Pauliar,

As you claim that there are no records prior to 1788, how do you know that aboriginals were fit and healthy and have a knowledge of their diet? A diet low in fat and carbs would have starved hunter-gatherers.

Once again you just make up crap as you go.

Foxy,

Can you put your hand on your heart and say that alcoholism, DV and remote living has nothing to do with the shorter life expectancy of aboriginals?

shadow minister,

And who introduced them to alcohol and took their
cultures, languages, self respect, their children,
et cetera, away from them?

I won't put my hand on my heart. Instead I'll put it
in prayer and kneel down.

shonkyminister,

Your comprehension is abysmal, just like your use of a comma when you want to defame a named person with a shocking slur. If you bother to read history, something you seem to be totally ignorant of, the descriptions of the appearance of indigenous people the world over by early European explorers, such people as Native Americans, Africans, Polynesians, Maori and others is in stark contrast to the emaciated condition of the average pox ridden European of the times. As for diet, the mass of undernourished Europeans survived on high amounts of saturated fats, and carbohydrates, often containing dangerous levels of salt, and little in the way of vitamins and minerals. When I say low fats, low cards its relative to later diets based on European foods. The rapid increase in life expectancy in Europe didn't begin until the mid 19th century. There is a theory that Europeans lived on average less in Cooks time, than they had pre IR times. Cities grew rapidly, but hygiene didn't improve, it got worse, disease was everywhere.

My wife's knowledge is from oral traditions of her ancestors, Maori people, not Australian Aboriginals. Her grandmother spoke of the "old people" who were in their 80's when she was a little girl circa 1870, and of those who died young from European introduced diseases. Hard pressed to find people in their 60's in the slums of 19th century England, old was 40.

Foxy,

I hardly see the settlers handing out free liquor.

Pauliar,

The reason the post was deleted was that it could be misinterpreted by buffoons as defamatory.

Secondly, your understanding of the term life expectancy is pitiful. People lived to 90 even back in Roman times, however, these were few and far between, so the anecdotal memories of your partner is not worth the paper it's printed on.

Ha, weasel words! So the moderator of this site is a buffoon misinterpreting! Two friends of mine who I showed your post to, one a school teacher and his wife in a professional job are also buffoons. The only buffoon is you the clown who posts slanderous comment. You are so pompous you think you are an expert on everything. 'Cry Baby' Porter is going to collect 10 million bucks, a grooving apology from the ABC, 100 employees sacked too pay for it all, so you said. Long before that it was your claim the an arrest is imminent in the 'Beat Up' Bolt case, another clanger from YPU! You can't seem to get anything wright. But I still love you.

On life expectancy, you can't dispute anything I say, because you don't know anything.

"Life expectancy at birth was a brief 25 years during the Roman Empire, it reached 33 years by the Middle Ages and raised up to 55 years in the early 1900s. In the Middle Ages, the average life span of males born in landholding families in England was 31.3 years

cont

All four of my grandparents who were living during the early 1900s, lived into their 80's, but 6 out of 15 uncles and aunties didn't reach the age of 5, those that did most lived fairly long lives. What impacted on life expectancy in earlier times was the very high infant mortality rate. If you reached the age of 5, you then had a reasonable chance of reaching the age of 40. In Roman times there was a difference in life expectancy based on class, Patricians, the upper class, had a much better diet, healthier living conditions than the Plebeians, the lower class, being the vast majority of Romans, so the Patricians had a longer life expectancy. this would/is the case where there is a marked class difference. For Indigenous there was no great class distinction, therefore diet and living conditions were much in the same. Just reading our 'Polynesian History' there is evidence that Polynesian women had better pelvic area development which was conducive to lesser complications during child birth. Also while Europeans were trying to breed like rabbits, indigenous were more select. In Australia Aboriginal women knew of certain berries that would bring on a miscarriage when things were not right.

A history of Sydney shows plague was common in The Rocks area in the late 19th century, rat catchers were employed.