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> The Aborigines very likely helped turn much of Australia into a desert. That isn't remotely what that article (or the paper it summarises) suggests -- it has
by crispinb 9y ago
> The Aborigines very likely helped turn much of Australia into a desert.
That isn't remotely what that article (or the paper it summarises) suggests -- it has nothing whatsoever to do with desertification. The magnitude of ecological effects of indigenous settlement of Australia is as yet very poorly understood and highly contested, and the timeline even more so. It's possible, but by no means demonstrated, for example, that early human settlement wiped out megafauna, but that it quickly settled into a sustainable pattern as the incomers learned to manage the continent.
To label any detailed description of indigenous cultures as 'romanticizing' or relating to 18th century 'noble savage' myths, for no better reason than that it contradicts unevidenced & derogatory popular myths, is just lazy.
A portrait deriving from the actual evidence carefully unearthed so far suggests nothing remotely resembling a 'noble savage' account of indigenous Australian civilisation, nor one that was 'less effective' than ours. Indigenous Australians were not purely hunter-gatherers, running naked around a 'pristine' environment, but were active managers of an entire continent's biomass. The aforementioned Gammage and Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu are the best popular accounts, both drawing on and carefully referencing primary sources. Reading either might dispel a few prejudices.
- mythrwy 9y ago"That isn't remotely what that article (or the paper it summarises) suggests -- it has nothing whatsoever to do with desertification" Yes it is and yes it does. (But to find this out you have to read all the way to the end.) The idea is that monsoon patterns were changed and the dry season extended which heated the land and resulted in more aridity. It's not a fringe theory at all and there is a fair degree of evidence for it. Point being, primitives didn't necessarily live in Harmony with nature at all. Any more than we do. They just (to address your later point) were less "effective".
- crispinb 9y ago> Yes it is and yes it does. (But to find this out you have to read all the way to the end.) I've read both it and the study it refers to. It has nothing to do with desertification (and it's not empirical -- it's simply modelling a possibility). > It's not a fringe theory at all I said 'contested', not 'fringe'. Big, big difference. The appropriate response when something is contested is to reserve judgement. As I do. And as Gammage, Pascoe et al do (it has little relation to their theses). > Point being, primitives didn't necessarily live in Harmony with nature at all. Only hippies ever suggested they did. The mainstream emerging picture of Australian indigenous civilisation has nothing whatsoever to do with 'living in H[sic]armony with nature'. That you choose that phrase, and jump so reactively at straw men, displays only your tribal affiliation to a general thesis, without any knowledge of the specifics.
- mythrwy 9y agoWe must be reading entirely different articles. "We showed that the climate responded significantly to reduced vegetation cover in the pre-monsoon season. We found decreases in rainfall, higher surface and ground temperatures and enhanced atmospheric stability" In other words, burning vegetation led to a more arid climate. That is the entire thesis of the article. It's really pretty clear. Not to beat a dead horse still further but one of us is really missing something here. It could be me and if it is I'd like to know what. "Contested" isn't cause to reserve judgment at all. The age of the earth is contested. Man made climate change is contested. But the age of the earth is very likely what geologists claim it is. And it's also very likely aboriginal burning is one of the causes of aridity in Australia. In which case they weren't "managing" so much as ignorantly abusing. Very much as we do today.