Tens of thousands of years ago, communities in northern Australia began developing systems for managing information to help them survive in a harsh environment. They designed these systems to delegate roles and responsibilities to different people with different skills, often delineated by age and gender. They shared knowledge about where to find certain foodstuffs and water supplies, how to distinguish medicinal plants from poisonous ones, and where territorial borders were drawn. They depended…

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Read more stories by Lyndon Ormond-Parker & Lucy Bernholz.