The Dreamtime

Australian Aboriginal Myths

Charles P Mountford, Ainslie Roberts

• Publisher: ETT Imprint
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781922384294
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythologie

The Dreamtime is one of the greatest Australian publishing successes. The first edition was published in 1965, and fifteen impressions were issued to meet the constant demand. This is the first electronic edition.
The original concept of the paintings was developed by an association between Ainslie Roberts and Charles Mountford. Mr Roberts had made extensive painting tours through remote outback regions, and Mr Mountford, of course, is well known for his anthropological work among the Aboriginal peoples. including Nomads of the Australian Desert.
Other books in the series include Dreamtime Heritage, Shadows in the Mist, The First Sunrise and The Dawn of Time.

THE DREAMTIME

Australia is an ancient land, undisturbed by any major geological upheavals for many millions of years. Its people, too, are an ancient people, who, reaching the shores of this continent fifteen thousand or more years ago, were able to follow their simple way of life until we, the white intruders, came among them.

No other race has ever lived in Australia, nor at the present time are there people of the same stock anywhere else in the world, except, perhaps, the pre-Dravidians of India, and the almost extinct Veddahs of Ceylon, who may be distantly related.

There is no evidence that the Australian natives originated in their present homeland; but, wherever they came from, it is reasonable to assume that they left south-eastern Asia and travelled to Australia through the Indonesian and Melanesian Islands, their journey spanning probably many hundreds of years.

Although Cape York, on the north-eastern corner of the continent, would have been the easiest and most reasonable point of entry, some groups may have landed along the north-western coasts of the continent. Irrespective, however, of their points of entry, these brown-skinned people were living in every part of Australia—from the fertile, well- watered coastal regions, to the arid, inhospitable interior—many thousands of years before European settlement reached their homeland.

It is certain that the aborigines have always been, as they are today, simple hunters and food-gatherers, collecting their sustenance at such time and place as Nature provided. In seasons of plenty they feasted, and in times of hardship they philosophically endured hunger, confident that some foods would soon be ready for harvesting.

The equipment of the aborigines is particularly limited. Except along the coastline, or on the larger rivers, where fishing is an activity, the men own little more than spears, spearthrowers, boomerangs, and clubs; and the women use wooden, bark, or string containers, grinding-stones to reduce grass-seeds into a coarse flour, and simple digging-sticks for unearthing tubers and small creatures.

Some tribes use simple watercraft, but over the vast stretches of the Australian coastline the aborigines are without any means of travelling by water. They do not know how to weave cloth to cover themselves, have no pottery techniques by which to make cooking vessels, nor any beasts of burden on which to travel or carry goods. From the standpoint of material possessions the aborigines of Australia are, without doubt, the poorest of any people.

This material poverty has led to the mistaken impression that, as the white man uses so many, and the aborigines so few tools with which to gain a livelihood, the aborigines must have the lesser intelligence. But this idea is completely refuted on an examination of the success of the food-gathering of the aborigines in the almost waterless deserts of central Australia, a country so arid that no white man can live there unless he takes his own food.

Yet, with no more than five tools, the aborigines have been able to live and multiply in this harsh and unfriendly country for many centuries. This is surely evidence not only of normal intelligence, but of minds intensely trained in the lore of the desert, and in the knowledge of its food resources.

The aborigines live in family groups, each group having its own territory, which its members seldom leave, except to attend some important ceremony, or when there is a shortage of food or water. All members of the family, from children to the oldest men and women, engage in a continuous search for food, a search that must go on from day to day, for they have no means of storing or preserving what they kill or collect.

To meet these conditions, the natives must acquire a profound knowledge of the rhythm of their country. From early years they learn when the vegetable foods ripen, and where they may be gathered; the seasons of the year when the reptiles wake from their winter sleep, when the animals reproduce, and in what place there will be water to drink.

The aborigines have also developed a calendar, based on the movements of the heavenly bodies, the flowering of certain trees and grasses, the mating calls of the local birds, and the arrival of migrant ones. All these signs are related to the food-cycles on which their living depends.

The labour of food-gathering is fairly equally divided between the men and the women. To catch the larger creatures—the kangaroos, the wallabies, and the emus—the men often have to make long journeys in the cold of winter or the blazing heat of summer. The women, laden with the children and the camp gear, travel in a more or less straight line from one stopping place to the next, gathering vegetable foods, fruits, and small creatures on the way. The men often return empty- handed at the end of the day, for the desert animals are wary and difficult to capture, but the women always bring in some food. Sometimes it is not much, nor particularly tasty, but it is usually enough to keep the family going until the hunters are more successful.

The distribution of the food is governed by wise laws, decreeing that everyone receives a share, whether the amount be large or small, or the recipients men, women, or children. Further, though meat is highly prized, the hunter gains little advantage from his prowess. The hunter’s share is the lesser portion; his skill is of more value to his family than to him. His reward is in the joy of achievement and the approbation of his fellows.

It is a memorable experience to live and travel with these aboriginal people, and to observe, if only for a short time, the functioning of one of the most primitive cultures of mankind, a culture where the gaining of a livelihood is a remarkable achievement; where the people live in harmony with each other and their surroundings, and the laws are well balanced and strictly enforced.

The government of these people is in the hands of the well-informed old men, not the physically active youths. A full knowledge of the secret and ceremonial life of the tribe is possessed only by these elders. It is they who maintain the ancient laws, agree on the punishments of the law-breakers, and decide when the rituals, on which the social and philosophical life of the tribe depends, will be performed. It is not, therefore, the task of a professional or priestly class to preserve the traditional myths and their associated rituals, but of a number of groups of fully initiated men, each group being responsible for the memorizing of the myths, songs, and rites belonging to their family territories, and for the passing of them on, unaltered, to the succeeding generation.

The organization of each tribe, in its basic form, is divided into two intermarrying groups; for example, one half are the Crow people, and the other the Eaglehawk people. It is a fundamental law that a man must always marry outside of his group, and the same applies to women. An Eagle-man must marry a Crow-woman, or vice versa. To marry a member of the same class would be looked on much the same as marrying a brother or a sister, and punishable by death.

The aborigines believe that their world is flat, and so limited in area that, should they travel to the horizon, which to them is the edge of the universe, they would be in danger of falling into bottomless space. Most tribes assume that the world has two levels; the earth, which is the home of the aboriginal men and women, and the sky, in which the sun, moon, and star people live, as well as, during the dry season, the rainstorms, the thunder, and the lightning.

According to some tribes, the home of the dead—that is, the aboriginal ‘‘heaven”—is also in the sky, although other aboriginal groups consider that, when dead, they will take their eternal rest on a distant island, in a dense jungle, or in some other inaccessible place.

At the conclusion of the burial rituals...