//A pity that they didn't manage to think of the wheel.//

Neither did the Aztecs (at least not for utilitarian purposes, although they did put them on toys) and they built the largest pyramid in the world, the Great Pyramid of Cholula.

Apparently wheels ain't everything.

"my accusation of you being a 'racist crunt'."
It's OK i'm not racist.

minotaur,

" That technology [hafted axes] didn't come to Australia until around 5-6000 years ago (when the dingo arrived too). That implies that some others had to have introduced it (and the dingo) from outside.

Therefore there was outside contact.
I suppose that they didn't invent a hafted axe because they didn't need one, only discovering the need when they saw how useful it was.

Probably for the same reason they didn't invent the bow and arrow, woven clothing, writing, drawing (beyond the very primitive). how to make boats etc., etc.

Face up to it, Australian Aborigines were very primitive but quick learners and adept at adapting new technology to the uses with which they were familiar; an example of this is the superb spear points fhaf they made from discarded broken bottles.

Hi Minotaur,

I'm not sure what you mean by 'condescending': I'm assuming that you are a university lecturer.

Regards,

Joe

I'm going to start this post as moderator, and warn anyone against using a term like "crunt" again. I'm going to leave it this time, but that is the last time I will leave it, or anything resembling it.

And I'm going to end the post as the author. That piece on Inventing Aborigines was very good LeoJ. Presentness is a problem in all these debates, with people lacking the imagination to put themselves in someone else's shoes in another time and another culture.

I don't see much point in arguing about why the Aborigines were so primitive. Settled agriculture for most of humanity is at most 12,000 years old. They, and a number of other peoples, got left behind. When you consider the length of time there have been hominids, they are not a long way behind in percentage terms.

And I don't see much point in arguing that they weren't primitive. And that their societies weren't brutal. They were, just as the societies where all of our ancestors lived in the stone age were brutal. The story in Australia is similar to all the rest of the world. Nowhere have primitive peoples like the Aborigines prospered after colonisation by a more advanced society. Same issues occur even in places like Japan and Taiwan, which we don't normally think of as having native populations.

Any curriculum about Aboriginal societies in schools should put them in the worldwide context. If it doesn't it won't be particularly useful.

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Graham wrote :

« I don't see much point in arguing about why the Aborigines were so primitive … They, and a number of other peoples, got left behind … »
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Not just the Aborigines ! As a matter of fact, I feel quite primitive, myself, compared to people like Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Jesus of Nazareth, Shivaji Bhonsle, Mahatma Gandhi, Gautama Buddha, Nelson Mandella, Martin Luther King Jr., Mozart, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates, Bertrand Russell, Qin Shi Huang, Leo Tolstoy, Maurice Utrillo, Albert Namatjira and, I’m afraid to have to admit, millions of others, even far more modest than the few I’ve just mentioned – including many … Aborigines ! – and I don’t just mean the Aboriginal university graduates.

In their natural environment, the so-called primitive Aborigines are the “civilized” ones and I am the ignorant “primitive” !

In their particular field of competence, I have literally everything to learn.
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Graham also wrote :

« Any curriculum about Aboriginal societies in schools should put them in the worldwide context. If it doesn't it won't be particularly useful »
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Allow me to recommend the following reading for any who may be interested :

“Primitive Culture” (in two volumes), by Edward Burnett Tylor (1832- 1917), an English anthropologist, whom some consider the founder of cultural anthropology,

“Ancient Society” by Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881), an American anthropologist, also considered a pioneer of social anthropology.

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