NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Thousands of ancestors’ remains, sacred objects to return home to North Dakota tribe

Thousands of ancestors’ remains, sacred objects to return home to North Dakota tribe

In a storage room at the University of Tennessee’s anthropology department, the remains of almost 2,000 Arikara and Mandan people rest in boxes, alongside the sacred objects buried with them centuries ago.

There, 65-year-old Pete Coffey, director of the Tribal Historic Preservation Office for the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, reunited with his ancestors in 2017.

“The only thing I can tell you is that I felt the presence of those ancestral spirits very strongly when I walked in there,” he said.

The Native American remains stored there were buried centuries ago along the Missouri River in South Dakota, according to a Federal Register report published in November. The 1,971 ancestors and 2,263 funerary objects have been traced to the Arikara and Mandan, who once lived in earth lodges along the river. The tribes, along with the Hidatsa, now live west of there on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.

In the mid-1900s, archaeologists excavated the burial sites along the Missouri River in South Dakota as part of the Smithsonian’s River Basin Survey. The survey was an effort to gather as much archaeological information as possible before dams and reservoirs flooded areas along the Missouri River following the 1944 Flood Control Act.

An authentic reproduction of a Mandan Hidatsa earth lodge sits next to the Knife River Indian Villages interpretive center in North Dakota

For the MHA Nation, that meant thousands of their ancestors were taken out of the ground.  An archaeologist who helped excavate the remains eventually transported them to the University of Tennessee, where they’ve been stored since before the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed in 1990. The act asked federal agencies and museums to take inventory of Native American remains and funerary and sacred objects in their possession and to work with tribes who have a claim to return the remains.

Coffey said NAGPRA gave tribes “the right to repatriate these remains which were taken with no thought of human decency, either by collectors or by archaeologists from museums and put on display.”

Coffey has been working with universities and museums across the U.S. that have reached out since the act was passed in the hopes of returning remains. Still, the MHA Nation is just one of the hundreds of tribal nations across the country working to reclaim their ancestors since the act was passed. The Federal Register regularly posts reports alerting tribes to collections.

Dustin Lloyd, the burial coordinator for the South Dakota State Historical Society’s Archaeological Research Center, said some members of the scientific community worried about losing data or information from burial grounds after the act was passed. But Lloyd said the issue is more human than that.

“These were people at one point,” he said. “They were family members, they were fathers, sons, grandmothers. That’s why protection in place is such an important aspect of NAGPRA.”

Reburial this summer

Since 1990, Coffey has helped reclaim tens of thousands of his Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara ancestors across the country. When remains are returned, he consults with tribal elders to determine where and how they should be buried. He said, for the most part, remains are simply put back into the ground, as all the prayers and ceremonies were performed at the original time of burial.

Sometimes, remains are returned to the sites near where they were originally taken. But when that’s not feasible, Coffey said, the remains are repatriated, or given back, to the tribe for reburial on their land.

This summer, the MHA Nation will rebury thousands more of their ancestors. Ellen Lofaro and Robert Hinde at the University of Tennessee started working on the repatriation of remains in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Lofaro, a curator of archaeology, said NAGPRA “not only gives tribes a voice at the table but a power to make decisions. Archaeologists did not always take their wishes and desires into consideration.”

The university contacted the MHA Nation to let them know they had thousands of remains and funerary objects in storage. The next year, 2017, Coffey came to see the remains for himself.

The university, the tribes, and the Army Corps of Engineers for the Omaha District — which owns the land where the remains were excavated — had to meet to determine how to proceed according to NAGPRA rules.

“We’re pretty grateful NAGPRA has a process we feel is successful in helping get these ancestors back to their families,” said Julie Jacobsen, cultural resources program manager for the Corps’ Omaha District.

Because the Corps is the largest land management agency in the U.S., they have “a lot of land with a lot of sites” where collections were excavated prior to NAGPRA. Making sure these collections are properly cared for by those managing them and working to get them repatriated is a “big responsibility,” Jacobsen said. She added that the collection at the University of Tennessee is abnormally large compared to most the Corps works to repatriate.

Overall, Coffey said working with the university and the Corps to repatriate the remains has been a very positive experience.

Jacobsen said the Corps is working to determine how many trailers will be needed to safely return the remains and sacred objects to the MHA Nation and to devise a security plan to protect the remains during the long drive from Tennessee to Fort Berthold.

Hinde said the remains are set to be transported home this summer when cold weather isn’t a factor. There, at Fort Berthold, the tribal ancestors will be laid back to rest.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

A fossilized human footprint was found to be 500 million years old!

500 Million-Year-Old Human Footprint Fossil Baffles Scientists

Hundreds of millions of years ago someone with shoes walked on an ancient trilobite.

The amateur fossil hunter William J. Meister found a lifetime discovery 43 kilometers west of Delta, Utah, in the summer of 1968, he found a fossilized human footprint about the size of a US 13 shoe (3.5″W x 10.25″L) stepping on a trilobite. Now, trilobites only existed between 260 to 600 million years ago, so this makes it the oldest human fossil footprint ever discovered!

Trilobites were small marine invertebrates related to crabs and shrimps. Scientists currently think humans emerged 1 or 2 million years ago and only began wearing such shoes a few thousand years ago.

This archaeological discovery could be sufficient to overturn all conventionally accepted ideas of human and geological evolution. According to science’s currently accepted timeline of human existence on this planet, humans advanced enough to wear shoes that would not have existed hundreds of millions of years ago. As one might expect, this sent shockwaves throughout the scientific communities with excitement for a new paradigm shift as well as skeptical denial.

Meister took the rock to a professor of metallurgy at the University of Utah, Melvin Cook, who suggested he show it to the university’s geologists. But none of the geologists were willing to examine it, so Meister took it to a local newspaper called The Deseret News and quickly became very well-known around the country.

This amazing find was presented on March 1, 1973, in a creation-evolution debate at California State University in Sacramento. The creationist team included Dr. Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research and Reverend Boswell of a local Sacramento church. The scientific team consisted of Dr. Richard Lemmon of the University of California at Berkeley and Dr. G. Ledyard Stebbins of the University of California at Davis. Reverend Boswell said:

“I have here something that pretty much destroys the entire geological column. It has been studied by three laboratories around the world and it’s been tested and found valid. It represents a footprint that was found at Antelope Springs, Utah while digging for trilobites.

The man was digging for trilobites, and these are trilobites here and here embedded. This is a brick mold of a trilobite footprint of a human footprint with a trilobite in it. The man stepped on a living trilobite, [thus burying] him in the mud.

These particular strata are dated Cambrian, supposedly 500 million years extinct before man arrived on the face of the earth. The interesting thing about this photograph is that there is also heel marks, which would indicate that they were made by modern man.”

In a news conference, the skeptical curator of the Museum of Earth Science at the University of Utah, James Madsen, dismissively said: “There were no men 600 million years ago. Neither were there monkeys or bears or ground sloths to make pseudo-human tracks. What man-thing could possibly have been walking about on this planet before vertebrates even evolved?”

Another astonishing trilobite fossil discovery was made in Antelope Spring, Arizona on July 20, 1968, by Dr. Clifford Burdick, a consulting geologist from Tucson, Arizona. He found an impression of a child’s foot in a bed of shale.

‘The impression was about six inches in length, with the toes spreading as if the child had never yet worn shoes, which compress the toes. There does not appear to be much of an arch, and the big toe is not prominent.’

This was shown to two geologists and a paleontologist. One geologist agreed it seemed to belong to a human being, but the paleontologist’s opinion was that no biological agent had been involved. Dr.Burdick affirmed:

“The rock chanced to fracture along the front of the toes before the fossil footprint was found. On cross-section, the fabric of the rock stands out in fine laminations or bedding planes. Where the toes pressed into the soft material, the laminations were bowed downward from the horizontal, indicating a weight that had been pressed into the mud.”

Mr. Meister claimed that when he had a geologist examine the print, the geologist offered him $250,000 for the print. Meister asked him, “What are you going to do with it if I sell it to you?” The geologist replied, “I’m going to destroy it, it destroys my entire life work as a geologist.”

It’s disappointing to think that some people would be willing to destroy such a monumental artifact that can reveal such a new perspective on our human heritage and origins.

Respected archaeological researcher, Michael Cremo, has written books on the subject of such examples of ancient artifacts and he has learned that certain scientific institutions, like the Smithsonian Institution, make great efforts to maintain the concept of recent human evolution. He has documented several instances where they deny, defame, and even exile archeologists for publishing their findings for peer review.

“In defense of the dates obtained by the geologists, Virginia Steen-McIntyre wrote in a letter (March 30, 1981) to Estella Leopold, associate editor of Quaternary Research: “The problem as I see it is much bigger than Hueyatlaco. It concerns the manipulation of scientific thought through the suppression of ‘Enigmatic Data,’ data that challenges the prevailing mode of thinking.”

Can you imagine the implications of mankind around the world learning or realizing we are hundreds of millions of years older than we thought and that we have been far more advanced than even we are today? The questions and answers beyond this metaphorically opened doorway could cause a rippling paradigm shift worldwide.

During one interview, Michael Cremo said:

“The reactions in your question are typical of a group that I call the fundamentalist Darwinists. They support the theory of evolution not for purely scientific reasons, but because it confirms their prior commitments to strict materialism. They do not want to hear me, and they do not want anyone else to hear me, so they say those kinds of things. Sometimes they try to stop me from lecturing at universities.”

Those really seeking the truth are open to new information to learn from and examine the scientific findings rationally without bias. We may have to dig deep within ourselves to find the answers to the questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here?

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Utah family finds 16,000-year-old horse bones in the backyard

16,000-yr-old Ice Age Horse Found During Utah Family’s Backyard Renovation

Laura and Bridger Hill dug their yard after embarking on a home building project But something surprising emerged into the soil when a portion of the earth was removed: a row of rib bones. That certainly wasn’t all, though.

Following further investigation, the Hills realized that they had the nearly complete skeleton of some mysterious creature on their hands. Yet even at this point, the family had no clue as to the significance of their find.

A paleontologist said Wednesday the bones may date back as much as 16,000 years.

Bridger and Laura Hill discovered the ancient remains late last fall and consulted a neighbor, who referred the couple to the paleo lab at Thanksgiving Point’s Museum of Ancient Life.

Tuesday and Wednesday, paleontologist Rick Hunter and his team carefully excavated the bones, which Hunter said belonged to an Ice Age-era horse.

“We’ll be able to learn some really interesting things from this skeleton,” Hunter said. “It’s probably about 16,000 years old, roughly.”

Bridger Hill said the remains were first spotted by his son.

An illustration of Haringtonhippus francisci, an extinct horse species that was found in North America during the last ice age. Rick Hunter, a Utah paleontologist, said the horse, whose skeleton was discovered in a Utah backyard, may have looked similar to this.

“We started digging away with our fingers and saw ribs,” Hill said. Hunter said the skeleton was mostly intact, though team members were still working to locate the skull.

“What you see behind us there is a massive excavation to find more skull elements and teeth,” volunteer Lane Monson said.

Excavators used a grid to map and document the site.

The scientists ended up recovering several teeth, including a molar that wound up in fossil preparologist Sara Wootton’s hands.

“Yeah, it’s just a treasure hunt all the time,” Wootton’s co-worker Jodie Visker said. “It’s super fun!”

Visker said the team had been carefully sifting through the sand and dirt in the Hill’s backyard for two days.

“You have to have a lot of passion for something to want to dig all day long in the dirt, I guess,” she said.

Hunter said the scientists would take the remains back to the paleo lab and try to reconstruct the bones, with hopes that they would be able to determine the exact species, as well as answer several other questions about the creature’s health and structure.

Hill said he never expected that kind of find in his yard.

“It’s pretty neat,” Hill said.

EUROPE, HUNGARY, WORLD

Deformed ‘alien’ skulls offer clues about life during the Roman Empire’s collapse

Deformed ‘alien’ skulls offer clues about life during the Roman Empire’s collapse

The multicultural change between local residents and migrant Romans is documented by researchers studying deformed skulls from an old cemetery in Hungary.

Mönzs-Icsei dülő cemetery, founded in 430 AD and abandoned in 470 AD, in the settlement of Mözs near Szekszárd in the Pannonia region of present-day Hungary, was created in the late Roman period at the beginnings of Europe’s Migration Period when the barbarian Huns invaded Central Europe forcing the Romans to abandon their Pannonian provinces and retreat from modern-day Western Hungary.

The site was recently excavated by a new study integrating experimental isotope analysis and biological anthropology, which determine that seeking refuge from the Huns, new foreign groups arrived in Pannonia and integrated with the remaining local Romanized population.

The upper part of the body in Grave 43, during excavation. The girl had an artificially deformed skull; she was buried with a necklace, earrings, a comb, and glass beads.

These migrant waves sparked a period of rapid-onset, and chaotic cultural transitions, and the deformed skeletons recovered from Mözs-Icsei dülő cemetery held important clues about life and death during this turbulent time.

The new paper was published April 29, 2020, in the open-access journal  PLOS ONE  by Dr. Corina Knipper from the Curt-Engelhorn-Center for Archaeometry, Germany, István Koncz, Tivadar Vida from the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, and colleagues.

The authors first conducted an archaeological survey of the 5th-century cemetery, and then they combined isotope analysis with biological anthropology to interpret the burials.

What the pair of researchers found was a “remarkably diverse” ancient community consisting of two or three generations (96 burials total) of three distinctly different cultural groups.

The first was the founding, or local, group who were buried in brick-lined Roman-style graves, the second group comprised of 12 foreigners who arrived about a decade after the founders, and the third were a later culture, who blended Roman and various foreign traditions.

The brick-lined burial of Grave 54 represents late Antique traditions, which prevailed among the supposed founder generation of the cemetery.

The researchers think that the second group of 12 foreigners most probably established the ritual burial tradition of burying the deceased with elaborate grave goods, and also the practice of “cranial deformation,” which was found in 51 skeletons of adult males, females, and children.

Artificially deformed skull of an adult woman. Permanent binding during childhood caused the elongation of the braincase and the depressions in the bone.

Artificial cranial deformation, or modification, is commonly called head flattening, or head binding. This ancient form of body alteration in which a human child’s skull is deformed with blocks of wood bound to the skull under a constant force, was practiced on every continent of the prehistoric world.

However, Mözs-Icsei dülő cemetery represents one of the largest concentrations of this ancient aesthetic cultural phenomenon in the region; a practice that was generally reserved for societal elites.

Buckle in, it’s time for the science bit: according to researcher Doug Dvoracek from the Centre of Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia , who was not involved in the new study, strontium isotopic ratios are widely used as indicators of provenance, residential origins and migration patterns of ancestral humans, in an archaeological context, where it provides “links to the land where food was grown or grazed.”

A number of deformed skulls used in the study.

The two researchers’ data showed the strontium isotope ratios measured on skeletons at the Mözs-Icsei dülő cemetery were “significantly more variable” than the prehistoric burials and animal remains excavated at other archaeological sites in the same geographic region in the Carpathian Basin.

In conclusion, the scientists say their isotopic analysis indicates most of Mözs’ adult population had lived elsewhere during their childhood and had migrated to Pannonia as teens and adults.

Moreover, carbon and nitrogen isotope data attest to what the scientists say were “remarkable contributions of millet” in the human diet.

Millets are a group of highly variable small-seeded grasses that were grown as cereal crops or grains for human food and fodder.

What ancient cultures who grew millets observed, but didn’t know why they had stronger bones, bigger muscles, tougher warriors and fitter farmers, because not only is millet gluten-free, but it also has high levels of protein, fiber, and antioxidants contents.

In the 5th century, the forested mountain ranges and resource-rich agricultural plains of what is today Hungary made this region a choice destination for fleeing Romans and other asylum seekers and refugees displaced by expanding Germanic armies.

And while archaeological and anthropological research in Hungary will continue, for now, the researchers have established that after the decline of the Roman Empire at least one community briefly emerged in Pannonia comprising local and Roman incomers who not only shared the same geographical space, but they blended and infused their burial rituals and traditions into a new multicultural system of internment.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

150,000-Year-Old Pipes Baffle Scientists in China: Out of Place in Time?

150,000-Year-Old Pipes Baffle Scientists in China: Out of Place in Time?

In the province of Qinghai near Mount Baigong in China, there is a strange pyramid with three caves leading to the saltwater lake

Below the lake bed and on the coast there are iron pipes of about 150,000 years old that are some as thin as a toothpick.

What is baffling Chinese historians is that the area wasn’t thought to have been occupied by people until around 30,000 years ago.

And according to historians, the humans that were around were nomads, thus making it unlikely that they would have taken the time to install plumbing.

That leaves a 120,000-year gap of “who was here laying down the iron pipe?”

Aliens?

Yes, it’s a far-fetched possibility, but the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences isn’t ruling it out. Research fellow, Yang Ji told Xinhua News Agency the pyramid may have been built by intelligent beings.

He didn’t dismiss the theory that ancient extraterrestrials may be responsible as complete hogwash, but said: “it’s worth looking into and science would have to determine if there’s any truth.” Okay, so now that we’ve got the obligatory space alien theory out of the way, what about more likely theories?

The investigation into the pipes began in 2002 with some researchers believing the pipes were left over by a prehistoric civilization whose techniques were later lost to the humans that moved into the area.

Around the pipes leading to the area are “strangely shaped stones” protruding from the ground that are confusing historians even more.

So weird rocks are protruding from the ground and the pipes can’t be traced to a known civilization. If that wasn’t strange enough, the scientist isn’t entirely sure what they’re made of.

While the pipes are believed to be mostly iron, the head of publicity for the local Delingha government told reporters that the pipes were analyzed at a local smeltery and 8 percent of the material could not be identified.

The remaining material was a combination of ferric oxide, silicon dioxide, and calcium oxide which are byproducts of long interaction between iron and the surrounding sandstone.

One final theory is that they aren’t even pipes at all but fossilized tree roots. Fossilized tree roots of similar structures have been found in Louisiana and scientists found plant matter in some of the pipes and it looks very similar to tree rings.

It’s a long-standing geological theory that in certain temperatures and under certain chemical conditions, tree roots can undergo the transformation of soil into rock and in time, produce iron formations.

So, are they pipes laid down by an ancient tribe or space aliens? Or are they the result of iron-rich magma forcing its way up through the earth into fissures, or just fossilized tree roots? Whatever the case, the “oopart” (out of place artifact) is certainly a source of puzzlement and wonder for conventional scientists and historians alike.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

38 centimeter long finger found in Egypt left researchers clueless

38 centimeter long finger found in Egypt left researchers clueless

Researchers are traveling with photographs of a massive finger which are said to be 38 centimeters long, as they believe it is impossible and can not exist.

Although science suggests it’s impossible the finger found in Egypt is said to be true, and it has been X-rayed and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

The photographs of the large finger were captured in 1988, and at the time they were published in one of the leading newspapers in Europe.

The finger seems to suggest that it is evidence of giants having walked on the Earth in the past. The Bible even refers to Nephilim.

The remains of the finger are quite impressive, and the finger is a mummified humanoid finger that is 38 centimeters.

Egyptian researchers have said that the finger must have belonged to a creature that was more than 5 meters tall and in 1988 only a very few people were allowed to take photographs of what has been called an artifact that is incredible.

A grave robber was said to have discovered the huge finger when he was searching a tomb in Egypt that has not been disclosed. Entrepreneur Gregor Sporri wanted to buy the finger from the owner and made a good offer, but the owner said that he would not sell it.

Sporri said that the grave robber has a certificate to say that the finger was authentic and he also had an X-ray of the finger.

Sporri said that the finger was in a package that was oblong and it had a very musty smell to it. When he told the story about the finger in 2012, he said that he been very surprised when he had been shown the dark brown, huge finger.

Certificate of authenticity and X-Ray images of the giant finger

He went on to say that he had been allowed to pick it up and that he was also allowed to take photographs of the giant finger.

Sporri said that a bill had been placed at the side of the finger so that comparison in size could be got and the finger was bent and split open, and it had been covered in mold that had dried.

Could this be evidence that points towards the existence of giant beings that walked on Earth in the distant past?

Once Sporri left Egypt he decided that he would like to find out more about the giant finger and he set about trying to find where the body belonging to the finger was located.

He made his way back to Egypt in 2009 and went looking for the man who owned the finger, but he could not find him and it left scientists along with researchers scratching their heads.

All that remains of the giant finger are photographs that were taken of the finger along with stories of the huge creature that walked among humans, which the finger must have belonged to. Scientists and researchers have many mixed feelings about the relic.

One of the issues they have with the finger is that it does not fit in with conventional theories that have come from historians and archaeologists.

In fact, many have said that the finger could not possibly exist. But is the photographs proof that giant creatures did walk on planet Earth in Egypt or was the finger no more than a hoax?

CROATIA, EUROPE, WORLD

Nomadic Warriors’ Remains Unearthed in Croatia

Nomadic Warriors’ Remains Unearthed in Croatia

ZAGREB, CROATIA—Archaeology Org reports that the remains of an Avar warrior dating to the late seventh or early eighth century A.D.

Archaeologists have been found in a tomb in eastern Croatia, near the site of the Roman city of Cibalae. The Avars were Eurasian nomads who arrived in Europe in the sixth century A.D.

During archaeological studies at the city cemetery of Vinkovci, which had started before the coronavirus pandemic and resumed these days, and investigating Avar graves, discovered by workers who had been expanding burial plots.

The City museum archeologists have discovered remains of an Avar warrior and a set belt that can be dated to the turn of the 7th to the 8th century, which is, according to Vinkovci city museum archaeologist Anita Rapan-Papesa, a very valuable find.

She said that previously there had been no Avar graves in Vinkovci, but that it was a known fact that there had been Avars in the area.

“When we observe the walled grave we have discovered, it turns out that Avars saw how Romans were buried so they made their own copies of Roman graves,” the archaeologist specializing in the Middle Ages said.

In addition to the walled grave, the archaeologists explored an ordinary earthen grave, where they found a warrior and his horse, with unique bridle ornaments.

Rapan-Papeša underscored that the border of the protected archaeological site in Vinkovci went through the middle of the field where the Avar graves had been unearthed and that they were the westernmost graves in the area of the former Roman city of Cibalae.

There are five more Avar graves to be explored, and as the work on expanding burial plots in the city cemetery in Vinkovci continues, further archaeological research will continue, as well.

AUSTRALIA, WORLD

Australian Aboriginal people were baking bread and farming grain 20,000 years before Egypt

Australian Aboriginal people were baking bread and farming grain 20,000 years before Egypt

What would your response be if you were asked who were the world’s first bakers? Many people think of ancient Egypt first, where it is believed that bread was baked about 17,000 BCE first. But there is evidence that grindstones were used in Australia to turn seeds into flour 30 thousand years ago.

The Gurandgi Munjie group is revitalizing native crops once cultivated by Aboriginal Australians, baking new bread with forgotten flours.

At Cuddie Falls, in New South Wales, Archeologists found evidence of this in the form of an ancient grinding stone that was used to turn grass seeds into flour.

These were the bakers of antiquity. It took Egypt 12,000 years to repeat this baking experiment. Why don’t our hearts fill with wonder and pride?

“Environmentally it’s a pretty good deal,” says Pascoe of growing these native crops.
This map gives an indication of how much we can learn from Aboriginal grain production. Norman Tindale documented that Aboriginal grain harvests occurred over most of the Australian continent but contemporary grain areas make up less than a quarter of that area.

Australian sovereign nations cultivated domesticated plants, sewed clothes, engineered streams for aquacultural and agricultural purposes, and forged spiritual codes for the use of seed in trade, agricultural enterprises, marriage, and ceremony.

This was and is an incredible human response to the difficulties of fostering economic, cultural and social policies. It may be unique in its longevity but also in its ability to flourish without resort to war.

Australia’s reluctance to acknowledge what was lost can be witnessed in our ignorance of the birth of baking, the gold standard of economic achievement.

Why is this? Is it a malicious refusal to recognize the economic triumphs of the people from whom the land was taken or a simple culture of forgetting fostered by the bedazzlement of Australian resources and opportunities?

Grinding grain into flour, and Lake Mungo bread made from Panicum descompositum

If we could rid ourselves of the myth of low Aboriginal achievement and nomadic habits, we might move toward a greater appreciation of our land.

We might begin to wonder about the grains that explorer Thomas Mitchell saw being harvested in the 1830s, and the yam daisy monoculture he saw stretching to the horizon of his ‘Australia Felix’, the early name given to western Victoria.

These crops must have been grown without pesticides and chemical fertilisers and in harmony with the climate; surely they are worthy of our investigation.

If you search for Australian research into yam daisies you inevitably come across, Beth Gott, an honorary research fellow at Monash University.

She has almost single-handedly led the interest in this wonderful plant. Inspired by her work, a Landcare group and Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in East Gippsland have begun field trials into the staple of the southern Aboriginal economies.

A yam daisy garden under trial as a crop in East Gippsland.

Similarly, the fish traps at Brewarrina seen by Mitchell and other explorers created economic conditions that allowed the people to live in semi-sedentary villages of over 1000 people; Mitchell marveled not just at the villages’ size but also their comfort and elegance.

Since Mitchell’s report, however, you will look in vain for later reference to the Brewarrina fish traps even though some archaeologists have speculated that they maybe 40,000 years old and as such the oldest human construction on the planet.

Even if you accept the more common age of 15,000 years, these structures are still amongst the world’s first. Until recently, the sole publication about them was a 50-page book published in Brewarrina in 1976.

When we eventually acknowledge the food plants adapted to Australian conditions and domesticated by Aboriginal people, let’s hope we don’t just celebrate them every ‘Baker’s holiday’ but recognize the intellectual property Aboriginal Australia has vested in them.

All In One Magazine