Arnhem Land in the context of "Nhulunbuy"

The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the colonisation of Australia in 1788, which marks the start of consistent written documentation of Australia. This period has been variously estimated, with most evidence suggesting that it goes back between 50,000 and 65,000 years. This era is referred to as prehistory rather than history because knowledge of this time period does not derive from written documentation. However, some argue that Indigenous oral tradition should be accorded an equal status.

Human habitation of the Australian continent began with the migration of the ancestors of today's Aboriginal Australians by land bridges and short sea crossings from what is now Southeast Asia. It is uncertain how many waves of immigration may have contributed to these ancestors of modern Aboriginal Australians. The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land is perhaps the oldest site showing the presence of humans in Australia. The oldest human remains found are at Lake Mungo in New South Wales, which have been dated to around 41,000 years ago.

Madjedbebe (formerly known as Malakunanja II) is a sandstone rock shelter in Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia, possibly the oldest site of human habitation in Australia. It is located about 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the coast. It is part of the lands traditionally inhabited by the Mirarr, an Aboriginal Australian clan of the Gaagudju people, of the Gunwinyguan language group. Madjedbebe is located within the former Jabiluka Mineral Leasehold, surrounded by the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park. The mineral lease expired in August 2024, after the Australian federal government refused a renewal application from the mine's operators. The government plans to formally absorb the site into Kakadu National Park.

The Gulf of Carpentaria is a sea off the northern coast of Australia. It is enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea, which separates Australia and New Guinea. The northern boundary is generally defined as a line from Slade Point, Queensland (the northwestern corner of Cape York Peninsula) in the northeast, to Cape Arnhem on the Gove Peninsula, Northern Territory (the easternmost point of Arnhem Land), in the west.

At its mouth, the Gulf is 590 km (370 mi) wide, and further south, 675 km (420 mi). The north–south length exceeds 700 km (430 mi). It covers a water area of about 300,000 km (120,000 sq mi). The general depth is between 55 and 66 metres (30 and 36 fathoms) with a maximum depth of 69 metres (38 fathoms). The tidal range in the Gulf of Carpentaria is between two and three metres (6.5 and 10 ft). The Gulf and adjacent Sahul Shelf were dry land at the peak of the last ice age 18,000 years ago when global sea level was around 120 m (390 ft) below its present position. At that time a large, shallow lake occupied the centre of what is now the Gulf. The Gulf hosts a submerged coral reef province that was only recognised in 2004.

Many Australian Aboriginal cultures have or traditionally had a manually coded language, a signed counterpart of their oral language. This appears to be connected with various speech taboos between certain kin or at particular times, such as during a mourning period for women or during initiation ceremonies for men, as was also the case with Caucasian Sign Language but not Plains Indian Sign Language, which did not involve speech taboo, or deaf sign languages, which are not encodings of oral language. There is some similarity between neighbouring groups and some contact pidgin similar to Plains Indian Sign Language in the American Great Plains.

Sign languages appear to be most developed in areas with the most extensive speech taboos: the central desert (particularly among the Warlpiri and Warumungu), and western Cape York. Complex gestural systems have also been reported in the southern, central, and western desert regions, the Gulf of Carpentaria (including north-east Arnhem Land and the Tiwi Islands), some Torres Strait Islands, and the southern regions of the Fitzmaurice and Kimberley areas. Evidence for sign languages elsewhere is slim, but they have been noted as far south as the south coast (Jaralde Sign Language) and there are even some accounts from the first few years of the 20th century of the use of sign by people from the south west coast. However, many of the codes are now extinct, and very few accounts have recorded any detail.

Alligator Rivers is the name of an area in an Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory of Australia, containing three rivers, the East, West, and South Alligator Rivers. It is regarded as one of the richest biological regions in Australia, with part of the region in the Kakadu National Park. It is an Important Bird Area (IBA), lying to the east of the Adelaide and Mary River Floodplains IBA. It also contains mineral deposits, especially uranium, and the Ranger Uranium Mine is located there. The area is also rich in Australian Aboriginal art, with 1500 sites. The Kakadu National Park is one of the few World Heritage sites on the list because of both its natural and human heritage values. They were explored by Lieutenant Phillip Parker King in 1820, who named them in the mistaken belief that the crocodiles in the estuaries were alligators.

The Bininj are an Aboriginal Australian people of Western Arnhem land in the Northern Territory. The sub-groups of Bininj are sometimes referred to by the various language dialects spoken in the region, that is, the group of dialects known as Bininj Kunwok; so the people may be named the Kunwinjku, Kuninjku, Kundjeyhmi (Gundjeihmi), Manyallaluk Mayali, Kundedjnjenghmi and Kune groups.

Three languages are spoken among the Mirrar or Mirarr clan group, who are prominent in matters relating to looking after the traditional lands. The majority speak Kundjeyhmi, while others speak Gaagudju and others another language.

The Macro-Gunwinyguan languages, also called Arnhem or Gunwinyguan, are a family of Australian Aboriginal languages spoken across eastern Arnhem Land in northern Australia. Their relationship has been demonstrated through shared morphology in their verbal inflections.

Many of the languages have a fortis–lenis contrast in plosive consonants. Lenis/short plosives have weak contact and intermittent voicing, while fortis/long plosives have full closure, a more powerful release burst, and no voicing.

Pera and Arnhem were two ships from the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Companie abbreviated to VOC) that explored the north Australian coast in 1623. Arnhem Land is named after Arnhem, while the ship itself was named after the Dutch city Arnhem.

The Gove Peninsula is at the northeastern corner of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. The peninsula became strategically important during World War II when a Royal Australian Air Force base was constructed at what is now Gove Airport. The peninsula was involved in a famous court case known as the Gove land rights case, when local Yolngu people tried to claim native title over their traditional lands in 1971, after the Australian Government had granted a mineral lease to a bauxite mining company without consulting the local peoples. Today the land is owned by the Yolngu people.