Victorian Aborigines

The Indigenous Australians of Victoria, Australia occupied the land for tens of thousands of years prior to European settlement. According to Gary Presland Aboriginal people have lived in Victoria for about 40,000 years living a semi-nomadic existence of fishing, hunting and gathering, and farming eels.

The Aboriginal people of Victoria had developed a varied and complex set of languages, tribal alliances and trading routes, beliefs and social customs that involved totemism, superstition, initiation and burial rites, and tribal moeties that regulated sexual relationships and marriage.

There is some evidence to show that people were living in the Maribyrnong River valley, near present day Keilor, about 40,000 years ago, according to Gary Presland.

At the Keilor Archaeological Site a human hearth excavated in 1971 was radiocarbon-dated to about 31,000 years BP, making Keilor one of the earliest sites of human habitation in Australia. A cranium found at the site has been dated at between 12,000 and 14,700 years BP.

Similar archaeological sites in Tasmania and on the Bass Strait Islands have been dated to between 20,000 – 35,000 years ago, when sea levels were 130 metres below present level allowing Aboriginal people to move across the region of southern Victoria and on to the land bridge of the Bassian plain to Tasmania by at least 35,000 years ago.

There is evidence of occupation in Gariwerd - the territory of the Jardwadjali people - many thousands of years before the last ice-age. One site in the Victoria Range (Billawin Range) has been dated from 22,000 years ago.

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Wikipedia