The Australian Indigenous people lived in the heart of a huge trade route that has been compared in volumewith
What happened?
Archaeologists have found sandstone mining sites on an industrial scale in Australia.They are, as far as researchers know, the largest in the southern hemisphere, which means that the trading systems of the first people of Australia were at a global level.The find belongs to the indigenous Australian people of Queensland, the Mitaka.
A woman from the people worked at the excavation siteMitaka - Shawnee Gorringe. She has wanted to be an archaeologist since she joined a research team in 2018 with her grandfather, Mitaka Elder George Gorringe, and her mother, Trudy Gorringe.
“As a Mitaka people and the indigenous population in general, we have lost so much,” said Shawnee Gorringe.
The cultural landscape of the Mitaka people is planned to be included in the list of national heritage. This could lead to World Heritage status.
What did the archaeologists find?
Researchers have been working at the site since 2017and are still trying to understand why this system was there and what it was used for. Archaeologists have discovered unusual stone formations on an area of 60,000 m², there are more than 200 quarries, the largest of which had 14,000 quarries.
Luminescent dating of sand in stone quarries shows that the site appeared about 2,130 years ago or more.
Why is it important?
These territories were called the country of channels,due to the interweaving of streams that were filled with water from the monsoon rains. Archaeologists were able to find out that the quarries of the Mitaka people who lived here were part of a well-developed trading system. Grinding stones, silicate tools, seeds and much more were produced there.
Grinding stones mined and processed on the land of the Mitaka people were exchanged for ocher, wooden objects, stone axes and pituri - this is a drug.
Mitaka Land was once the center of a vast transcontinental trade route that ran from the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north to the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.
Tracy Howe, director of the Mitaka Indigenous Peoples Corporation, said the facilities are proof that they had a truly developed economy.
“We were not just a nomadic people wandering lost in the territories,” said Tracey Howe, director of the Mitaka Indigenous Corporation.
Project partner and lead researcher from the University of Queensland, Michael Westaway, said he was struck by the scale and significance of the mitaka cultural landscape.
“Mitaka is at the heart of a huge trading and exchange network that I have called the Australian Silk Road,” said Dr. Westaway.
Mitaka dwellings, called gunyas, have been found throughout the land of the Channels. Researchers have dated them as the oldest structure in Australia.
Archaeologists also note that during theirIn this project, they will test the Dark Emu Hypothesis, the idea put forward by Bruce Pascoe in his bestselling book, that the indigenous people of pre-colonial Australia were not hunter-gatherers but were farmers.
Pascoe's book was praised for debunkingstereotypes about Indigenous Australians, but also criticized by scholars. They stated that some of the data is distorted in the work, and there is also a hint that agricultural societies are more developed than hunter-gatherer societies.
Archaeologists note that agriculture is closely related to domestication.Historical evidence that there were irrigation systems in this area, as well as active cultivation and cultivation of plants.The team plans to analyze pollen samples to look for possible genetic evidence of plant cultivation.
What are they going to do with this discovery?
The Mitaka people hope that being shortlisted for national heritage will help protect the historical finds and unique landscape.
But there are fears that the government of this Australian region, Queensland, will extraditeA license for gas exploration near the excavation site.to destroy some of the important archaeological finds.
George Gorringe said he plans to explore the fossil areas where the gas is going to be extracted.Therefore, the territories should be given a special protected status.
Read more:
Scientists have proved that the sixth extinction is “launched” on Earth
Is the standard model of physics no longer relevant? The main thing about the new work of scientists at the collider
Belarusian physicist working on quantum internet: this is the first step towards teleportation