Aboriginal songlines
Líneas del canto (songlines) aborígenes
- Date
- desde hace milenios (tradición oral, edad indeterminada) · confidence low
- Place
- Uluru, Northern Territory, Australia
- Credited to
- Aboriginal peoples of Australia
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Routes across country encoded in songs, dances and stories that describe in order the waterholes, hills and sacred places a traveller meets. They work as an oral map that allowed crossing deserts hundreds of kilometres wide.
The concept spread worldwide through Bruce Chatwin's book (1987) and its scope varies among peoples; the exact age is indeterminable, though some stories preserve memories of over seven thousand years ago.
What it led to
- long-distance navigation and trade between groups
- transmission of knowledge about water and landscape across generations