Hi Foxy,
Aboriginal folk fought in whiteman's wars at a time, unlike left handed Australians they were not even considered to be citizens. Not even worthy of swimming in the same water hole as a whiteman.

Please stop pointing out any good in aboriginal people, its very upsetting to some of the Forum Old Farts, it doesn't fit their racists narrative. They will tell you ALL aboriginal people are drunken bumbs, who beat their women, and the women throw their babies on ants nests. WHAT A PATHETIC BUNCH OF LOOSERS SOME OF OUR OLD FARTS ARE!

In the United States some people object to the Black Lives Matter movement by saying all lives matter. However, blacks appear to be a special target of trigger happy police. The Black Lives Matter movement is necessary since many have the perception that black lives matter less than other lives. By the same token it is good to have a recognition of the special contribution that Aborigines have made since many think of Aborigines as not as worthy as other Australians.

I’d still like to read the 60,000 year old history.
Tell me where to find it,, someone; just a link or two will d o the trick.

thinkabit,

"I can offer a few plausible reasons why their societies never increased much in complexity"

All civilisations grew out of the domestication of plants. primarily grains like wheat, barley, rice, maize. Domesticated grains leads to surplus which then provides feed stock for animals that can now be domesticated. That extra food then leads to other surpluses and allows some members of society to devote their efforts to things other than growing food - things like pottery, metallurgy and weaving. It also leads to trade. Trade leads to the need to record transactions which leads to increasingly complex writing systems such as cuneiform and hieroglyphs.

So the starting point for the aboriginals would have been to domesticate some plant. It's claimed by apologists for that failed culture that no such plant exists. But that's rubbish. When you look at the wild plants that lead to, say, wheat they aren't inspiring. Imagine looking at a paspalum weed and thinking you could build a civilisation on it. Well that's effectively what the early Levantine farmers did. There are any number of candidates in Australia. One that is grown in many parts of Australia today is Lomandra. It creates enormous quantities of seed even without trying to use it as a crop and it self-seeds readily. The natives used it as bush-food but it never occured to them to cultivate it.

Equally livestock. Comparing Australian wild stock with current domesticated stock is invalid. Compare it with the undomesticated stock in Asia and Europe 12000 years ago. Do current wild boars look like candidates for domestication? Buffalo? Yet by getting a few head and breeding for tameness, domestic pigs and cattle were created. A couple of 1000 years devoted to, say smaller wallabies or wombats might achieve the same - assuming they had the surplus feedstock which they never did...see above.

Every nascent civilisation faced its own special series of problems yet found ways to get past those problems - except for one.

The thread is about luvvies wanting Australia to adopt bits and pieces of aboriginal culture.

Lauding aboriginals who adopted and succeeded at Australian/Western culture is either entirely beside the point or evidence against the SBS desires.

Dear Mhaze,

«I can offer a few plausible reasons why their societies never increased much in complexity»

But is complexity desirable?
Maybe they were just not interested?!

«Every nascent civilisation faced its own special series of problems yet found ways to get past those problems - except for one.»

You assume that aboriginals wanted to have a civilisation.
You further assume that whatever you perceive as problems, they too perceived as such.

«The thread is about luvvies wanting Australia to adopt bits and pieces of aboriginal culture.»

Yes and it is most impractical: we are not ready for it, we are too materialistic and also far too many.
Merely adopting aboriginal mannerisms, arts and languages without actually living independently in nature like they did, is inorganic and would produce nothing of value.
In fact, it would only increase the complexity of life, not reduce it.

«Lauding aboriginals who adopted and succeeded at Australian/Western culture is either entirely beside the point»

Indeed. They no longer follow the aboriginal way of life.