00:03In a cave in Australia, archaeologists have revisited the site of an ancient Gunai Kurnai Aboriginal ritual.
00:10The peoples lived in the area some 10,000 years ago, but this cave was not lived in, despite having
00:15been discovered in the 1800s.
00:17The cave and the remains of an ancient fire within it were not well understood.
00:21The peoples were believed to live secular lives, but now archaeologists say the fire was part of what could be
00:26an extremely long-running and continuous ritual.
00:29There are two nearly identical fireplaces within the cave, each built around 1,000 years apart.
00:34However, the sediment inside the cave suggests they were constructed 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, at the end
00:40of the last ice age.
00:41The traditions of the Gunai Kurnai are exclusively oral in nature, shared by generations for at least 10,000 years,
00:48but their histories were not properly or respectfully investigated until recently.
00:52With the archaeologists concluding that these findings are not about the memory of ancestral practices,
00:57but of the passing down of knowledge in virtually unchanged form from one generation to the next, over some 500
01:04generations.
01:04Some of these oral traditions even document the end of the ice age, when giant bodies of ice melted,
01:10and flooded the land bridge between Australia and the mainland some 12,000 years ago.
01:17The End of the Ice Age
01:18The End of the Ice Age
01:19The End of the Ice Age
01:20The End of the Ice Age
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