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From prehistory to the present day: Australian food

Pre-Colonial Australia

The oldest human remains in Australia are 42,000 years old, though humans first reached the continent several thousand years earlier. At the time, Australia and New Guinea were joined together, as sea levels were lower than they are now (Dorey, 2024). The diet of these prehistoric Aboriginals included:

eggs of an extinct, 2 metre high flightless bird called Genyornis, that went extinct 50,000 year ago. Burnt eggshells have been found that provide evidence of this. In fact, humans probably helped drive it to extinction (Collins et al., 2023).

Bogong moths. In the summer months, when they fly into the mountains and gather in huge numbers, Aborigines would cook them. They tasted good, and it was even possible to grind the cooked moths into a cake. 2,000-year old fragments of burnt moth have been found on the stones used to grind them (Stephenson et al., 2020).

Fish. Aboriginal fish traps have been dated to 6,600 years old (McNiven et al., 2011).

A species of shearwater (a kind of seabird), probably a so-called muttonbird. At a site in Victoria, several hundred years old, four of their skeletons were found, along with other birds. What was more, one was burnt, proving humans ate it (Skira, 1993).

It may have also included:

extinct, over 2-metric-ton, marsupials called Diprotodon (Musser, 2021).

Bread. 30,000 year old fragments believed to be of grindstones, used to grind seeds into flour to make bread, have been found (Wailwan grindstone, 2021).

Madjedbebe

Florin et al. (2020) examined plant remains from this site in the Northern Territory, which have been dated to be 53,000 to 65,000 years old. What it found was as follows:

Many different kinds of plants were found, and many were edible. Different remains could be identified more or less specifically. Some had their species identified, others could only be narrowed down to broader plant categories.

Charcoal was also found. Because of the lack of naturally occurring charcoal, this suggests humans were cooking the plants with it.

As well as charcoal to cook the plants, grinding stones, used to grind seeds, have been found. The evidence that the stones were actually used this way comes from plant residues on the stones and also clues from marks, cracks and the shape of the stone that appear to result from the stone being used as a grinding stone.

Some of the plants were highly nutritious and easy to get at, others required more preparation before they or their edible parts could be eaten.

The plant remains found included fruits and nuts from different kinds of plants, including species that are harvested today, as well as remains of palm tree stems (stems hold up a plant).

A tree, scientific name Pandanus spiralis, was identified among the remains. The species’ fruit was still being eaten by Aboriginals over 50,000 years later, when European settlers arrived. The fruit is hard to open even with stone tools, but the seeds contain large amounts of fat (44-50%) and protein (20-33%). Other remains that have been identified as being part of a broader group of plants including Pandanus spiralis are thought to be from this species, because the only other species in the group that grows in the area would be hard to access for early humans.

Also found were remains of soft, fleshy parts of plants that have structures in their stems/roots to store energy, parts that humans might eat. Some of were charred, probably by humans, as they’re similar to fragments left over when modern Aboriginal Australians cook similar plants.

Other kinds of plant remains other than the ones already mentioned were not discussed in the study.

Note: Florin et al. (2020) refers to the aforementioned study, which was published in 2020.

European Accounts

The aforementioned evidence of what Aborigines ate has been archaeological, that is, traces of human activity that have survived all these thousands of years. Of course, accounts from Europeans (they visited Australia many times before they actually settled in it) provide more detail than, say, a fossil of a butchered Diprotodon, or a fish harpoon from who-knows-how-many-years-BCE. Here are a list of accounts that provide evidence as to what Aborigines were eating before European settlement. The aforementioned evidence of what Aborigines ate has been archaeological, that is, traces of human activity that have survived all these thousands of years. Of course, accounts from Europeans (they visited Australia many times before they actually settled in it) provide more detail than, say, a fossil of a butchered Diprotodon, or a fish harpoon from who-knows-how-many-years-BCE. Here are a list of accounts that provide evidence as to what Aborigines were eating before European settlement.

Colonial Australia

Over the years, many visitors from foreign lands came and went. It is possible that tens of thousands of years after the first Aboriginal Australians arrived and after Australia was separated from New Guinea by rising sea levels, Australia was colonised yet again. There isn’t any direct evidence of this, but changes in Aboriginal culture and the appearance of dingoes about 4-6,000 years ago suggest this may have happened (Bërgstrom et al., 2016). From sometime likely beginning during the late 1600s, Aboriginal Australians were regularly visited by Indonesians who came there to catch sea cucumbers for a burgeoning trade, with some involvement from the Aborigines (Dash, 2016). There were also many European visitors to Australia beginning in 1606 (Pearson, 2005), but it wasn’t until 1788 that a settlement was established there by Europeans (Australia Day, 2024).

Bibliography

Dorey, F. (2024, April 18). When did modern humans get to Australia?. Australian Museum. https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/the-spread-of-people-to-australia/ Collins, M. J., Demarchi, B., Gifford, M. (2023, January 24). How we cracked the mystery of Australia’s prehistoric giant eggs. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-we-cracked-the-mystery-of-australias-prehistoric-giant-eggs-176952 McNiven, J. I., Crouch, J., Richards, T., Dolby, N., Jacobson, G., & the members of Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation. (2011, September 16). Dating Aboriginal stone-walled fishtraps at Lake Condah, southeast Australia. Journal of Archaeological Science, 39(2), pp. 268-286. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2011.09.007 Skira, I. J. (1993). Tasmanian aborigines and muttonbirding : an historical examination (Version 1). University of Tasmania. https://doi.org/10.25959/23243582.v1 Stephenson, B., David, B., Fresløv, J., Arnold, J. Lee., Delannoy , J., Petchey, F., Urwin, C., Wong, L. N. Vanessa., Fullagar, R., Green, H., Mialanes, J., McDowell, M., Wood, R., Hellstrom, J., & the members of Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation. (2020, December 17). 2000 Year-old Bogong moth (Agrotis infusa) Aboriginal food remains, Scientific Reports, 10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79307-w Musser, A. (2021, August 23). Diprotodon optatum. Australian Museum. https://australian.museum/learn/australia-over-time/extinct-animals/diprotodon-optatum/ Wailwan grindstone. (2021, August 30). Australian Museum. https://australian.museum/learn/cultures/atsi-collection/cultural-objects/grindstones/ Florin, A. J., Fairbarn, S. A., Nango, M., Djandjomerr, D., Marwick, B., Fullagar, R., Smith, M., Wallis, A. L., Clarkson, C. (2020, February 17). The first Australian plant foods at Madjedbebe, 65,000–53,000 years ago. Nature Communications, 11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14723-0 Dash, M. (2016, October 31) Dreamtime voyagers: Aboriginal Australians in early modern Makassar, A Blast From The Past. https://mikedashhistory.com/2016/10/31/dreamtime-voyagers-australian-aborigines-in-early-modern-makassar/ Pearson, M. (2005) GREAT SOUTHERN LAND The Maritime Exploration of Terra Australis, The Australian Government department of the Environment and Heritage. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/great-southern-land.pdf Australia Day. (2024, September 26). In Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Australia-Day Bërgstrom, A., Nagle, N., Chen, Y., McCarthy, S., Pollard, O, M., Ayub, Qasim., Wilcox, S., Wilcox, L., Oorschot, V., AH, R., McAllister, P., Williams, L., Xue, Y., Mitchell, R, J., Tyler-Smith, C. (2016, March 21). Deep Roots for Aboriginal Australian Y Chromosomes, National Library of Medicine, 26(6), pp. 809-813. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.01.028