Ancient Australian Aboriginal stories preserve history of sea-level rises

An interesting article was brought to my attention today by the Australian Archaeological Association's twitter account (@AustArchaeology).

A couple of posts ago I talked about the potential value of oral histories to archaeologists. In the south Pacific there are no written records of history predating European exploration of the region within the last 400 years. However, throughout this region there are oral traditions that predate European contact and that certainly have the potential to inform archaeological investigations. 

The piece I was reading today is an intriguing example from Australia, a land with a human presence dating back around 50,000 years.

Australian Aboriginal man with Uluru/Ayers Rock in the background. Image sourced from here.

Stories told by groups of indigenous Australians right around the coast of the continent since the earliest colonial times have recalled rises in sea-level and coastal inundation. The following (in italics) is a direct quote from the article:

In the beginning, as far back as we remember, our home islands were not islands at all as they are today. They were part of a peninsula that jutted out from the mainland and we roamed freely throughout the land without having to get in a boat like we do today. Then Garnguur, the seagull woman, took her raft and dragged it back and forth across the neck of the peninsula letting the sea pour in and making our homes into islands.

So goes an Aboriginal story, paraphrased, about the origin of the Wellesley Islands in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria, a story with parallels along every part of the coast of Australia. Along the south coast, stories written down early in colonial times told when these areas were dry, a time when people hunted kangaroo and emu there, before the water rose and flooded them, never again to recede.

Around 20,000 years ago, during what is referred to as the Last Glacial Maximum, the height of the last Ice Age, sea levels world-wide were approximately 120 metres lower than their present levels. A few thousand years later, when the earth began to warm up, the giant glacial ice sheets that covered large parts of Europe and North America began to melt, and huge amounts of water started to pour into the oceans, leading to a rise in sea levels. This didn't happen overnight, however. It took a few thousand years for sea levels to reach present day levels around 6-8,000 years ago.

The largest glacier in the European Alps, the Grosser Aletschgletscher. Image sourced from here. 

The recollection of this process in the stories told by Australian Aboriginal populations, such as the one above, strikes me as a pretty impressive example of verbal memories passed down through generations and worth a share!

Read the full article by Nick Reid and Patrick Nunn here.

Thanks for reading,

Nick.