Copyright 2001, Environmental News Network
December 11, 2001

Thousands of Aborigines lived in the twilight world of Queensland, Australia's tropical rainforests for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. Much of the coastal rainforest has now been cleared, but this area was once inhabited by 12 distinct Aboriginal groups who learned to live in balance with thier surroundings.

Anthropologist Dr. Richard Cosgrove believes that Aboriginal occupation of these rainforests pre-dates the current oldest known dates of human occupation.

He is seeking proof that the Aborigines may have brought their environmental survival skills to Australia from Melanesia during the late Pleistocene Period. The Pleistocene Period includes the time from about 1.6 million years ago to about 11,000 years ago and spans the last major ice age.

A University of Queensland study dated the oldest rock shelter art in the region from 32,000 years ago. A 1993 study by Bruno David presented evidence of the oldest dated human occupation of Queensland 37,000 ago at Nurrabullgin Cave, a recently excavated site from southeast Cape York Peninsula.

But habitation does not necessarily mean environmental manipulation. Dr. Cosgrove says, "the successful exploitation and manipulation of Australian tropical rainforest has a very long antiquity, probably acquired before the drowning of the Torres Strait Island land-bridge around 9,000 years before the present."

Critical tools for finding evidence to back this theory include the carbon dating and thermoluminescence facilities provided to Dr. Cosgove by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANTSO) says the organization's spokesman Gavin Atkins. Dr. Cosgove, who is senior lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at Melbourne's La Trobe University.

He is investigating the possibility that the South Pacific islands called Melanesia are the origin of these Aborigines' environmental skills.

"As the strongest evidence for the very earliest rainforest use comes from Melanesia, it is likely that the northeast Queensland rainforest culture has its original links, not with Southeast Asia, but with Melanesia," he said.

The focus of Dr. Cosgrove's research is an area of north Queensland between Mossman, Cardwell and the Atherton Tablelands, an area believed to have sustained a population of 5,500 Aborigines before Europeans arrived. Dr. Cosgrove says that subsistence activities of the Aborigines revolved around their staple foods of nuts and fruit.

"During the wet season, the existence of large quantities of food permitted large annual ceremonial gatherings or pruns. As nut and fruit supplies at one dance-ground ran down, the festivals would be moved to another site," he says.

"Towards the end of the wet season, people supplemented their diet with rats, snakes, crocodiles, lizards, turtles, birds, possums, macropods and fish. The remains of these animals, particularly those of the green ringtail possum, musky rat kangaroo, wallaby and white-tailed rat, have been found in caves deep within the rainforest zone."

Studies show that the 12 rainforest tribes of the area differed physically and economically from their neighbors in semi-arid habitats. Many artifacts left by those tribes still exist -- long hardwood swords, large painted wooden shields made from the buttress roots of fig trees, beaten bark blankets, bark cloth and lawyer cane baskets.

"The baskets were used by women to leach toxins from various foodstuffs," Dr. Cosgrove explains. These tribes appear to have altered their rainforest environments.

Dr. Cosgrove says the large number of stone axes discovered in campsites indicate large open areas were cleared and maintained for ceremonial grounds. His work continues with a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council.

Meanwhile, the Brisbane-based Australian Rainforest Consevation Society is working to protect, repair and restore the rainforests of Australia and to maximize the protection of forest biodiversity. The society led the campaign that stopped logging in North Queensland's tropical rainforests and prepared the nomination that gained their World Heritage Listing. Error: Unable to read footer file.