Australia & Oceania Location
Hundreds of books have been written about the advanced astronomical knowledge of the ancient Egyptians. Similar efforts have been made to identify the astronomical obsessions that motivated the builders of Stonehenge, and to explain the details of the complex Maya cosmology. But there have been few systematic attempts to record the astronomical achievements of the Indigenous people of the world, which is what Australian astrophysicist Duane Hamacher set out to correct.
Roughly 18,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers in New Guinea loved nothing more than a good fried egg and a lump of roasted bird meat. To enjoy these treats more easily, they turned to bird breeding. What is surprising is that they bred one of the deadliest birds on the planet: the deadly cassowary.
One of the most intriguing and perplexing legends of the Australian Aboriginal people is that of the Wandjinas, the supreme spirit beings and creators of the land and people. The land of the Wandjina is a vast area of about 77,220 square miles in the Kimberley region of north-western Australia. This region has continuously been important for indigenous culture since at least 60,000 years ago, and probably much longer.
Pitcairn Island is a place so remote, and with a history so bizarre, that until recently it was viewed almost as myth rather than reality. But the events that took place on this tiny island in the Pacific Ocean were very real.
Flores is a pretty island in eastern Indonesia which is home to nearly two million inhabitants. Most significantly, it is the only place on Earth where traces of an ancient hominin species known as Homo floresiensis have ever been found.
Australia Day is celebrated on 26th of January because it is the day that Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet, made up of eleven convict ships, landed at Sydney Cove in Australia and raised the British Flag, marking the beginning of British sovereignty over Australia. Phillip took possession of the land in the name of King George III, declaring it terra nullius (uninhabited by humans).
In the remote South Australian desert, where temperatures are known to reach 125 °F in the shade, there is a town named Coober Pedy, where residents have dug themselves underground to escape the blistering heat. Once the largest opal mining operation in the world, Coober Pedy is now a peculiar site where chimneys rise from the sand and signs warn people of unmarked holes in the ground.