The aborigines of Australia may have been some of the first people on the planet. Recent discoveries of relics, including stone tools, show that humans lived near Penrith, New South Wales, about 47,000 years ago. Australian aborigines migrated from northern lands by sea, when the water passages were narrower than they are today. This is the first evidence of sea travel by prehistoric humans. The saga of this water passing survives in modern-day aboriginal folklore. To put this in perspective, remember that 50,000 years ago, humans were nomadic. Early aborigines did not cultivate crops, and in Australia at the time there were no animals that could be domesticated. No one knows how long it took aboriginal people to reach Australia, but archaeologists are searching through ancient campsites for vestiges of their early lifestyle. Fossilized remains indicate that these nomadic people not only gathered food from the land, but they also subsisted on meat from large animals that no longer exist today. As part of their hunting tradition, aborigines ritually covered themselves in mud to mask their own scent or for camouflage. Aboriginal society marked the major events of life with rites such as circumcision, marriage, and cremation. Older people were revered and cared for as great sources of wisdom. When Westerners arrived in Australia in 1788, the 300,000 aborigines who lived there were not eager to assimilate their ways. In the following years, disease, loss of land, and loss of identity shaped the aborigines’ history perhaps as much as their first prehistoric crossing from the north.