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I was taught as a child in Australia that the Indigenous Australians were the world’s oldest living/surviving civilization.
by docdeek 7y ago
I was taught as a child in Australia that the Indigenous Australians were the world’s oldest living/surviving civilization.
- ars 7y agoThey are probably excluded for not having any sort of symbolic communication system (writing, hieroglyphics, knot patterns, stuff like that).
- garmaine 7y agoOr cities, monumental architecture, or unified government. The term "civilization" in this context is an academic category for historical societies, and its absence does not imply the pejorative "uncivilized."
- a_bonobo 7y agoThere were at least message sticks: https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-australia-oceania/aboriginal-message-sticks-and-ancient-system-communication-001670 https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-australia-oce... >For instance, one of the message sticks in the Dandiiri Maiwar Exhibition at the Queensland Museum and Science centre is as follows: Bishop White of Carpentaria described how he delivered a message stick on behalf of an Aboriginal boy in Darwin to a boy in Daly Waters. Bishop White asked the boy from Darwin to explain the message. The boy read the message symbols which requested headbands and boomerangs from Daly Waters. The Bishop delivered the message stick and asked the recipient to tell him what the message was. The boy interpreted the message stick exactly as the boy from Darwin had explained it.
- jacobush 7y agoWhich I understand, but it's also wrong. The dream songs are a symbolic communication and very stable at that, for millennia.
- fit2rule 7y agoThen this should be re-evaluated. They had no need for written communication systems, because they have (had) the most robust word of mouth, oral history of any human society. 40,000 years of oral traditions accurately reproduced over the generations. We 'civilised Europeans' can't even do 80 years. The argument can be made that the FNP of Australia are not only the longest running civilisation, but in terms of actual human activity, the most advanced. Longest-running, still in operation, mineral mines (20,000 years). They had cryptographic systems which not only kept the peace between 300 different languages, but enabled a massive trade network to flourish. Personally, I consider China young in comparison, and the West absolutely juvenile.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- danieltillett 7y agoYes Australian education leaves a lot to be desired.
- tjmc 7y agoWhy is the parent's statement incorrect? There's significant evidence that indigenous culture in Australia is at least 40,000 years old. Despite the lack of written history, there were some permanent settlements and agriculture. So I guess it comes down to the definition of civilization.
- danieltillett 7y ago1. We have no idea how old indigenous culture is in Australia. By this I mean how stable it is over time. All we know is there wasn’t much technical innovation, but as for language, ritual, religion there is zero data for how old it is. 2. Civilisation != culture. Aboriginal culture might be 40,000 years, but aboriginal civilisation is a little over 200 years old. 3. There are hundreds of different Aboriginal cultures so to make specific claim about them sharing a common feature is meaningless.
- cygx 7y agoWe have no idea how old indigenous culture is in Australia It is suspected that aboriginal stories about eg sea level rise, comets, changes in flora and fauna are based on historical events. Some of those events can be dated, suggesting on oral tradition that goes back 10,000+ years.
- danieltillett 7y agoEven if it is possible that Aboriginal people retain stories from long ago (unlikely in my opinion), this doesn’t prove that Aboriginal culture is unchanged for 40,000 years. I am highly sceptical of all these stories of Aboriginal people retaining non-useful knowledge for thousands of years. It doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. A really good counter example is the Tasmanian Aborigines forgetting how to fish. They fished (the waters of Tasmania are teeming with fish) until 4000 years ago and then for some reason stopped. If you lose highly useful information like how to fish, how likely is it that you will retain stories from 10,000 years ago of some comet?