trade
47:26things like pearl shells were traded from the Pilbara coast in the Kimberley right across into South Australia
47:34that's an enormous distance for a trade good to travel during the first several thousand years of
47:40occupation of the continent in central Australia ochres are being exchanged between groups over hundreds of kilometres
47:52the trade and distribution of stone tools of particular raw materials
47:59of marine animals like shellfish which were used as water containers as ornaments as personal jewelry
48:09and a whole range of other goods which were special revered or sought after crisscross the continent
48:17right in the earliest phase of occupation between 30 to 50,000 years ago and the one that we tend
48:27to forget ideas
48:30we know from the historical records that the exchange of ideas and cultural knowledge was both rapid and over vast
48:40distances
48:45the Chichengala ceremony was exchanged from Queensland south to the Great Australian Vite and right across to Northwest Australia
48:54practically the entire continent
49:06more than just a dance the Chichengala contained important cultural information that would be transferred to the next group with
49:15each performance
49:30Ceremonies like the Chichengala would have been performed for tens of thousands of years
49:38people would have gathered along the trade routes for days even weeks to perform rituals settle disputes arrange marriages exchange
49:49information
49:51the stuff of life
50:01these networks of trade and cultural exchange enable people in the ancient past to travel to all the different environments
50:11found in Greater Australia
50:14even the coldest
50:1942,000 years ago
50:22a land bridge opened to Tasmania as seas fell
50:26allowing access for the first time
50:32people moved into even the freezing central highlands
50:49walking track would have been beautiful to go through there
50:54we the people walking through going to the rock shelter were staying there overnight off the camp
51:01just a beautiful valley too
51:03when people first occupied this landscape
51:07they would have been able to walk from Melbourne to Hobart
51:11and the evidence that we've got here suggests that people use this as a highway
51:31geographically the valley at that time of occupation would have been clear of trees because the temperatures would have been
51:39too cold for trees to survive here
51:51that's the side isn't it wonderful it's got a lovely ambiance to it
51:56nice straight rock shelter but it comes right over just there you see so
51:59yeah so it gives you plenty of protection hey
52:03we have been here when it's rained and the water's all flowing over there so it's completely dry
52:08and that's what's preserved a lot of the sediments is that there's been no intrusion of water or anything like
52:14that
52:15the parmethana rock shelter have been lived in continuously for 35,000 years
52:22almost the entire period of occupation in Tasmania
52:30when people first arrived they were surrounded by glaciers
52:36humans had never traveled so far south on the planet
52:43in this square here is where we put the one by one meter just in there
52:49and we went down about two meters
52:53and all through the deposit there are artifacts in different concentrations
52:58thumbnail scrapers, burnt bone, halves, charcoal, you name it
53:03and then below that rich organic layer we got dates, further dates of 28, 30
53:10and the final two dates dated on two individual pieces of charcoal were about 35,000 years ago
53:40people are living in every ecological niche of the continent
53:49as modern people's first long-distance nomads they came they saw and they adapted sustainably
54:00these were highly socially sophisticated peoples their societies had kinship systems cosmologies religions
54:10and ways of interacting with the land which were sustainable to the extent that people enjoyed
54:17loved moved and interacted with each other and their environment in ways which would last
54:26at least another 50,000 years
54:35it is astounding how long people have been here
54:40it's also astounding to have a direct link to an ancient past
54:45when I come back it feels like I'm here
54:50even like I feel that my family they're here with me
54:57when I feel that I start to cry
55:00that they say to me welcome home
55:02Margaret
55:12the first Australians had penetrated to all corners of the harshest habitable continent
55:23but conditions would get even harsher
55:32a 10,000 year ice age turned greater Australia into a cold dry desert
55:40that they were very much the外 states
55:40and...
55:46you know...
55:51I have a habit
55:53you know...
55:55you know...
55:57you know...
55:58you know...