Timeless History Invented Yesterday
Robert Hill, Quadrant, May 18 2026
I have never read the “First Knowledges” box set and, after a decade spent immersed in this field, probably never will. That is not intellectual laziness. It is recognition of a relentless and deceitful genre. The first box set of six books was released in 2023 and in June this year we are told we will be privileged to have a box set of 10 books for $195.
This article is not a review of the 10 books but rather a consideration of a cultural moment: one in which Aboriginal Australia has been steadily transformed from a small-scale hunter-gatherer society into a profound ‘civilisation’ of extraordinary sophistication retrospectively credited with astronomy, engineering, politics, mathematics, economics, architecture, agriculture and environmental science in forms supposedly hidden from every serious observer until the present age.
The boxed set represents perhaps the most elaborate construction yet assembled within this broader movement of institutional mythmaking, one in which historical restraint has steadily collapsed and the ordinary boundaries between evidence, speculation, and fantasy have become increasingly blurred. Yet given the continuing incentives within universities, publishing, government institutions, and ARC-funded research to reward ever more expansive reinterpretation, it is entirely possible that further cards remain to be added to the structure.