NARRATOR: Mullumbimby,
New South Wales, 1939.
Frederick Slater, the president
of the Australian Archeology
Society, was dispatched to
investigate the discovery
of a complex aboriginal
arrangement consisting
of 188 standing stones.
Slater dubbed the formation
the Stonehenge of Australia
and became convinced that it
was one of the oldest temple
complexes in the world,
predating those found
in Europe and the Middle East.
Frederick Slater found that
the site he was investigating
was part of a larger,
much larger site,
and it fitted in very closely
with aboriginal sacred lore,
myths, and legends.
After a time, Frederick Slater
began to posit and suggest
that instead of out
of Africa, that maybe
we should re-examine
the evolution
of man as out of Australia.
He took a massive
leap and started
declaring that in ancient
times in Australia,
the Aborigines were more
advanced than any culture
that he could recount
on the planet.
He was declared almost
insane by the rest
of the academic community.
The landowners were so
terrified of the controversy
that it implied
that it was pretty
much destroyed by bulldozers.
There are many stone
circles throughout the British
Isles and Europe.
Stonehenge is one of
the most well known,
but they all have
some relationship
to astronomical observatories.
This Aboriginal
Stonehenge would really
alter the way we think
of the Aboriginals
and the sophistication
of their society,
where they had astronomical and
archeo-astronomical structures
that help them
monitor the heavens,
much as standing stones
in Europe would have done.
For our people, it went beyond
the paintings and the carvings
into stone arrangements.
We would arrange in
certain patterns, which
relate to the
constellation of the stars,
in regards to our connectedness
with the sky world
and where we originate from.
NARRATOR: Could the so-called
aboriginal Stonehenge
provide insight into the
other stone arrangements found
scattered throughout the world?
If so, might they
serve to provide
a permanent record of a
significant connection
to another world?
Uluru Rock, also
known as a Ayers Rock,
is located nearly in the
center of the continent
over 1,200 miles from the
nearest major Australian city.
This geological anomaly
is one of the largest
isolated rocks in the world.
It is over two miles long
and rises over 1,100 feet.
It is, in fact, the exposed tip
of a huge vertical slab of rock
that continues below the
surface for three miles.
It is a huge sedimentary
boulder that's gigantic sitting
there in the middle
of the desert,
and geologists
cannot really explain
how Ayres Rock came to be.
It's almost as if it was
lifted up from somewhere else
and brought to the
center of the continent
and then just dumped there.
NARRATOR: For the
indigenous population,
Uluru is one of their
most sacred sites
and a place of pilgrimage.
They consider it the
navel of the earth.
For the aboriginal
cosmologies, a lot of times
the landscape itself is sort
of like the Bible and heaven
rolled into one.
So in places like
Uluru, Ayers Rock,
this rock has great significance
because they built this
into their cultural memories
of when the world was formed
by sky spirits coming to earth.
