12,000-year-old Aboriginal sticks may be evidence of the oldest known culturally transmitted ritual in the world

The 12,000-year-old remains of two mini-fires and two curious sticks deep within a secluded cave in southern Australia may be evidence of the oldest known culturally transmitted ritual in the world, a new study finds.

The artifacts, which were analyzed in a new study that used both scientific analyses and Aboriginal oral history, may have been used in a ritual spell carried out to bring harm to another person.

The artifacts are similar to a ritual practiced by the Gunaikurnai, an Indigenous group residing on Australia's southern coast, which involved smearing a wooden object with human or animal fat and then dropping it into a ritual fire.

Given the parallels between the objects in the cave and the historically attested Gunaikurnai ritual, which was recorded by anthropologists in the late 19th century, Aboriginal elders sought out archaeological collaborators to excavate the cave, known as Cloggs Cave, and study the artifacts.

While the archaeological work tying together 12,000-year-old ritual objects with 19th-century historical practices is a clear scientific triumph, it also points to a loss of Indigenous knowledge with the colonization and Westernization of Australia, according to Mullett.

I don't know much about Aboriginal rituals but I think it's so absolutely cool to have this tie in culture that goes back for twelve thousand years. And it's so incredibly tragic that the oral history was so damaged, if not destroyed in some places that if not for external documentation they could have lost this connection entirely. It shouldn't have to be that way