60,000 Years Is NOT an Achievement (Why Australia Is Obsessed With the Number)

Certain circles in Australia seem to be obsessed with how long ago Aboriginal people first came to Australia. Just in the last couple of decades, the estimated figure has ballooned.

For example, in this article from the ABC from 2008, “Ancient Australia not written in stone,” they wrote, “Aboriginal people are thought to have inhabited the Australian continent for around 45,000 years before European contact.” In 2011, in their article, “Aboriginal DNA dates Australian arrival,” they conclude that it is “more than 50,000 years.” In 2015, a ministerial statement in Queensland read: “The Indigenous peoples of Australia occupied this land up to 60,000 years before the British arrived.” In 2017, the ABC published a piece on an excavated rock shelter claiming that “humans reached Australia at least 65,000 years ago.” In 2016—a year earlier—SBS got in on the fun: “A lock of hair reveals Indigenous Australia is about 70,000 years old.” But in 2017, The Guardian took the cake: “Australian dig finds evidence of Aboriginal habitation up to 80,000 years ago.”

You probably wouldn’t think this could get much crazier, but in 2019, Monash University claimed that “Indigenous peoples lived in Australia 120,000 years ago,” based on some “shells that were gathered on the beach and smashed on rocks.” They admit, it could have been birds though: “Pacific gulls are known to drop turban shells on rocks to release the meat.”

The point is, certain circles in Australia act like the higher the number of years they’ve allegedly inhabited these lands, the more legitimacy the First Peoples have to the land. It’s treated like some kind of great Aboriginal achievement, as if prehistory were a competition. But we all instinctively know it isn’t an achievement at all.

I mean, for the Aboriginal people alive today, whether their ancestors were here 40,000 years ago, or 60,000 years, makes no difference to their lives today. It’s not an achievement; it’s a genetic lottery ticket. If you’re here today, it just means your ancestors survived—they didn’t die. And that’s true for all humans. If you’re here today—Aboriginal or otherwise—it just means that your ancestors were successful in staying alive.

In 2005, when the ABC was much more honest with itself, it reported: “Early settlers’ fires ‘made Australian deserts’.” Essentially, they were blaming the First Australians for Australia’s dry climate.

Although, only 20 short years later, so-called cultural burning is pretty much universally celebrated. For example, SBS reported this year: “Cultural burning: using fire to protect from fire and revive Country.” They obviously didn’t get the memo that the original inhabitants may well have triggered a cataclysmic weather change that turned Australia into desert.

Despite the absurdity of constantly shifting the blame and the praise, the chase for the ultimate Aboriginal arrival date continues to this day. Just over the weekend, the ABC reported as their top headline: “DNA study provides ‘almost perfect correlation’ for first Australians’ arrival.” Essentially, they state that the research is the first to “comprehensively” close the gap between genetic and archaeological evidence, which places arrival about 65,000 years ago.

Although, they do admit that Western scientists continue to argue over dates, and that there is a “shifting date of arrival.”

The point is, every time a study moves the clock forward—say, from 50,000 to 60,000 years—it’s treated like a major victory, rather than a minor data point in an already established timeline. Historically, this wasn’t an expedition. It’s not like these original people set out with a clear, defined goal to ‘move to Australia.’ It was essentially just a natural, generational process where people slowly spread out over many thousands of years. They probably didn’t even realise they had landed on the land mass that we now call Australia.

As I said, it wasn’t an achievement, it was just a geographic happenstance like any other migratory movement, but modern academia and the political class like to celebrate it as some sort of unassailable moral currency.

Naturally, the media outlets obsessed with sensational headlines—the ABC included—don’t tend to report on conflicting evidence like this article published in the journal Archaeology in Oceania titled: “Recent DNA Studies Question a 65,000-years-ago Arrival of Humans in Sahul (Australia).” The argument is that due to the presence of Neanderthal DNA, Aboriginal Australians couldn’t have possibly arrived here before 50,000 years ago, because that interbreeding event happened after our ancestors left Africa.

I’m not here to debate the number, of course, but it is interesting that Australia’s public broadcaster and others want you to treat the mere fact of Aboriginal cultural longevity as some kind of massive achievement that requires constant and incessant celebration.

MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn