Hi Individual,

Almost all of the surnames of my ancestors on both sides are also the names of Aboriginal families somewhere in Australia, often of many groups not even related to each other all over the country. Surely you know that.

Pascoe is just one more fraud amongst the many in the Indigenous Industry.

But I think the more important issue is whether or not there was anything that could be defined as 'farming'. Going back over ten thousand years, there were very few places in the world where farming arose, perhaps only four or five. Not only that, but it must have happened gradually with many steps from roraging, following herds of domesticable animals, then actually herding those animals, then penning the best animals mainly for fibre for clothing, which required gathering feed for them.

From those beginnings, gathering the best fields of grain, spilling seed across penning areas, someone of genius (probably a woman since gathering was women's work) realised the connection between grain falling on the ground and grain grasses sprouting and maturing; and perhaps between, say, the sheep with the most wool having offspring which may have also produced larger than average wool-clips - and hence, animal breeding. Maybe, but those insights may have been made many, many times before they took hold.

In Australia, there were no domesticable animals; there were no domesticable grasses worth cultivating compared to gathering across vast areas - if grass-seed grows all over the continent, why bother growing it - or even thinking of doing so ?

Australia provided an often-harsh environment, but millions of square km of it and with low populations, there would have been no incentive for people to even imagine growing anything.

If there were of course, we would expect to hear of farming rituals, stories, songs, dances, like in every traditional farming population all over the world (check out Frazer's 'Golden Bough'). Instead, we know of a multitude of traditional hunting stories, rituals, ceremonies, dances across Australia. And there is no visible and unambiguous evidence of farming anywhere in Australia.

Joe

When you farm land, first you have to clear it, then till the soil, keep your plants weed free, then harvest the crop. Aboriginal people had no tools except Stone axes and knives and digging sticks. I would be fascinated to learn how they managed to do all that with those few inefficient tools.
As for towns of 1000 people, well, when you think about it, the problems become obvious. How would you feed that many people without intensive farming? Wild game would have been long eaten out and they had no domestic animals. Kangaroo grass seeds are tiny and you would need tons of them to feed a population that size, even if you found a way to cultivate and store them.
And what about sewage disposal? Without some form of disposal system, disease would be rampant, and that’s ignoring the fact that aboriginal people buried their faeces so that enemies couldn’t find and use it against them by spiritual methods.
So many questions, so few answers,

Dear mhaze,

Why on earth are you linking to a discredited site, one whose authors are not identified on any part of the site?

Go find a decent reference and we can have a look at it.

Dear Is Mise,

Pretty typical of your side of politics. Try and discredit the message and when that fails go after the author. Trouble is Pascoe references explorer diaries and you have to do some serious contortions to discredit them.

Look, I don't know if Bruce Pascoe has all the heritage he has claimed for himself. If he doesn't then it is certainly an issue.

However the degree to which you lot are tying yourselves in knots over his book, which was not written by an historian but by a generalist, is really telling. Have a good look at your motivations old chap, they appear to be pretty average in my book.

What is it about lefties that they hate their own heritage so much they must make up lies. See Elizabeth Warren finally come clean.

Is mise is Andrew Bolt sane? not sure anything he says is worth hearing

Belly,

Why do you say that ? Because Bolt details Pascoe's English heritage, going right back to all of his great-great-grandparents, with no exceptions ? Not a single Aboriginal ancestor ? Thank you, Ancestry.com . Oh, but an Aboriginal person attended his great-grand-parents wedding in Hobart, 'therefore' Pascoe is Aboriginal ? And you're the sane one, Belly ?

But I wish Bolt would focus more on the core issue, foraging or farming, of the mode of production (wow, there's an old Marxist term, where did that come from ?!) across Australia - hunting and gathering, or farming ? What solid evidence is there - settlement patterns, tools, archaeological remains, etc. - that Aboriginal groups ever farmed ? Why isn't there more admiration for the hard work of hunting and (particularly) gathering in some of the harsher environments of Australia ? Why the disrespect ?

Joe