BRUCE PASCOE: I learnt in 2017 that Aboriginal people had been grinding grain into flour 35,000 years ago.
REPORTER: 35,000 years ago, Cuddie Springs was a large, ancient lake, at the centre of a trade route used by thousands of Aborigines. The water also attracted large numbers of giant kangaroos, four metre high emus and wombats the size of hippos. Convinced the site holds the key to unlocking questions surrounding the extinction of these megafauna, Judith Field has initiated the biggest archaeological dig in Australia. So far literally thousands of stone tools and implements dating back 35,000 years have been uncovered and are now being carefully preserved and catalogued.
DR RICHARD FULLAGAR: To get something like seed grinding, you know, hunting and gathering society, is particularly unusual to get this at 30,000 years ago. Why were these people doing this then way back before any other people were doing it anywhere else in the world?
REPORTER: Richard believes he can even identify what kinds of plants the Cuddie Springs people were grinding. Grass seeds are the most likely candidates. The puzzle is that such plant processing techniques could have existed in Australia 30,000 years ago. On other continents, seed grinding doesn't appear until 12,000 years ago. Then it was swiftly followed by agriculture and the first towns and cities.
DR RICHARD FULLAGAR: There's two sort of surprises, if you like. One of them is, hey, here are people we thought shouldn't be as advanced as this doing this sort of thing. That's one thing. The second thing about it is that, well, where did they take that sort of technology? I mean, they were first in with this technology. Where did they take it? And where they took it was to inhabit one of the most extreme environments in the world. This incredibly arid core of central Australia, and developed a technology for living there on a much more permanent basis than had been done before.
REPORTER: Another puzzle is the origin of the stone used to make the tools. Since no stone occurs naturally at Cuddie Springs, it's all had to be carried in. The seed grinders, for example, are made from a honey-coloured sandstone, and this steep hillside 105km away is almost certainly the source.
MAN: That way.
I'd say there's a definite connection because this is the only sandstone outcrop in this whole western region of New South Wales.
BRUCE PASCOE: And I thought, "Oh, that's interesting. "I wonder who were the first people in the world to grind grain into flour." So I went on Google, I searched through Google, and it comes up the Egyptians were the first to bake bread in the world 17,000 years ago. Well, that's a little difference of 18,000 years. So, Aboriginal people were the first bakers on earth, by a long way. And I thought that was pretty good. The very next year an old grinding stone was found in the Northern Territory at Kakadu and the starch in that grinding stone was 65,000 years old. So that's double the length of time.
REPORTER: The Mirrar people have long known the significance of this place they call Madjedbebe.
MAY NANGO: We remember this place for a long time. Getting old now. So we still gather at this place.
SIMON MUDJANDI: We get told stories from, like, old people like Mark and May.
REPORTER: Excavations at the rock shelter, a hidden site near Kakadu, have confirmed its importance in human history.
CHRIS CLARKSON: We found a very dense layer of artefacts and we've dated those now with the help of the team here to 65,000 years ago, which of course pushes back the age of Aboriginal occupation in Australia by about 18,000 years.
REPORTER: The site's been excavated before, but this time scientists say they've got more proof about the date from thousands of artefacts, including ancient axes, ochre deposits and surrounding sediment. And what exactly did you find here?
CHRIS CLARKSON: We found really, really rich sites. So, at the top we found dense food remains, there were human skeleton and burial there. And as we went down we found lots of artefacts, we found intact fireplaces, we found grindstones, we found rock art under the ground, and then really, it's exciting, we've got beautiful grindstone axes or hatchet heads all the way to the bottom. So it's giving us a picture of enormous cultural continuity from 65,000 years ago right up to the present.
BRUCE PASCOE: And the fact that we're only learning about this now is sad in a way, but let's rejoice in it, because we now know that this country can produce that. And every Australian shouldn't cringe at the idea that Aboriginal people were successful. We should rejoice in it and say, "I come from the country that invented bread. "I come from the country that was making bread 65,000 years ago. "Isn't that a fantastic thing? I'm so proud." We should get off at Los Angeles airport, Berlin airport, London airport and when people say, "Where are you from?" I want Australians to say, ""I come from the country that invented bread." And that's Australia. Our country.