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When has aboriginal Aus ever been a united nation?

@Shadow Minister: "The longest living culture is African, 100,000 cave paintings."

Sorry I cannot comprehend why you do not understand the important difference between that and "the longest continuous human culture/civilisation ever to exist" which extended into the 20th century ?

There is no single identifiable 'African culture' that has existed continuously into the modern era or as long as the Aboriginals have in Oz. This isn't a trick, it's proven, so why are you saying such things? I do not get it.

SM: "When has aboriginal Aus ever been a united nation?"

What is the problem here, or you're simply trolling for effect? I have no idea which it is. Why can you not see what was said? Genuine experts over 200+ years who have done the work and published their research.

It's simple - 200 to ? separate defined territorial 'nations' with set borders, made up of different clans/tribes etc of ONE CULTURE/CIVILISATION.

eg Western civilisation is ~2,500 years old, is spread across the entire world, speaks multiple languages from Greek to Spanish, and includes ~100 (?) separate nations today from Russia to Australia and Europe to South America. This isn't hard to understand, surely?

@LEGO: "I think that the second argument is far more credible." Hypothetical thought experiments can be fun, entertaining. Pleasant way to wile away one's time. Enjoy it.

@Loudmouth, the DNA movements etc is very old news. Eventually it sometimes gets in the newspapers as 'new news.'

@Yuyutsu, @Loudmouth, @ttbn - oh if only facts were simple and could fit on a postage stamp.

Thomas said pg3 "Childhood caused PTSD isn't racist, but it still lasts a lifetime and is so easily passed on to the next generation."

It would also work better in 'communication' if people slowed down to see what others say, or assuming they have and building Strawmen Fallacies to knock down imagining they made a valid poin but didn't.

I suggest have another go, start at the beginning and read it all again (slowly/calmly) if you're actually interested.

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@Loudmouth: "are you assuming that [all?] Aboriginal people are in similar situations to the mentally ill ?"

NO. Only those that actually are. You're generalising/assuming again, not me.

@Loudmouth: "Why assume Aboriginal people are all those things ?"

I didn't. RU assuming I did? Did you read what I said carefully?

@Loudmouth: "My dear wife was Indigenous-don't recognise them in your descriptions."

Of course not. I was not talking about your family, obviously! Assuming? Maybe, read it again?

Domestic Violence especially parental violence and verbal abuse upon their own children, alcoholism, entrenched poverty, psychopathic little-Hitlers and narcissistic parents, parental irresponsibility, bad choices, gambling addictions, drug abuse, child sexual abuse, marriage breakdown, infidelity, lying, cheating, Psychological/mental illness can all cause Trauma in life and it is not distributed upon RACIAL grounds.

These are all parts of the HUMAN CONDITION - count your blessings if you have never been touched by these in your life.

Here's some tips for anyone genuine:

Read Jimmy Barnes new autobiography and Billy Connolly's.

Read the original material on the RC into Child Sexual Abuse site.

Learn about Damien Rider's experiences as a child http://vimeo.com/141523955?from=outro-embed
and others http://youtu.be/NB0wSxdqi40 and http://www.theriderfoundation.com

One's RACE is irrelevant - many more 'Australians' are struggling with childhood caused PTSD and it's effects than Aboriginal or Military Aussies are.

Because 'Australians' is the largest identifiable 'group'!

All need help and support not matter what race, where they live, or what or who caused the original trauma - Jail is not a solution.

Screaming at people on the TV or on internet forums to "pull your bloody socks up and get on with it you bludger " is not a solution.

Here's some 'arts' to lift the tenor of this discussion, and just maybe break through some discriminatory racial blind spots and blame games?

Yolngu Mandawuy Yunupingu BA PhD A.C. 1993 Aussie of the Year
- "We don't own mother earth, the earth owns us." -

Tribal Voice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ-hbpWlXNQ

Djäpana http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG-CNqOhO2c

Treaty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cbkxn4G8U

Dots on the Shell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKWHEfwOEnc

Wiyathul http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8-YMpYbRqY

Dead Heart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16bFBzx7I_0

Truganini http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcxdbZ5chcc

Solid Rock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf0_m5oZW7c

Sounds Of Then http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML9h3I5Uktw
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Thomas,

Repeating a baseless assertion even in CAPITAL LETTERS does not make it any less ludicrous.

The definition of civilization - "A relatively high level of cultural and technological development; specifically : the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained." - would tend indicate that none of the aboriginal nations ever achieved a level of development that could be called civilization.

Secondly, as any anthropologist could tell you, is that writing, literature, and art are the main ways of passing culture from one generation to another, and without these mainstays of civilization, tribes and cultures develop grow and disappear to be replaced with new cultures constantly. There is no evidence that the aboriginal cultures as discovered by the settlers bore any resemblance to the cultures even a millennia ago.

So to claim that the 500 odd tribes throughout Aus whose cultures differ broadly between each other all date back unbroken to a culture 40 000 yrs ago is politically correct twaddle.

Hi Thomas,
Your suggestion that there was one Aboriginal culture which is " .... "the longest continuous human culture/civilisation ever to exist" which extended into the 20th century .... " needs some elaboration, apart from the obvious comment that all human cultures are equally long, changing or not.

No two Aboriginal groups practised/practises the same culture, but I'll defer to Big Nana on that.

' .... the longest continuous human culture .... " - do you mean the longest unchanging culture ? The most static culture in the world ? That may be true: Aboriginal foragers had the horrific misfort6une to be cut off from the rest of the world for so long, apart from the South-East Asian trepang and pearl-shell and sandalwood traders along the north coast, just in the past few hundred years.

For good or ill, the rest of the world was, for sixty of those seventy thousand years since people left Africa, still (sooner or later) in touch with any innovations derived on the African-Asian-European land mass - the agricultural revolution, the switch from stone to bronze to iron, the multifarious exchange of knowledge, much more sophisticated trading systems, etc. Aboriginal people missed out on all of these ideas.

So yes, they may been practising the world's oldest unchanging cultures (by the hundreds) anywhere in the world without any inflow of new ideas, not even from PNG. But I see that as a curse, not a blessing.

Sorry.

Cheers,

Joe

Shadow
Was Australia a united nation? No. Never was and Europe never has been. Nor north America, south America , India ( including under Britain), Asia or Africa. Greenland was but Antarctica not. Fiji has been . Ancient Greece never was except by force for 9 years.. They had city states with direct democracy. Germans were civilised but never united until 40 years before WWI which de-civilised the European tribes.

Taplin (1879, p. 34) estimates that there were eighteen territorial clans or Lakalinyeri that constituted the Ngarrindjeri ‘confederacy’ or ‘nation’. ( South Australia). Each territorial clan was administered by a group of ten to twelve men or elders, referred to as the Tendi. The Tendi from each clan collectively elected the Rupulli or the head of the entire Ngarrindjeri confederacy. [...] Thus, the Ngarrindjeri were landowners who had a centralised and hierarchical government to administer the laws of the confederacy and its eighteen independent territories. " Hunter-gatherer social complexity at Roonka Flat, South Australia"._ ( F Donald Pate 2006).

" Or, to put it another way, endemic and rampant Euro-tribalism hampers the creation of a viable European Union. There are many tribes in the EU, but there is no such thing as a European tribe. Thus, while India is composed of numerous tribes, they do come together as one Indian tribe under certain circumstances – eg a cricket match! "_ ( Forbes.com )