Before Europeans began settling in to Australia in 1788, the 700,000 Aboriginal residents of Australia lived much as they had for thousands of years. They were a diverse people, speaking over 700 languages, but they shared many of the same cultural, economic, and political institution. They also shared a common heritage, having arrived in Australia over 40,000 years ago. That makes them the oldest surviving people group in the world.
Separated from the rest of the world, Australian Aborigines developed a unique culture, similar in some ways to that of other isolated groups like the various Native American tribes. Like many the Native American tribes, Australian Aborigines were largely a hunter-gatherer society. This made them very different from Eurasians who by 1788 had developed very sophisticated, proto-industrial economies.
Like most people groups, the Australian Aborigines had a division of labor based on gender. Men hunted kangaroos, emus, and turtles while women and children hunted small animals and gathered fruits and berries. Women also made baskets for use by both sexes during food gathering and tools and coverings from the various parts of hunted animals. Those tribes that lived along the costs also engaged in fishing.
Because of the seasonal weather patterns, Aborigines, were a nomadic people who never stayed in one place for too long. While this ensured that they did not overuse their natural resources, it also meant that they never built many permanent structures. They did, however, own land although they seldom marked it in ways that Europeans recognized.
Aboriginal groups had no formal governmental structures. They recognized an extended family as the basis for a community and looked to elders to teach and raise children. They believed that the whole community should share the responsibility of raising children and had a society focused more on the group and less on the individual than European society.
Aborigines developed different political and social structures than Europeans because they were isolated from the rest of the world. Whereas Europeans, Asians, and some Africans could exchange information fairly easily by the 1700s, allowing them to build upon the knowledge of each other, the Aborigines did not have access to that collective knowledge. They did not even have access to much of the knowledge of their ancestors since they had no written language. While information did pass down from generation to generation, it was done orally. Obviously, the lack of a written language greatly impairs the ease with which one can make technological innovations.
Of course, Aboriginal society was changed drastically with the coming of the British in 1788. Like most indigenous people around the world, they had no natural immunity to the disease the British brought with them. Therefore, many of the Aborigines were wiped out from disease. What happened to the survivors is the same that happened to the remnants of the Native American tribes. They were pushed off of their land and marginalized in the land their ancestors had lived for thousands of years.
While many of the remaining Aborigines have embraced at least some aspects of Western cultures, some have shunned it and continue to live much as their ancestors did. For those who have partly assimilated to Western culture, they face many of the problems that indigenous groups like the Native Americans face today. Substance abuse, unemployment, discrimination, disease, education, and crime remain chronic problems.
