Joe
P Bellwood is putting his guess ("seems unrealistic") as history.
Does he refer to diaries or letters of the 1st British in Cape York. Does he know what he means by "calendars of resource"? Could 3 men go hunting and 3 harvest grain all in the very same week?

Hi Nick,

Bellwood was probably relying on the accounts and writings of a multitude of anthropologists who have spent their entire careers observing and documenting the spectrum of cultural practices of a multitude of societies, including a multitude of hunter-gatherer societies. He's no idiot, having spent his entire fifty-year career (so far) mainly in New Zealand, the Pacific and Australia (and now, I think, in Vietnam and South-East Asia).

I wish people would have enough respect for traditional hunter-gatherer cultures to realise that they are full assemblages of culture, not just some try-this-try-that bits-and-pieces sort of thing that people can drop out of any time. As intelligent people, hunter-gatherers have developed extremely intricate and ingenious ways of 'understanding' the world that they are in every day, forever, often (in the case of most Aboriginal societies) oblivious of any alternatives, but fiercely attached to time-honoured ways of doing everything.

As Bellwood tries to point out, the shift to agriculture happened extremely rarely in world history: perhaps in only three or four places in the world (South-West Asia, Mexico, China and maybe Papua-New Guinea), and spread out from those places very slowly over ten thousand years or more, against the resistance of surrounding hunter-gatherers and pastoralists.

Hunter-gatherers, being rational decision-makers, saw no advantage in, and had no cultural compulsion to, set aside patches of land, organise for months ahead who does what, prepare the ground, break the soil, put in seed, wait, watch for predators for months on end, patrol fence-lines or boundaries, get the women out harvesting, carting, storing, having to set up more permanent settlements around those storage pits, then ensure that rats, mice, birds etc. didn't get into the stored grain, or it wasn't spoilt by water, etc. - rather than go out most days, to hunt, while the women gathered seed and other plant and animal products.

[TBC]

[continued]

Agriculture took five thousand years to spread across Europe from what is now Turkey to Britain, even longer in other parts of Europe. And it may have spread, not by hunter-gatherers adopting agriculture, but by agriculturalists migrating to new areas, and displacing hunter-gatherers, often by force.

And in Australia, what would have been the point of going to all that trouble for a 'crop' which was growing wild all over the continent, including Tasmania ? And why kangaroo grass seed, which has a very low nutrient content, which is why it is used in Africa only when famine strikes ? If it was so nutritious, why isn't the CSIRO working on it right now ?

Try to somehow get some sense, Nick :)

Joe

Joe
As dance rituals aren't used in the stock exchange they were never seen in Australia. Ochre paint was only used by the Xtzkfgatre people of lower Tqandgiljs in Africa.
Strangely many Poms recorded details across Australia before you were born. The Aboriginal CSIRO in 1717 had websites about the benefits of Irish potatoes and Russian vodka and kangaroo grass.
Low to moderate feed quality, but this is highly variable across the region
Digestibility ranges from 54-75 %
Crude protein 3.3-10.6%
MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
A highly variable species that is moderately productive with most growth being produced over summer; many of the more palatable varieties have been grazed out
Leaves tend to have low phosphorus level and are relatively palatable to cattle, but not sheep.
A well managed stand provides excellent competition against weed invasion.