Landscape Matching 7,000 Year Old Songline Discovered in Australia

Researchers found two ancient watering holes in the ocean that correspond to songlines the Aboriginal and Torres Strait First Nation people still know

Photo by Michael on Unsplash

As a species, we’ve spent a long time gathering and sorting information into an organized tree of knowledge, with branches dedicated to distinct categories. The math and science branches include subjects like algebra, biology, physics, etc. But the tree of knowledge also has branches for art, music, philosophy, language, and everything else we’ve discovered or created.

But now we’re entering a new phase that uses the tree of knowledge to create a garden by combining and overlapping individual subjects to construct new ones or unveil new layers. Such is the case for today’s topic, in which archeologists teamed up with Australia’s First Nation Elders to make a new connection between human history and the land.

Songlines

Today, song lyrics often tell a personal story of love, loss, or some other human emotional experience — but songs were once used for a wholly different purpose. Songlines differ from song lyrics in a couple of ways. For one, lyrics to a song remain within the confines of the song, whereas…