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It's worth giving Dark Emu a (critical) read. It gathers numerous primary sources from early explorers which describe practices of cooperative harvesting, cult

It's worth giving Dark Emu a (critical) read. It gathers numerous primary sources from early explorers which describe practices of cooperative harvesting, cultivation, and land management between indigenous tribes in Australia. They also had totemic moieties which governed who could conceive together within and between tribes, ostensibly to avoid in-breeding. The agricultural revolution that spawned from the Indus valley civilisations were dependent on beasts of burden which were lacking in Australia. Though maybe with time something similar might have happened in Australia to, as it did in the Incan empire before it was destroyed by the conquistadors

jojobas 3y ago
Dark Emu was caught misrepresenting these primary sources. Pascoe is a conman.
- h0l0cube 3y ago
  The book has garnered some criticism from experts, which is expected for conjectures where most of the evidence has been destroyed, but I don't believe there's been a complete refutation of his ideas > Pascoe is a conman. As per this thread, you've made a lot of claims without sufficient back up, seem somewhat intransigent, and hold very one-sided beliefs. I think a little self-reflection is warranted, especially if your motivation is to convince people you have beyond a superficial understanding on these matters.
  - jojobas 3y ago
    For a lot of Pascoe's claim there's direct contradicting evidence, see Keen, Walshe and Sutton. He deliberately forged a lot of his evidence, such as trying to pass Torres Strait huts for mainland Australian, all to boost his name recognition and his Aboriginal food-themed business, therefore conman.
    - h0l0cube 3y ago
      > see Keen, Walshe and Sutton Have you seen them? I won't pretend to have read Walshe and Sutton, but from my cursory understanding of their criticism it's that Pascoe has conflated all indigenous tribes across the continent (not all engage directly in planting), and they used means of cultivating the land that were lower effort (harnessing fire and self-seeding) but still effective (which is much in sympathy with Pascoe's thesis). It certainly doesn't provide evidence that indigenous people didn't understand seeds
      - jojobas 3y ago
        So your conjecture is that they did understand seeds, but refused to use them and provide themselves with a relatively care-free way to not die of hunger en masse?
        h0l0cube 3y ago
        I’ll suggest again to read Guns, Gerns, and Steel. An agricultural revolution is predicated on fertile lands, high yield crops, domestication of docile animals (both for consumption and as beasts of burden), etc. then if those environmental factors are aligned, tools can be made to exploit them. Australia is a mostly arid country, it took the import of overseas animals and crops before western agriculture emerged, but up to that point indigenous Australians had the means to provide for themselves. From our best understanding of pre colonial life, famine wasn’t a feature of it. Funnily enough it’s post agricultural societies that often died of famine because they enabled huge populations in cities and shifting climate would cause several years of floods and droughts at infrequent and irregular intervals, and at such scale that it couldn’t be planned for by early societies (and maybe we might find out our modern global one still has this flaw)
        jojobas 3y ago
        Maori still managed it without much of the above just next door. Australian lands are so fertile that it half Asia with wheat and meat. Just wasn't their time. >From our best understanding of pre colonial life, famine wasn’t a feature of it. Yes it was. Killing over food theft, cannibalism and general hardship are a staple of Aboriginal stories. Agriculture, even early transport, power structures and communication systems made it possible to store and redistribute excess food. A single very dry season in a particular part of Australia meant its inhabitants would have to feed on someone else's land or die trying. Aboriginals are also way more susceptible to obesity and type 2 diabetes than Europeans, basically lacking European adaptations to abundant food.
jwhite 3y ago
For anyone interested in the "critical" aspect mentioned by h0l0cube, please consider also reading "Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate" by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe. Peter Sutton is an anthropologist and linguist (>50 years); Keryn Walshe is an archaeologist (>35 years). Peter Sutton in particular has spent large amounts of time living with indigenous people in the far north. Their book describes many deficiencies in Dark Emu, and also gives a huge amount of interesting information about how aboriginal people lived, and the way they curated the land and the food resources available to them. https://www.amazon.com/Farmers-Hunter-gatherers-Dark-Emu-Debate-ebook/dp/B097Q9NPG2/ https://www.amazon.com/Farmers-Hunter-gatherers-Dark-Emu-Deb...
- defrost 3y ago
  For anybody lacking context, ie. those outside Australia, for example, * Australia has much the same area as mainland USofA (ie. it's big) and spans from the tropical equatorial (northern Australia) to much closer to the south pole (Tasmania). * Pre colonial territories looked something like: https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_highres.jpg https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high... * Geographic landscapes include: Coastal, Rainforest, forest, river, and desert. There was (and still remains in some parts of Australia) a wide range of traditional lifestyles, the Murray river (and south western australia, and elsewhere) had extensive multigenerational fish traps - now largely destroyed for paddleboat navigation back in the day. I've heard Dark Emu has deficiencies, I can't say I've ever read it. There are other books that address pre colonial aboriginal living, pay attention to place and landscape and avoid generalising across a large landmass.

jojobas 3y ago

Dark Emu was caught misrepresenting these primary sources. Pascoe is a conman.

h0l0cube 3y ago
The book has garnered some criticism from experts, which is expected for conjectures where most of the evidence has been destroyed, but I don't believe there's been a complete refutation of his ideas > Pascoe is a conman. As per this thread, you've made a lot of claims without sufficient back up, seem somewhat intransigent, and hold very one-sided beliefs. I think a little self-reflection is warranted, especially if your motivation is to convince people you have beyond a superficial understanding on these matters.
- jojobas 3y ago
  For a lot of Pascoe's claim there's direct contradicting evidence, see Keen, Walshe and Sutton. He deliberately forged a lot of his evidence, such as trying to pass Torres Strait huts for mainland Australian, all to boost his name recognition and his Aboriginal food-themed business, therefore conman.
  - h0l0cube 3y ago
    > see Keen, Walshe and Sutton Have you seen them? I won't pretend to have read Walshe and Sutton, but from my cursory understanding of their criticism it's that Pascoe has conflated all indigenous tribes across the continent (not all engage directly in planting), and they used means of cultivating the land that were lower effort (harnessing fire and self-seeding) but still effective (which is much in sympathy with Pascoe's thesis). It certainly doesn't provide evidence that indigenous people didn't understand seeds
    - jojobas 3y ago
      So your conjecture is that they did understand seeds, but refused to use them and provide themselves with a relatively care-free way to not die of hunger en masse?
      - h0l0cube 3y ago
        I’ll suggest again to read Guns, Gerns, and Steel. An agricultural revolution is predicated on fertile lands, high yield crops, domestication of docile animals (both for consumption and as beasts of burden), etc. then if those environmental factors are aligned, tools can be made to exploit them. Australia is a mostly arid country, it took the import of overseas animals and crops before western agriculture emerged, but up to that point indigenous Australians had the means to provide for themselves. From our best understanding of pre colonial life, famine wasn’t a feature of it. Funnily enough it’s post agricultural societies that often died of famine because they enabled huge populations in cities and shifting climate would cause several years of floods and droughts at infrequent and irregular intervals, and at such scale that it couldn’t be planned for by early societies (and maybe we might find out our modern global one still has this flaw)
        jojobas 3y ago
        Maori still managed it without much of the above just next door. Australian lands are so fertile that it half Asia with wheat and meat. Just wasn't their time. >From our best understanding of pre colonial life, famine wasn’t a feature of it. Yes it was. Killing over food theft, cannibalism and general hardship are a staple of Aboriginal stories. Agriculture, even early transport, power structures and communication systems made it possible to store and redistribute excess food. A single very dry season in a particular part of Australia meant its inhabitants would have to feed on someone else's land or die trying. Aboriginals are also way more susceptible to obesity and type 2 diabetes than Europeans, basically lacking European adaptations to abundant food.

jwhite 3y ago

For anyone interested in the "critical" aspect mentioned by h0l0cube, please consider also reading "Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate" by Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe. Peter Sutton is an anthropologist and linguist (>50 years); Keryn Walshe is an archaeologist (>35 years). Peter Sutton in particular has spent large amounts of time living with indigenous people in the far north. Their book describes many deficiencies in Dark Emu, and also gives a huge amount of interesting information about how aboriginal people lived, and the way they curated the land and the food resources available to them. https://www.amazon.com/Farmers-Hunter-gatherers-Dark-Emu-Debate-ebook/dp/B097Q9NPG2/ https://www.amazon.com/Farmers-Hunter-gatherers-Dark-Emu-Deb...

defrost 3y ago
For anybody lacking context, ie. those outside Australia, for example, * Australia has much the same area as mainland USofA (ie. it's big) and spans from the tropical equatorial (northern Australia) to much closer to the south pole (Tasmania). * Pre colonial territories looked something like: https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_highres.jpg https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high... * Geographic landscapes include: Coastal, Rainforest, forest, river, and desert. There was (and still remains in some parts of Australia) a wide range of traditional lifestyles, the Murray river (and south western australia, and elsewhere) had extensive multigenerational fish traps - now largely destroyed for paddleboat navigation back in the day. I've heard Dark Emu has deficiencies, I can't say I've ever read it. There are other books that address pre colonial aboriginal living, pay attention to place and landscape and avoid generalising across a large landmass.