by Patrick Nunn
49 Details in this section come from pp. 14–15 of Dixon (1977); note that I have anglicised Yidin words for ease of reading.
50 During the last ice age, much of Australia was drier than it is today, yet in contrast to other lake basins on the continent, Lake Carpentaria is never known to have dried up completely within the period 12,200–35,000 years ago. It was a large lake, covering an average area of some 35,000km2 (13,500mi2), and containing 48km3 (12mi3) of water for most of the time it existed. The beginning of its end came about 12,200 years ago when rising sea level overtopped the Arafura Sill and seawater spilled into the lake. Its conversion to full marine conditions was completed by about 10,500 years ago. There is a sole Aboriginal story about the formation of the Gulf of Carpentaria, but its resemblance to that of the kangaroo with the giant digging bone retold for Spencer Gulf, to which it seems uniquely suited, suggests that it may not be an authentic tradition for the Gulf of Carpentaria (details in Reed 1965: 189–192).
51 You might think that given the comparative plethora of drowning stories from elsewhere along the Australian coast, there would be some among the peoples of the Torres Straits Islands. Yet despite considerable anthropological and linguistic research in these islands, no stories have been formally reported, although Dixon alludes to a 1988 conference presentation in which Ephraim Bani, a Torres Strait islander, spoke of ‘ancient legends’ that tell of people ‘who actually walked as if on dry land, from the Australian mainland to the Papuan coast’ (Dixon, 1996, Oceania, p. 129).
52 The story tells that ‘the two Djanggau Sisters, Daughters of the Sun, came in their bark canoe with their Brother from the mythical land of the dead, Bralgu, somewhere in the Gulf of Carpentaria’ (Berndt and Berndt 1994: 16). Another Yolngu tradition about Bralgu [Island] is its link with the planet Venus, known as Barnumbir and associated with death. Two old women on Bralgu hold Venus on a long string to ensure that it cannot escape (Bhathal, 2009, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales).
53 This and the quote in the following sentence both come from p. 20 of Dick Roughsey’s autobiography, Moon and Rainbow (1971).
54 The channel-cutting stories were collected by Paul Memmott and analysed as part of his 1979 PhD. Ages of 5,000–5,500 years ago were assigned to them after consideration of the history of postglacial sea-level changes in the Gulf of Carpentaria. These ages are superseded by those presented at the end of Chapter 4 in the present book.
55 It may seem self-evident to us that people would not deliberately strand themselves on islands becoming cut off from the mainland. Yet we should be wary of superimposing our own views – what we would do in a particular situation – on people with quite different worldviews confronted by the same situation in the past. A good analogue that I have been researching for some time is the issue of how Pacific Island coastal communities should respond to the sea-level rise they have been experiencing for some decades, and which appears to be accelerating. The ‘Western’ approach is to understand the context of the problem, evaluate scenarios for future sea-level rise, and explain to coastal dwellers that they should move. But that ignores the ways in which island people have long coped with environmental adversity; it ignores their spiritual beliefs and, for as long as they are given messages in foreign languages (like English) that privilege foreign thinking, it seems likely that they will continue to resist such exhortations. See also my 17 May 2017 article in The Conversation at https://tinyurl.com/khzm6nl.
56 From p. 194 of Josephine Flood’s (2006) The Original Australians.
57 Quote from p. 108 of Isaacs (1980).
58 I am struck by the similarity between the ‘sandbars’ of the Yolngu Ancestresses and the sarns of Celtic cultures. Sarns – literally highways – are linear sedimentary features that extend from the land out across the sea floor, probably ancient moraines or levees bulldozed into place by growing glaciers, whose form and composition have been modified by the sea following their submergence after the last ice age.
59 This story is recounted on p. 40 of Berndt and Berndt’s (1994) magisterial The Speaking Land.
60 This story was told originally by Peter Namiyadjad in the Maung language (Berndt and Berndt 1994: 40). A more recent version, in which the main actors are anthropomorphised, was collected by Siri Veland (2013, Global Environmental Change).
61 Quote from p. 25 of Corn (2005, Journal of Australian Studies).
62 Story told by Mangurug of the (northern) Gunwinggu people, reported on p. 88 of Berndt and Berndt (1994).
63 In my book Vanished Islands and Hidden Continents of the Pacific (Nunn 2009), I quote the examples of Teonimenu in the Solomon Islands and Malveveng and Tolamp in Vanuatu as places where the (abrupt) sinking of an island was accompanied by giant waves that observers believed to be the cause (rather than a consequence) of earthquake-induced island submergence.
64 From pp. 88–89 in Berndt and Berndt (1994).
65 This is the assumption, made for the sake of analytical completeness, by myself and Nick Reid in Table 1 of our 2016 paper in the Australian Geographer, freely available online at http://tinyurl.com/hl8bdgt.
66 This quote is from p. 14 of Morris (2001). Details of the Tiwi stories are from this source as well as from the account of Sims’s chapter in the (1978) collection by Hiatt.
67 From p. 165 of Sims (op cit).
68 Quotes from p. 10 in Morris (2001).
69 The language of the Tiwi islanders and the ways in which their society is organised make them distinct from mainland Aboriginal groups, differences that are attributable to the isolation that began when the Tiwi Islands became separated from the mainland by the rising sea level.
70 A parallel record of the isolation of the Tiwi Islands by postglacial sea-level rise may be the ‘extraordinary’ level of endemism shown by its rainforest ant fauna. Of the 34 species of ant found there, only nine are found anywhere else; the other 25 have been found only on these islands and perhaps evolved only after all land connections with the mainland became severed (Andersen, 2012, Insectes Sociaux).
71 Recollections of the effects of postglacial sea-level rise along other Tiwi coasts may include Myth 1 in the collection by Osborne (1974), which tells of a man stamping his foot repeatedly, causing the sea to rise over the land.
72 A readily accessible summary was published in The Conversation (online) on 6 April 2015.
73 This research was presented by Jo McDonald (2015, Quaternary International) and depended on the temporal sequencing of rock art in Murujuga. McDonald’s continuing research in these islands uncovered evidence that their former Aboriginal inhabitants had built huts on stone platforms, something that many had previously thought Aboriginal Australians had never done.
74 None of these stories has been published. Most details here were supplied by Dr Katie Glaskin (University of Western Australia), who collected the majority of them as part of her 2002 PhD thesis; others come from testimony given by various Bardi and Jawi informants (Jimmy Ejai, Khaki Stumpagee and Aubrey Tigan) to a federal court case (Sampi vs State of Western Australia, 2005, FCA 777).
75 From p. 8 of the Dictionary (Moore 1884).
76 Much of the oldest evidence for human occupation of Rottnest is found within ancient soils (palaeosols) that have been buried by younger lithified sand dunes. These dunes contain the remains of land snails whose shells were able to be dated using aspartic acid racemisation assays. Dates on these shells of more than 50,000 years suggested to Patrick Hesp and others (1999, Australian Archaeology) that this was a minimum age for the human artefacts, although more recent work using optically stimulated luminescence dating suggests that the artefact-bearing layer is 10,000–17,000 years old (Ward, 2016, Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia).
77 This account is from p. 341 of Mathews (1909, Folklore), and is part of a number of Aboriginal stories from the area that were collected by one Thomas Muir.
78 The story is found in Collet Barker’s journals (Mulvaney and Gr
een 1992: 361).
79 Quote from p. 157 of Maio and others (2014, Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology).
80 All the quotes in this section come from pp. 142–146 of Ethel Hassell’s (1935, Folklore) collection of folktales from the Wheelman (Wiilman) tribe made before 1930.
81 Annual rainfall in the Nullarbor averages 150–250mm, but potential evaporation is closer to 2,000–3,000mm – unarguably a desert.
82 This is not strictly accurate. Between three and six million years ago, enough rain was falling on the Nullarbor for water to percolate into the subsurface limestone caves and form speleothems (stalactites and stalagmites). Pollen recovered from these suggests that gum trees (Eucalyptus sp.) and banksias (Banksia sp.) dominated a mesic forest that grew across the Nullarbor – at that time – in stark contrast to its present-day situation.
83 The Roe Plain(s) is part of the formerly more extensive coastal plain that existed during the lower sea level of the last ice age, but which is visible today only because it was uplifted shortly after it formed during Pliocene times, between 2.5 and 5.5 million years ago. It comprises a veneer of calcarenites – sediments laid down in shallow ocean water – covering an erosional platform in the bedrock limestone that formed when the Pliocene cliffs of the Nullarbor were receding at an astonishingly rapid rate: perhaps 85km (53 miles) in three million years.
84 Mallee eucalypt is the name given to at least three species. They have adapted to semi-arid conditions in Australia by developing long roots that extend laterally outwards, sometimes tens of metres, in search of water in every direction from the base of the tree. They also have roots that can penetrate downwards almost 30m (98ft). In 1928, in the desert north of the Nullarbor, one Archer Russell was being guided by an Aboriginal man named Tuck who spotted ‘a clump of big scrub-mallee’. Russell tells the story of what happened next. ‘The trees I now noticed, had roots with sections growing alternately above and below the ground, and all the roots were long and twining. With Tuck wielding the shovel a root was soon exposed and torn from the ground. It was thirty feet (nine metres) long and no thicker than a man’s wrist … it is in reality an underground stem or rhizome. In each rhizome, which often contains a length of fifty feet (15 metres) or more, is enough water to sustain a man for a day’ (Russell 1934: 100–102).
85 Quotes in this section are from pp. 89 and 91 of Scott Cane’s (2002) comprehensive account of the Pila Nguru or Spinifex people who live in the Nullarbor.
86 Quote from p. 15 of Wright (1971).
87 Quotes from pp. 104–105 of Flinders (1814, vol. 1).
88 Quote from p. 401 of Berndt and Berndt (1996). Another version of this story – told by Mushabin (Bidjandjara), Harry Niyen (Antingari) and Marabidi (Ngalia-Andingari) – states that the brothers camped at Won-genya near Fowler’s Bay and that, after the skin was pierced, ‘all the water spread across the countryside and flowed down to the coast to become the Southern Ocean’ (p. 44). Still another version – told by Sugar Billy Rindjana, Jimmy Moore and Win-gari (Andingari) and by Tommy Nedabi (Wiranggu-Kokatato) to Ronald Berndt in 1941 – adds the detail that the sea flood was prevented from spreading over the whole country by the ‘action of various Bird Women’ who gathered the roots of the ngalda kurrajong tree (probably Brachychiton gregorii), placed them along the coast to make a barrier and so ‘restrained the oncoming waters’, a response similar to that of the Wati Nyiinyii at the foot of the Nullarbor cliffs.
89 Assuming that, on average, a person acquired knowledge of these stories at the age of 15 and passed them on at the age of 35, this means that we count ‘generations’ for this purpose as lasting 20 years. Thus for a story to be passed on for 7,000 years (a minimum for these stories), it must be passed down through 350 generations.
Chapter 4 : The Changing Ocean Surface
1 The earliest known remains of modern humans (Homo sapiens) are found within the Kibish Formation in the valley of the Omo River in southern Ethiopia. They date from about 195,000 ( ± 5,000) years ago (McDougall and others, 2005, Nature). There is evidence for Homo sapiens living at Asfet on the Red Sea coast of Eritrea as early as 150,000 years ago, although the main period of occupation would probably have been during the subsequent interglacial, when this coastal region became better watered and altogether more attractive to these of our ancestors.
2 The Quaternary Period began 2.6 million years ago and is characterised by regular climate (glacial-interglacial) oscillations divided on the basis of oxygen-isotope values for ocean-floor sediments of various ages. There are 104 Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) within the Quaternary; each even-numbered stage marks a cool (glacial) period or ice age, and each odd-numbered stage marks a warm (interglacial) period. The Last Interglacial shown in Figure 4.1 is thus MIS 5, while the coldest part of the Last Glacial (the last ice age) is MIS 2.
3 An argument along these lines was laid out to explain the start of cross-ocean discovery and occupation of oceanic islands in the Western Pacific Ocean in my book Environmental Change in the Pacific Basin (1999).
4 Information comes from the study by Scott and others (2014, Antiquity), who argue that the bone accumulations at La Cotte represent the final resting places of the megafauna that were extirpated here because they were unable to withstand the onset of cold conditions within the Last Glacial. There is a range of ages for the human and faunal presence at La Cotte, from 40,000 to 238,000 years ago, but another study quotes the more recent terminal age of 25,700 ± 3,000 years ago that is noted in the text (Bates, 2013, Journal of Quaternary Science).
5 The most comprehensive study of Doggerland is the book by Gaffney and others (2009).
6 Such remains began to be recovered in earnest after a Dutch fishing innovation called beam trawling, which involved dragging weighted nets along the ocean floor, was developed; ‘sometimes an enormous tusk would spill out and clatter onto the deck, or the remains of an aurochs, woolly rhino, or other extinct beast. The fishermen were disturbed by these hints that things were not always as they are. What they could not explain, they threw back into the sea’ (Laura Spinney, National Geographic Magazine, December 2012).
7 The sabre-toothed cat (Homotherium latidens) lived in Europe, Asia and North America. In size and musculature, it more closely resembled modern lions than modern tigers. Most of the details in this section come from the book by Mol and others (2008).
8 In short, the wetter times of the last ice age appear to coincide with periods of expansion of areas occupied by modern humans (Homo sapiens), the proposed connection being that more rain would have made drier places more attractive to our ancestors because of the increased livelihood possibilities associated with the establishment of vegetation diversity. Using analyses of speleothems (dripstone deposits like stalagmites and stalactites), one research project reconstructed rainfall in North Africa during the last ice age and found just this for human expansion within and beyond this region. With remarkable precision, it proved possible to link a wet phase (50,500–52,500 years ago) to the movement of modern humans out of North Africa into the Middle East, where they first encountered – and interbred with – Neanderthal humans (Hoffmann, 2016, Scientific Reports).
9 Megafauna in most parts of the world became extinct approximately simultaneously in the latest Pleistocene, typically by 10,000–13,000 years ago. In some places, the weight of evidence for megafaunal extinction favours predation by increasing numbers of increasingly well-armed and cooperating humans, while elsewhere deglacial climate changes are implicated. Explanations involving both rapid climate changes and human predation have also been mooted for some places. See also Chapter 6.
10 One of the pioneers in the use of ‘island dipsticks’ for measuring postglacial sea-level change was one of my heroes, the late Art Bloom of Cornell University, in many of whose footsteps around the Pacific Islands I have followed.
11 It is unclear whether most of the meltwater from the collapse of this ice saddle entered the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans. The former perha
ps received the larger part because the thermohaline circulation, which is most vulnerable to freshwater inputs in the North Atlantic, did not shut down during MWP-1A.
12 The argument is neatly articulated in Barber and others (1999, Nature).
13 An earlier study suggested that the instantaneous rise of the sea level in the Mississippi Delta may have been as much as 1.2m (nearly 4ft), although this probably includes a background sea-level rise component as well as the effects of the outburst flood.
14 There have been serious suggestions from sensible scientists that future sea-level rise might cause the West Antarctic ice sheet to collapse catastrophically, raising sea levels an average of 3.3m (11ft) along the world’s coasts, albeit with significant regional variations (Bamber, 2009, Science). Similar suggestions have been made for the Greenland ice sheet (Shannon, 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).
15 The origin of rice agriculture, if indeed there was a single place of origin, is disputed and may be becoming an issue of national pride rather than detached empiricism. That said, most evidence points to the Yangtze as an important place of early rice domestication, although there is increasing evidence that it may not have been the sole place of origin.
16 The comparatively ‘late’ development of agriculture in the Vistula Delta has long puzzled archaeologists. In addition to the effects of an oscillating sea level, which may have frustrated attempts to establish enduring crop production and animal husbandry here, it may simply be that the collection and processing of amber proved more profitable for many of the Roman-era Pomeranians living here. In addition to bedrock deposits of amber suited to mining, the shores of the Gulf of Gdańsk are as famed today for the deposition of wave-borne amber (often in nuggets) as they were in Roman times. From here, the amber was exported along an ‘amber road’ to Mediterranean markets, where it was in great demand for jewellery and for medicinal purposes.
17 The model for the Pacific Islands that links climate change and sea-level fall to an enduring food crisis about ad 1300, and a subsequent abandonment of coastal settlement in favour of hillforts, is described in considerable detail in my book Climate, Environment and Society in the Pacific Islands during the Last Millennium (Nunn 2007).
