When historian Billy Griffiths set about charting the history of Aboriginal archaeology in Australia more than six years ago, he wrote out of a sense of responsibility to glean more about the country in which he lived.

Until the mid 20th century, it was widely believed Indigenous Australians had arrived only a few thousands of years before and their societies were static.

Billy Griffiths, non fiction writer of NSW Premier's Literary Award's book of the year. Credit:Christopher Pearce

"Not just young but primitive, a fossilised stage in Western evolution," Griffiths says.

Since then, history has been upended. Human experience has been found to go back more than 65,000 years, before the Ice Age, and represents different societies living at a time of great environmental change when it was possible to walk from Hobart to Port Moresby.