Dear Loudmouth,

You wrote;

“You seem to have a lot more respect for early explorers than I do, Steele. I'd prefer to take the accounts of long-term observers such as anthropologists and missionaries, people who knew what to look for and did it over years, not fly-by.”

I'm sure you would as the anthropologists and missionaries were mostly not seeing and experiencing Aboriginal life untouched by the cataclysmic changes brought on by the invasion of their lands.

From my reading the Aboriginal way of managing the land was about enhancing what was there, not trying to force plants on to land unsuitable to the species requiring fertilisation and more intensive management etc.

They were certainly prepared to alter river flows to water land with records of significant earthworks employed to water vegetation.

They were also operating under a different system. The land was not partitioned like the tenured farms in Europe of the serf communities. Aboriginal societies appear to have been a lot more horizontal without absolute rulers setting forth for new lands to conquer.

Just here in Victoria the eel aquaculture works around Lake Condah for instance allowed the owners to extensively trade their produce. The industry of greenstone quarries of Mt Wallace allowed its tribe to also enjoy significant trade with other communities.

In many ways it was a rigid structure with entrenched rules and once part of it was disrupted through the invasion it fell away quite quickly.

Hi SR,

I like that bit: " ..... once part of it was disrupted through the invasion it fell away quite quickly."

Leaving no evidence, across the entire country. Reminds me of how Aboriginal people invented wireless technology.

You do realise that it took more than a hundred years for European invasion/settlement to spread slowly across the country ? Where it hadn't spread, presumably all that agriculture was still going on ? And usually farming people around the world fight very fiercely - and are well-organised and motivated to do so - to protect their precious property ?

So we're re-defining 'agriculture' now ? To involve fish-traps, i.e. a combination of hunting and gathering ?

Why are you so insistent on denying that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers ? Are there crucial differences in how people relate to the land, whether they're foragers or farmers ? I'll take my cue on all of this from Marx :)

Joe

Dear Loudmouth,

What do you mean no evidence. There was plenty and more coming to light as better archaeological surveys are carried out.

Again you say;

“Why are you so insistent on denying that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers?” Which is just another rewording of “Why are some people so eager to deny that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers?” that you asked earlier.

My response then and now is;

“They don't deny it at all. The way they managed their resources meant they could have lived quite happily off hunting and gathering. It really is a very fine existence for the most part and the early explorers often remarked how fit, healthy, intelligent and happy they seemed compared to virtually all classes of Englishmen. It left plenty of time for ceremony and spirituality. That of course wasn't to last. Pascoe says he had always accepted the hunter gatherer label on Aborigines until he started reading the explorers account. It then became patently obvious that was not the full story.”

If you get the inclination to want to reword it and present it again in the future just instead refer to this.

And there were plenty of fierce battles over land and many aboriginals died defending them. Why are you saying there wasn't?

"My understanding is that Mitchell was supposed .."
left fender crumpled , radiator buckled, right headlight in tatters.

Hi SR,

Certainly, it was not unusual, it seems, for early farmers to also be hunters and gatherers, whatever provided. Often in fact, people went back to hunting and gathering if their usual crops weren't viable, such as the tuber-oriented Maori farming applied to much of the top of the South Island where it was just too cold, so people went back to hunting moa.

What is amazing, to follow your hypothesis, is how rapidly and expertly Aboriginal people went back to foraging, as - in your view - they could no longer practise farming. So much so that some observers, such as the Rev. J. R. B. Love in the west Kimberley around 1920, the first white fella the people had seen, wrote prolifically about their hunting and gathering techniques, but seemed to have overlooked their farming techniques.

Joe

In a quick look through this thread I think that you have ignored the
importance of energy.
Hunting and gathering appears to me to produce less surplus energy than
agriculture, which built early civilisations, Mesopotamia etc.
Slaves provided energy that required energy input (food), but required
less support than other members of society. So civilisation was given
a further boost in energy. This enabled civilisations such as Rome to
develop. Windmills added more energy.
Then much later coal enabled great increases in energy and so removed
the slave trade as it was nowhere as efficient as coal.

BTW way the Arabs were far and aware the worlds largest slave traders
and are still so. In their time the Arabs took about one million
Europeans from as far away as Icelend and Britain.