Hi AJ,

One of your sources suggests " .... The estimates varied from a minimum figure of 300,000 to as high as over 1 million .... " and then mis-quotes Radcliffe-Brown, in his Australian Year Book article of 1930 as suggesting 750,000. My recollection, perhaps faulty after so many years, is that Brown cited a figure in his article of 250,000.

I'll stick with that.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi AJ

Every reference that I have ever read on the numbers of pre colonial aboriginal population figures put the number as 250.000 -300,000. That included the book by the sainted lefty Jared Diamond who wrote "Guns, Germs, and Steel".

Although it would hardly surprise me if today's left wing academics who were criticised in the series of books written by Keith Windshuttle on the fabrication of aboriginal history, have air brushed history to suit their evil white oppressor ideology.

Joe,

I might have missed it, but I don’t see where either link has quoted Radcliffe-Brown.

The article I linked you to does cite Radcliffe-Brown as one of their references for the 300,000-1,000,000 estimate, but that’s not a quote. If you are going to research indigenous history and social sciences, then you’ll want to understand the difference. They also cite two others in that same citation: Muvaney 2002:6; Smith and Gray 1985:15.

Radcliffe-Brown (1930) estimated between 250,000-300,000; Muvaney (2002) estimated about 700,000; and Smith and Gray (1985) estimated around 750,000, with an absolute minimum of 315,000. Others have estimated as high as 1,000,000 (http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/3/2158244013499143).

So what are we going to go with? An estimate of 250,000-300,000 from 1930? Or average out all the estimates to around the 750,000 mark?

The fact that you insist on sticking to the former suggests a motivated reasoning on your behalf.

LEGO,

So now I have seen an estimate as low as 250,000-300,000. I wasn’t aware of the Radcliffe-Brown estimate. But the fact that everything you have read has cherry-picked the lowest possible estimate (which, mind you, is quite old) suggests a bias in your preferred reading.

It appears that those who insist on sticking with the lowest estimate available (regardless of its age) are determined to make the indigenous peoples appear as hopeless as they possibly can.

Hi AJ,

Yes, he is cited in that Kinfu article, page 2, about two-thirds of the way down: " .... recent archaeological findings suggest that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained (Mulvaney 2002:6; Smith and Gray 1985:15; Radcliffe-Brown 1930: 671–696)."

Do I have a motive for suggesting a low figure ? Yes, it's called drought. At the very least, a serious and widespread drought would interrupt what you might call demographic processes, of reproduction and group maintenance.

A widespread drought of, say, six years, like in NSW in the nineties, then again last decade, or like the one in Queensland at the moment, would mean the death of any children under four or five, and a hiatus in reproduction for the duration of the drought, and perhaps a bit after, plus of course the nine months needed to produce the first of the next generation.

So there would be a gap of at least four plus six plus one = eleven years between the youngest survivors and the bare beginning of a new generation of babies. We can quibble, if you like, about those years, I don't mind quibbling. But the point is that it would take some time to re-build that population back to what it was before the drought. And another drought may hit before that can happen.

Some droughts have been known to last a lot longer than six years. Perhaps entire generations, fifteen or twenty years, could be lost due to very long droughts.

There would have been other causes for population loss, such as mutual extermination between groups. Yes, they happened, although of course, I shouldn't say so. What a bastard I am. Just getting in first :)

Hopeless ?! Christ, no ! Australia has been a very harsh environment for most groups, and how they survived is a matter of miracles of human ingenuity and endurance. You may see Aboriginal people as hopeless but I couldn't possibly see it that way.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Joe,

I don’t know if or how so many indigenous Australians survived drought. My indigenous studies focused more on crime.

I don’t have the time at the moment to look into exactly how the various estimates were arrived at. But since you seemed to have studied the effects of drought on the indigenous population before 1788, then perhaps you could tell me how the majority of estimates arrived at their conclusions and how you think they erred?

<<Hopeless ?! Christ, no ! Australia has been a very harsh environment for most groups, and how they survived is a matter of miracles of human ingenuity and endurance.>>

I agree. Tell that to LEGO though. It seems strange to me that you wouldn’t point this out when he was trying to paint indigenous as hopeless without white people. So please excuse me if I sense motivated reasoning.

There is something else that needs to be factored into the discussion.

Prior to 1788 there was a truly genetic Aboriginal population. After that it started to get diluted with European and Chinese genes. As an example, well known and now deceased Charles Perkins seems to have only acknowledged his Arrernte and Kalkadoon heritage and ignored the fact that his mother had a white father and grandfather and his father had an Irish father. A good many successful Aboriginals seem to fall into this category, but their white heritage is conveniently ignored. I suspect this is often to their detriment.

Behavioral characteristics and abilities which are currently attributed to Aboriginals in general can be very distorted because of this.

David