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The Aborigines






 

The word comes from the Latin phrase ab origine, meaning from the beginning. When spelled with a small " a, " the word “aborigines” refers to any people whose ancestors were the first to live in a country.

 

Considerable uncertainty exists about the racial origins of the Australian aborigines, and, because no proven connection can be traced with any other living race, ethnologists usually class them as a separate race called Australoid.

 

Australian Aborigines have the longest cultural history in the world. There has been continual habitation of Australia for more than forty thousand years.

 

There is no written record of the origin of the Australian Aboriginal people. Some legends, however, tell of great sea journeys. These legends could indicate that the ancestors of the Aboriginal race came from across the sea possibly from Asia or Europe. The Aborigines discovered a large forested continent with many lakes. At that time the land was inhabited by huge, flightless birds and giant marsupials such as three-metre-tall kangaroos.

 

As the Ice Age finally came to an end, the great ice caps around the world began to melt. As a result the seas everywhere rose and Australia gradually became an island. As a result, those people who were there had no choice but to stay.

 

In 1788, when Britain established the first European settlement on Australian soil, there were at least five hundred thousand Aboriginal people there. There were about six hundred different groups, each comprising several clans.

 

Original Australians were essentially hunter-gatherers without domesticated animals (their only domesticated animal is the dog.) The Aborigines employed a type of " firestick farming" in which fire was used to clear areas so that fresh grazing (пастбищные) grasses could grow, attracting kangaroos and other animals.

 


Although the Aborigines were nomadic (кочевой) or seminomadic, their sense of place was strong and historical record points to the existence of some stone villages. Group territorial boundaries were known and respected.

 

Nomads (кочевники) had few material possessions and built temporary shelters from bark and brush. They wore little clothing. The bow and arrow were unknown to them. On the open plains, they hunted with woomeras (приспособление для бросания копья) and boomerangs.

 

 

The aborigines used two kinds of boomerangs. The returning boomerang is light, thin and well balanced, 30-75 centimetres in length, and up to about 340 grams in weight. Returning boomerangswere used as playthings, in tournament competition, and by hunters to imitate hawks (ястреб) for driving flocks of game birds (пернатая дичь) into nets strung from trees. The nonreturning boomerangis longer, straighter, and heavier than the returning variety. With it animals were maimed (калечить) and killed, while in warfare it caused serious injuries and death.

 

 

The aborigines were skilled in the construction of stone tools and in weaving bags and baskets, including a watertight variety.

 


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