OK;
After considerable reading of subject matter from several Qualified and Accredited academics.
There is nothing at all to back up Pascoes lies about Farming or cities of aboriginals pre-colonization.
Dr Christopher Lloyd , Emeritus Professor of Economic History in School of Business, University of New England, Armidale
Quote:
Australian Aborigines were foragers or hunter/gatherers before European colonisation.
Neither agriculture in the sense of settled communities of cultivators nor pastoralism in the sense of settled or nomadic groups with domestic animals existed in Australia.
There were areas of partially sedentary material culture where food sources were abundant, such as some river valleys and coastlines. There were, however, no permanent dwellings, no real villages and very few possessions.
Nomadic foraging was by far the dominant socioeconomic system.
As with foragers elsewhere, however, here there was a wide variety of activity, dependent to a large degree on the environment in which people lived.
Aboriginal people did a great deal to mould the landscape to their needs by, for example, firestick farming to improve grasslands for grazing animals, building fish traps in shallow riverbeds and coastal zones or building canoes for hunting marine mammals and fish. There was much local specialisation in food production depending on natural conditions, and the manufacture of tools was a matter of local specialisation—again, depending on resources.
Trade of tools and special materials with neighbouring peoples and over long distances across many language boundaries has been well studied (see Butlin 1993; Keen 2004). It seems clear that there was a continent-wide system of cultural diffusion and trading networks.
Furthemore;
Dr Ian Keen is Honorary Associate Professor, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, College Arts & Social Sciences at the Australia National University in Canberra. His distinguished academic career spans more than forty years.
Historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey
Academic, who specialised in covering research in history, anthropology and botany, Bill Gammage, in his 2011 book, The Biggest Estate on Earth.
Rhys Jones (archaeologist)
All of the above have stated professionally that Australian Aboriginals were not and have never been true farmers.
They use the term "Firestick" farming (setting fire to control growth).
Which was probably misinterpreted by the semi-literate lazy researcher Pascoe as farming in an agricultural term.
All state that Aborigines never lived in cities or even villages, but may have lived in collectives where food sources were plentyful.
And that housing structures did not nor ever have existed.
The "fish traps" so revered in myth and lore were the result of natural phenomenon and some opportunistic placement of rocks to make traps.
Not unheard of in primitive people and certainly not indicative of an established farming and coordinated enterprise.
Again;
Quote: Australian Aborigines were foragers or hunter/gatherers before European colonisation.
Neither agriculture in the sense of settled communities of cultivators nor pastoralism in the sense of settled or nomadic groups with domestic animals existed in Australia.
My conclusion, which will be refuted by Pascoe's worshipers, is that Australian Aborigines were nothing more than Primitive hunter gatherers.
Sure, some took advantage of some natural elements and< as they do, Loved setting fires.
But there is not one shred of true evidence that agriculture, aquaculture or building is/or has been found to date.
Finally;
Quote: To amateurs like us, all this controversy over how to define the economies of pre-colonial Aboriginal societies just sounds like semantics.
Aboriginal people were quite happy with their lives as very skilled and successful hunter gatherers.
If 250 years later, politically motivated academics and activists want to engage in world play by calling Aboriginal people farmers, living in settled stone villages of 1000 people, so be it.
It won’t make any difference to the Aboriginal Sovereignty argument - When the British colonised New South Wales in 1788 they legally ‘settled’ here amongst nomadic, native hunter gatherers. It was not a ‘conquest’ or ‘cession’ of settled farmers who had a recognisable social government, as understood by the legal definitions of the time, so no Treaty was required.
Academics can write as many papers as they like with ‘Farming’ in the title such as, ‘Food-getting, Domestication and Farming in Pre-colonial Australia’ and then have to admit that, ‘This paper argues that Australian Aboriginal economies do conform to the “complex” hunter gatherer archetype’. (ibid. p116). Which is what all us amateurs already know - Aboriginal people were brilliant and successful hunter gatherers and fishers with many complex tools and practices.
Dr Ian Keen
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A real history of Aboriginal Australians (Read 21817 times)
