Marked Madjedbebe, Northern Territory

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

First Australians

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived in Australia for at least 50,000 years, and possibly 65,000, the longest unbroken cultures on Earth. Their history is kept in Country, song, story and art, as well as in archaeology.

Place
Madjedbebe, Northern Territory · Lake Mungo, New South Wales · Budj Bim, Victoria · Murujuga, Western AustraliaOceania
Laid out as
A civilisationA society seen from the inside: its rulers, places, work, beliefs and daily life, laid out like the rooms of a house.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IArriving by sea
  2. IILake Mungo
  3. IIIThe eel traps of Budj Bim
  4. IVSonglines and Country
  5. VRock art across a continent
  6. VILiving with fire

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Jim Bowler
  • Mary Pappin

Objects

  • The Lake Mungo burials
  • Budj Bim stone eel channels
  • Murujuga rock engravings

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

67,000 years ago to now. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?