“There’s a lot of spiritual issues on this land and they are alive.”
Like many Australians I grew up knowing little about the tens of thousands of years of history of this beautiful continent. Well after seeing the beautifully filmed series “First Footprints" (TRAILER) (EXCERPT) (ABC, Australia, 2013 4 part series (Ep1 Super Nomads, Ep2 The Great Drought, Ep3 The Great Flood, Ep4 The Biggest Estate) that has changed.
The series directed by Martin Butler, DP Bentley Dean, tells the story of the first inhabitants of Australia. Australia is home to the oldest living cultures in the world. It truly is the stunning untold story of the original pioneers of all humankind, a history that began in Australia 50,000 years before modern humans reached America and Europe.
Over fifty thousand years ago, when Neanderthals still dominated Europe and thousands of years before people reached America, people were spreading across this vast southern continent. As the first modern people out of Africa, Aboriginal people made;
- the first open-ocean crossing in history,
- conducted the world’s earliest ritual cremation,
- invented technologies such as the hafted stone axe and boomerang,
- etched the earliest depiction of the human face,
- engraved the world’s first maps and
- made the earliest narrative paintings
all pre‑dating the Cro-Magnon of Lascaux, France.
Geologists and archaeologists show, among other things by means of archaeological discoveries and murals how the ancestors of today’s Aborigines lived. Not only scientists are heard, but also Aboriginal people themselves tell the stories they have heard from generation to generation about their ancestors.
Who was the first man in Australia and what was his life like?
Oldest modern person found outside Africa. In 1969 one of the world’s oldest known early human inhabitant of the continent of Australia was found. Known as the Lake Mungo 1 (also called Mungo Lady, LM1, and ANU-618), who is believed to have lived between 40,000 and 68,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch. The remains are the oldest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia to date. His exact age is a matter of ongoing dispute. (Wikipedia). The first modern humans to leave Africa Recent DNA evidence dates this back to over 70,000 years ago.
Watch the truly mesmerising series, narrated by Ernie Dingo, on NPO Doc. This with startling new archaeological discoveries revealing how the first Australians adapted, migrated, fought and created in dramatically changing environments.
Go to ABC’s official micro site here with interactive videos, photos, data points and facts
"First Footprints” was not previously seen on the Dutch television. Photo Credit: ABC, and © 2013 Screen Australia, Contact Films Pty Ltd, Screen NSW, Screen Queensland Pty Ltd, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Quote above comes from Wilfred Hicks, Wong-GooTtOo Elder. And E-mail info@flamedistribution.com (Flamedistribution) if you want to order the DVD. Enjoy!