The simplest way to describe Civilisation is that in order to reserve the right to call oneself civilised is to be civil.
There's nothing civil about greed such as in wanting more than is needed or not wanting to share surplus !
Human history is full of people colonising because they want more & the colonised rejecting others to settle on unused land.

Dear David F.,

I've come across an interesting article that I think
puts things into perspective for us and is worth a
read:

http://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/australian-aboriginals-remind-us-how-civilization-should-be/

We're told that - " In their new book, "Farmers or
Hunter-Gatherers: the Dark Emu Debate," Sutton and Walshe
scholarly evaluate a common Eurocentric view of Australian
Aboriginal culture that is, in their view, reinforced by
the best-selling "Dark Emu" written by Bruce Pascoe, a
well-known Aboriginal author. They characterise Pascoe's
book as unfortunately and ironically Eurocentric, while
applauding its hunter-gatherer skills, other parts of
Aboriginal culture are interpreted as signs of being
merely on the threshold of becoming civilized in the
Eurocentric sense."

"Sutton and Walshe disagree, arguing that Aboriginal
knowledge of their environment was so profound and their
social organization so complex, that their culture,
organised around equality and sustainability, was
distinctly civilized."

There's much more given in the link and is worth reading.
It gives us another way of looking at things. Most of us
have very limited knowledge of our First Nations People.
And we do tend to see things from our own point of view.

The article ends on the following:

"Aboriginal people remind us of the profound flaw in what
we call civilization, that is, the transience, volatility
or absence of equality and sustainability. Recognised
civilizations built vast cities and infrastructures, often
involving warfare, slavery, religious intolerance, and
massive environmental destruction, and yet they faded away."

"Aboriginals largely avoided these and although recently
decimated by European colonials, remain as Earth's oldest
continuous culture. To misquote Caesar: they came, they saw,
they adapted.

Most aboriginals have very little knowledge of aboriginal culture, before white settlement, & if they did have would give praise every day that the poms took over the place.

People believing the latest imaginative crap from modern anthropologists, wishing to ingrate themselves with the aboriginal industry need to open their eyes.

Like many other words the word, civilization, has more than one meaning. One common meaning is the development of skills in humanities, the sciences and social organization. Another meaning is a society which acts with due consideration for all members of it. I believe no society on earth fits the last definition. My definition of civilization I used when I started this thread is the first one above. That implies literature and science which the Aborigines did not have.

What I would like to see is a society which acts with due consideration for all members of it. This definition depends on how we define all members of it. Some would extend this definition to all sentient creatures. Others would extend this definition to fertilized human ova. Some would reject boat people. The definition is the subject for another thread.

What I find most extraordinary about this whole 'oldest civilisation/culture' meme is that its held up as some sort of achievement by the natives.

In the past 50000 years inhabitants around the Mediterranean went from hunting sheep and gathering whatever grass seed they could find, to domesticating sheep and wheat, inventing agriculture and writing, building the Acropolis and the Pyramids and creating modern Western civilisation.

In the past 50000 years inhabitants around the Yellow River went from hunting pig and gathering proto-Rice grains to domesticating pigs and rice, inventing writing and bureaucracy, the terracotta soldiers and creating eastern civilisation.

In the past 50000 years inhabitants in American went from hunting horses and gathering a few maize seeds to creating a civilisation around maize domestication and the wonders of Aztec and Mayan cultures.

Meanwhile in the past 50000 years the inhabitants of this land went from throwing sticks into a flock of cockatoos in the hope of hitting something to....throwing sticks into a flock of cockatoos in the hope of hitting something. From drawing outlines of their hands on rocks to ...drawing outlines of their hands on rocks. From wiping out the mega-fauna that existed here 50000 years ago to wondering what happened to the mega-fauna.

Yet somehow we are meant to swoon and admire the fact that, while the rest of the world was creating civilisation, these people advanced not one iota in all that time. Only in a mindset determined to offer praise where none is due, would we find reason to laud 50000 years of stagnation.

mhaze your last post is not merely ignorant it is offensive. All people learnt to survive in their environment. When it comes to the environment Jared Diamond argues that the Aboriginal people drew the short straw. There was no native fauna that could be put to work, the flora likewise difficult to manage. Despite these obstacles indigenous Australians displayed the same ingenuity as humans did elsewhere. They managed their environment, they had what we now realize should have been recognized as farms. Read Sturt's account of his exploration of the Murray - all along its length were permanent settlements. Far from stagnating their cultures continued to develop. As Blainey explains in the Triumph of the Nomad at the time of the British invasion - the average Aboriginal's standard of living was well in excess of the average Englishman. So yes we should have admiration for their achievements.