Peter White 'A view from the ANBG 200 years ago'

Where we now walk, sit and admire the beauty of the ANBG has been the home of Aboriginal people for more than 25,000 years. This talk gives a little glimpse of how these people may have lived, how they obtained their living from the environment and the traces of their lives that we can still see in the urban landscape of the National Capital."

Peter has archaeological qualifications and, as an interest over the years, has worked on archaeological projects in the ACT and elsewhere.  He has a strong interest in history, and particularly the story of our species - Aboriginal men and women - in Australia for the last 50,000 years or more.  Australia's 50,000 year history has only been written in detail for the last 200 years or so, since the arrival of Europeans.  Before that time we rely on archaeology and new scientific methods to unravel what happened in the past. Since retiring, Peter runs history courses for members of the University of the Third Age.  This talk is based on a little bit of his course ‘Deep Time and Archaeology : Aboriginal Australia before 1788’. That course seeks to explain our current knowledge of Australian ‘prehistory’ and to encourage thinking about our history as including that vast depth of time before the arrival of Europeans."