mhaze,

You quote Blainey; "According to calculations done by Blainey, the annual percentage of aboriginals killed in warfare was greater than the percentage killed in each year of WW1. And not just one year but every year over the millennia they occupied Australia." You even have a ratio of exceeding 1 in 270. Where did that come from?

Where is Blainey's evidence you confidently regurgitate, that for millennia Aboriginals slaughtered each other at a rate greater than the European carnage of WWI? Elsewhere you are demanding evidence from me.

SR,

Ya berk. What have I told you about playing with numbers....never do it because you end up looking even more foolish.

We are talking about "fighting deaths". The numbers you use are not "fighting deaths". (You never did understand the concept of comparing apples with apples did you? Your thinking is come up with a number that suits and just go with it). I didn't check all your figures but...

Since you didn't link to your source, I can't help you work out where you went so wrong, but I suspect you took the numbers of total deaths as opposed to "Fighting deaths". Blainey's was talking about the numbers who died in actual fighting. I suspect the difference will go over your head.

So you claim Britain had 1.3 million war deaths. In fact they lost 744000.

But hilarity ensues when you move onto Turkey (actually the Ottoman Empire but who can be bothered to explain that nuance to you). You say the Ottomans lost 2.3 million. In fact they lost 305000. I suspect you included all the deaths from the Armenian genocide but who knows - certainly not you!!

Still having fun?

But all this is just poor old innumerate SR trying ever so hard to not learn that aboriginal society was highly militaristic and violent.
I get that people like SR want to believe that pre-contact society was the height of peacefulness with the men filing in their time by picking daisies to give to their beau. But in fact it was brutal, misogynistic, militaristic and genocidal. And he'll never understand that.

So no apology from SR. About what you'd expect.

Meanwhile, silly old Paul goes off on some moronic rant about fantasising a car death compared to a shooting death. I'd try to understand what he's on about and explain the logic failure, but Paul's understanding of numbers makes SR look numerate, so why bother.

I would love to meet Geoffrey Blainey and sit
down and talk to him about Australia's early
history. I believe he's in his 90s today.

John Maynard's article in The Sydney Morning Herald
is worth a read:

http://smh.com.au/entertainment/books/geoffrey-blainey-takes-a-fresh-look-at-australias-early-history-20150314-14340n.html

Dear mhaze,

You really do flail around when you get sprung on numbers don't you.

Direct from Blainey's calculations where he arrived at the 1 in 270 of the POPULATION:

“A slow count of the deaths inflicted in the battles and raids described by Buckley reveals a total of at least thirty seven of whom 10 were women and children.”

WOMEN AND CHILDREN!

But sure, let's do the figures just on soldiers deaths for giggles, especially since you have set this up so nicely. Again I'm using Brill's figures which I did reference in my post. I did not provide a link but neither did you to Blainey's because they are both books, so please stop being so hypocritical.

Great Britain and Ireland had a population of 46.1 million people but lost 750,000 military dead over the 4.3 years of WW1. Or 1 in every 264 of their population annually.

France had a population of 39 million people but lost 1,327,000 military dead. Or 1 in every 126 of their population annually.

Germany had a population of 67.8 million people but lost 2,037,000 military dead. Or 1 in every 143 of their population annually.

All these figures exceeded the 1 in 270 Blainey claimed of one group of indigenous Australians.

Now Blainey might have been able to scrape his way around this but because you couldn't help yourself and decided to over egg it with “the annual percentage of aboriginals killed in warfare was greater than the percentage killed in each year of WW1” you really have no where else to go do you.

Time to move on old boy. And yes I am still having fun, lots of it in fact. Thanks for asking.

SR,

What no mention of Turkey? Another, YET another, one of those monumental errors from SR that he quickly sends down the memory hole and pretends to forget. Ever heard of Liz Warren? Well, pretends is unfair. I'm convinced he actually DOES forget these constant and repeating errors. Still in this case he was only out by 1000% which shows some level of improvement from his previous errors.

Still, having not read Blainey, SR purports to have an intimate understanding of his numbers.

But do you get what you're doing here SR. You're trying to show that aboriginal society wasn't in a constant state of warfare by showing that the annual death toll from warfare was marginally better than the death toll in the most catastrophic war in European history. And even to do that you have to use dodgy numbers AND dodgy calculations eg the war lasted more than 4 years.

So according to SR, aboriginal society, year in and year out over the centuries, over the millennia was as deadly as Europe was in a highly unrepresentative 4 year period.

And this is the basis of the claim that the aboriginals were peaceful. Struth.

Dear Steele,

The following may be of interest:

http://lens.monash.edu/@politics-society/2021/04/23/1382962/the-frontier-wars-undoing-the-myth-of-the-peaceful-settlement-of-australia