Hand, Part 1

The blog has returned from its Australia sojourn, during which it learned the full extent of its ignorance about that country's history. The hand pictured above (stenciled on the wall of a natural sandstone cave in Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park, which is located northeast of Sydney) was placed there some time in the last 10,000 years by a group of the aboriginal people of Australia, the Guringai people . There is good archaeological evidence that the aboriginal people of Australia have lived in that country more than 40,000 years (some estimates go back to 125,000 years). They therefore represent the world's oldest continuous human culture, and currently constitute about 3% of the population of Australia.