Aboriginal Culture is Young, Not Ancient

Australian Aboriginal culture is often claimed to be the oldest continuous culture in the world. In fact, Aboriginal culture is recent—as is every other known culture today.

People learn culture as it is shared by others around them. Anthropologists have identified some 164 definitions of “culture”, but these can be distilled to three key factors that define culture: the language, beliefs and customs of a group. The US anthropologist Linda Light states that human language can be considered a culture’s most important feature, since complex human culture could not exist without language, and language could not exist without culture. They are inseparable because language shapes culture and provides the means through which culture is shared and passed from one generation to the next.

When the First Fleet arrived in 1788 there were hundreds of tribes living in what is now Australia. Each tribe spoke its own language, which may have been intelligible to some neighbouring tribes but completely incomprehensible to others. So, on linguistic grounds alone, there were many cultures rather than a single Aboriginal culture. This dramatically changed after 1788, so that by the 2016 census 90 per cent of indigenous people spoke only English at home, while another 8.5 per cent reported speaking English well or very well. The 2021 census re-worded these questions but still reported that of those who could speak an Aboriginal language 87 per cent also spoke English well or very well, with only 2.1 per cent not speaking English at all. Of those who identified as speaking an Aboriginal language, 21 per cent were actually using a creole language, that is, one that is a mixture of English and indigenous. In fact, what is known as Kriol is the single most spoken indigenous language. This is a seismic change of culture.

A French citizen crossing the border into Germany, Italy or Spain would know immediately by the language spoken that they were in a different culture. Language is created and shaped by the needs of a culture as it changes. It is more than words, and includes the way we speak in different accents and dialects. Language also includes coded cultural messages understood by those within a culture, but not necessarily by those outside it.

Aboriginal people had neither a common nor a written language in 1788 so it was a monumental cultural shift for them to transition from collectively speaking numerous unique native languages to using a single language that was both spoken and written, and which was completely unknown to them before 1788. This would, without taking into account any other factors, establish that their cultures had irretrievably changed since the First Fleet and were therefore young, not ancient. But this is only the first pillar of culture.

Belief is the second pillar of culture. Societies with predominant religious beliefs, such as Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu, are readily identifiable as having a different culture from each other on that basis alone. Most cultural belief systems have a creation myth that includes human-origin stories such as Adam and Eve (Christian, Muslim, Jewish), Nuwa and Fuxi (Chinese), Manu and Ananti (Hindu). Many thousands of creation myths existed in the past and many still survive today. British settlers referred to the Aboriginal creation myths as the Dreamtime, but this was no single genesis story. Each tribe had its own creation story that characterised an essential part of its culture. Although there were similarities among many tribes in their creation stories they were more complex and varied than is conveyed by the use of the word Dreamtime, by foreigners who had little understanding of the native peoples.

These cultural beliefs no longer exist as an intrinsic part of the culture that was held by Aboriginal tribes before 1788. As shown in the 2021 census, less than 1 per cent of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population reported adherence to Australian indigenous traditional religions or beliefs. Around half reported they were Christian, which is a fundamentally different cultural heritage. This is not simply a change in belief but a profoundly different way of thinking and of comprehending the world. Well over a third reported they had no religious beliefs. Thus most Aboriginal adults state that they are either Christian, agnostic or atheist, each of which would have been unimaginable to the pre-1788 inhabitants of the continent. This is another radical, recent change in Aboriginal culture.

The third pillar of culture is customs. With a possible small number of exceptions, pre-1788 Aboriginal societies were hunter-gatherers who searched for plants and animals that could be eaten, in much the same way as everybody’s distant ancestors once lived. These hunter-gatherer societies, everywhere in the world, were forced beyond the fringes of productive land by agricultural societies during ten millennia of extermination, enslavement, absorption or forced flight. Inevitably, this had an impact on the customs of the surviving hunter-gatherers, wherever they lived, and it particularly affected the food that was available to them.

Food, like language, is an intrinsic part of a culture. Just ask the French, Italians, Chinese—and many other peoples—how important food is to their identity. The food eaten by pre-1788 Australians comprised native animals and plants taken from the land. Today, the food that provides the main Aboriginal diet is the same as that for all other people in Australia—beef, pork, lamb, chicken, wheat, oats, barley, peas, beans, potatoes, peaches, pears and many other products, including coffee, tea and alcohol, all of which were previously unknown to Aborigines. Animals and plants are farmed today and the produce is sent to stores where almost all Australians buy their fresh, preserved and processed food, cook it in an oven or microwave (often after defrosting) and eat it at a table, or on a lounge while watching television. Seasonal foods, once part of many cultures, have become year-round commodities due to international transportation, freezing, greenhouse production, and other technologies. This change in our diet and how we obtain food has brought about a fundamental change not only in Aboriginal society but in almost every society. The tales once told around a campfire of the food collected or the day’s hunt are no longer part of Aboriginal folklore.

When the British first reported Aboriginal dress they remarked that most people went completely naked or, in adverse weather, wore marsupial skins for warmth. Today, like almost every known society, they wear clothes made from cotton, linen, wool, silk, or synthetic materials, none of which were known to pre-1788 Aborigines. Traditionally they had neither footwear nor headwear (some tribes did use caps or footwear during mourning). Clothing is fundamental to culture and we recognise some of those cultures—past and present—when we see people wearing turbans, burqas, tartan kilts, wooden clogs, togas, djellabas, cheongsams, saris, kimonos and sombreros. The T-shirts, jeans and shorts worn by so many Australian people today, including Aborigines, didn’t exist in 1788 and were rare around the world until the 1950s. Most clothes in 2023 are visibly identifiable as belonging to our time and are international, in contrast to previous times when most clothing was identified with a region. This cultural change has affected the whole world.

Aborigines communicated their stories in a variety of ways, including when groups of people could relax around a watering place, campfire, or some other gathering spot. They also passed on customs through rituals, some of which would have been accompanied by dancing and songs specific to the clan, emphasising what was right and wrong, good and bad, brave and cowardly, acceptable and unacceptable. As in many societies around the world some rites could be brutal, such as the subincision of the penis used in the initiation of youths, or knocking out front teeth. Women were excluded from many of these ceremonies although there were rituals for females only. Initiation would also include an explanation of certain tribal places that were special and could only be entered under strict conditions, with severe punishments for violations that could include spearing, exile or death. Again, similar rituals were common around the world but today these initiations, if practised at all, are fundamentally different from the past, as killing, wounding and mutilation are illegal; and banishment today would not hold the same dread as being driven out from the clan lands into enemy territory. Tribes also used rituals to communicate with neighbouring tribes when either side wished to trade with the other or cross their territory. These rituals would vary amongst tribes but needed to be understood by those to whom they wished to communicate. All of these rituals were an intrinsic part of the various cultures of Aboriginal people, and with their disappearance a fundamental aspect of their cultures disappeared.

Aborigines lived off the land, using the bounty of nature for survival. This was in stark contrast to the newcomers who arrived with and after the First Fleet. Individuals in agricultural and industrial societies mostly worked within a narrower, specialised skillset to obtain their living, usually paid in cash, and they often worked at specified times of the day. Most Aborigines today don’t forage or hunt for food but work in paid employment in specific jobs like most other Australians, and non-working Aborigines are allocated funds from the government in the same manner as all other non-working people in Australia. Again, this is a massive cultural change that would have been unfathomable to Aborigines before 1788.

But Aboriginal culture didn’t just undergo changes with the arrival of the British and others—change has been occurring ever since people first arrived in Australia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago. During all but the last ten millennia Aborigines hunted giant marsupials, like the diprotodon, palorchestes, procoptodon, mukupirna and other now-extinct species, like the reptile megalania. The thylacoleo, quinkana and other large predators would have engendered fear among the human inhabitants. These animals would have been incorporated into Aboriginal legends and hunting them would have been part of their culture. These creatures would have inculcated stories to be passed down through the generations. As the megafauna gradually went extinct, due to climate change or hunting (or both), the culture of all Aboriginal tribes would have changed substantially. Likewise, millennia of burning the undergrowth altered the environment by diminishing some species of trees and plants, while giving a massive advantage to eucalypts and other pyrophytes, some of which rely on fire to germinate. The modification of regional native flora and fauna habitats, whether by natural climate change or by human activity, would substantially change the culture of any people who are spiritually attached to the land on which they live.

This was true at Lake Mungo in south-western New South Wales. At approximately the same time as the megafauna disappeared, Lake Mungo dried up (as did many other lakes). Aborigines had lived on the shores of this former giant lake for tens of millennia, at least four-fifths of their time in Australia and probably longer. They lived on shellfish, yabbies, eels, marsupials, reptiles, birds, insects, plants—and the soon-to-be-extinct megafauna. During their long human presence the climate changed dramatically several times, but around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago these lakes permanently dried up. This would have precipitated a major cultural change on those affected. In that same period sea levels rose, cutting off New Guinea from Australia, and Tasmania from the mainland. This isolated the Tasmanians until the arrival of Europeans and allowed them to develop different cultures from the mainland people.

Much later, Aborigines on the coastal north of the continent traded with Makassar seamen arriving from Sulawesi in search of trepang. The Makassars had a big influence on the Yolngu clan in Arnhem Land, to whom they introduced calico, tobacco and smoking pipes, and words that are still in use today, such as rupia (money), as well as metal from which tools were made, differentiating the Yolngu from other tribes. From around 1640 these same traders also introduced dugout canoes in coastal regions of northern Australia, allowing them to fish in ocean waters rather than close to shore, thus shifting the culture of littoral tribes even further from their inland neighbours.

Some 5000 years ago dingoes appeared in Australia and were probably responsible for the extinction of the mainland thylacine. The coming of dingoes changed Aboriginal culture immensely and they are one of the most represented animals in Aboriginal mythology (except in Tasmania). Dingoes, which live both in the physical and mystical realms, are thought to be able to perceive evil spirits undetectable by man, making them valuable guardians of camp sites. Having animals that could help them hunt, guard them at night, and be the first-ever pets for Aboriginal people, had an incalculable effect on their culture.

About the same time as the dingo arrived, Indian DNA intermixed with Aboriginal DNA, with as much as 11 per cent of the genomes of northern Australian Aborigines being from India, which provides clear proof of intimate contact with non-Aboriginal peoples from outside the continent. As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (January 2013), these findings dovetailed with fossil and archaeological changes, as around that time new kinds of stone tools called microliths appeared in Australia, finer than earlier tools discovered on the continent but similar to tools already in use elsewhere in the world. Both the arrival of non-indigenous people and new stone technology would certainly have changed the cultures of the Aboriginal people affected.

So, even before Governor Arthur Phillip arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788, Aboriginal societies had undergone enormous changes to their cultures, each one in its own way according to specific, local circumstances.

Like all other societies, whether they be hunter-gatherer, agricultural, pastoral, herder or industrial, Aborigines warred with their neighbours. There were various reasons, including the belief that another clan had wronged them, intruded on their territory, or stolen some of their women. Revenge in respect of women, rights over women, or sorcery attributed to women, accounted for around 90 per cent of Aboriginal hostilities, most of which would today be considered skirmishes, although large-scale killings did occur. Because warfare was endemic (as with all human societies until recently) the percentage of people killed or disabled over a generation could be high within a given tribe. Nick Thorpe and Mark Allen demonstrated that archaeological and ethnographic evidence—globally, but especially in Australia—indicated the existence of complex and large-scale military engagements within hunter-gatherer societies. Tribes would weave tales of heroism and victory into their histories which would be subsumed into their culture. When such endemic warfare was ended by the British it marked yet another intrinsic change in the culture of Aboriginal society.

Aboriginal culture included painting, dancing, singing and playing musical instruments. Estimates have been made of Aboriginal rock art, which includes both petroglyphs and pictographs, dating up to 50,000 years ago. “The oldest continuous tradition of rock art in the world exists in Australia and this provides an important component of the culture of Aboriginal Australia … Australian rock art is represented by many different artistic styles and techniques, often reflecting artistic practices during particular time periods.” This statement by Barbara Stuart and Paul Thomas shows that, although it has a very long continuity, rock art was different in various places and times, indicating that clan cultures had observable differences and changed over time and location, as would be expected. The main colours used in traditional rock art were red, yellow, black and white. 

Today, most Aboriginal art produced is by way of dot painting on canvas, using many more colours and with very different styles and materials. These changes were introduced as recently as 1971 to Aboriginal children by Geoffrey Bardon, a non-Aboriginal art teacher. This is a huge shift in culture—not just in materials and style, but also in meaning, as ancient rock art carried information relevant to a particular tribe, such as rituals, ceremonies, their bond to the land, events such as a successful hunt, or simply giving directions to important or useful places, whereas much of today’s paintings are for sale to non-indigenous people. In many tribes women, children and uninitiated males were not permitted by traditional law to participate in rock art and could be severely punished just for seeing it because the location of such art was taboo to the uninitiated.

There are many traditional Aboriginal dances, songs and music, but it is difficult to put timeframes on ephemeral arts. However, like the paintings, it could be expected that they, too, changed over time with a concomitant transformation in culture.

According to the website Aboriginal Art & Culture (Alice Springs), “Aboriginal group(s) exchanged natural resources, such as ochres, and tools … stone axes and boomerangs, thus creating extensive trading networks. Goods travelled hundreds of kilometres from their original source.” Almost all of these trading networks involved carrying goods on foot, although riverine trade also existed. Such trading is virtually extinct now, as most Aborigines, like other Australians, travel by car or public transport to a supermarket, hardware, pub, café, or other retail outlet, and pay for goods and services with money or a cashcard.

Aboriginal accommodation was mostly temporary, made from wood, bark and leaves found nearby. If necessary, mud or clay could be added. Low-built stone wall enclosures would be erected as windbreaks in high country where it was cold, windy and lacked wood. Today, almost all Aborigines live in a fixed location in structures that are made from manufactured materials, many of which are connected to electricity and running water, two utilities that have changed the culture of the world.

Aboriginal communities had, and still have, a hierarchical structure based on elders who have authority founded on respect. Women elders also had such authority, although this varied among clans, highlighting the diversity of cultures. While this hierarchical structure still exists, rapid urbanisation has greatly weakened it, as it has with other family structures around the world.

Aboriginal recreational games included battendi, boogalah, kai, kalq, keentan and many more. These games would have varied, and been given different names, from clan to clan. Today, the vast majority of Aborigines play or watch the same games as other Australians—football (all codes), tennis, basketball, cricket and so on. They also play cards, snooker, board games and electronic games, none of which were known to pre-1788 Aboriginal societies—another major recent cultural change.

Intermixing with Europeans also changed Aboriginal culture, with couples in mixed relationships being exposed to the other’s culture. Children of such couples who were reared by both parents would develop a hybrid culture, incorporating elements of each parent’s culture. The 2016 census allowed respondents to report up to two ancestries. Aboriginal people in Australia reported their ancestry most commonly as Australian (45 per cent), English (17.2 per cent), Australian Aboriginal (15.8 per cent), Irish (5.2 per cent) and Scottish (3.5 per cent). These self-reported figures show that a high percentage of Aborigines have non-Aboriginal ancestors. The 2021 census revealed that 81.7 per cent of indigenous people are cohabiting with a non-indigenous person (this percentage includes some who didn’t answer the question), which would have a profound impact on their cultural experiences in ways that would be totally incongruous with any of the Aboriginal cultures that existed before 1788. (It is also strong evidence that reconciliation is occurring—without necessitating the intervention of politicians, legislation or referendums.) Even with no intermixing, simply living in close proximity to another culture, especially one that is numerically dominant, would have a profound effect over time upon the culture of the numerically fewer.

In 1970 Harold Thomas designed an Aboriginal flag, the colours of which represent the Aboriginal people of Australia and their connection to the land. Flags never existed in any of the numerous Aboriginal cultures until 1970, but they were an integral part of the culture of the people who arrived in and after 1788. Indeed, it was a flag-raising ceremony that was used to proclaim British sovereignty over the east coast of Australia. So now there is an artefact, in a material and with a symbolism that were unknown to pre-1788 Aborigines, being used to represent all Aborigines (but not all indigenous Australians, as Torres Strait Islanders have their own flag), despite the fact that Aboriginal people were never united and any given clan would have little to no knowledge of the great majority of other clans living on the continent. Aboriginal people have, however, embraced the flag, making this another significant recent change in their culture.

All of the changes listed above show that Aboriginal culture is not the oldest continuous culture in the world but is a young culture, like almost every other culture in the world, with many major and fundamental traits and customs going back no further than the 1950s. Indeed, by far the greater part of Aboriginal culture is no different from that of other Australians. While many non-Aboriginal cultures still have languages and religions that go back many centuries (during which time they, too, have also evolved), the way of life in all nations has changed radically since the 1950s.

We are entertained by television and can watch live broadcasts from any part of the world and even from space; we communicate, research, shop, learn and date on the internet; we listen to digitised music that changes genre by the decade; we use electronic money and bank accounts; the use of smartphones is universal and most people can use, and have access to, a computer either directly or via a notebook, tablet or smartphone. There were almost 15 billion mobile devices operating worldwide in 2021, an increase of a billion since the year before (and this doesn’t include PCs). These smartphones provide us, inter alia, with music, videos and photographs by the trillion; we read paperback books, eBooks and social media sites; 1.5 billion tourists flew off on vacation in 2019 to foreign lands or to holiday on cruise ships or stay in hotels or resorts; we use photocopiers, refrigerators, air conditioners and microwave ovens; jeans and sneakers are de rigueur fashion items; the whole world celebrates New Year on the first day of January (although many cultures additionally celebrate their traditional New Year); many of us “foster out” our young children to pre-schools and our older people to retirement villages and nursing homes; young people in their late teens and early twenties have more independence than at any time before the 1950s and lead a lifestyle that is often very different from their parents; many tens of millions live in high-rise buildings (the number of skyscrapers over forty floors has risen by an average of 8 per cent each year since 1950) and there are thousands of city buildings over 100 metres high; 94 per cent of the world has access to essential health services and standardised medications, massively reducing reliance on traditional medicines, and we use antibiotics and antivirals to treat many illnesses; some 90 per cent of people around the world have completed primary school and there were around 220 million tertiary students in 2022, making the current generation the most literate in history; we eat in restaurants and cafes in vast numbers and indulge in fast food and soft drinks in such quantities that obesity is a major health problem for the first time in human history; there are 1.4 billion private cars in the world, which have greatly changed our lifestyle by giving us greater freedom of movement than at any time in history and have massively changed our cities, countryside, and even our homes; we have international laws that define basic human rights and trade rules (in contrast to multifarious national and tribal codes of law)—and the list goes on and on.

Every one of these changes, that either did not exist before 1950 or has only been embraced by the masses since then, has transformed almost every known culture in existence beyond recognition, with a marked divide between everything that went before. Traditional music, an important marker of culture, has been sidelined by international music that arrived in the 1950s. Aborigines, like other Australians and other societies around the world, listen to digital music in the post-1950 genres of rock, pop, rap and numerous other variations, and most Aborigines prefer this music to their traditional songs. There are hundreds of different instruments used in providing digitised music whereas pre-1788 Aborigines used six musical instruments, some of which were regional rather than Australia-wide: the didgeridoo, the bullroarer, drum, rasp, clapsticks and the gum-leaf. Yet another massive cultural change for Aborigines.

Obviously some characteristics of past cultures continue to exist in current cultures, but that doesn’t alter the fact that cultures today are radically different from those of our recent forebears and, indeed, many people living today have seen their culture change dramatically to the point where many older people do not recognise or understand the current culture. Aborigines, like everyone else, have been impacted by these global changes. The teeming hordes of tourists mentioned above are often entertained by “cultural” performances in various parts of the world—Maori hakas and swinging poi; Aboriginal corroborees, smoking or welcome-to-country ceremonies; Scots tossing cabers and sword dancing in tartan kilts; American Indian rain and war dances; Japanese tea rituals; Chinese dragon dances; and many more. While they can be enjoyable and entertaining for tourists, these rituals are a mere shadow of their original, when they were integral to culture.

With all cultures now radically and recently changed, the spiritual (and therefore cultural) context of these rituals is missing, rather like an atheist singing Christmas carols—all very jolly and pleasant, but the belief system that spawned the carols no longer exists in the mind of the singer. Even those who still practise traditional medicine almost always now omit the prayers or incantations that were not only integral to the treatment, but were actually the most important component of that treatment.

Some may argue that, although cultures do vary over time, the fact that they occur in a particular region—such as Australia—is proof that they are continuous, and therefore Australian Aborigines do have the oldest continuous culture in the world. Not so! This viewpoint confuses “continuous culture” with having a past, and Aborigines certainly do have a past—a very long past—in Australia; but all other people also have a past, wherever they live. All human beings have common ancestry. According to some estimates the common (female) ancestor of all living human beings, known as Mitochondrial Eve, lived about 160,000 years ago in Africa (the time frame is disputed but irrelevant here). Until recently the oldest human remains had been found in the Rift Valley of Africa, but older remains have since been found in Morocco. This means that Moroccans, or at the very least continental Africans, have a longer association with a given continent than any other people by a margin of some 100,000 years. But the culture of the people who lived at this time and place is shared by all human beings living today. It is part of everyone’s ancestry.

To claim that Australian Aborigines have the oldest continuous culture in the world is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach to those involved and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no improvement in the lives of those groups affected, leaving them to live in stasis, unable to adapt to the numerous changes in the environment over long periods. Fortunately this is not the case, as Australian Aborigines have moved with the times and are culturally in harmony with the rest of the world while, of course, retaining some sentimental attachment to their past way of life—a characteristic that marks out all sub-groups which exist within overarching national cultures. These national cultures have themselves become sub-groups of a now global culture which has arisen only in the past seven decades.

Andrew Paterson has retired after more than forty years working in Sydney, London and Glasgow, in private enterprise and in the public service