The old colonial attitude that the Australian Aborigine was an unlearned and uncultured wild man has been slowly eradicated. Now Ray P. Norris of the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility and Duane W. Hamacher of the Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University have begun putting together the pieces from archaeological findings and interviews with remaining Aboriginal Australians to show that the people of this oldest human culture on the planet were well aware of the movements of the heavens and maintained many very accurate astronomical observations.

Even without a written language these ancient astronomers kept up with such cyclical phenomena as solstices, equinoxes and the proper times for ceremonies as well as food gathering. They also noted such random events as eclipses, comets and meteor impacts.

You will have to download the PDF file to read their fascinating report but it is well worth it to investigate “The Australian Stonehedge” at arXiv:0906.0155v1 [physics.hist-ph]