Walkabout

About 5,000 years ago, after nearly thirty millennia in Australia, Aborigines began traveling a great deal throughout the continent and sharpening their tool-making skills. Was it a baby boom that prompted their cultural transformation, as some investigators contend, or something else? A new study indicates that a turn in the weather may have been part of the story.

Chris S.M. Turney and Douglas Hobbs, both archaeologists at the University of Wollongong in Australia, tracked the Aborigines' activity of the past 12,000 years from the dates of 710 archaeological samples--charcoal from fires and discarded shells--that were discovered throughout the northeastern state of Queensland. They then compared the pattern of activity to published geological records of the El Nino phenomenon, in which warming of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean alters weather patterns around the globe.

Five thousand years ago El Nino began to act as it does today: its frequency and severity increased and it brought periods of intense drought to northeastern Australia. Turney and Hobbs discovered that the start of the new El Nino pattern coincided with a boost in Aboriginal activity across Queensland's inland countryside. Subsequent spikes in activity were also in sync with periods of intense weather caused by El Nino.

The archaeologists think drought may have forced Aborigines to develop better tools, roam farther to hunt, and explore new areas in search of scarce necessities for survival. (Journal of Archaeological Science, in press)

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