Dan
I won't argue your point of view.
you say 3000, some say 60,000. Mid point is 28500. If it's a case of maths let's for the sake of peace and respecting peoples beliefs(whether right or wrong) just accept an average.

Do you have an opinion on the belief of the age of the bible, the book of Thoth or Corpus Hermeticum?

Thanks and could you please supply the relevant mathematical proofs?

I am sure that you are absolutely right, imajulianutter.

>>There is no racism in my thoughts as I have expressed them.<<

It must have been my imagination..

Imajuliannutter,
For Australian aborigines inhabiting the continent, you first suggest a history of 40,000 years as the figure, though mention people may give it a wide range, some as low as 3000 or as high as 60,000 (I’ve heard even higher.) You don’t seem very sure, despite being quite emphatic at first instance.

It seems to me the only reason people say 40,000 is that they’ve heard others say it so often that it has come to stick. The numbers you’ve thrown about with cavalier abandon are really a very long way apart. Even 10,000 years is an incredibly long time in human terms. It’s longer than all of recorded history. Your solution to the problem is to pick a random number somewhere in between them all. Is this your usual approach to problem solving?

I’m not aiming for a mathematical proof. Mathematics is just a tool to help decide what is ball park reasonable and what is not. 28,500 is not reasonable, and I’ll state why below.

As for the age of the Bible, there are some pretty standard dates going around for the ages of the various books, depending on which book of the Bible you are talking about (there’s something in the order of 1500 years between the first and the last). For those other two you mention, I’ve never heard of either one.

Pericles,
The problem of population growth is a real problem for the idea that people have been living in Australia for 40,000 years. The problem doesn’t disappear by suggesting that people are also dying. All population growth models are well aware of the fact that people die.

I’ll try and put this simply. If more babies are born than people die in a year, then there has been a net increase. Imagine an increase of one percent. Such an increase over the years accumulates, a bit like money gaining interest in the bank. One percent increase carried over about 70 years leads to a doubling. For example, if Australia’s population was 22 million in 2014, with a one percent increase it would double in roughly 70 years: 44 million in 2084, 88 million in 2154, etc.

Populations tend to increase in such manner, sometimes quicker, sometimes slower, but they increase at a certain rate. Even with the catastrophes, wars and famines, over the 20th Century, most nations saw a multiplied increase.

If they decrease consistently over a time, they will dwindle and disappear. That is obviously not what happened to the Australian aborigines, as they are still here. They are, of course, a resourceful, intelligent and durable group of peoples.

So the Aborigines have increased over time, but at what rate? Let’s imagine starting with 20 people increasing at a meager rate of 0.4%.

After 2,500 years – about 432,000 (that seems ball park reasonable),
After 3,000 years – about 3.2 million people (more than what is evidently present),
After 5,000 years – about 9 billion people (quite unreasonable)
After 10,000 years – about 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people (ridiculously unreasonable,)
After 28,500 years (Julian’s preferred age) – about 25 with 48 zeros following!
After 40,000 years – about 22 with 68 zeros following!

I put the problem in the hope that someone may come up with a reasonable solution given the tendency for an intelligent and resourceful people to naturally increase. The Aborigines couldn’t have been suffering at zero increase or near extinction levels for 37,000 of their 40,000 year existence.

Dan

I don't have much truck with mathematics, too many assumptions and variables to be as simple as you suggest.

Neither of us was alive during the time of the ancient Egyptians either. Evidence suggests their civilisation was likely to have started between 9000 and 15000 years ago.

How does that fit your mathematical model?
Shouldn't there now be at least 9 billion Egyptians?

'The Aborigines couldn’t have been suffering at zero increase or near extinction levels for 37,000 of their 40,000 year existence.'

Why not?
cheers Dan

Pericles,

It was in your interpretation not your imagination but I'll accept your statement sorta as a simple apology.