8 Astonishing Ancient Australian Structures That Rewrite History

Australia was long described as a place where nothing permanent was ever built, a story that colonial records repeat again and again. This video counts down eight constructions that prove otherwise, from a hand dug channel that farmed eels across three kilometres of Victorian swampland, to a fish trap system on the Barwon River that may be one of the oldest human made structures still standing anywhere on Earth. Along the way we cover ceremonial earth rings outside Melbourne, an industrial stone axe quarry worked for over a thousand years, permanent stone villages, a possible solstice aligned stone observatory, and the aquaculture system at Budj Bim that helped support settled Gunditjmara communities thousands of years before similar systems appeared elsewhere in the world. If you want to go even deeper into the parts of Australian history rarely covered in the classroom, check out The Timeline Lie, covering fifteen major archaeological sites across the country. Link below. New episodes drop weekly, and you can also catch us on Spotify, link below.