The discovery suggests that the healing ritual was passed down through generations of Indigenous people since the last ice age Two slightly burnt, fat-covered sticks discovered inside an Australian cave are evidence of a healing ritual that was passed down unchanged by more than 500 generations of Indigenous people over the last 12,000 years, according to new research. The wooden sticks, found poking out of tiny fireplaces, showed that the ritual documented in the 1880s had been shared via oral ...