Tasmania Stock Photography

Twelve thousand years ago sea level was rising as the most recent period of global glaciation eased. The land mass now known as Tasmania was cut off and the Aboriginal people living here were isolated. They shared many traits with Australian mainland Aboriginal people but also developed physically and culturally into a distinctive population. The Tasmanians were hunters and gatherers. They made tools and containers from wood, bone, stone, seaweed, bark, grass and sinew. They managed their environment carefully, moving around their country to harvest seasonal food resources and using fire to maintain grasslands which supported an abundance of wallabies and kangaroos. Coastal people relied on the sea for much of their diet. Scale fish were eaten in the distant past but apparently not since about 3,500 years ago, however the women collected abalone, oysters, mussels and other shellfish. The remains of these make up enormous middens all around Tasmania’s coastline. The Tasmanians made bark canoes to travel to offshore islands to harvest muttonbirds and seals during summer and autumn. The people camped in family groups several of which formed a band, the land-holding group in Tasmanian society. Several bands spoke the same language and there were nine language groups / tribes in Tasmania at the time of European contact. Bands with reciprocal arrangements intermarried and shared resources.