This is so tragic and so amazing.
ANCIENT TRIBAL MEETING GROUND FOUND IN AUSTRALIA
Australian archaeologists have uncovered what they believe to be the world’s southernmost site of early human life, a 40,000-year-old tribal meeting ground, an Aboriginal leader said Wednesday.
The site appears to have been the last place of refuge for Aboriginal tribes from the cannon fire of Australia’s first white settlers, said Michael Mansell of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.
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“When the archaeological report came out it showed that (life there) had gone back longer than any other recorded place anywhere else in Tasmania, dating back to 40,000 years,” Mansell told AFP.
Up to three million artifacts, including stone tools, shellfish fragments and food scraps, were believed to be buried in the area, which appeared to have been a meeting ground for three local tribes.
They died out after white settlers arrived in the late 18th century.
“They (settlers) hunted people here to this place and shot them just so they could get the land,” said Mansell. “Many others were imprisoned until they died.”
“In terms of culture and history this region now represents Tasmania’s Valley of the Kings,” he added, referring to the world heritage listed Egyptian tombs on the west bank of the Nile.
“When you get something like this that evokes memory of what your people did before we were born and evokes a memory about the legacy that they left us … it makes the place irreplaceable.”