Did Australia's boomerangs pave the way for flight?

Likely developed 10,000 years ago by Aboriginal Australians, boomerangs may contain the design invention that makes flight possible.

The aircraft is one of the most significant developments of modern society, enabling people, goods and ideas to fly around the world far more efficiently than ever before. The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off. 

As early aviators discovered, the secret to flight is balancing the flow of air. Therefore, an aircraft's wings, tail or propeller blades are often shaped in a specially designed, curved manner called an aerofoil that lifts the plane up and allows it to drag or turn to the side as it moves through the air.

For many years, scholars couldn't figure out how, exactly, a boomerang flew. Yet, in the last 50 years, scientists have realised that boomerangs are designed in a similar aerofoil manner as aeroplane wings, with each side or "wing" of a boomerang curved to give it aerodynamic lift. Therefore, whether intentional or not, the boomerang may have been a pivotal Indigenous predecessor to modern flight.

For more on this and other stories, watch The First Inventors: Investigating Ancient Australia.

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