VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA—Newsweek reports that sticks that Aboriginal ancestors likely used during rituals some 12,000 years ago were unearthed in southeastern Australia’s Cloggs Cave. Investigations of the site, which is located in the foothills of the Australian Alps, are a collaboration between the GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation and archaeologists led by Monash University’s Bruno David. The sticks are made of Casuarina wood and were each found fixed in miniature fireplaces. Using chemical analysis, researchers determined that the sticks had been smeared with animal or human fat. According to nineteenth-century ethnographer Alfred Howitt, GunaiKurnai mulla-mullung, or medicine men and women, performed a ritual using Casuarina sticks. Howitt described how the mulla-mullung would tie an item belonging to a sick individual to the stick, smear it with fat, and then stick it in the ground and light a fire beneath it before chanting the sick person’s name. “For these artifacts to survive is just amazing. They’re telling us a story,” said GunaiKurnai Elder Uncle Russell Mullett. “A reminder that we are a living culture still connected to our ancient past. It’s a unique opportunity to be able to read the memoirs of our Ancestors and share that with our community.” Read the original scholarly article about this research in Nature Human Behaviour. To read about another recent discovery from Cloggs Cave, go to “Around the World: Australia.”
