Australian aborigines have lived at Kow Swamp. There are canoe trees where the bark has been taken from the tree to make a canoe. There are also middens, which are rubbish heaps with evidence of what people ate. Early European settlers described an Aboriginal ceremonial site on the north side of the swamp. In 1925 part of a skull was found on the west side of the swamp during digging works. It was called the "Cohuna Cranium". The editor of the local newspaper "Cohuna Farmers Weekly" notified authorities and the importance of the discovery was realised. In the 1960s, Alan Thorne also found an ancient bone in the collection at the Museum of Victoria, and traced the find spot to Kow Swamp. Archaeological excavations took place between 1968 and 1972 by Thorne for the Australian National University in Canberra. Further remains were found around the swamp by a local person, Gordon Spark. By 1972 the remains of at least forty individuals had been excavated and studied. These discoveries helped prove the wide range of Aboriginal genetic history. They have been used to show that there were different waves of immigrants to Australia before European discovery.