Indigenous Australian fire-stick farming began at least 11,000 years ago

Indigenous Australians have been using fire to shape the country’s northern ecosystems for thousands of years. Researchers analysed charcoal that was preserved in the sediment of a flooded sinkhole over the last 150,000 years. They discovered that, around 11,000 years ago, there was a shift to more frequent but less intense fires as a result of Indigenous fire-stick farming. European colonisation mostly brought an end to the practice, which might have contributed to the return of more high-intensity wildfires.