Tasmania

The first evidence of human habitation on Tasmania dates from around23,000–25,000 years ago, when the Bass Strait was actually a land bridge and allowed for easy passage between the mainland and Tasmania. Then, between 8,000–12,000 years ago, with the warming of the Earth, the Strait flooded, leaving the small population stranded for the longest period of human isolation ever.

These aboriginal Tasmanians were hunter-gatherers who ate marsupials such as wombats and kangaroos, seafood such as crayfish and crab, and plant foods such sea kelp, roots, berries, and fungi. Their political organization was akin to many other food collecting societies in that homestead groups of between two and eleven were joined together through both kinship and geography into acephalous bands of 40 or 50 people. Bands were the primary landholding units, not landowning as there was no private property recognized, while tribes were the largest political units. Contemporary aboriginal organizations say that nine tribes existed prior to European contact. While some publications speak of 35 coastal and 22 inland “tribes,” this is most likely a misuse of the word for what anthropologists generally call bands.

Despite their relatively simple technology, Tasmanian aborigines did not live in a “state of nature.” They transformed their habitat through the use of controlled burns to clear the land for easier travel, flush out animals, and encourage the growth of new plant life. They also created tools, nets, and baskets and other containers from bone, wood, stone, woven grasses, sinew, seaweed, and bark. Small boats were also constructed out of bark and grasses, to travel to offshore islands in the summer months for hunting seal and muttonbirds and gathering other seasonal foods.

Tasmania's cold, wet climate necessitated both shelter and some protection for the naked body. There were two basic designs for shelter:bark, lean-to windbreaks and dome-shaped huts thatched with grass or bark and lined with feathers or fur. This latter form dominated in Tasmania's cold western area and were lived in year-round, while the temporary windbreaks sufficed in the warmer areas of the east. Despite Tasmania's weather, most people actually wore very little clothing. Women did don cloaks made of kangaroo skins, as did men at the coldest times, but children and many adults protected themselves largely by rubbing a mixture of fat, ochre, and charcoal onto their skin. In addition to this adornment, adults also practiced cicatrice, or ritual scarification, and wore necklaces of fur, shell, or other materials.

Tasmanian aborigines' religion had many features in common with those on the mainland. They believed in spirits, had totemic animals and plants, and observed their associated taboos. They also cremated their dead, avoided speaking of them afterward, and had a strong belief in the afterlife. The only existing examples of Tasmanian visual art are geometric petroglyphs of circles, lines, and dots seen today on [Page 2164]the west coast, which may tell creation myths and other dreamtime stories. Unfortunately, few language features—other than several songs, place names, and a few word lists—were recorded from the five related dialects that were spoken on Tasmania prior to European settlement.

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