Belly, 'Yes, we're all Africans'. Europeans too. Chinese too. Everybody. That's what it means. And yes, we were all nomads, hunter-gatherers, 10-12,000 years ago.

In Australia, of course, in very productive areas, along major rivers, especially in the bends around rivers, Aboriginal people were more likely to set up permanent (or near-permanent) camps, building more solid foundations (wind-breaks) for their wurlies. And from there, they hunted, fished and gathered food. In such circumstances, they would not have had any need to cultivate the soil and grow crops, even if such plants had been available.

Joe

Artifacts in Kakadu national park have been dated
between 65,000 and 80,000 years
Reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a tour bus driver.
He told me he was one of the Main roads crew who found some old cave paintings in the mid 50's. When he went back some 30 years later he was amazed how many more 40,000 year old paintings there were.

Dear individual,

Nah. Didn't happen.

What were the crops that Aboriginals cultivated?

Is Mise,

And could they be cultivated today ? Wouldn't it be handy to know what they were ? And also the animals which were domesticated ? Would eels count ?

Joe

Dear Is Mise,

i will take that as a legitimate question.

Here in SW Victoria a principle crop was murnong. It is a yam daisy.

It once stretched as far as the eye could see and sustained the local tribes when other sources of food were scarce. The early explorers talked of fields of yellow that went for tens of miles. It was almost completely wiped out with the introduction of thousands of sheep which were transported across from Tasmania. They loved it and eat their way from Geelong to Colac over the course of two years.

The early accounts of women collecting the tubers abound. Woven baskets full of murnong were placed on fires.

http://tuckerbush.com.au/murnong-yam-daisy-microseris-lanceolata/

There are normally three parts to the tuberous roots. Traditionally they were called the daughter, the mother, and the grandmother with the mother being the largest.

From memory the mother was harvested and the murnong replanted. By the next harvest the stores of the grandmother allowed the daughter to grow and to regenerate all three again. In times of plenty the three were planted separately to extend the crop. From what little we are able to glean from the records it appeared there was a practice of enhancing what was already there.

Thus firestick management was apparently only part of the equation.