Hi Joe, a passage from the journal of explorer Edward Eyre;

"Particular districts are considered generally as being the property and hunting grounds of the tribes who frequent them. These districts are again parcelled out among the individual members of the tribe. Every male has some portion of land, of which he can always point out the exact boundaries. These properties are subdivided by a father among his sons during his own lifetime, and descend in almost hereditary succession. Tribes can only come into each other's districts by permission. or invitation, in which case, strangers or visitors are well treated."

Eyre is most defiantly referring to land ownership.

Hi Paul,

As Eyre wrote, "Particular districts are considered generally as being the property and hunting grounds of the tribes who frequent them."

And each group considered everybody else's district as fair game, a bit like clan attitudes everywhere: clans in Scotland and hapu in New Zealand, for example, seemed to perceive every other clans' [and hapu] lands as susceptible to seizure. In traditional societies, force rules. That didn't make it right, of course, but there you go.

Joe

@Loudmouth,

So much sense in your post. Great work.

My view is that Aboriginal peoples failed to evolve at rates similar to other humans because there was no need. Environment and cultural practices kept numbers very low so not much effort was needed to feed them.
Babies were killed if they were not convenient, many women must have died or failed to bring a child to term given their horrific abuse by the males, the old and sick were left to die as was common in all such primitive societies.

Small numbers so little pressure for change.

@banjo

You seem to have little understanding of primitive cultures. You think slaughtering the tribe in the way was a sign of recognition of legitimate ownership.

That would be funny if it were not so ridiculous. That is a perfect instance of retrofitting modern attitudes to the past.

In stone-age societies everyone other than the tribe was the enemy. That is why you killed them. Particularly the males. Women could be taken as slaves and for sex, but the men were a threat.

In many parts of Africa the practice was to take women and children as slaves and cut off one leg of all men. they either bled to death or survived and were not a threat.

You said:
No, I don't think I'm applying « double standards ». According to most historical accounts, the British colonisers did much the same whenever they met with any resistence from the local Aboriginal peoples whose traditional land they wished to take.

Would you like to prove that claim? In my research that is not what I found. And yet you claim MOST reports have Europeans slaughtering Aborigines to take their land. You should be able to compile dozens of recorded instances.

From what I can see, the British went out of their way to keep Aborigines alive and their lease system guaranteed, in law anyway, the right to continue to hunt, gather and forage.

I would suggest you access a site called First Sources and work your way through Aboriginal Protector's reports because you have either done no research or you have done no real research.

Read the actual reports from the times and then come back and make your case. http://firstsourcesguide.com/index.html

Paul,

"Eyre is most defiantly referring to land ownership"

Most definitely Eyre is defiant in his references.

Hi Robroy,

Thank you. Droughts too would have devastated numbers if they were widespread and long enough: one here in the 13th century lasted 32 years. Droughts usually meant that very young children and old people, especially women, would be left to die as the able-bodied in the group were forced to move quickly and revive relationships with groups in better country in order to survive.

Another thing was that babies and young children had to be on the breast until they could tolerate hard food. If Aboriginal groups had developed pottery, they could have boiled plants and grasses (such as kangaroo-grass) and fed that to children at a much younger age. That way, women could have had a lot more children, spaced fewer years apart, and the population could have increased many times over. But nobody developed pottery.

Pottery could have enabled the Aboriginal population to reach much higher levels by broadening the possible diets. Salting food also would have boosted population, allowing people to tide themselves over hard times, not to mention initiating trade - commercial trade, not just for women - between groups.

I suppose these were lessons that could all of humankind many tens of thousands of years to initiate. We don't realise now how rare innovation was amongst our Stone Age ancestors: e.g., fire was 'discovered' 1.5 million years ago, but cooking on fires only 750,000 years ago - so our ancestors had fire without realising its use for cooking for three-quarters of a million years.

As you indicate, maybe foraging societies are on a sort of 'closed-loop' - there is little space for innovation, let alone major transformations of society, such as a sudden flip into agriculture, which need accumulated reserves of food until the first (and maybe second) harvest. So foraging continues as is .....

Cheers,

Joe