Gunditjmara Build the Budj Bim Eel Aquaculture System
- Date
- c. 4600 BCE
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- South-western Victoria, Australia (Oceania)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
Around 4600 BCE, the Gunditjmara people of south-western Victoria, Australia, engineered an extensive aquaculture system across the basalt lava flows of the Budj Bim volcano, today recognised as one of the oldest and most extensive such systems on Earth.
Using volcanic stone, they constructed a complex network of channels, weirs, dams and holding ponds to divert and manage water, trapping, storing and harvesting kooyang (short-finned eel) at different stages of growth, along with fish and other species. Woven funnel-shaped baskets set in the weirs captured the migrating eels, which were then smoked in hollow trees for preservation and trade. Radiocarbon dating of one eel-trap component at Lake Condah has returned an age of about 6,600 years, with associated infrastructure possibly older still. The reliable food surplus this system produced supported permanent stone-house villages of hundreds of dwellings, challenging long-held assumptions that pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians were exclusively nomadic hunter-gatherers. In 2019 the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape became the first place inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List solely for its Aboriginal cultural values.
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Related science, technology & invention events
- The ard plough and the Secondary Products Revolutionc. 4500–3500 BCE
- The first copper smelting and the dawn of the Chalcolithicc. 5000 – 4600 BCE
- Domestication of sorghum and pearl millet in the African Sahelc. 4000–2500 BCE
- Development of large-scale irrigation agriculture in southern Mesopotamiac. 5300–4100 BCE
- Invention of the wheel and wheeled vehiclesc. 3500 BCE
- Early horse domestication on the Eurasian steppec. 3500 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
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