Berlin. In a cave in Australia, archaeologists find evidence of what is probably the oldest ritual in the world that has survived to modern times.
The 12,000-year-old remains of two mini-fires and two strange branches deep inside a remote southern cave Australia could be evidence of the oldest known cultural tradition ritual in the world, as a new study shows.
The artifacts analyzed in the study, which used both scientific analysis and Aboriginal oral traditions, could be in a ritual magic used to cause harm to another person.
The artifacts are reminiscent of a ritual of the Gunaikurnai, an indigenous group living on the southern coast of Australia. It involves coating a wooden object with human or animal fat and then placing it in a ritual fire played.
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Given the parallels between the objects in the cave and the Gunaikurnai ritual historically documented and recorded by anthropologists in the late 19th century, Aboriginal elders sought archaeological collaborators to investigate how Cave of Clogs to excavate a known cave and examine the artifacts. Their findings were published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
Places for sacred rituals
The cave had already been partially excavated in the early 1970s. Speaking to LiveScience, lead author Bruno David, an archaeologist at Monash University in Australia, said: “The cave was never used as a general campsite, only for special camps. ritual purposes. It was first used in this way about 25,000 years ago and remained so until at least 1,600 years ago.”
If you do this again excavation In 2020, two sacred ritual sites were discovered. Each consisted of a small fire pit with a lightly charred wooden stick sticking out of it. Radiocarbon dating of the sticks revealed that one was between 11,930 and 12,440 years old, while the other was between 10,870 and 11,210 years old. This makes them the oldest wooden artefacts ever found in Australia.
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The research team found that both sticks had been intentionally altered, suggesting that people had trimmed, cut or shaved the sticks in the past to make them very smooth. Further analysis showed that both sticks were casuarina, a pine tree native to Australia, and contained stains of an unknown residue. When the residue was chemically analyzed using mass spectrometry, it was found to be fatty acids, suggesting that part of the stick had been contaminated with some type of animal or human substance. Fat was coated.
Ritual passed down through more than 500 generations to modern times
Given that no food remains were found near the small fireplaces and that in each fireplace there was a single smooth, flat piece, both in contact with fatty tissue, the researchers came to the conclusion that the 12,000-year-old sites they had discovered, for a specific ritual purpose served – one that has apparently been passed down for over 500 generations, from the end of the last Ice Age to the recent past.
“What these fire sticks tell us is that this is actually specifically the ancient ancestral culture that continues to this day,” David said after speaking with one of the Gunaikurnai elders. “Incorporating the community type – the cultural type – with some of the scientific techniques means that stories can be told.”