12,000-year-old Aboriginal sticks may be evidence of world’s oldest known culturally transmitted ritual

A new study has found that the 12,000-year-old remains of two small fires and two peculiar sticks found deep in an isolated cave in southern Australia could be evidence of the world’s oldest known culturally transmitted ritual.

The artefacts, analysed in a new study using both scientific analysis and Aboriginal oral histories, may have been used in a ritual spell intended to harm another person.

The finds are reminiscent of a ritual practiced by the Gunaikurnai, an indigenous group living on the southern coast of Australia, which involved smearing a wooden object with human or animal fat and throwing it into a ritual fire.

Given the similarities between the cave objects and a historically attested Gunaikurnai ritual that was recorded by anthropologists in the late 19th century, Aboriginal elders sought archaeological collaborators to excavate the cave, known as Cloggs Cave, and examine the artifacts. Their findings were published Monday (July 1) in the journal Nature Human behavior.

Cloggs Cave was partially excavated in the early 1970s. In an email to Live Science, the study’s first author Bruno Davidarchaeologist at Monash University in Australia, said that “the cave was never used as a general camp site, but rather only for specific ritual purposes. It first came into use in this way around 25,000 years ago and continued to be used in this way until at least 1,600 years ago.”

Later excavations in 2020 by David and his team revealed two ritual installations, each consisting of a small hearth from which a lightly burnt wooden stick protruded. Radiocarbon dating Tests on the sticks have shown that one is between 11,930 and 12,440 years old and the other between 10,870 and 11,210 years old, making them the oldest wooden artefacts ever found in Australia.

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One of the ritual sticks found in Cloggs Cave, South Australia. (Photo credit: Monash University; Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation)

The team found that both sticks had been intentionally altered, suggesting that previous humans had trimmed, cut, or scraped the sticks to make them very smooth. Further analysis revealed that both sticks were Casuarinanative Australian pine, and that they had stains of an unknown sediment on them. Chemical analysis of this sediment using mass spectrometry—a technique that can identify individual molecules in a sample—revealed the presence of fatty acids, indicating that part of the stick had been smeared with animal or human fat of some kind.

Given the lack of food remains near the small hearths, the presence of a single smooth stick in each hearth, and the contact between the stick and the fatty tissue, the researchers concluded that the 12,000-year-old installations they discovered were used for a specific ritual purpose—a purpose that was apparently passed down from generation to generation since the late 12th century. last ice age to very recent times.

“These fire sticks tell us that this is really about the culture of the Old Ancestors that continues to this day,” David said in a transcript of his conversation with Elder Gunaikurnai Russell Mullett“Bringing a social way — a cultural way — with some of the scientific techniques means you can tell stories.”

Photographs and illustrations of two sticks, approximately 12,000 years old and used in rituals. (Photo credit: Bruno David et al.; (CC-BY 4.0 Deed))

According to the authors, the study places high demands on the study of ancient ritual practices. Ben MarwickAn archaeologist at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study told Live Science in an email.

“There are older examples of more general rituals, such as burial of the deceased“, said Marwick, “but this one is unique because it is a specific ritual practice that has been going on from time immemorial until very recently.”

Mullett says the archaeological work linking 12,000-year-old ritual objects to 19th-century historical practices is an undoubted scientific success, but it also points to the loss of Indigenous knowledge as a result of the colonisation and westernisation of Australia.

Ethnographer Alfred Howitt recorded the Gunaikurnai rituals in 1887, but “if he hadn’t been there, the knowledge probably wouldn’t have been passed on,” Mullett said. “Because we’re talking about the mission station era, where cultural knowledge is cut off.”

“Science can only tell you so much,” David told Live Science in an email. “Incorporating traditional cultural knowledge gives you the opportunity to tell a broader story about the Ancient Ones and the cultural landscape they lived in.”