The Oldest Continuous Culture on Earth
Aboriginal Australian spiritual traditions represent the oldest continuous culture on Earth, with evidence of habitation dating back at least 65,000 years. The Dreaming (or Dreamtime) is not a past era but an eternal present in which ancestral beings created the landscape and continue to inhabit it. Every rock, waterhole, and songline is alive with meaning.
Country and the Clever People
Divination in the Western sense is not quite the right word for Aboriginal practice; instead, knowledge is accessed through ceremony, song, dance, and deep listening to Country (the land itself). Clever men and women (known by various names in different language groups) serve as intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds. The songlines that cross the continent are simultaneously navigation, law, history, and spiritual practice.
Related Traditions
- North America — comparative indigenous traditions
- The Pacific — the Austronesian connection
- The Cosmic Library