The First Australians

The story of the continent’s earliest human  arrivals is being revealed at a rock shelter  in remote and challenging territory

- Kate Ravilious

If you see a yamuti, then hide in a tree,” Adnyamathanha children are told, “for the Yamuti can’t lift its head to the sky.” For some Australians, learning about the Yamuti—a terrifying mythical creature that eats people and carries children away—is a rite of passage. The Adnyamathanha, one of Australia’s many aboriginal communities, have inhabited the Flinders Ranges in northern South Australia and passed down stories of the Yamuti for as long as they can remember. Some believe the myth has its origin in a long-extinct, hippo-sized mammal called the diprotodon—the largest marsupial known to have lived. Archaeological excavation inside a recently discovered rock shelter suggests that Australia’s earliest human occupants did, in fact, interact with these giant beasts more than 40,000 years ago. But the finds in the shelter, known as Warratyi, reveal much more. They show that people traveled into the continent’s arid interior far earlier than previously thought, and were culturally and technologically more sophisticated than once believed. Warratyi, researchers say, is rewriting the history of the first Australians.