Explores the traditional lifestyle of Australia's Aboriginal people - one of the world's oldest continuous cultures.
Since their arrival many thousands of years ago, Australia's Aboriginal people have developed a unique, rich and elaborate way of life. With a deep spiritual attachment to land and a strong sense of community, they have drawn on tradition to respond to new situations. In this way, they have thrived in Australia's changing and often harsh landscape.
Early European settlers in Australia judged Aboriginal culture as "primitive". Yet the Aboriginal people they encountered had, in fact, a highly sophisticated understanding of their environment and complex strategies for finding food and medicines, and for making tools and art objects.
Philip Clarke paints a picture of the culture and traditions of Aboriginal Australia. Drawing on research from anthropology, cultural geography and environmental studies as well as his own fieldwork, he explains the diverse ways in which Aboriginal people relate to the land across the continent.
Heavily illustrated, 'Where The Ancestors Walked' will appeal to anyone interested in understanding the traditional lifestyle of Aboriginal people.