@Paul1405,

I know Joe has touched on this, i.e. the lack of agricultural equipment used by the Aboriginal 'farmers,' but, more to the point, Bruce Pascoe talks about the value of Kangaroo Grass as a crop and how Aboriginal peoples harvested it.

Now, we know that Kangaroo Grass is low in nutrition, and I am sure Aboriginal peoples also knew from observation that while it was useful, it was not crucial.

However, if they were such consummate 'farmers' as Pascoe likes to claim, then why did they not establish with this native grain, what other cultures established with wheat, barley, rye etc.? I mean, the ancient peoples of the Middle East had storage facilities, silos in essence, for their harvests. Aboriginal peoples did not. They did not even invent threshing equipment with any sophistication, nor did they have storage capacity for their 'harvest.'

It was all very basic and well, primitive. Farming is about ensuring reliable crops, give or take the weather, and finding ways to store excess for future use. Aboriginal peoples did not do that.

This is just one example of Pascoe's flights of fancy. Kangaroo Grass, under Aboriginal experience, remained a wild 'crop' of grass and while there would have been some management, it was certainly not farmed.

Hi Rhross,

Kangaroo grass grows all over Australia, and in India and Africa too as you would know. It's called 'famine food' there. So I'm puzzled why anybody would go to the trouble of growing what is readily available.

In early farming, it seems that the best-yielding grain would be grown, i.e. in laboriously prepared ground, and jealously guarded from neighbours and predatory animals. Before that, the best-yielding plants would have been stripped and eaten as a matter of course, so it takes a lot of counter-intuitiveness, probably by women, since they were the plant-gatherers, to actually NOT do that and save the best-yielding heads for seed for planting.

Farming societies are marked by very clearly-defined property rights, who owns what, usually in the early days probably on a clan basis, and divided up within the clan into family lands, which were periodically re-distributed.

I'm surprised that Pascoe hasn't found out that kangaroo-grass leaves are quite nutritious, for cattle for example - pastoral properties advertise the presence of kangaroo-grass to get better prices for the sale of their leases. But of course, to cook the leaves, one needs a pot. So I expect that Pascoe will soon discover that Aboriginal groups had pottery and that whites destroyed all traces of it. Bastards.

But it's very difficult to remove all traces of pottery: many archaeological sites are marked precisely by the type, style and amount of pottery. Some sites have millions of pottery shards in many different styles, sizes, uses and colours. We'll see if Pascoe twigs and makes new discoveries.

Cheers,

Joe

@Joe,

Yes, I did read Kangaroo Grass had good levels of nutrition at certain stages but compared to other 'seeds' and 'grains' it is in the lower order for humans. I have no doubt Aboriginal peoples, like all primitive peoples, assessed this empirically, over centuries of use.

As to pottery, those sneaky settlers, managing to find and destroy all of it. The oldest pottery found so far seems to be Chinese at 20,000 years and since one needs no more than a tiny remnant to identify pottery, it is remarkable how its presence can be eradicated from the face of a particular bit of earth

@Joe,

p.s. Bruce Pascoe doesn't 'make' discoveries, he invents them. easy peasy.

As I asked rhross, give me a reference, a quote for example from 'Dark Emu' where Bruce Pascoe has made something up. Joe prattles on about 'kangaroo grass' but Pascoe mentions an extensive range of native grains, but of course Joe would know nothing about that as he admits to not having read the book.

Large parts of the book focus on the accounts of the explorer Thomas Mitchell, it should be relatively easy to find untruths in relation to the accounts of Mitchell, his journals are out there to read, probably on Joe's web site, he loves first hand accounts.

Go for it lads.

At last, some sanity ! Congratulations to whoever put this together:

https://www.dark-emu-exposed.org/

What does come through is the amazing ingenuity and persistence of people, especially women, in hunter-gatherer society.

Joe