Warratyi facts for kids
Warratyi is the site of a prehistoric rock shelter in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Located around 550 kilometres (340 mi) north of Adelaide and about 200 kilometres (120 mi) inland, it has been identified as the oldest known site of human habitation in inland Australia. Newspapers reported that this rock shelter was discovered by chance in 2011 by a local resident who stumbled upon it while looking for somewhere to go to the toilet. Researchers found thousands of artefacts and bone fragments, which enabled them to date the shelter's occupation to a number of periods between 49,000 and 10,000 years ago. The finds include the earliest evidence in Australia of the development of bone and stone-axe technology, the use of ochre, and interaction with megafauna such as Diprotodon.
Discovery
The site is located in the ancestral lands of the Adnyamathanha, an Indigenous Australian people. It lies in a gorge at the southern end of the Lake Eyre basin in the northern Flinders Ranges. Its discovery came about by chance during an exploratory trip into the Flinders Range by Clifford Coulthard, an Adnyamathanha elder, and Giles Hamm, an archaeologist from La Trobe University.
While Coulthard was searching for a place to go to the toilet, the two men found a spring surrounded by rock art and a soot-blackened fissure in the rock nearby. They realised immediately that the soot indicated that the fissure had been used as a shelter where fires had been lit. The fissure is located about 20 metres (66 ft) above a creek bed. It is approximately 10 metres (33 ft) wide and extends to a depth of about 4 metres (13 ft).
Finds
Between 2011 and 2014, a team of researchers led by Hamm excavated the shelter to a depth of 1 metre (3.3 ft). They found over 4,300 artefacts including bone fragments from sixteen species of mammal and one reptile, as well as eggs from emus and an extinct giant bird, Genyornis newtoni. The animal remains included bones from the extinct Diprotodon, a wombat-like creature the size of a rhinoceros, which had probably been killed and brought to the shelter to be cooked and eaten. Most of the 3 kilograms (6.6 lb) of bones discovered were probably from a single species, the yellow-footed rock-wallaby.
The artefacts included pieces of gypsum pigment, hafted and stone tools, and bone needles including the oldest bone tool so far found in Australia. The shelter also provided evidence of the earliest known ochre usage in Australia and south-east Asia. Fragments of fibrous plant material found at the site may be the remains of nets, which the occupants may have used to catch the fast-moving wallabies.
