This discussion has made for interesting reading. On the one hand there are those that seek nothing more than the truth, Andris and others thankyou for that. For some truth telling establishes an uncomfortable environment where recognition of the past leads to Aboriginal claims of sovereignty and all that ensues, very uncomfortable for some.

Thank you PAUL, spot on.

FOXY, indeed "Give and you shall receive". So, I'll ignore the 'hypocrat' stigmatisation.

In a sense the term is valid: my position THINKABIT and INDIVIDUAL belies yours.
I admire thinkabit your persistence and assiduous research.

I think there are at least two assumptions on your part that lead you astray.

One, is your failure to grasp the enormity of the gift ancient Aborigines spirituality has to offer to Australia.

Two, your preoccupation about how far today's Aborigines can remember back to the ancient Aborigines wisdom.

Why does this latter interest you so much? Or, why is it so crucial for you?

Will you kindly look into that mirror and ask yourself, where do I come from?

What am I trying to prove?

That I (you) am superior to Aborigines and that they should be grateful for the invasion because without it they would still be living in Dark Stone Age primitiveness?

Am I misrepresenting you thinkabit? I doubt.

You assume that our Western science based civilisation knows so much more than traditional Aborigines did. Really?

What do you know about their spirituality, in particular, 'dreaming'?

In your apparently ethnocentric and parochial perspective you deify Western Science and confuse western knowledge with wisdom.

You just can't seem to get it that human modelling and oral learning occured for hundreds of thousands, if not for millions of years, and that spirituality, which Western physical-material science cannot comprehend was perhaps seemlessly integrated with material living in the unwritten pre-history.

That the Aborigines knew that material existence stems from a causal spiritual basis and keeps returning to it in a cycle.

Quantum physics has only belatedly caught up with the fact that 'something' stems from the 'no-thing' of the spiritual realm and dies back to it.

What do you think the rainbow serpent paradigm is all about and its connection to 'dreaming'?

Could you grasp that the rainbow serpent spiritual paradigm has been around since time immemorial and has been seemlessly retained and passed on in the Aborigines wisdom tradition before modern science was even an idea?

Andris,
Are you saying that the Aborigines were in fact the first humans ?
How do you think other races developed from here on ?
What do think was the point where others as near as New Guinea advanced technologically yet in the Great South Land they remained static ? Or, did they go & conquered the Planet just as generations later they themselves were conquered by their overseas descendants ?
Interesting indeed !

>Two, your preoccupation about how far today's Aborigines can remember back to the ancient Aborigines wisdom. Why does this latter interest you so much? Or, why is it so crucial for you?

I was demonstrating to you that your claims are BS that's why I talked about it. Normally, it doesn't interest me much. I'm way more interested science and math than the arts.

>That I (you) am superior to Aborigines and that they should be grateful for the invasion because without it they would still be living in Dark Stone Age primitiveness?

I've never said that I'm superior to Aborigines. An aborigine is a human being just like I am. What I have clearly demonstrated is that common currently fashionable claims we hear and which you yourself have regurgitated about their level of knowledge in areas like medicine, the environment, etc. being greater than the knowledge established by western science are BS. So the claim that we have lots to learn (compared to the body of our current knowledge) from traditional aboriginal knowledge is BS. The claim that they have a deep and thorough understanding of their own history which they meticulously passed down through an oral traditional is BS. Also, the claims that their society is just a complex as ours in terms of internal groupings of people (ie, social structures like tribes/family units) and law and trade etc. are also BS (well I didn't mention this in this thread but am including it here anyway).

And as for your claims of quantum woo [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_woo] and spirituality they are BS too. One of us has actually studied university level physics and that one isn't you!

[PS: Oh, yeah, before I forget to mention: Homo sapiens (that's us modern humans in case you didn't know) have only been around for about 300,000 years so your claim "You just can't seem to get it that human modelling and oral learning occured for hundreds of thousands, if not for MILLIONS OF YEARS*..." is more BS. *capital letter emphasis added by me]

Individual: what you call 'static' is in fact being tuned into nature. Instead of busting themselves to conquer it, they developed ever more intimate connection with and knowledge of the land, so that the entire continent was taken care of by Au's multitude of nations.

They had no need to conquer and steal each others'land: when they faught, it was to settle tribal conflicts.Instead of materially acquisitive technologies designed to amass material possessions and wealth, the wealth they were interested in was close kinship relationships and affinity with land and the fauna and developing an ever richer spiritual-cultural,art, group dance, song and rhytm based lifestyles or 'technologies' of social living, where much of their times was spent on enacting celebratory rituals and stories.

They advanced alright, but that advancement was cultural-spiritual enrichment that left them contented without wanting or missing possessions and material advancement.

The danger is in projecting on them our material advance-based standards and then blaming them that they did not play ball when in fact, left to themselves their vision of a good life was vastly different from our materialism-attracted Western Societies.

This was similar in India, where for thousands of years there was little interest in materialism but there was an insatiable appetite for spiritual enlightenment.The Indian Yogis were mostly forest dwellers where they developed the discipline of Yoga by observing animal movements and the inner functioning of the mind. They developed the varius branches of Eastern philosophy which eat Western Philosophy for breakfast. The similarities between tantric kundalini, again focusing on the serpent power paradigm and the Aborigines central focus on the rainbow serpent and between Eastern Kirtan chanting-musical meditation and Aborigine corrobarees are striking.
Aborigine 'dreaming' which involved living a spiriually driven life through day to day activities, could be of enormous benefit to Australia now to try to fill our spiritual vacuum and help us to reset our lifestyles from our addiction to unsustanable economic growth which is killing the planet and climat and instead help us to develop more kinship and spiritually focussed interpersonal and personal lives.

They advanced alright, but that advancement was cultural-spiritual enrichment that left them contented without wanting or missing possessions and material advancement.
Andris,
You have some very interesting points albeit rather ideological ones. What & when do you think was the turning point that made them desire the goods & commodities of the outside World ?
I can only go back 45 years when I experienced my first contact with Aborigines & what I witnessed was a strong desire for non-indigenous goods & conditions to the point of having demonstrations with calls of discrimination & just straight forward demands for non-traditional everything !
My guess is that once people are exposed to new conditions & particularly commodities, the term 'traditional' becomes as diluted as the genes. In my view that is something only time can sort out. Good, bad or ugly, the past can not be changed however, depending on the gain possible some historical aspects are now so coloured-in that the true picture is no longer visible ! We are now at a stage where pretend indigenous people have to rely on this to bolster their claims, whilst the indigenous, like everyone else, just go on day by day !
I certainly would like any indigenous live their way they want to & are capable of instead of being used as pawns by the partially indigenous.