Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
From boomerangs to planes, spear-throwers to sourdough, and now Flinders Uni claims a 7000-year-old stone quarry is “ancient Aboriginal mining.” Is there any milestone the media won’t retroactively discover in the bush? The advanced Stone Age is here.
We all know Aboriginal Australians invented the boomerang—that sometimes-returning weapon of hunting and warfare. And naturally, because it flies, that of course makes it the direct blueprint for modern aviation.
Thank you to the viewer who sent in this 2020 video about Aboriginal Innovations highlighting this important, undeniable scientific fact. In it, a Sydney museum presenter points out that the boomerang utilises an aerofoil design—the exact same physics used in modern aircraft wings.
Now, she doesn’t explicitly say Aboriginal Australians invented the aeroplane, but as she flies the boomerang through the air like a Cessna while the editors cut to an image of a commercial jetliner, the subtle-as-a-brick visual implication is clear: this is where it all started. She even holds it over her head and spins it like a helicopter, just in case you thought that Leonardo da Vinci might have been the first mastermind behind vertical flight.
If you think that’s just a hyper-local museum over-selling an artefact to school groups during NAIDOC week, think again. In 2023, the BBC published an article explicitly asking: “Did Australia’s boomerangs pave the way for flight?”
I think we all know the answer.
They concluded: “In the last 50 years, scientists have realised that boomerangs are designed in a similar aerofoil manner as aeroplane wings… Therefore, whether intentional or not, the boomerang may have been a pivotal Indigenous predecessor to modern flight.”
So, as we all know, the Wright brothers—who famously achieved the first motorised, piloted flight in 1903 in North Carolina—were actually just using stolen technology. Despite a total lack of historical evidence, they clearly snuck into Australia at some point, stole some Indigenous boomerangs, and scaled them up to act as the wings of their plane.
It’s a classic case of devious Westerners taking credit for something designed by Indigenous Australians ten thousand years ago, purely to profit off the back of ancient outback innovation.
Then there is the woomera, a spear-throwing device designed to act as a mechanical extension of the human arm, allowing a spear to be launched with significantly greater speed, distance, and force. It was a clever piece of engineering for its time. Ultimately, however, this ancient ballistic tool proved to be no match against the industrialised reality of European steel and mass-produced gunpowder.
In 2021, the BBC also asked other hard-hitting questions like: “Who were the world’s first bakers?”
I think you can guess the answer: “Indigenous Australians were among the world’s first agriculturalists.”
To back up this monumental historical pivot, the BBC got their information from that completely uncontroversial pillar of flawless peer-reviewed rigour: Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 book, Dark Emu.
According to this narrative, a grinding stone discovered in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory proves that bread-making was happening a staggering 65,000 years ago. Even if you look past the mainstream archaeological consensus that those stones were actually used to grind paint pigment rather than sourdough starter, Pascoe notes that Aboriginal people were baking bread from wild seeds 18,000 years before the ancient Egyptians even touched a grain of wheat.
If you thought ancient agriculture was impressive, the National Indigenous Times recently covered the latest Aboriginal technological wonder under the grand headline: “Evidence of ancient Aboriginal mining discovered in South Australia’s Riverland.”
Researchers from Flinders University uncovered a 7,000-year-old site where “hard, fine-grained rocks were mined by Aboriginal people to craft tools, weapons and for trade.”
It’s a vital reminder to the sceptics out there. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that pre-colonial Australia was a primitive society relying heavily on wooden tools. This research proves beyond a doubt that they had successfully transitioned into a fully functional, highly advanced Stone Age civilisation.
From boomerangs to aeroplanes, spear-throwers to bread making, and now advanced stone mining, it really makes you wonder: is there any modern technological marvel that won’t eventually be retroactively credited to Australian Aboriginal people after the fact?
MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn
From boomerangs to planes, spear-throwers to sourdough, and now Flinders Uni claims a 7000-year-old stone quarry is “ancient Aboriginal mining.” Is there any milestone the media won’t retroactively discover in the bush? The advanced Stone Age is here.
We all know Aboriginal Australians invented the boomerang—that sometimes-returning weapon of hunting and warfare. And naturally, because it flies, that of course makes it the direct blueprint for modern aviation.
Thank you to the viewer who sent in this 2020 video about Aboriginal Innovations highlighting this important, undeniable scientific fact. In it, a Sydney museum presenter points out that the boomerang utilises an aerofoil design—the exact same physics used in modern aircraft wings.
Now, she doesn’t explicitly say Aboriginal Australians invented the aeroplane, but as she flies the boomerang through the air like a Cessna while the editors cut to an image of a commercial jetliner, the subtle-as-a-brick visual implication is clear: this is where it all started. She even holds it over her head and spins it like a helicopter, just in case you thought that Leonardo da Vinci might have been the first mastermind behind vertical flight.
If you think that’s just a hyper-local museum over-selling an artefact to school groups during NAIDOC week, think again. In 2023, the BBC published an article explicitly asking: “Did Australia’s boomerangs pave the way for flight?”
I think we all know the answer.
They concluded: “In the last 50 years, scientists have realised that boomerangs are designed in a similar aerofoil manner as aeroplane wings… Therefore, whether intentional or not, the boomerang may have been a pivotal Indigenous predecessor to modern flight.”
So, as we all know, the Wright brothers—who famously achieved the first motorised, piloted flight in 1903 in North Carolina—were actually just using stolen technology. Despite a total lack of historical evidence, they clearly snuck into Australia at some point, stole some Indigenous boomerangs, and scaled them up to act as the wings of their plane.
It’s a classic case of devious Westerners taking credit for something designed by Indigenous Australians ten thousand years ago, purely to profit off the back of ancient outback innovation.
Then there is the woomera, a spear-throwing device designed to act as a mechanical extension of the human arm, allowing a spear to be launched with significantly greater speed, distance, and force. It was a clever piece of engineering for its time. Ultimately, however, this ancient ballistic tool proved to be no match against the industrialised reality of European steel and mass-produced gunpowder.
In 2021, the BBC also asked other hard-hitting questions like: “Who were the world’s first bakers?”
I think you can guess the answer: “Indigenous Australians were among the world’s first agriculturalists.”
To back up this monumental historical pivot, the BBC got their information from that completely uncontroversial pillar of flawless peer-reviewed rigour: Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 book, Dark Emu.
According to this narrative, a grinding stone discovered in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory proves that bread-making was happening a staggering 65,000 years ago. Even if you look past the mainstream archaeological consensus that those stones were actually used to grind paint pigment rather than sourdough starter, Pascoe notes that Aboriginal people were baking bread from wild seeds 18,000 years before the ancient Egyptians even touched a grain of wheat.
If you thought ancient agriculture was impressive, the National Indigenous Times recently covered the latest Aboriginal technological wonder under the grand headline: “Evidence of ancient Aboriginal mining discovered in South Australia’s Riverland.”
Researchers from Flinders University uncovered a 7,000-year-old site where “hard, fine-grained rocks were mined by Aboriginal people to craft tools, weapons and for trade.”
It’s a vital reminder to the sceptics out there. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that pre-colonial Australia was a primitive society relying heavily on wooden tools. This research proves beyond a doubt that they had successfully transitioned into a fully functional, highly advanced Stone Age civilisation.
From boomerangs to aeroplanes, spear-throwers to bread making, and now advanced stone mining, it really makes you wonder: is there any modern technological marvel that won’t eventually be retroactively credited to Australian Aboriginal people after the fact?
MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn
