Why is the parent's statement incorrect? There's significant evidence that indigenous culture in Australia is at least 40,000 years old. Despite the lack of written history, there were some permanent settlements and agriculture. So I guess it comes down to the definition of civilization.
1. We have no idea how old indigenous culture is in Australia. By this I mean how stable it is over time. All we know is there wasn’t much technical innovation, but as for language, ritual, religion there is zero data for how old it is.
2. Civilisation != culture. Aboriginal culture might be 40,000 years, but aboriginal civilisation is a little over 200 years old.
3. There are hundreds of different Aboriginal cultures so to make specific claim about them sharing a common feature is meaningless.
We have no idea how old indigenous culture is in Australia
It is suspected that aboriginal stories about eg sea level rise, comets, changes in flora and fauna are based on historical events. Some of those events can be dated, suggesting on oral tradition that goes back 10,000+ years.
Even if it is possible that Aboriginal people retain stories from long ago (unlikely in my opinion), this doesn’t prove that Aboriginal culture is unchanged for 40,000 years.
I am highly sceptical of all these stories of Aboriginal people retaining non-useful knowledge for thousands of years. It doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. A really good counter example is the Tasmanian Aborigines forgetting how to fish. They fished (the waters of Tasmania are teeming with fish) until 4000 years ago and then for some reason stopped. If you lose highly useful information like how to fish, how likely is it that you will retain stories from 10,000 years ago of some comet?
