Читать книгу Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott - Страница 37

Pre-European Australia was a very social place — it took teamwork to survive in such a challenging land! Tribes had complex kinship and trading connections over vast distances, and even overseas. (Many are surprised to learn that the Aboriginals were not ‘pre-contact’ at all when the First Fleet arrived — they’d been trading, intermarrying and presumably speaking with the Macassans of Indonesia for decades, and quite possibly centuries). As in much of the world at the time, the barter economy was a part of life.

Key items for trading included:

 Pituri, a mildly narcotic plant, which the Aboriginals exchanged for Indonesian tobacco

 Pearls and pearl shells, farmed by northern tribes and useful as ornamentation and for magic rituals

 Stone suitable for tools

 Ochre, used heavily in ritual and ceremony

No books, maps or made roads existed in Aboriginal Australia, and so these overland trading routes — sometimes hundreds of kilometres long — had to be memorised. Being able to navigate your way across a desert continent without cars, trains or even pack animals is no mean feat.

For more on Aboriginal people pre–European settlement, see Indigenous Australia For Dummies, 2e, by Larissa Behrendt, Wiley Australia Publishing.