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Aborigines of Australia: interesting facts. Aborigines of Australia: life of the indigenous population

The Australian Aborigines are one of the oldest and most distinct racial groups. It was the isolation of the natives of the Green Continent, also called the Australian Bushmen, that caused them to retain their unique, different appearance.

According to geneticists, confirmed by DNA analysis, the indigenous population of Australia remained isolated for at least 50 thousand years. Research has provided evidence of its continuity for at least 2,500 generations.

General information

The Australian Aborigines, whose photos are presented in the article, belong to a separate, Australian branch of the equatorial (Australian-Negroid) race. According to scientists, this is one of the oldest cultures in the world. The settlement of the mainland, according to scientific data, occurred within 75 - 50 thousand years ago. Australian Aborigines are the descendants of the first people modern type who migrated here from Africa. They have a lot common features: well developed body muscles, dark hair (usually wavy), wide nose, prominent lower face. But among the natives, there are three separate types. Their representatives, for all resemblance, differ markedly from each other.

barrinean type

According to scientists, it was the Barrineans who first set foot on the shores of the mainland. They differ from the other two types in their small growth - the result of the so-called reduction. The area of settlement is mainly North Queensland.

Murray type

Representatives of this type of Australoid race are visually distinguished by darker skin and developed hairline. They predominantly live on open spaces(steppes) South and West and the coast of Eastern Australia. According to one of the theories of the settlement of the mainland, called trihybrid, they moved to Australia in the second wave - from the African continent.

Carpentarian type

It is predominantly distributed in the north and in the central part of the continent. Its representatives have even darker skin than the Murrays, and one of the highest average heights in the world. The hairline on the face and body is poorly developed. It is believed that this type of aborigines developed due to the third wave of settlement in Australia.

At the time of the appearance on the continent of the first colonizers from Europe, there were at least 500 Australian Aborigine tribes. The total population, according to various sources, was from 300 thousand to one million people.

Lifestyle

Of course, most of the natives of the mainland joined the achievements of civilization. However, many, nevertheless, did not change the ancient habits. So, in the central part of the mainland, where at least 17% of the total indigenous population of the country currently lives, there are no large cities and towns. The largest settlement here has 2.5 thousand people. There are no schools (children are taught by radio) and medical institutions. It is worth noting that in total, medical assistance to the indigenous population of Australia has been provided for less than a hundred years - only since 1928.

The basis of the diet of the natives, leading a primitive way of life, like thousands of years ago, is the fruits of hunting and gathering - roots, rare plants, wild animals, lizards, and in coastal areas - fish and other seafood. They process the found cereals and roast cakes from them on coals. Still, many centuries later, most of the day in remote communities is spent foraging. If necessary, insect larvae are also used.

The boomerang, the most famous weapon of the Australian Aborigines, is still used by them for hunting. According to ancient beliefs, only a true warrior, brave at heart, could master the possession of a boomerang. This is really not easy, given that the speed of a launched weapon can reach 80 kilometers per hour.

Consequences of colonization

The development of Australian lands by Europeans, as in most cases, was accompanied by forced assimilation or even the destruction of the indigenous population. Aborigines of Australia, driven from their lands to specially created reservations, suffered from hunger and epidemics. Until the early 1970s, it was legal to forcibly remove indigenous children from their families in order to make them servants and farm workers. As a result of such a policy, the number of Aboriginal people in the early 90s of the twentieth century was only 250 thousand people (only 1.5% of total population).

Aborigines achieved equal rights with other inhabitants of the country only in 1967. Their situation gradually began to improve, for which special programs aimed at preserving cultural heritage and increased fertility. Separate tribes began to move to big cities and settle in them.

However, the consequences of colonization still make themselves felt. So, among the prisoners in Australian prisons, representatives of the indigenous population, with their small total number, make up about 30%. The average life expectancy of the natives is about 70-75, and the white population is about 80-85 years. They are six times more likely to commit suicide.

Aboriginal children continue to be discriminated against in schools on racial grounds. This was stated by about a quarter of those interviewed in the course of a national study on the life of the indigenous population. At the same time, the level of education among the Aborigines of Australia is below average. So, at least a third of the adult population cannot read and write, perform arithmetic operations. And in remote communities, located in areas densely populated by the indigenous inhabitants of the mainland, about 60% of children do not have access to school.

Australian Aboriginal language

History has preserved evidence that by the time travelers from Europe arrived on the mainland, at least 500 dialects existed here. Moreover, many of them differed from each other as seriously as the languages of peoples living in different parts of the world.

Currently, there are about 200 local dialects. Australia is a real paradise for linguists, because, according to them, the melody of the indigenous languages radically distinguishes them from any African, Asian or European. It is difficult to study the absence of writing in the vast majority of tribes, because many of them created only primitive signs to display the plots of ancient legends and elementary calculations (drawings, notches).

At the same time, almost all natives speak the official language of the country - English. With such a variety of dialects, this is the only option that allows Australian residents to communicate with each other without any problems. Even a special channel for Aboriginal people, launched in 2007 and designed to promote the cultural community of various tribes (Australian National Aboriginal Television), broadcasts in the language of Shakespeare. By the way, contrary to popular belief, the word "kangaroo" in the language of the Australian Aborigines does not mean "I do not understand." But more on that later.

Probably, everyone knows the anecdote about how James Cook, having set foot on the coast of Australia, asked the locals what the name of the animal they saw was called. In response, he allegedly heard: “Kangaroo!”, Which means: “I don’t understand!”. However, this version has not been confirmed by modern linguistic studies. A similar word - "gangaroo", used in the language of one of the tribes of the Australian aborigines to refer to kangaroo, in translation means "big jumper".
In one of the national parks on the east coast of the mainland, Australian aborigines willingly accept tourists. They are shown, among other things, the art of owning a boomerang, as well as teaching it to everyone. However, not everyone manages to master this difficult science.
It turns out that Australia has its own Stonehenge. A stone structure of 100 boulders was discovered about halfway between Melbourne and Geelong, the second largest city in Victoria. As scientists have found out, the location of the stones allowed in ancient times local residents determine the days of the solstice and equinox.
10% of the natives living in the Solomon Islands, which are located northeast of the mainland, have blond hair. The reason is a genetic mutation, which is about 1000 years old.

Finally

The article provided information about the indigenous population of the Australian continent. Today, a paradoxical situation has developed here, because on the territory of the state of Australia, which is industrialized, in which the general standard of living is quite high, there is another world in parallel - people living almost the same as their very distant ancestors. This is a kind of window ancient world for everyone who wants to join a unique culture and understand how people lived on Earth tens of thousands of years ago.

Races. Peoples. Intelligence [Who is smarter] Lynn Richard

6 Australian Aborigines

Some of the peoples of the South and East Asia migrated to the islands of the Indonesian archipelago and reached New Guinea approximately 65,000 years ago. Approximately 60,000 years ago, some of these peoples migrated to Australia, where they evolved into the Australian Aborigines (Bradshaw; 1997). The closely related peoples who survived in the highlands of New Guinea are known as the New Guinea Aborigines.

The ancestors of the Australian Aborigines and New Guineans never experienced the harsh winters that began in South Asia with the onslaught of the first ice age some 70,000 years ago. By this time they should have been in South-East Asia, in Indonesia or New Guinea, lying on the equator or very close to it. They were not affected by the second ice age in the Northern Hemisphere. Thus, the Australian Aborigines and New Guineans have the morphological features of humans who evolved in tropical and subtropical environments and have never been exposed to temperate climates. They are similar to Africans in their dark skin, wide nose, long legs, slender body and large teeth.

Like other peoples who evolved in the tropical and subtropical zones, the New Guineans and Australian Aborigines were able to eat plant foods, insects and eggs all year round. When Aboriginal Australians were studied in the wilderness of Western Australia in the twentieth century, they found that 70-80% of their diet consisted of plant foods, with most of the rest consisting of eggs and insects. They did not have well developed methods of group hunting (Gould; 1969). The Gadio people of New Guinea are estimated to have a diet of 96% plant foods and only 4% meat (Dornstreich, 1973). The easy availability throughout the year of plant foods, along with insects and eggs, meant that the indigenous peoples of the tropics and subtropics of New Guinea and Australia never depended on meat as a food source and were not subject to strong selection pressures to develop the cognitive abilities required for hunting large animals. They did not need to make clothes to keep warm. Even on the island of Tasmania, located south of Australia, the temperature in July, the coldest month of the year, averages 45 degrees Fahrenheit (about 7 ° C, - approx. transl.) and "Tasmanians usually go naked" (Coon; 1967, p. 114). This explains why their intelligence and brain size are low: an IQ of 62 and an average brain size of 1225 cm3. Both are slightly lower than Africans, with an IQ of 67 and an average brain size of 1280 cm3. The most likely explanation for this is that Africans in their larger populations were much more likely to develop intelligence-enhancing mutations than Australian Aborigines. The number of New Guinean aborigines in the highlands of New Guinea is about a quarter of a million. The number of Aboriginal people in Australia in the eighteenth century, when Europeans first appeared there, is estimated at about 300,000. In such a small population, the likelihood of new mutations providing increased intelligence should have been low, and the geographical isolation of the Australian and New Guinea aborigines prevented the acquisition of these mutations. from other races.

When Europeans discovered Australia at the end of the eighteenth century, they found that the Aborigines were at a primitive level of cultural development. “Their Mesolithic (Stone Age) culture did not (and still does not in remote areas) have pottery, agriculture, or metals” (Cole; 1965, p. 82). They did not plant crops to grow their own food, and they did not keep herds of animals (Elkin; 1967). They did not store food for future consumption. As Bleakley (1961, p. 78) describes it: "Aborigines seem to have no concept of famine storage." Thomas (Thomas; 1925, p. 295) described the natives as “nomads who know neither pottery nor metalworking, who do not have any domestic animals (the most tamed is the dingo) and who still do not know agriculture, supporting their existence with snakes and lizards, emus, larvae and simple plant foods.” “Their main stone tools are stone ax on the handle and knife, as well as microliths (small stone plates) used as spearheads, teeth of saw-knives, and so on. Weapons consist of clubs, spears, spear throwers and boomerangs. Women use special digging sticks to dig up yams and other roots” (Cole, 1965, p. 83). They never invented or adopted the bow and arrow (Coon, 1967). Some of the British explorers and early anthropologists who studied the aborigines in the nineteenth century concluded that they had a low level of intelligence: "They are still children in their mental development" (Wake, 1872, p. 80). There were no numerals in their languages, except for one and two: "two or a pair represent the range of their numerals" (Crawfurd, 1883, p. 170). Their languages were also devoid of abstract concepts and "were poor in collective nouns" (Curr, 1886, p. 20), indicating an inability to formulate general concepts, and this is one of the main characteristics of intelligence. The aborigines, however, made primitive drawings of human figures that survived in the Jinmiun mountain refuge on northern territories, which have been dated at approximately 58,000 years (Bradshaw; 1997).

dingo dog

Diamond (1997, p. 309) attributes the failure of the Australian Aborigines to domesticate animals or develop agriculture "to the absence of domesticated animals, the paucity of domesticated plants, and unsuitable soils and climates", but on the same page he tells us that yams , taro and eland grow wild in Northern Australia and can be cultivated, and there are two native wild grasses that can be bred to produce crops. Kangaroos and dingoes could have been domesticated through selective breeding over a number of generations. The climate of Australia is very diverse and, apart from the deserts of the central region, potentially suitable for agriculture, which was developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by Europeans.

The Tasmanians were even at an even lower level of cultural development than the natives of the Australian mainland. The Russian anthropologist Vladimir Kabo (Kabo; 1985, p. 603) wrote that they were "the only society that survived at the level of the late Paleolithic until the beginning of European colonization." Captain William Bligh visited Tasmania in 1788 and described the Tasmanians as nomadic hunter-gatherers who had "a small number of squalid wigwams containing nothing but a few kangaroo skins spread on the ground", "they moved from one area to another, on the way, getting food by collecting berries, fruits and seeds of various shrubs. Apart from algae, they rarely carried any food with them” and “usually they went naked, but sometimes they threw a kangaroo skin over their body” (Bowdler and Ryan, 1997, pp. 313–326). They are the only famous people who never learned how to make fire (Gott, 2002). They could sometimes get fire from spontaneous forest fires, but when they went out, they had to wait for a new one. forest fire or get fire from a nearby group. They never figured out how to put sharp stones on a wooden shaft to make a spear or an ax (Ryan, 1992).

The last purebred Tasmanians. Photo from 1860

When Europeans discovered the New Guineans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they found them at a stage of cultural development slightly higher than that of the Australian aborigines. The New Guineans were predominantly hunter-gatherers, but had some Agriculture which consisted of growing yams and bananas, they also had domesticated chickens and pigs. But, “until the Europeans began to colonize them, all New Guineans were illiterate, used stone tools and were not yet politically united in states or (with rare exceptions) tribal unions (chiefdoms)” (Diamond; 1997, p. 299). After European colonization, some of the aborigines moved to cities and towns, while others remained in their settlements, living in subsistence farming. The Europeans built and staffed schools for those living in cities and towns, and boarding schools for those living in their villages, although some rural children did not attend school. Kelly (1977) described the way of life of typical tribes living in their villages and towns in Papua New Guinea in the 1970s. They subsisted mainly on slash-and-burn agriculture, which was predominantly done by women.

Settlement of the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea

The men made a small living by hunting, and some of them worked for money on coffee plantations managed by Europeans. The clothes of the less advanced tribes consisted of skirts made from leaves and bark. Some tribes had counting systems that allowed them to count up to a thousand, while others only had words for "one", "more than one", and "many". main reason the fact that the New Guineans were a little more developed in comparison with the Australian Aborigines was that the coastal regions of the island were inhabited by immigrants from Southeast Asia and from the islands of the Melanesian archipelago Pacific Ocean who brought with them taro (the edible root they grow), as well as domesticated chickens and pigs. The New Guineans adopted some of these cultural innovations but never developed anything that could be called a civilization with cities, capital buildings, metalworking, writing or arithmetic.

From the book Australian Studies author Grzimek Bernhard

Bernhard Grzimek Australian Studies We, the fighters for the protection of nature, must try to prove to people that wild animals are an invaluable wealth and decoration of our planet, that this is an ideal example of the public property of all mankind ... B.

From the book of Race. Peoples. Intelligence [Who is smarter] by Lynn Richard

Chapter 6 South Asians and North Africans 1. Intelligence of South Asians and North Africans 2. South Asians and North Africans in Great Britain and Australia 3. South Asians and North Africans in the Continent

From the author's book

Chapter 7 Southeast Asians 1. Southeast Asian intelligence 2. Southeast Asians in the United States of America and the Netherlands 3. Southeast Asian brain size 4. Genetic and environmental

From the author's book

2. Southeast Asians in the United States and the Netherlands The IQs of Southeast Asians in the United States and the Netherlands are presented in Table 7.2. Table 7.2. IQs of Southeast Asians in the United States of America and

From the author's book

Chapter 8 Aboriginal Australians 1. Australian Aboriginal intelligence 2. Australian Aboriginal-European hybrids 3. Piagetian intelligence 4. Spatial memory 5. Brain size 6. Genotypic intelligence

From the author's book

Chapter 9 Pacific Islanders 1. New Zealand Maori intelligence 2. Other Pacific Islanders 3. Hybrid population Hawaiian Islands 4. Pacific Islander brain size

From the author's book

2. Other Pacific Islanders Intelligence findings of Pacific Islanders other than New Zealand Maori are shown in Table 9.2. Table 9.2. Pacific Islander IQ In line 1

From the author's book

Chapter 10 East Asians 1. East Asian Intelligence 2. East Asians in the United States of America 3. Other East Asian Studies Outside Northeast Asia 4. East Asians

From the author's book

2. East Asians in the United States of America East Asians have settled in many countries, including the United States, Canada, Europe, Brazil, and Malaysia. Largest number research on the intelligence of East Asians outside of East Asia has been

From the author's book

4. East Asians Adopted by Europeans There have been six studies on the intelligence of East Asian infants adopted by European families in Europe and the United States of America. The results are presented in Table 10.4. Table 10.4. IQ

From the author's book

3. South Asians and North Africans The first groups of people who migrated from sub-Saharan Africa colonized North Africa And Southwest Asia between about 100,000 and 90,000 years ago. Between about 90,000 and 60,000 years ago, they colonized the entire

From the author's book

5. Pacific Islanders It was not until about 6,000 years ago that some Southeast Asians began migrating to the Pacific Islands, where they evolved into the Pacific Islanders. The value of their IQ (85 points) does not differ significantly from 87 points

From the author's book

6. Australian Aborigines Some of the peoples of South and East Asia migrated to the islands of the Indonesian archipelago and reached New Guinea about 65,000 years ago. Approximately 60,000 years ago, some of these peoples moved to Australia, where they

From the author's book

8. Natives of East Asia Some of the peoples of South and Central Asia began to colonize Northeast Asia in the area modern China 60,000 to 50,000 years ago, where they evolved into the East Asians and later into the Arctic peoples of the extreme

Before the Dutch, who were the first to set foot on the shores of Terra australis incognita, the natives of Australia, representatives of the oldest civilization on the planet, appeared. The indigenous population was not very friendly to the Europeans, who since then “frequented” to New Holland, as the discoverer Willem Janszon called it.

Even Ptolemy drew this mainland on his map. The astronomer, astrologer and geographer was convinced that somewhere in the south there is a piece of land inhabited by people, and its name is Terra australis incognita - “Unknown southern land”. This is the name of Australia for a long time appeared on the maps, exciting the minds of explorers, drawing navigators into the temptation. Only at the beginning of the 17th century (1606) Ptolemy's guesses were confirmed.

Australian Aboriginal lifestyle

According to one version, the natives of Australia appeared on this land 40-60 thousand years ago. Some scientists are sure that the mainland, from which Tasmania and New Guinea, was inhabited 70 thousand years ago. The Aborigines of Australia can be considered the first navigators, because they arrived on the continent by sea.

Typical appearance of an Australian aborigine

For 40 thousand years, the way of life of the Australian Aborigines has not changed much. If you are not Europeans who gradually settled the territory of Australia, the indigenous inhabitants of the continent would still not know about the existence of writing, television and radio. In fairness, it should be noted that in the heart of the "aboriginal" territories - a magical and mysterious outback, the aborigines of Australia have not changed their ancient habits.

Ritual rites of the Australian aborigines

Almost 17% of Australian Aboriginal people live in this barren and arid area, the largest settlement is 2,500 people. There are no schools here, a few children are taught by radio, and medical assistance has been provided to residents only since 1928.

What do Australian Aborigines look like?

If you look at the photos of the natives of Australia, you can see dark-skinned people with a mop of lush curly hair and a wide base of the nose. The front of the skull has a slightly convex shape. The Australian Bushmen, as the indigenous inhabitants of the green continent are sometimes called, are very frail, but muscular.

Australian Aborigines - Bushmen

Interesting fact. If you look at photos of natives living northeast of Australia, in the Solomon Islands, then almost 10% of them are blond with very dark skin. Why? "Tried" European sailors? Special gene? Scientists have argued a lot, but only recently it has been proven that the hair color of these Aborigines of Australia was indeed influenced by a genetic mutation thousands of years ago. Blond Europeans have nothing to do with it.

Photos of the natives of Australia clearly confirm that they can be considered three separate races. In the province of North Queensland live the most ancient representatives of the Australoid race - the aborigines of the Barinean type, distinguished by the most dark color skin.

Scarification - characteristic appearance australian aboriginal body ornaments

The valley of Australia's largest river, the Murray, is inhabited by aboriginal Australians of the Murray type. These are people of medium height with a very extensive hairline on the head and body. Scientists believe that they belong to the second wave of migrant seafarers.

Boomerang is a traditional weapon of the Australian aborigine.

In the north of the green continent live the tallest Aborigines of Australia, belonging to the third wave of immigrants. Their skin is darker than that of the Murrays, the vegetation on the body is practically absent, and the mop of hair is also not very dense.

What languages do the Australian aborigines speak?

The language of the natives of Australia by the time the first Europeans landed on the shores of the green continent consisted of 500 dialects. They could well be considered their own dialects or even separate languages, they were so different from each other.

Australian aborigines are characterized by a lean, wiry build and tall stature.

Today, each of the Australian Aboriginal tribes has its own language. His melody is not like any of the European, Asian or African. On this moment linguists have more than 200 dialects. The vast majority of them exist only in oral speech, writing is developed only among a few tribes.

Traditional Australian Aboriginal dances - imitation of the habits of animals

Interesting fact. Almost all Australian Aboriginal tribes speak English. In 2007, for the indigenous population of the green continent was opened TV channel, which is broadcast in the language of Shakespeare. There are so many adverbs that this is the only acceptable option.

Shrines and customs of the aborigines of Australia

The main object of worship for all Australian Bushmen is the sacred mountain of Uluru. "Concurrently", this is the most mysterious place of the green continent. Aborigines of Australia consider (height - 348 m) - the door between the worlds. Scientists believe that the age of the local shrine is 6 million years. Naturally, there are several names for the rock. Europeans call it Ayres Rock or Ayres, and excursions to the holy site are very popular.

Sacred mountain for the Australian Aborigines - the "heart of Australia" Mount Uluru

Near Uluru, to this day, Australian Aborigines perform their rituals. According to legend, climbing to its top is a sacrilege that can bring on a person the wrath of the spirits inhabiting other world, and ancestors who have passed the "Eternal Period of Dreams". It is worth noting that several accidents that have occurred with "wicked" tourists fully confirm this fact.

Decorative and applied art of Australian aborigines

The main invention of the natives of Australia is boomerangs. It is believed that only a true warrior can control this hunting weapon. Especially for tourists on the east coast of the green continent (the town of Tzhapukai), the indigenous people created some kind of national park for tourists, where "inept" foreigners are taught how to handle the original weapons of all Australian tribes. In words it is easy, but in reality it is not so easy. The flight speed of a heavy boomerang can reach 80 km per hour. I didn’t calculate the strength of the throw, swung it wrong - a blow to the head can have serious consequences.

Australian Aboriginal Music

The music of the Australian aborigines is ritual, everyday and ethnic chants. In the tribes inhabiting the northern regions of the green continent, individual singing to the accompaniment of percussion instruments. In the south and in the central part of Australia - group singing.

Australian Aboriginal traditional pipe - didgeridoo

Many Australian Aboriginal musical instruments have a sacral (sacred) meaning. This is a magical buzzer, the material for which is stone and wood, with sacred signs applied to them. The sounds that she makes can hardly be called very pleasant to the ear.

In 2-3 hours, an Australian aborigine can provide himself with food while in a desert area - giant worms and insect larvae are eaten

The boomerang is a weapon invented by the Australian aborigines.

The didgeridoo is considered a spiritual instrument, on the creation of which nature itself has worked. This is a tree trunk (eucalyptus or bamboo), the core of which is completely eaten away by termites. Its length varies from 1 to 3 m. Other names for the termite instrument are yedaki and didieridoo. The instrument is decorated with totem drawings of a certain Australian Aboriginal tribe.

Europeans, having settled at the end of the XVIII century. in Australia, called the local population aborigines from lat. ab origene - from the beginning. Since then, the word "aboriginal" means a native, the first settler of the region. Regarding the origin of the Australian Aborigines, scientists have no consensus. Some believe that the Aborigines settled in Australia about 40 thousand years ago, having reached there from Southeast Asia. In 1707, the Englishman James Cook declared the east coast of Australia an English colony.

England began to exile convicts there, and in the 19th century. the first immigrants followed the exiles. Colonization was accompanied by the extermination of indigenous people, deprivation of their ancestral lands and displacement to unfavorable areas far from hunting grounds and water sources. Europeans carried epidemics that mowed down the local population, which had not developed immunity to unfamiliar diseases. As a result, approx. 90% of the natives died - from hunger, thirst, disease, and also as a result of clashes with the colonialists. Soon, the surviving natives began to be driven into reservations - special settlements in remote desert parts of the continent, where outsiders were not allowed.

Even in the censuses, the natives were not taken into account. Only in 1967, as a result of a popular referendum, the indigenous people were recognized as citizens of the country and received the right to free movement. Some of the tribes have preserved the traditional way of life: in the endless search for water and food. But most live in cities. As a rule, the natives are very poor. The reason for this is unemployment, the lack of the necessary level of education and professional skills. In the 1980s the natives launched a struggle for the return of the territories taken from them by the colonialists. So, in 1982, the natives of the Murray Islands, an archipelago in the Torres Strait that separates Australia from Pa-pua New Guinea, filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court of Australia. They opposed the principle on the basis of which whites settled Australia in the 18th century - the lands discovered by the colonizers were considered no man's land and became the property of the state that captured them. In 1992, the Supreme Court of Australia considered the claim of the aborigines and recognized their rights to Australian territory.

Aborigines believe that the world was created by their first ancestors, among whom were people, animals, the sun and the wind. The creation of the world among many tribes is called by the same word as the dream, and the era of creation is known as the "time of dreams." Aborigines composed many songs and myths about him. The events of that legendary era are also depicted in rock paintings.

In Australia, 11.5% of the territory is occupied by protected parks. There are more than 2,000 national parks and reserves in the country. Among them are the Nambang National Park, where the main attraction of the country is located - fields of petrified remains of an ancient forest; Northern Territories Wild Animal Park; Leamington National Park, etc.

According to anthropological data, the Australian Aborigines are a type of Australoid large race. Outwardly, they are medium or tall, with dark hair, thick and curly. They have thick lips and wide noses, medium sized eyes. A feature of this race can be considered a protruding eyebrow. Until the 18th century, 1.2 million Aborigines lived in Australia. Scientists believed that they arrived on the mainland from Asia. At the end of the 18th century, Europeans also came to it, who brought colonization and disease with them. The indigenous population was not ready for these processes and many aborigines died. Before colonization, they were engaged in hunting and fishing, gathering fruits. Such crafts as pottery and weaving, metalworking were not known to them.

Australian Aboriginal language

Australia is a developed country. In our time, aborigines live on its territory, whose way of life is unchanged. They do not know how to produce, do not use the achievements of civilization and even the calendar. Their culture is original. It has nothing to do with the population from other countries of the world. This is because Australia has lived in an insulating space for a long time. Each of the local tribes has its own language, and it is not similar to Asian dialects. Writing is developed among several tribes, and there are approximately 200 dialects of the language. For a long period of time, the indigenous population of the mainland lived on reservations. These were the most deserted territories where strangers were not allowed. The population of the reservations did not participate in the census.

At the end of the 19th century, the Aboriginal Protection Act was passed in the state of Victoria. This document is a collection legal regulations governing the lives of the indigenous population. And a century later, as a result of a referendum held in this country, the indigenous people of Australia were officially recognized as citizens of the state and received the right to free movement within the country. Aboriginal people have been seeking equal rights with the white population for many years. Many of them moved to live in large ones. The country has launched programs to increase the birth rate and preserve the cultural heritage of the natives. In 2007, they launched a television channel for the indigenous people of Australia. It is broadcast on English language, since it is difficult to use 200 dialects at once.

Aboriginal life in Australia

In modern times, the natives are involved in tourism. For travelers who come to Australia and have a desire to visit its beauties, excursions to the reservation are organized. Tourists are shown the life and way of life of the indigenous population. It is different from our world. Australian Aborigines are the best guides. For travelers, performances are created with dances and song accompaniment, in addition, with the performance of rituals that are considered ritual by the indigenous population of Australia. The sale of souvenirs, hunting objects and wicker clothing is very developed in Australia. Interestingly, about ten thousand people inhabiting Australia are still at the level of the Stone Age. But only thanks to them the primordial culture of Australia is preserved.

Cultural heritage

Paintings
Art and design lovers are familiar with canvases painted in the original ethnic technique, which is inherent only to the indigenous population. Each of the artists in his picture describes a different life. They call it a spiritual reality or another life. She is different from modern society and reflects the spiritual connection with the world of deities. As them, the natives still call the sun and the moon, as well as many animals.
Music
Australian aboriginal craftsmen musical instruments. One of them is the didgeridoo instrument, which is a pipe with a length of 1 to 2 meters. Made from eucalyptus trunk, eaten by termites in the central part. Not everyone will be able to play this instrument, as this requires practice, as well as a good respiratory system. As for the natives, they can safely play this pipe for several hours in a row. While playing, they dilute the music with the help of their guttural sounds and for an additional effect with imitation of the sounds of animals and birds.
Dancing
In dances, the natives imitate the movements of animals inhabiting the continent. These are kangaroos or snakes, wallabies. In the process of dancing, they masterfully imitate their movements. Many of the dances are similar, they have musical accompaniment playing percussion sticks and didgeridoo. But not all dances are entertaining: some of them are brightly ritual in color.
Boomerang
As a weapon, it was invented by the indigenous people of Australia! Means "returning throwing stick" in their language. Boomerangs were used by them for hunting, but also sometimes in local conflicts with other tribes. To return the boomerang to the hands of the owner, you must have certain skills: throw it at an angle certain indicators and correctly hold, release in time, taking into account the direction of the wind. A skillfully made boomerang should have cuts at the ends. He simply does not return without them. In addition, the Aborigines of Australia use throwing spears, and they throw them at a distance of up to 100 meters, masterfully hitting a target the size of a coconut. The shields made by the indigenous people are narrow and used for dancing and ceremonies. Although they can be used as a defensive weapon.
Geography of settlements
Where do Australian Aborigines live today? The largest group is in Queensland. In addition, Aboriginal people can be seen in Western Australia and New South Wales. There are few in Victoria. But the indigenous population, sacredly observing their traditions and customs, is trying to get away from civilization. For the most part, they do just that. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that they are concentrated in the desert regions of Australia and places on the Cape York Peninsula. These places are hard to reach for an unprepared person.