The Aborigines (澳洲土著) have lived in Australia for about 60,000 years. They painted pictures inside caves, and these are the rock paintings that have given us so much information about Aboriginal life. For example, some of the paintings that are about 10,000 years old show us with boomerangs (回旋镖). From this we know that the Aborigines started using boomerangs for hunting at that time. Other pictures show kangaroos, so we know that there were kangaroos at that time.
The Aborigines believed that spirits made people, animals and plants, and that these spirits still live on the Earth. For Aborigines, no one can own the Earth-the Earth belongs to the spirits.
In 1700, there were many Aboriginal groups with a population of 750,000 all over Australia, and there were probably more than 240 different Aboriginal languages. The groups did not have a leader. Instead, things were decided by the older men in a group. People from different groups often travelled hundreds of miles to meet each other.
Aboriginal life changed when an English boat arrived in Australia in 1770. Many Aborigines were killed in the wars that they had with the English. More Europeans came, and they started taking land from the Aborigines. The Europeans also brought new illnesses that killed the Aborigines. The result is that today there are only about 300,000 Aborigines in Australia.
