Before the colonists came, we managed the land with careful use of cool burns. To stop giant bushfires, we have to learn again how to care for country.
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Articles on First Australians
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The policy, called Revive and funded by $286 million over four years, establishes Creative Australia which will be the government’s principle arts investment and advisory body
Indigenous artists have been engraving rock shelters for millennia - long before the Kimberley’s celebrated rock art paintings. Now the rocks’ natural coatings are yielding clues to the engravings’ creation.
It took just 5,000 years for large and well-organised groups of people to populate all corners of the continent.
We now have a glimpse into where early Indigenous Australians likely travelled all those tens of thousands of years ago.
Tiny nutshell fragments, found at a rock shelter in the Kakadu region, have helped researchers track past climate change in the region.
New research shows just how many first people were needed to create a viable population in what is now Australia.
They were looking to study rock art at a remote desert site but what they found showed people had been using the place almost since the first people arrived in Australia.
Aboriginal Australians have effectively been on their country for as long as modern human populations have been outside of Africa. We have a limit as to how long ago that was: around 50,000 years.
It’s been half a century since Jim Bowler discovered Mungo Lady, which changed the course of Australian history. But now he says the find has fallen off the national radar, leaving a legacy of shame.
The first people to make it to Australia could have navigated their way by sea crossing, reaching the north-west coastline of the island continent more than 50,000 years ago.
New techniques for genetic analysis are helping us build more detailed and accurate stories about the ancient histories of the first Australians.
There is plenty of debate over what route was taken by the first people to reach Australia. New research reveals a likely route through a now submerged chain of islands.
The evidence of a much earlier presence of humans in Indonesia was found more than 100 years ago. But only now has the age of the fossil teeth been accurately dated.
Part of the land inhabited by some of the early Australians is now submerged, but details of their life is now revealed in an excavation on an island off the continent’s north-west coast.
Aboriginal people stayed settled in places across Australia for 50,000 years until Europeans arrived, showing a strong connection with the land.
The extinction of the giant reptiles, marsupials and birds that once called Australia home has been the subject of much debate, including the role early Australians may have had on their fate.
New DNA research working with Indigenous Australians is answering many of the questions about when and where the First Australians emerged many thousands of years ago.
For the more modest aim of delivering steady, competent government – well, it’s no wonder Malcolm Turnbull is raging.
Research first published in 2001 has been used to question of whether Aboriginal People were the First Australians. So why not re-test those results with improved techniques and equipment?
Top contributors
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Sean Ulm is a Friend of The Conversation.Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures, James Cook University
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Kimberley Chair in Rock Art and Professor of Australian Archaeology, Centre for Rock Art Research and Management, The University of Western Australia
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Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University
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Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Griffith University
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Associate Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW Sydney
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Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Archaeology, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland
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ARC Laureate Fellow, Charles Sturt University
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PhD Candidate, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Wollongong
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Michael Bird is a Friend of The Conversation.
JCU Distinguished Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University
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Research Fellow in Ecology for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University
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Research scientist, Griffith University
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Research Fellow in Genomics, Griffith University
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Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
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Professorial Fellow,School of Earth Sciences,(Geology), The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Water Science, Griffith University
