Stone Pages - Archaeo News (Australasia)

New Guinea's Neolithic period confirmed

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 16:54:58 +0100

It is well known that agriculture developed independently in New Guinea 7000 years ago, but evidence of its influence on how people lived has eluded scientists, until now. An archaeological dig in Papua New Guinea has for the first time uncovered strong evidence that a Neolithic period existed on the island about 5000 years ago.
Scientists believe the cache of artifacts that were unearthed, including stone axes, pestles, figurative carvings and other tools, are the missing clues needed to make the case for a Neolithic period in New Guinea's prehistory.
A team of archaeologists and scientists reported the excavations at Waim, an area located in the northern highlands of modern Papua New Guinea. Dr. Ben Shaw of UNSW Science says until now, there was little evidence to demonstrate that New Guinea had enjoyed its own Neolithic period like other global agricultural centers had.
At Waim, the team was astounded by the sheer bulk and variety of tools that turned up in the one place. They found very finely carved pestles used for the grinding of food, stone axes and adzes, as well as carved figurines. One of them, a large fragment of carved stone depicting the brow ridge of a human or animal face dated at 5050 years old is now the earliest evidence of a carved expression of body form in Oceania.
After examining the pestles under the microscope, co-author Dr. Judith Field identified microfossils, demonstrating they had been used to process some of the wetland crops native to New Guinea. "It is probably one of the most direct links that you can draw to the influence of agriculture upon human behavior at this time," Dr. Field says.
Dr. Shaw says a grooved volcanic stone was found with ochre on it, suggesting that 5000 years ago humans were already using it to paint, stain and decorate. "When we looked at the grooves on this stone under the microscope, it looked as though they were shaped by having organic fibers pulled through them. The ochre on the stone would have stained these fibers a red color, which even today is how they sometimes stain fibers in the production of their woven string bags, or bilums. This has never been found at a site before."
Another surprise was the uncovering of a large block of stone that had been ground and polished, which Dr. Shaw reckons was laid against a hillside and subsequently buried after the village at Waim was abandoned about 4000 years ago. He says that at about half a metre long and 30cm wide, it was a very unusual piece and had the team stumped as to what its purpose was.
"While we were sitting there scratching our heads, one of the elders from the village came up and told us that this is how the old people used to make the axes: they would take a big block of stone, work it into shape, and then simply saw it into the individual sizes of the axes that they wanted." The type of ax that was associated with this stone template was previously thought to have been used by people coming into the area more than 2000 years later, which Dr. Shaw says "really floored us and blew us away".

Edited from PhysORG (26 March 2020)

Homo erectus may not have evolved in Asia

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 12:33:35 +0100

Indonesia is hugely important for understanding human migration and settlement patterns in Asia during the Early Pleistocene - a period that ended around 780,000 years ago. According to new research, Homo erectus reached the Indonesian island of Java about 1,400 kilometres west-northwest of Darwin, Australia, sometime between 1.3 million and 1.5 million years ago - around 300,000 to 500,000 years later than previously estimated. The revised time frame may settle a longstanding debate about the geographical origin of the species.
Since 1936 over 100 different hominin fossils have been recovered from thick sedimentary layers in a large volcanic dome on the island of Java, but the complex geology has prevented anyone establishing an accepted chronology. Previous attempts to date the volcanic deposits relied solely on argon-argon dating of materials extracted from pumice. For the new study, Shuji Matsu'ura of Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science and his colleagues relied upon two different techniques - uranium-lead dating and fission-track dating - to examine the sediments in and around which the fossils were found. The new dates indicate an arrival of Homo erectus to the region around 1.3 million years ago, and no earlier than 1.45 million years ago. Later physical changes could have been the result of a major global cooling trend around 1.2 million years ago or the arrival of a separate population to the region when sea levels dropped and dry land connected the archipelago.
Archaeological evidence suggests Homo erectus emerged in Africa. Coincidentally, new dates were very recently published for the extinction of Homo erectus both in Indonesia and the world. Homo habilis likely emerged in Asia many hundreds of thousands of years later as a sister species to Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Edited from Gizmodo (9 January 2020)

Australia wildfires reveal ancient aquaculture system

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 19:55:19 +0100

Australia's wildfires have revealed an ancient aquaculture system built by indigenous people which is thought to date back to 4,600 BCE.
The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape is situated south-west of Victoria and features an elaborate series of stone-lined channels and pools set up by the Gunditjmara people to harvest eels. As of 2019, the site was added to the Unesco World Heritage List. Some parts of the elaborate system also shows evidence of stone dwellings dating to around 6,600 years ago.
But after a bushfire which was sparked in December, extra sites were spotted that were previously hidden under vegetation. The sites are also believed to be part of the aquaculture system.
Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation project manager, Denis Rose, said he was unconcerned about how the fire when it first broke out would affect the system. He added: "There have certainly been many fires here in the thousands of years prior. Our major concern was the effect after the fire, and we've still got some work to do there.
A new survey will take place in light of the discovery with archaeologists working alongside indigenous rangers as well as aerial photography using specialised software.

Edited from The Independent (19 January 2020)

Ancient humans survived longer than previously thought

Fri, 27 Dec 2019 18:23:17 +0100

Homo erectus evolved around two million years ago, and was the first known human species to walk fully upright. New dating evidence shows it survived until just over 100,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Java - long after it had vanished elsewhere.
In the 1930s, 12 Homo erectus skull caps and two lower leg bones were found in a bone bed 20 metres above the Solo River at Ngandong in central Java. Researchers have since attempted to date the fossils, but this proved difficult because the surrounding geology is complex and details of the original excavations became confused. In the 1990s, one team came up with unexpectedly young ages of between 53,000 and 27,000 years ago.
Now, researchers led by Prof Russell Ciochon of the University of Iowa opened up new excavations of an untouched reserve area on the terraces beside the Solo River, providing what they describe as a definitive age for the bone bed of between 117,000 and 108,000 years - the most recent known record of Homo erectus anywhere in the world.
On other islands in South-East Asia, Homo erectus appears to have evolved into smaller forms, such as Homo floresiensis - the "Hobbit" - on Flores, and Homo luzonensis in the Philippines.
The fossils represent a period when open woodlands were transforming into rainforest. No Homo erectus are found after this time, and there's a gap with no human activity at all until Homo sapiens arrives on Java around 39,000 years ago.

Edited from Nature, BBC (18 December 2019)

The world's oldest hunting scene discovered in Indonesia

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 15:47:05 +0100

A prehistoric painting depicting what looks to be a hunting scene pushes back the earliest evidence of human storytelling by more than 20,000 years. Discovered on the wall of a limestone cave in the southern region of Sulawesi in Indonesia, it shows wild pigs and dwarf buffaloes being pursued - and possibly captured - by human-animal hybrids.
As soon as archaeologist Maxime Aubert, from Australia's Griffith University, set eyes on the images, he was gob-smacked. "I'd never seen anything like it," he says. More than 200 cave art sites have been documented in the region so far. "Every year we find new sites," says Aubert. "There's hundreds of them; it's quite amazing."
In 2014, the same team found hand stencils and animal paintings in a nearby cave that were made at least 40,000 years ago. That finding shattered assumptions that rock art had its origins in Europe. Last year, Aubert and colleagues also found rock art of a similar style and antiquity on the nearby island of Borneo. The new hunting scene is in a cave about 20 metres off the ground that was likely never used as a residence because of its location.
Aubert and his colleagues dated the artwork as at least 44,000 years old - the oldest so far - by measuring the amount of uranium and thorium in calcium carbonate nodules deposited on the painting's surface.
"We have a narrative scene - the first evidence of story-telling," says Aubert, adding that this represents an important milestone in human cognitive evolution. Hunting scenes in the Lascaux cave in France date to much later - around 17,000 years ago. "Now we're more than doubling that," he says.
The human-animal hybrids - people with animal tails or the heads like birds - are also significant because they indicate that whoever painted them could conceive of something that doesn't actually exist, says Aubert, and could hint at the beginnings of human spirituality and religion.
The scene also shows what Aubert and his team believe are ropes tied around the neck of a pig. It's a tantalising find, which could solve the mystery of who domesticated pigs. European pigs (Sus scrofa) were domesticated in the Near East around 8000 years ago, but it could be that people were already making attempts to tame and domesticate the beast on Sulawesi 44,000 years ago.
Archaeologists are now racing against time and the elements to see what other discoveries the Indonesian caves hold. "[They're] disappearing at an alarming rate," says Aubert, "just flaking off and we don't know exactly what's happening."

Edited from Cosmos Magazine (12 December 2019)

Ancient humans colonized diverse environments in Southeast Asia and Oceania

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 12:33:38 +0100

A new study reviews the palaeoecological information associated with hominin dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania throughout the Pleistocene (1.25 Millions years ago to 12,000 years ago). Our species' ability to specialize in the exploitation of diverse and 'extreme' settings in this part of the world stands in stark contrast to the ecological adaptations of other hominin taxa, and reaffirms the utility of exploring the environmental adaptations of Homo sapiens.
The paper, published by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History focuses on hominin movements across the supposed 'Movius Line' a boundary previously argued to separate populations with different cultural and cognitive capacities. While such divisions and assumptions are now clearly outdated, the authors argue that focus on this part of the world may, instead, be used to study the different patterns of colonization of diverse tropical and maritime habitats by different members of our ancestral line.
Southeast Asia offers a particularly exciting region in this regard as such records can be linked to a variety of hominins throughout the Pleistocene, including Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis (or 'the Hobbit'), and Homo sapiens. As Patrick Roberts, lead author of the study states the accumulated evidence shows, "While earlier members of our genus appear to have followed riverine and lacustrine corridors, Homo sapiens specialized in adaptations to tropical rainforests, faunally depauperate island settings, montane environments, and deep-water marine habitats."
The authors hope that, in future, the growth of new methods and records for determining past hominin ecologies will enable similar comparisons to be undertaken in different parts of the world, further testing the unique capacities of our species during its global expansion.

Edited from (28 January 2019)

Island-hopping most likely route to Australia

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 11:06:57 +0100

The First Australians were among the world's earliest ocean explorers, undertaking a 2,000 kilometre migration through Indonesia at least 65,000 years ago. Research published earlier this year highlights the most likely route by mapping the region over time through changing sea levels.
Some archaeologists have argued for an initial human migration into Australia through New Guinea, because islands across northern Indonesia are relatively close together, and people could easily see to the next island. First landfall on Australia has been argued to be both more difficult and less likely than first landfall at New Guinea, as the final crossing distance from was more than 80 kilometres. It was also thought that the Australian landmass was not visible from any Indonesian island. Despite that it was proposed that now submerged islands off the Australian continental shelf were visible from Timor, but until recently ocean floor data sets were not adequate to test this.
During an ice age lasting from around 71,000 to 59,000 years ago, western Indonesia formed part of the Pleistocene continent of Sunda, while Australia and New Guinea were joined to form Sahul. Using surface height data, the new study ran more than 10,000 computer analyses of visibility between islands and continents in the whole of Island South East Asia. The results show that between 70,000 to 60,000 years ago - and potentially for much longer - people could see from the Indonesian islands of Timor and Rote to a now submerged island chain in the Timor Sea at the midpoint between southern Indonesia and Australia. From there it was possible to sight the Australian continental shelf, which then formed a massive fan of islands extending towards Indonesia - much of it now more than 100 metres below the surface.
The findings potentially solve another mystery: if people island-hopped from Timor and Rote they would have arrived on the now submerged northwest coastline close to all of Australia's most ancient occupation sites, such as Madjedbebe, Nauwalabila and Boodie Cave.
While we might be closer to understanding where people first reached Australia, signs of the earliest explorers to reach Indonesia have been more elusive. Another team of researchers have now begun the search on Rote and West Timor for the earliest evidence of the region's first human arrivals, the likely ancestors of the First Australians.

Edited from Australian National University (28 March 2018)

Australia chemical plants threaten 40,000-year-old rock art

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 15:34:19 +0100

On a peninsula halfway up the coast of Western Australia are heaps of cubic boulders decorated with more than one million rock carvings, some thought to be 40,000 years old. The petroglyphs are Australia's largest and oldest collection of rock art, providing a continuous record of the Yaburarra people who lived there until the 1860s, when they were wiped out in a massacre. Local archaeologist Ken Mulvaney says the older rock art shows land animals such as kangaroos, but as the sea rose, the images shifted to marine life such as turtles and fish.
But a kilometre away are some of Australia's largest and dirtiest chemical plants. The air is often fouled with a yellow haze from ammonium nitrate and fertiliser plants, a liquid natural gas processing plant, and the emissions from ships burning sulphur-rich fuel, resulting in increased atmospheric acidity. A Senate committee report will spotlight the problem, but it remains to be seen whether politicians will support measures to protect the art.
The peninsula was opened for industrial development in the 1960s and 1970s by the state government before people were aware of the significance of the petroglyphs. Some rock art was almost certainly destroyed during development, but in 2007 the federal government placed the remaining carvings on the national heritage register, and part of the peninsula was declared a national park. Despite this, further expansion of industrial activity has been approved by both federal and state governments.
Retired scientist John Black says the original studies failed to recognise the fragility of the desert patina that gives the rocks their distinctive red colour: "We know the acidity in the atmosphere has increased 1,000-fold due to industry. We know the rock art is being destroyed, we just don't know how fast." Black has analysed colour changes, concluding there has been significant damage.
Johan Kuylenstierna, a Swedish scientist whose work on acidity and European monuments was used by the government, gave evidence to the Senate inquiry that the use of his study was inappropriate.
While corporations have made significant financial contributions to the documentation and preservation petroglyphs, they deny any environmental impact. Meanwhile, the state government has made noises about seeking world heritage status for the area.

Edited from The Guardian (6 February 2018)

Early humans in the jungles of Borneo

Wed, 20 Dec 2017 13:58:24 +0100

A team excavating at Niah Caves in Malaysia recently uncovered stone tools, charred rocks, several human bones, marine oyster shells, and the remains of large mammals from various layers in two pits dug at Traders Cave - a 190 metre long, 30 metre wide and up to 15 metre high rock shelter outside of the main cave complex.
Niah Caves National Park is on the northern coast of Borneo, an equatorial island covered mostly by dense rainforest. Human occupation there goes back at least 46,000 years. Almost 40 indigenous linguistic or cultural groups live on the island, from which people long ago began island hopping across Southeast Asia, eventually settling New Guinea and Australia.
The massive Niah Caves complex sits within a large limestone hill. There are 21 caves in the main network, with 6 large entrances. Parts of the largest cave are more than 60 metres high.
Researchers estimate the Traders Cave deposits are mostly 20,000 years old or more. A team will return next year to deepen and widen the more productive first pit, and date the various finds and sediments.

Edited from PhysOrg (15 December 2017)

2,500-year-old cave paintings discovered on Indonesian island

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 11:20:13 +0100

A tiny Indonesian island, previously unexplored by archaeologists, is covered in cave paintings that date back more than 2,500 years, according to a new study. Researchers from the Australian National University uncovered at least rock art sites on the island of Kisar - which measures just 81 square km.
"These Indonesian islands were the heart of the spice trade going back for thousands of years. The paintings we found depict boats, dogs, horses and people often holding what look like shields. Other scenes show people playing drums perhaps performing ceremonies," said Sue O'Connor from the School of Culture History and Language.
O'Connor said the discoveries suggest a stronger shared history with the neighbouring island of Timor than was previously thought due to the similarities of the artwork. "A distinctive feature of the art in both islands is the exceptionally small size of the human and animal figures, most being less than 10 centimetres. Despite their size, however, they are remarkably dynamic."
The relationship between Kisar and Timor likely extends back to the Neolithic period 3,500 years ago when an influx of Austronesian settlers introduced domestic animals, such as dogs, and perhaps cereal crops, O'Connor said. However, some of the newly discovered paintings most likely had a more recent origin as they resemble figures and images cast on metal drums that began to be produced in what is now northern Vietnam and southwest China around 2,500 years ago. These objects were traded throughout the region.
"These paintings perhaps herald the introduction of a new symbolic system established about two thousand years ago, following on the exchange of prestige goods and the beginning of hierarchical societies" she said.

Edited from International Business Times (14 December 2017), Gizmodo Australia (18 December 2017)

Oldest burial Fish Hooks show prehistoric women fished, too

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 11:19:55 +0100

Archaeologists recently found evidence that 12,000 years ago, at least some women were fishing, even though that was previously believed to be largely a man's activity. The scientists say the fish hooks they found with a skeleton of a female from that time period are the oldest known ones involved in a burial ritual, according to a statement from Australian National University. But they are also important because of what they say about the way the earliest societies functioned: "The discovery turns on its head the theory that most fishing activities on these islands were carried out by men."
There were five hooks found around the dead woman's chin and jaw, made from a sea snail's shell. Four of them are circular objects that are reminiscent of moon crescents and the other hook was shaped like the letter 'J'. Burying this woman with the hooks speaks to how the society viewed the afterlife: they thought that being able to fish would have been essential for her.
"The association of the fish-hooks with a human burial, combined with the lack of alternative protein sources on the island, suggest that fishing was an important part of the cosmology of this community," a study in the journal Antiquity explains. "The burial represents the earliest-known example of a culture for whom fishing was clearly an important activity among both the living and the dead." According to the university, the next known use of fishing hooks at a burial site is only from about 9,000 years ago. Those were found in Siberia.
Fish hook artifacts have been dug up from sites dating back as far as 22,000 years, ANU said, but those were not linked to burial sites. The newest find came from Alor Island in Indonesia, and researcher Sue O'Connor said in the university statement that they look similar to other rotating hooks used across the world during that time, suggesting prehistoric people developed this fishing technology separately. "We argue that the same sort of artifact was developed independently because it was the most fitting form to suit the ecology, rather than through cultural diffusion," she said.

Edited from International Business times (11 December 2017)

Skull could be from the world's earliest known tsunami victim

Sat, 11 Nov 2017 16:09:45 +0100

Scientists studying the effects of tsunamis - giant waves, caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and underwater landslides - have now shed light on what could be the earliest record of a person killed in a tsunami: someone who lived 6,000 years ago in what's now Papua New Guinea in the southwest Pacific. Their skull was found in geological sediments having the distinctive hallmarks of ancient tsunami activity.
"If we are right about how this person had died thousands of years ago, we have dramatic proof that living by the sea isn't always a life of beautiful golden sunsets and great surfing conditions," says John Terrell, Regenstein Curator of Pacific Anthropology at The Field Museum.
The skull in question was found in 1929, buried in the ground near the small town of Aitape on the northern of Papua New Guinea, about 500 miles north of Australia. Terrell has been doing archaeological and anthropological research in this coastal region of New Guinea, the second largest island in the world, since 1990. The new study is a continuation of that work, and as a member of an international team, Terrell says he has long wondered what to make of this tantalizing human find.
"The skull has always been of great archaeological interest because it is one of the few early skeletal remains from the area," says Mark Golitko of the University of Notre Dame and The Field Museum. "It was originally thought that the skull belonged to Homo erectus until the deposits were more reliably radiocarbon dated to about 5,000 to 6,000 years. Back then, sea levels were higher and the area would have been just behind the shoreline."
In 2014 Golitko and others went back to the exact place where this skull had been found to look for new clues about what killed this individual. "We have now been able to confirm what we have long suspected," says James Goff at the University of New South Wales in Australia. "The geological similarities between the sediments at the place where the skull was found and sediments laid down during the 1998 tsunami that hit this same coastline have made us realise that human populations in this area have been affected by these massive inundations for thousands of years."
"Given the evidence we have in hand, we are more convinced than before that this person was either violently killed by a tsunami, or had their grave ripped open by one - leading to their head but not the rest of their body being naturally reburied where it then remained undiscovered in the ground for some 6,000 or so years," explains Goff.

Edited from EurekAlert! (25 October 2017)

Earliest evidence of aboriginal occupation discovered in Australia

Tue, 06 Jun 2017 17:53:55 +0100

Recent evidence from Western Australia has pushed back the original occupation of the Indigenous occupation to more than 50,000 years ago. The research was carried out by the University of Western Australia, where they discovered charcoal, animal remains, and ancient artefacts in Boodie Cave on Barrow Island, confirming hunter-gatherer occupation.
The island is located 60 kilometres off the Pilbara coast and was cut off from the mainland roughly 7,000 years ago due to rising sea levels. However, the results of the recent research shows that the cave had been used as a hunting shelter from almost 50,000 years ago and as a residential area from 10,000 years ago.
According to lead archaeologist Peter Veth: "This pushes back the age of occupation from the previous and more conservative limit of 47,000 years ago. Even older dates are entirely plausible." The island also contained the longest record of dietary fauna in Australia with Veth adding: "Barrow Island provided rich records of ancient artefacts, gathering and hunting of marine and arid animals, and environmental signatures which show the use of a now-drowned coastal desert landscape."
Apart from the material culture found in the island, the archaeologists also discovered rock shelters, deep chambers, as well as caves, which contained well-preserved remains. Veth notes that this coastal occupation did not stop even after the sea rose: "Our current research at Barrow Island has provided the earliest evidence of coastal living in Australia. Remarkably the early colonists of the now-submerged North West Shelf did not turn their back on the sea or remain coastally tethered but rapidly adapted to the new marsupial animals and arid zone plants of the extensive maritime deserts of North West Australia."
The study has been published in the Quarternary Science Review and the research was assisted by the University of Queensland, the University of Adelaide, the University of Waikato and Oxford University. Four international laboratories also helped date the finds, which were supported by Buurabalayji Thalanyji Aboriginal corporation and Kuruma Marthudunera Aboriginal corporation.

Edited from theguardian 19 May 2017

Did humans wipe out Australian megafauna?

Fri, 27 Jan 2017 08:43:34 +0100

Australian megafauna some 50,000 years ago included half-ton kangaroos, 2-ton wombats, 7-metre-long lizards, 180-kilo flightless birds, 140-kilo marsupial lions and tortoises the size of compact cars.
Shortly after the arrival of the first humans around 45,000 years ago, more than 85 percent of Australia's mammals, birds and reptiles weighing over 45 kilos went extinct, and new evidence suggests that humans, not climate change, were the cause.
Scientists have been debating the causes of the Australian megafauna extinctions for decades.
A team of researchers used information from a sediment core drilled in the Indian Ocean off the coast of southwest Australia to help reconstruct past climate and ecosystems on the continent. The core contains dust, pollen, ash, and spores from a fungus that thrived on the dung of plant-eating mammals, allowing scientists to look back through more than 150,000 years - the last full glacial cycle. They found tungal spores from plant-eating mammal dung were abundant in sediment layers until about 45,000 years ago, after which they declined rapidly over just a few thousand years.
Southwest Australia is one of the few regions on that continent having dense forests both 45,000 years ago and now. The area also contains some of the earliest evidence of humans on the continent.
Study participant and Colorado University professor Gifford Miller says there is no evidence of significant climate change during the time of the megafauna extinction, and the real cause may have been "imperceptible overkill." A 2006 study indicates that even low-intensity hunting like the killing of one juvenile mammal per person per decade could have resulted in the extinction of a species in just a few hundred years.

Edited from Popular Archaeology (20 January 2017)

Ancient eel traps in Australia

Sat, 14 Jan 2017 14:01:15 +0100

Traps built around a lake 6,000 years ago by the Gunditjmara people are among the earliest surviving examples of aquaculture anywhere. The traps are a series of canals and graded ponds running for some 35 kilometres around Lake Condah, 350 kilometres west of Melbourne, in southwest Victoria. Gunditjmara people manipulated water levels to encourage eels to swim into holding ponds, placing funnel-shaped baskets at spillways between ponds so that smaller eels could slip through and larger eels be harvested.
The traps and other abundant wildlife provided by the lake allowed the Gunditjmara people to remain in one place, rather than following the nomadic lifestyle commonly associated with traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.
The site received national heritage status in 2004. The Gunditjmara were awarded native title over the area in 2007, and plugged the drain in the lake, allowing the fish traps to fill again. Work is in progress to improve the area for visitors, with proposed construction of interpretive signage, improved access and a traditional eel aquaculture interpretation centre. The traditional owners have requested that the features receive world heritage status, and are waiting to learn whether the Australian government has accepted their proposal.
Monash University professor of Indigenous archeology, Ian McNiven, said that carbon dating of charcoal found during an excavation of one of the fish traps found it was 6,600 years old: "Muldoon trap complex is currently the oldest known stone-walled fish trap in the world and amongst the world's oldest known fish traps. It is also the oldest continuously used fish trap in the world. Indeed, the trap was still being used by Gunditjmara people at the Lake Condah Mission in the late 19th century."
McNiven says the extensive network of traps were the "largest example of ancient freshwater fishing structures created by hunter-gatherers in the world" and were also important evidence in destroying the myth that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people did not farm or improve the land, which was part of the argument made by colonisers who claimed the land for themselves.

Edited from The Guardian (9 January 2017)