Original subtitles

VOICEOVER: We acknowledge the many First Nations across the country

and their elders and knowledge holders

who have generously shared their stories

and welcomed us onto their country for this series.

And we would like to warn Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers

that the following program may contain images and voices

of deceased persons.

The past is an elusive place.

We desperately want to go there, to know it, to experience it.

What was life really like 100 hundred years ago,

1,000 years ago or even 10,000 years ago?

Sadly, we'll never know.

Written history dates back to just 5,000 years ago

and beyond that we have archaeologists sifting through ruins

hoping for some vague insight into the life of the ancients.

It's unfathomable to think of prehistoric time being recorded

by the very people who lived through it.

Well, here in Australia, it was.

Go.

We're revealing how the First Nations people of Australia

invented the most effective memory systems on the planet.

A memory system which can store volumes of information -

geography, law, education, astronomy and even maps,

all stored in the mind.

We know some of the story.

MAN: It's the connection from the sea to land.

Not many people get to see this. WOMAN: That's amazing.

Only the ancestors know it all.

To reveal what was lost, a new generation of detective...

Knowing how to navigate using the stars and knowing your country,

it's a matter of life and death, really.

..will retell the ancient story of the world's oldest living culture.

MAN: So what we're looking for today is evidence that people were here

living on what is now the seabed.

Tens of thousands of years in the making,

the story of the first inventors can now be told.

What if I told you there's a proven method to transmit information

accurately across tens of thousands of years

and that First Nations people knew it and used it?

Even the written word dates back to only 5,000 years ago.

So what was this information delivery system?

Well, I'm using it right now.

Storytelling.

Tens of thousands of years ago,

humans witnessed an extraordinary change to our planet.

During a period referred to as the glacial maximum,

ice sheets 3km thick covered large parts of the Earth.

Some 20,000 years ago, as the planet warmed,

ice started melting,

causing sea levels to rise by a massive 120 metres.

In some places the change was fast enough

to be witnessed in a single lifetime.

Entire coastlines disappeared, valleys flooded,

hills and mountains became islands.

These prehistoric events are now lost to time.

So far back in human history

that scientists only discovered proof of this ice age

around 150 years ago.

But, incredibly,

there's growing evidence that some First Nations in Australia

may have recorded this event and passed the information on

from generation to generation for 10,000 years or more.

(SPEAKS INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE)

(REPLIES IN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE) Ah, that's good.

Auntie Maggie is an elder on my home country, the Tiwi Islands.

She has a story which, if you listen carefully,

speaks of dramatic change.

The story describes how, in order to provide for her children,

Murtankala created the Earth,

the elements,

and the Tiwi Islands themselves.

Murtankala crawled on her knees,

and as she crawled, water bubbled,

filling her tracks,

dividing Tiwi from the mainland.

I remember this story growing up. Every Tiwi does.

It's a fundamental part of our identity and who we are.

To an outsider it might seem like just a story,

but what if stories like this one,

despite being handed down through word of mouth

over hundreds of generations,

actually documented real events?

The similarities between the Tiwi creation story

and the end of the ice age

could be written off as a coincidence.

After all, a story describing actual events

that took place 10,000 years ago seems impossible.

And yet there are no less than 22 First Nations groups

which can recall a time when oceans were lower

and their ancestors lived in places now submerged.

If they really are accounts of sea level rise,

it makes them a form of recorded history

which predates writing by thousands of years.

Western Australia.

Five clans are working with maritime archaeologists

to uncover evidence of human settlements on the sea floor

here off the coast of Murujuga.

Vince Adams is one of four traditional owners

joining the expedition.

All the Dreamtime stories that come from ocean to here,

those Dreamtime stories are actually coming true

with the science and the stuff that we are doing today.

They're both diving full face today.

MAN: Set up.

Professor Jonathan Benjamin is leading the dive.

So what we're looking for on this project primarily is stone tools.

Evidence that people were here using stone tools

and making a living on what is now the seabed.

Stone tools were chipped out of large boulders common to this area.

So what you've got here is granite fire.

It's the local hard rock.

You can see very clearly this has all been altered and adjusted.

So it's a nice tool for cutting, scraping, chopping,

those kinds of things.

Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna man Chris Wilson

is an archaeologist joining the expedition.

And so you can tell this is then cultural?

Rocks aren't made like this naturally.

So this is formed after human intervention, reduction.

Stone tool manufacture, very clearly.

So, in this whole archipelago there are more than 40 islands.

So what we have to do as archaeologists who work underwater,

is find out, first, where the haystack is

and then we can look for the needle.

10,000 years ago, Flying Foam Passage would've been a dry valley,

aside from a large freshwater spring.

MAN: This is the bathometric map of Flying Foam Passage.

We can clearly see the outline of the depression,

which we interpret as a submerged spring.

The locals have told us that this is a good area to go fishing.

Why would that be?

It's different. There's some sort of depression going on there.

Maybe there's fresh water, which increases the marine biodiversity.

It's for good reason the team are excited

about this underwater spring.

We need to think about where people would've been basically hanging out

around this spring

and have left maybe evidence of the occupation

in the form of artefacts of some type or another,

and we'll target those dives at those locations.

Anything that we find that will confirm cultural activity

makes this a confirmed underwater archaeological site

and probably the oldest underwater archaeological site in Australia.

Yeah, it's exciting stuff, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. So fingers crossed we find something.

Yeah. Yeah.

Discovering artefacts here could prove that

First Nations Australians

are the keepers of the oldest historical records on Earth.

So today, if you find something at that deep depth,

then will that rewrite the history books?

For us it's a real opportunity to see

is this an ancient Aboriginal site that rests now on the seabed?

And that's the exciting thing that we're going to find out today.

The ocean floor is 15 metres below

and today visibility is poor.

As we go deeper, our dives get shorter,

it gets darker, it gets colder, it gets harder to see.

So the archaeology becomes more and more challenging, you know.

It's next-level difficult to do.

On the ocean floor

an ancient stone tool and a plain rock can look very similar.

There's always a risk with underwater archaeology

when it comes to not finding anything.

Could be because you're in the wrong spot.

It could be because the ocean is gigantic.

This could be the most significant maritime archaeological discovery

in Australian history.

So, can I guarantee we will find archaeology?

Unfortunately, no.

Is it possible that people with no written language

could pass down their ancestors' experiences of living on land

that has now been underwater for close to 10,000 years?

Off the coast of Murujuga, Western Australia,

maritime archaeologists are diving in search of the answer.

PROFESSOR BENJAMIN: We only have a limited amount of time to dive,

so we really have to make the most

of every minute that we're on the seabed.

No fewer than 22 First Nations groups

recall a time when sea levels were lower.

If the dive is successful,

it could prove that their stories have been accurately handed down

for hundreds of generations -

a feat which until now would've seemed impossible.

Sometimes you get lucky,

you go down and you pick something up and you look at it

and you just go, "Wow, that's a stone tool."

Yep.

So, John's just handed me this.

There's a point of concussion there.

So you can see how that would be difficult to find

in waters like this.

To verify if these are actually artefacts,

Jonathan will need to examine them at the lab.

Fortunately, there are local experts here on location.

We found this underwater on the seabed.

Mm-hm.

This one is used for skinning meat.

You cut the skin off this one.

With another one we use a knife. That's right.

So, skinning the skin off. That's right.

It's a scraper. Yeah.

That's what I would've called it too.

But it's fantastic to hear it from you guys.

It's just the best.

So what kind of animals would they have...?

So, these would be used for mainly small type animals.

More...more possums.

So, hill kangaroo.

We know how to use this tool.

We know how to make this tool today.

Those stories are far older than what we ever imagined.

Ever imagined.

This proves that.

This is evidence of... of how, when and why.

We're changing the history of the story of Australians

10,000 years ago who lived in what is now offshore.

We now have the scientific evidence that backs up and supports

all of the oral histories that is in line

with what traditional owners tell us about Sea Country

and their relationship with Sea Country.

This is important for all of us.

Events recorded and passed down over more than 400 generations,

and all through the power of memory and storytelling.

How is it that the information hasn't disintegrated entirely

with each telling?

Here's the thing - memory is unreliable.

I'm a professional actor.

It's my job to learn and retain information,

but even on my best day I struggle to remember lines.

So how is it humanly possible to learn and pass on stories

from generation to generation across thousands of years?

G'day, Lynne. Hi, Rob.

How's this? (LAUGHS) Great to meet you. It's gorgeous.

Lynne Kelly is an Australian memory champion -

a feat she achieved by using First Nations memory techniques.

She's going to show me how it's done,

but first she's demonstrating

just how quickly our memories fail under normal conditions.

Rob is going to tell a little story to you

and we're going to do it right round

and then you'll hand it back at the end.

So my story is, "Five little geckos crawl past three sleepy koalas.

"The koalas awake, the storm breaks, and the geckos creep back."

(LAUGHTER)

Something about a koala eating a monkey.

(LAUGHTER)

That's not even close to what we had.

That is incredible that you couldn't get that story right.

But Indigenous stories date back tens of thousands of years

accurately recorded.

It's phenomenal.

What is this memory method

which makes stories last for thousands of years?

So, Lynne, you are Senior Australian Memory Champion.

What's your trade secret? How'd you do it?

Right, anyone can do it.

It's not a special brain thing.

It's a matter of using techniques.

So, in the competitions we memorise decks of cards and lists of numbers

and all sorts of useless stuff.

But we associate it with locations

and then imagine ourselves walking it.

What you need is to add characters.

That's why you'll find all Indigenous stories

are full of characters.

Everyone talks about Indigenous cultures not having writing,

but what's important is what they do have,

and this is a whole suite of techniques that are...

..have evolved over thousands of years

to suit the way the brain works

and the best memory systems in the world.

And that's just a really simplified version

of what Indigenous cultures do.

In many ways, this seems too simple -

use story characters and connect them to locations.

We're going to do this experiment over here.

I'm giving it a go by attempting to memorise 15 countries

in select order.

What we're going to do is put different countries of the world

in population order.

What do you think?

I don't know. Shall we give it a go?

I'm learning one of the ancient memory techniques

used by my ancestors.

My test is to memorise the names of 15 countries

in order of population.

I have 10 minutes to do it.

So, the first country is China.

Can you imagine something to do with China there?

So, think of an image? Yeah.

Whatever you associate naturally with China.

Alright. The Chinese dragon.

Chinese dragon? Yeah.

Oh, how gorgeous.

Doing loops in that little alcove there.

Oh, right. I can see it.

(LAUGHS) Yep.

The next is India.

Alright, I think I've got something.

Yeah?

Uh, so, it's an elephant.

In the Australian bush?

Well, you certainly wouldn't see it here.

(BOTH LAUGH)

The third is United States. Yep, yep.

This rock face here looks like Mount Rushmore-ish.

Like a miniature. Oh.

Next is Indonesia.

It's an Indonesian holiday.

It's my younger self jumping into the water.

Then next we've got Pakistan.

Oh, I like these little crevices here.

Like, you can pack them...

Right. ..with things, yeah?

Bangladesh.

Bang, bang the drum.

What do you associate with Egypt?

Egypt, the great Sphinx.

That kind of looks like a face at the back.

Fantastic.

Vietnam.

Rice fields.

Rice fields forever into the distance.

OK, I've got it. OK.

Now, I've got a favourite for Brazil.

You know the Carnival in Brazil? Yeah.

I'm looking at them coming, voom, and dancing everywhere.

I want to go to Brazil.

We're now up to the biggest country in Africa.

Nigeria.

Alright. Nigeria. OK.

We've got Russia. OK.

Mexico, Japan, Ethiopia.

Do you know anyone called Philip?

Yes. He's sitting on that ledge playing the ukulele.

Right, well, that's the Philippines. Alright.

15 countries committed to memory

by attaching a location and a character to each one.

But did it work?

What do you think?

I don't know. Shall we give it a go?

OK.

So, moment of truth.

Ordinarily, I need like two weeks to learn a bit of dialogue.

So we've just done 15 countries in less than 10 minutes.

Lynne has a whole lot more confidence in me than I do,

so let's put it to the test.

Can you do it without actually walking it?

Close your eyes and imagine yourself walking it.

China.

India.

United States of America.

This is the part...

United States,

Indonesia.

What's around the corner there?

I can see the place.

Pakistan, Bangladesh.

Yes.

Around the corner we've got Egypt -

the Sphinx on the back wall there.

And then we've got Vietnam.

Um...

Brazil.

Yep.

Nigeria, Russia, Mexico, Japan.

Ethiopia.

Going up the ledge, Phil from the Philippines.

15 out of 15! Yeah? Yes!

Phenomenal.

So I think the experiment went really well.

I'm patting myself on the back for that.

That's 10 minutes' worth of work, and I've remembered 15 countries.

Now, on the scale of things, it's a small experiment,

but for someone like me whose mind's a sieve,

it's quite profound

and gives me some insight

into how cultures thousands and thousands of years ago

retained information that was really important

for their culture and survival.

I've now learned how my ancestors stored information in memories,

but connecting characters to locations

is only one part of their ancient memory technique.

(RHYTHMIC BANGING)

Through repetition, singing is one of the most effective ways

of creating memories.

Plus, songs have a chemical effect on our brains.

Indigenous Australians use songs as a place to store important information.

Within these songs are stories.

Stories help release oxytocin,

which makes information more memorable.

This extraordinary record-keeping system is known as songlines.

Songlines record information, law, geography, astronomy,

plant and animal species,

and even navigation.

At its simplest,

these songs describe pathways through country,

or lines, if you like.

They connect places.

Songlines describe those places.

A rock formation that looks like a sleeping snake on the horizon

or a tree with special markings.

Songlines tell you everything you need to know

about where you are and where you're going.

They contain vital information for survival -

where to find water, when and what to hunt.

All that information in a song taught to us by our elders.

Wardaman Country, Northern Territory.

Elder Yidumduma Bill Harney

has travelled the 7,000 square kilometre region and far beyond

since he was a boy.

Never needing a map,

he has relied on songlines to guide him.

(SINGS)

(SINGS)

Bill is the senior custodian of countless songlines.

This songline starts 200 kilometres west

and ends at Bill's home here in Wardaman Country.

Four pythons begin their journey winding inland from the sea.

To avoid the water python, the black-headed python turns left,

creating a fork in the river

and an unmistakable landmark for navigation.

The songline continues a few kilometres upstream,

where the python turns and looks back,

his head visible across the valley.

More landmarks become visible as the songline continues.

The landmarks present themselves at walking pace.

The final landmark in this 200-kilometre journey...

The three other snakes continue their own journey,

each on a songline with different destinations and new waypoints.

Aged 92, Bill is the final custodian of his people's songlines,

the last fully initiated member of the Wardaman tribe still alive.

But his knowledge will live on.

Yamaji-Nyungar woman Tui Raven

is an art curator and collector of Indigenous stories.

She's come to learn how Bill navigates using songlines.

Uh, what I've heard about Bill is that he can use the stars

and all of his stories about country to navigate.

That's pretty special.

Tonight in the outback she'll be left alone in total darkness

to navigate her way

using nothing more than the knowledge of the stars.

Knowing how to navigate using the stars and knowing your country,

it's a matter of life and death, really.

Making observations of the natural world,

storing that information in stories and songs

and then transmitting that information

across thousands of years -

there's no question, that's remarkable.

Once information can be reliably recorded,

it can then be applied to scientific observation,

law, teaching, and geography.

It becomes practical and useful.

Take a place like this,

thousands of kilometres of tough country,

baking daytime heat, freezing cold nights,

not someplace you'd ever want to be lost.

In summer, temperatures in the outback

often reach 45 degrees.

Travelling on foot could cost you your life.

So Indigenous Australians invented ways to navigate at night.

Uh, what I've heard about Bill

is that he can use the stars

and all of his stories about country to navigate.

That's pretty special.

Where you come from?

I'm from Nyungar. I'm from Perth.

Oh! Welcome you in this Wardaman land.

Thank you.

Easy or hard?

Yeah.

Bill is a master navigator,

but can he teach a beginner how to travel 2.5 kilometres

over rocky terrain in the dark?

Yep.

Just as landmarks feature in songlines, stars do as well.

Plus, there are characters -

the grasshopper,

the catfish,

and the red kangaroo

are among the many protagonists in songlines

winding through the night sky.

Mordborronggo.

Angles and spacing between the stars and the songline

match up with directions and distances on the ground.

I can't believe how many different stars you know.

Bill starts Tui off with the fundamentals of longitude,

north and south.

OK.

Then her east-west cardinal points.

With the stars in continuous motion,

Tui will need knowledge of multiple constellations to find her way.

Yes, they are in an angle. I can see that.

But they're not...they're not three equally spaced, are they?

No, no, they are...they are...

Two close and one further. Yeah. Yeah.

The bright orange Antares is known to Bill as Murrijun,

wife of the sky boss Narri.

She's part of a three-star formation

pointing to a pair of bright guide stars,

and an imaginary line through those two

cuts the horizon almost exactly to the west.

To navigate successfully across the 2.5-kilometre journey,

Tui will have to keep track of these exact stars

and plot a westward course,

despite rough terrain

and obstacles like hills and trees obscuring her vision.

So you think I could do that?

Well, I mean, you can.

Yeah?

So Bill's going to drop me off

and I should be able to find him at the end at another location

just by using these stars.

I've never used the stars for navigation before

so it's going to be a little bit scary.

Tui Raven is attempting to navigate at night

using the star knowledge embedded in an ancient songline.

She will meet her teacher, Wardaman elder Bill Harney,

at a destination 2.5 kilometres away,

if she doesn't get lost.

When the trees come around, it gets a bit confusing.

You've gotta, I guess, have a look at the stars around them

and remember it.

So let's hope when we get on the other side of these trees

it's still those same stars.

I'm hoping.

The stars, when they move in the sky, you think you've got it,

and I just hope I'm going to meet up with Bill at the end.

Dense scrub and rocky terrain

make it impossible to hold a course in one direction.

Tui must constantly refer back to her guide stars.

One kilometre in, Tui has a problem.

The stars look so different now.

So I can see that this is the Milky Way here.

I think the stars that I'm supposed to use to navigate

are actually below the horizon.

There's another star that's just on the tree line,

the top of this tree here,

that you...I can't quite see.

To maintain course, Tui must change the stars she's following.

Now that the sky's actually moved,

the two that I thought I had to navigate with,

it might be these two just here.

I feel more like it's one that's near the tree line.

I just can't see the stars that was up before.

It's actually really stressful.

Right now I'm relying on a very small quantity of stars

to get me in a direction,

but if those have gone down, I don't know what I'd do.

I'd have to camp out and wait for the next night.

So I think I've just come through the clearing

and they're the stars that I was looking for

that were going to point me towards

where the other star had gone down below the horizon.

Oh, I can hear something over there.

(HOWLING)

After more than 2.5 kilometres, Tui finally hits a road.

But there's no sign of Bill.

Has she missed her mark?

Hello there. Hello.

How are you going? Not too bad.

Bit far south. I come a bit too far south.

(LAUGHS) No dingoes, just donkeys. No, you're here.

How you feel from walking that long distance?

My leg's a bit sore.

Yeah? Oh, well, jump in the car.

OK. Sounds good. Relax in there.

Yeah. Sounds good. You're freed from walking.

Tui's first attempt wasn't perfect

but she did navigate outback scrubland using the stars.

First Nations people successfully navigated the entire country

using songlines both at night and during the day.

Some songlines traverse thousands of kilometres.

At least one, the Seven Sisters songline,

covers the entire Australian continent.

So, it's after midnight

and the clouds have finally cleared enough to be able to see the stars.

Gamilaraay woman Karlie Noon

is looking for answers

to one of the greatest mysteries of ancient astronomy.

The Pleiades is what we call an open star cluster.

Basically a big collection of stars.

And we can find the Pleiades quite easily

if we are able to find the really large constellation of Orion.

OK.

I have found it.

And it is looking absolutely beautiful.

Remarkably, this cluster is known around the world

as the Seven Sisters,

from Europe to Africa, Asia, and North America.

However, why do different cultures around the world

refer to it as the Seven Sisters when only six stars are visible?

So, there's actually a theory that really boggles the mind.

For decades, astronomers have tried to solve the mystery of Pleiades.

Why do different cultures around the world

refer to it as the Seven Sisters

when only six stars are visible?

NASA's high-powered space telescopes

have shown the constellation has been moving

and two of the seven, Pleione and Atlas,

are now so close that to the naked eye they look like one star.

So there's actually a theory that perhaps 100,000 years ago

these two stars were separated enough

so that we could see seven with our naked eye.

If the seventh star hasn't been visible for 100,000 years,

it's possible the Seven Sisters story

can be traced back

to the earliest origins of human storytelling.

It's really a story that has transcended both space and time

for essentially the majority of human history.

It just really boggles the mind

around how long we've been observing the sky.

How long humans have been taking this data in

and documenting these changes.

Once considered by outsiders to be primitive,

songlines are now known

as a highly sophisticated record-keeping system.

A memory technique that has kept untold knowledge alive in Australia

for thousands of years.

However, it's not Australia's only archive of ancient events.

At Murujuga, on the coast of Western Australia,

artists have been painstakingly carving into rock

for over 30,000 years.

WOMAN: Basically, we call them petroglyphs.

And so pecking and abrading and rubbing and gouging

and all these different things are ways that people have, in fact,

made a mark in the rock.

Around 30,000 years ago, the art here featured land animals.

Around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, sea animals started to appear.

The change coincides with the dramatic rise in sea levels.

The coastline crept inland,

taking over the desert and stopping here at Murujuga.

This place is recording an extraordinarily deep time

of people's menus,

their dinner menus through time.

And when the people were first living in this landscape

between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago,

the coast was a very, very long way away.

It was about 160km that way.

So, at that time, people who were producing this art

were doing a very, very different set of menus,

uh, to what they're doing now.

These extraordinary changes recorded in rock art

also matched the oral records.

We're going to show you how all this connect, hey?

This story we're going to tell you today

connects the ocean and the water

from Dreamtime stories.

Traditional owners, including Vince Adams,

have a story which recalls a time when animals moved inland

as the sea advanced.

That's come from the ocean way, way back out there,

travelled to land and made home here.

Water come in, they want to go home.

Ocean god say, "No, you can't come here."

And as we all know, all bats are land-based animals.

So we're actually seeing story

about a particular point in time, aren't we?

Yeah.

That's the story that connects ocean and land from our Dreaming.

On a visit to a remote island, Vince spots, for the first time,

one of the most vivid symbols of this change,

when desert became sea.

And see the kangaroo with the turtle shell?

Yeah. Wow.

The turtle carapace actually in the body of the kangaroos.

So, to me, that story of passing culture over and law...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

..from the ocean to land...

Yeah.

..land to land animal.

Yeah. Wow.

This rock art marks a momentous milestone in human history.

The kangaroo... Yep.

..we're following that law...

Yep. ..today.

That's amazing.

And to see that, not many people get to see this.

It's the connection from the sea to land.

This goes to show that, uh, this history, this culture,

the engravings, they all mean something.

Mm-hm. That's right.

And not just people walking around

and drawing on the rock because they think they can.

Mm.

This is basically...

It's deep connection, isn't it? It's huge connection.

Some of the oldest stories on the planet may record actual events

that happened tens of thousands of years ago.

There are songlines that conjure up a world before the last Ice Age,

instructions on how to make tools

and guides for travelling vast expanses without a map.

These libraries of knowledge are all locked up

in a powerful recall system -

storytelling.

Now, I think what's most remarkable about this

is that it's all tied back to country.

Like my memory test,

the stories are written in the landscape.

So now we know how the information was transmitted.

Next we'll look at what it was used for -

the innovations that meant Australia's first inventors

didn't just survive in this place, they thrived.

Next time, a communication system spanning thousands of kilometres.

It's amazing how much information really could be encoded

in these objects.

Complex societies organised through mathematical genius.

This is a really optimised system.

Trade routes and superhighways

moving goods across the continent

and creating roads all Australians rely on today.

Using a supercomputer, we ran 125 billion pathways through Australia.

Captions by Red Bee Media