Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 06/21/2025 12:29:43 PM PDT by george76
Travel back 20,000 years into the last Ice Age, to a time when the upper reaches of the Blue Mountains were treeless and the ridgelines and mountain peaks laden in snow and ice.
At an elevation of 1,073 meters, you will find Dargan Shelter, an ancient rock shelter resembling a large amphitheater. Looking around, you could easily assume this cold and barren high country was too difficult for people to spend time in.
But our new research, published in Nature Human Behaviour, indicates Dargan Shelter was occupied as early as the last Ice Age and repeatedly visited during this cold period.
Our excavation results provide the earliest known evidence of high-altitude occupation in Australia, establishing the Blue Mountains as Australia's most archaeologically significant periglacial landscape—that is, an area which goes through seasonal freezing and thawing.
Cultural perspectives This is a highly significant landscape concentrated with tangible and intangible cultural values for Aboriginal people.
For millennia, Aboriginal people have passed down the knowledge and stories of Country.
Knowing our Ancestors have lived here, in this Country, for thousands of years was on our minds as the team headed down into the site where we would sit alongside our Ancestors of yesterday.
We chose this site because of its location on a known Aboriginal traveling route, high elevation and its potential to hold deep deposits.
Archaeologically, a deep and undisturbed deposit is one of the most important things to look for. The sediment buildup over time preserves cultural material, and allows us to reconstruct past activities by associating cultural objects within distinct layers or bands of time.
When we enter the site, we pay respects to the Country and Ancestors before us. As part of the opening of the site for the archaeological works, a lyrebird song and dance were performed and, magically, a handful of lyrebirds began approaching the cave and singing out as if they were communicating between the current and old worlds through song.
We do not know who exactly the Aboriginal people who moved through the Blue Mountains in the deep past were, nor where they came from. But Dargan Shelter was probably an important stopover point for people to attend gatherings and ceremonies that could have included people from the western interior, the Cumberland coastal plains, and Country to the north and south.
Finds from the Dargan Shelter excavation New evidence provides definitive proof of repeated occupation in this once frozen high-altitude landscape. It is now believed to be the oldest occupied site in Australia at high elevation.
We unearthed 693 stone artifacts, including 117 flakes from stratigraphic layers older than 16,000 years, and documented a small amount of faded rock art, including a child-sized hand stencil and two forearm stencils.
Charcoal from hearths (campfires) underwent radiocarbon dating, indicating Dargan Shelter had been continuously occupied since 22,000 to 19,000 years ago.
Among the findings, most of the stone tools were locally sourced and made. But, very interestingly some stones from the Jenolan Caves area, approximately 50 kilometers to the south-west, and the Hunter Valley region, 150 km to the north, were also found. This indicates people were traveling into this mountainous region from both the north and south.
We found a sandstone grinding slab, dated to 13,000 years ago, consistent with shaping bone or wooden artifacts such as needles, awls, bone points and nose points. A basalt anvil with impact marks consistent with cracking hard woody nuts and seed shells was dated to 8,800 years ago.
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
TWEEEEEEET!
Biblical timeline violation.
Why would ancient peoples live way up beyond the tree line in cold conditions with no heating sources?
I was wondering exactly the same thing.
“Why would ancient peoples live way up beyond the tree line in cold conditions with no heating sources?”
Not sure about this situation but I can think of one possible reason — running away from tribes that wanted to kill them.
“How do we know it’s an Ice Age?”
“Because... of all...”
“...the *ice*!”
The young earthers are just wrong. Genesis creation timeline isn’t meant as a direct dating system
UBU.
By the way.
Are you one of those who believe in the theory of (macro) evolution?
Usually, going hand in hand with that belief is a disbelief that all humans descended from the same man, the first man, Adam.
Are you also one of those who do not believe this?
Snowy Mountains must be a little farther south?
Someone in the New Testament said, “Concern yourself not with endless genealogies”
BTW endless means it goes back a long, long time..
All humans descended from Adam.
The fact is that we have human cultures before 4000 BC, whether at Gobekli Teoes, pre dynastic Egypt, the indus valley, or in Australia
Indeed Science huh.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
