Before 1788
It is not known how many people lived in Australia before the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. In 1930 the anthropologist Radcliffe-Brown estimated that the pre-contact Aboriginal population was around 300 000, with about 40 000 in New South Wales. More recent studies indicate that the figure was probably around one million for the whole continent and much greater than 40000 for New South Wales.
According to many Aboriginal beliefs people have been in Australia since the beginning — the Dreaming. It is known from the work of archaeologists that human occupation of Australia dates back at least 60000 years. The first people probably came from South-East Asia. Where they landed, whether there was more than one ‘wave’ of people, which mutes they took as they spread out over the continent, and how their numbers increased are matters for much study and discussion. However, by the time the British arrived in 1788, all parts of Australia were part of the territory of a particular linguistic group or ‘tribe’. This occupation and use of the entire continent provides the legal and moral basis for Aboriginal land-right claims to certain areas today.
Social organisation
The map opposite shows the language groups, or ‘tribes’, that are believed to have occupied New South Wales in 1788. Each of these groups spoke a different language or dialect, but people could usually speak the language of neighbouring people as well as their own. There was much contact between various groups for trade as well as for initiations, marriages and other ceremonies. While some groups had formed political or trade alliances, others were ‘at war’. Alliances between the various groups, as well as group boundaries, no doubt changed over the thousands of years Aboriginal people lived in New South Wales.
The language groups were each composed of several clans. Each clan, through religious law, was responsible for a certain area of land. It was through clan membership that individuals gained their special links with the land. All the people in a clan belonged to the same descent group (either patrilineal or matrilineal). Members of the same clan could not marry one another, so a person’s mother and father would have come from different clans. In areas where clan membership was based on patrilineal descent groups, children belonged to the same clan as the father. Where matrilineal descent groups occurred, children belonged to the same clan as the mother. Clans were associated with a particular species of animal which was a Dreaming ancestor.
The people who came together to live or hunt and gather food did not necessarily belong to the same clan. These groups, often referred to as bands or communities, usually consisted of one or more families. They were the basic economic unit of Aboriginal society.
