The chance discovery of a rock shelter in the Flinders Ranges has unearthed one of the most important prehistoric sites in Australia.
Key points:
* Dating of artefacts and fossils from Warratyi indicates human settlement between 49,000 and 46,000 years ago
* Timing 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 humans lived alongside, and hunted megafauna
The site, known as Warratyi, shows Aboriginal Australians settled the arid interior of the country around 49,000 years ago — some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.
The shelter, about 550 kilometres north of Adelaide, also contains the first reliably dated evidence of human interaction with megafauna.
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.
Lead author Giles Hamm, a consultant archaeologist and doctoral student at La Trobe University, found the site with local Adnyamathanha elder Clifford Coulthard while surveying gorges in the northern Flinders Ranges.
"Nature called and Cliff walked up this creek bed into this gorge and found this amazing spring surrounded by rock art," Mr Hamm said.
"A man getting out of the car to go to the toilet led to the discovery of one of the most important sites in Australian pre-history."
[...]
Professor Prideaux, from Flinders University's School of Biological Sciences, said the only previous site in Australia where megafauna remains and human artefacts had been found together was Cuddie Springs in NSW, which had become the subject of controversy over the accuracy of dating.
"One good thing about this study ... is there's no doubt there are megafauna remains in the form of Diprotodon and a giant bird in that rock shelter in a well-dated, well-stratified context sometime between 45,000 and 50,000 years ago," Professor Prideaux said.
"The only way those bones and shells got there [because of the steep incline up to the rock shelter] is because people brought them there [to eat] ... in terms of megafauna that's the really significant finding."
Photo: Aboriginal people co-existed with Diprotodon around 49,000 years ago evidence suggests. (Wikimedia Commons: Dmitry Bogdanov)
hookrider, eyes open even more as old age sets in .. lol, promise, will do .. so far only a few seashells, and the odd piece of coal have come to the surface in the back yard.
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