First Nations, Science and Politics

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Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #45 – January 27, 2025, 11:39:45 am

I'm not expecting people to go, yeah its right or wrong.

Here is an account from a credible page, of what the indigenous interpretation of events are:

https://www.aboriginalheritage.org/history/history/

Either we as a nation are choosing not to acknowledge this, or there is an element of fiction and embellishment to what occurred.

There is a juxtaposition of people moving around and returning after 12 months vs what we read here about people not moving around so much.

There is lots of exaggeration here mixed with truth, and that is my contention. Not that these events didn't occur, not to minimise the impact of them to indigenous Australians. The problem with studying history is a lack of first hand accounts that are definitely believable because you are reading someone's truth and not an absolute truth.

I think a lot of people gloss over the fact that we are seeing a massive revision of history to suit an agenda.

https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/about/Pages/1788-to-1810-Early-European-Settlement.aspx

The two stories are at odds with each other, and im surely not the only one that sees it?

As for people debating things without wits, I comment here purely to help encourage the conversation. Not to make indigenous people angry, I'm sensitive to their plight, and im not minimising their experience i just don't want to see fabrication.

It doesn't help anyone or anything, particularly a modern harmonious society which is what im interested in, where everyone can effectively move forward together.

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #46 – January 27, 2025, 12:29:30 pm

Thry,
As best as i can tell your biggest issue is with the population figures quoted and that not lining up with what you deemed normal for other parts of the world.
Is that a fair comment?

My question to that is, how the hell did anyone come up with any kind of estimate 200+ years ago that was even slightly accurate?

Looking at Perth as an example. The Dutch first arrived late 1600s. French early 1800s. Wasn't until 1830ish that anyone thought enough of it to do something with it.
Cook was long dead before any of that (post Dutch) so how could he provide an estimate on anything happening outside of his little area on the east coast?

Australia is a huge country with every kind of biome spread between its sea borders. Any kind of extrapolation for population figures are going to be far from accurate that long ago.

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #47 – January 27, 2025, 04:44:16 pm

A couple of loose ends:

The earliest evidence of exploitation of coastal resources by Aboriginal Australians comes from Boodie Cave on Barrow Island, northwest Australia. Excavation of the cave showed that the first occupation occurred between 51.1 and 46.2 ka [kilo annum or thousand years ago], consistent with other early dates for occupation of Australia. The report of the excavation by Peter Veth et al, states, "Marine resources are incorporated into dietary assemblages by 42.5 ka and continue to be transported to the cave through all periods of occupation, despite fluctuating sea levels and dramatic extensions of the coastal plain. The changing quantities of marine fauna through time reflect the varying distance of the cave from the contemporaneous shoreline. The dietary breadth of both arid zone terrestrial fauna and marine species increases after the Last Glacial Maximum and significantly so by the mid-Holocene. The cave is abandoned by 6.8 ka when the island becomes increasingly distant from the mainland coast."

It's worth noting that the authors of the paper come from 15 institutions in Australia, New Zealand, England and the USA so there goes the conspiracy theory around suppression of evidence and threats to funding.

You can find the paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379117302640

And here's a link to a brief article about the discovery of Aboriginal stone artefacts on submerged landscapes off the Western Australian coast: https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2020/research/ancient-aboriginal-history/

Paul posted excerpts from and a link to the paper "A Genomic History of Aboriginal Australia", published in the prestigious journal Nature. The following are excerpts from earlier DNA research that demonstrate consistent findings of one migration by the ancestors of contemporary Aboriginal Australians.

Sheila M van Holst Pellekaan published "Origins of the Australian and New Guinean Aborigines" in 2008. She found that, "Mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid (mtDNA) and Y chromosome studies indicate deep ancestry for both Australia and New Guinea peoples, with evidence for limited, shared genetic connection as well as ancient maternal lineages specific to both places. Several entry points into Sahul might explain haplotype distribution. Migration by northern as well as by a southern coastal route remain possible scenarios, as no single regional source population is identifiable."
https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470015902.a0020815

Morten Rasmussen et al published "An Aboriginal Australian Genome Reveals Separate Human Dispersals into Asia" in Science in 2015. This is a fascinating story in that the genomic sequence was obtained from a 100-year-old lock of hair donated by an Aboriginal man from southern Western Australia in the early 20th century. Rasmussen et al concluded, "The degree to which a single individual is representative of the evolutionary history of Aboriginal Australians more generally is unclear. Nonetheless, we conclude that the ancestors of this Aboriginal Australian man—and possibly of all Aboriginal Australians—are as distant from Africans as are other Eurasians, and that the Aboriginal ancestors split 62,000 to 75,000 years B.P. from the gene pool that all contemporary non-African populations appear to descend from. Rather than supporting a single early human expansion into eastern Asia, our findings support the alternative model of Aboriginal Australians descending from an early Asian expansion wave some 62,000 to 75,000 years B.P. The data also fit this model’s prediction of substantial admixture and replacement of populations from the first wave by the second expansion wave, with a few populations such as Aboriginal Australians, and possibly PNG Highlands and Aeta, being remnants of the early dispersal. This is compatible with mtDNA data showing that although all haplogroups observed in Australia are unique to this region, they derive from the same few founder haplogroups that are shared by all non-African populations. Finally, our data are in agreement with contemporary Aboriginal Australians being the direct descendants from the first humans to be found in Australia, dating to ~50,000 years B.P.. This means that Aboriginal Australians likely have one of the oldest continuous population histories outside sub-Saharan Africa today.

Morten Rasmussen wrote the article with the assistance of 47 co-authors and, as far as I can tell, only one is Australian and is associated with an Australian institution. Another nail in the coffin for the withheld evidence conspiracy theory.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1211177

Nano Nagle et al published "Antiquity and diversity of Aboriginal Australian Y-chromosomes" in 2015 in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. They concluded, "The age of the Australian-specific Y-haplogroups suggests New Guineans and Aboriginal Australians have been isolated for over 30,000 years, supporting findings based on mitochondrial DNA data. Our data support the hypothesis of more than one route (via New Guinea) for males entering Sahul some 50,000 years ago and give no support for colonization events during the Holocene, from either India or elsewhere."
https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.22886

It is patently obvious that the DNA evidence indicates a single migration event to Australia and New Guinea, or Sahul as the combined landmass is known, around 60,000 years ago, with no subsequent genetic admixture until European settlement.

Moving on to the Aboriginal population of Australia, Corey Bradshaw, et al published "Stochastic models support rapid peopling of Late Pleistocene Sahul" in Nature Communications in 2021. This is a modelling exercise rather than observed empirical data and 120 different scenarios were run. The models indicate that there was "rapid peopling of the entire continent of Sahul [that] occurred potentially within as few as 4370–5600 years, across a wide range of environments, including rainforests, savannas, deserts, alpine regions, grasslands and temperate forests."

And

"The highest-ranked relationship between carrying capacity and net primary production predicted a maximum continental-wide population of 6.3–6.5 million (0.55–0.57 people km−2) based on the carrying capacity predicted from the LOVECLIM Earth-systems model and the particular form of the best-supported relationship between human-population density and net primary production we considered."

"Overlaying the modern extent of Australia and New Guinea on the predicted population grid at 300 generations from initial entry indicates that ~27.5% of the continent’s total population is attributed to cells that are now under water (Fig. 3). In the case of the 50-ka single-entry scenario shown in Fig. 3, the above-water component of the Australian part of Sahul would give a total population of 3.1 million people at saturation."

The paper can be viewed at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21551-3. The modelling and mathematics may be a little daunting but the paper does have some nice graphics showing the extent of Sahul and the location of the earliest known occupation sites.

Then there's Alan Williams' 2013 paper "A new population curve for prehistoric Australia" published in Proceedings of the Royal Society. Again, this is modelling but it's based on a comprehensive dataset of radiocarbon dated occupation sites. Williams concludes:

"This shows low populations through the Late Pleistocene, before a slow stepwise increase in population beginning during the Holocene transition (approx. 12 ka) and continuing in pulses (approx. 8.3–6.6, 4.4–3.7 and 1.6–0.4 ka) through the Holocene. These data give no support for an early saturation of the continent, although the estimated population following initial landfall was probably greater than previously allowed (comparable with the Early Holocene). The greatest increase in population occurred in the Late Holocene, but in contrast to existing intensification models, changes in demography and diversification of economic activities began much earlier. Some demographic changes appear to be in response to major climatic events, most notably during the last glacial maximum, where the curve suggests that population fell by about 60 per cent between 21 and 18 ka. An application of statistical demographic methods to Australian ethnographic and genetic data suggests that a founding group of 1000–2000 at 50 ka would result in a population high of approximately 1.2 million at approximately 0.5 ka. Data suggests an 8 per cent decline to approximately 770 000–1.1 million at the time of European contact, giving a figure consistent with ethnographic estimates and with historical observations of the impact of smallpox, and other diseases introduced by Macassans and Europeans during and after AD 1788."
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2013.0486

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #48 – January 28, 2025, 05:27:36 pm

It's always disappointing when people introduce facts into these types of discussions.

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #49 – January 29, 2025, 10:03:20 am

What grinds my gears is the way people "interpret" (use) data. I haven't fact checked the dating work (having a PhD in isotopic geochemistry I actually am qualified to comment on the veracity of that stuff), so assuming it's correct ... Just because "people" habituated here 50ka ago doesn't mean that (1) they are what modern Aboriginal people consider Aboriginal and (2) it doesn't automatically mean that modern Aboriginal culture dates back to that date. Somantics, but I'd wager a Sahul individual would regard a Modern Aboriginal in similar ways to the Modern Aboriginals and Cook's mob.

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #50 – January 29, 2025, 11:00:51 am

Quote from: Professer E – on January 29, 2025, 10:03:20 am

What grinds my gears is the way people "interpret" (use) data. I haven't fact checked the dating work (having a PhD in isotopic geochemistry I actually am qualified to comment on the veracity of that stuff), so assuming it's correct ... Just because "people" habituated here 50ka ago doesn't mean that (1) they are what modern Aboriginal people consider Aboriginal and (2) it doesn't automatically mean that modern Aboriginal culture dates back to that date. Somantics, but I'd wager a Sahul individual would regard a Modern Aboriginal in similar ways to the Modern Aboriginals and Cook's mob.

Dr Prof hey, you mysterious bugger 😂!

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #51 – January 29, 2025, 01:31:01 pm

Quote from: Professer E – on January 29, 2025, 10:03:20 am

What grinds my gears is the way people "interpret" (use) data. I haven't fact checked the dating work (having a PhD in isotopic geochemistry I actually am qualified to comment on the veracity of that stuff), so assuming it's correct ... Just because "people" habituated here 50ka ago doesn't mean that (1) they are what modern Aboriginal people consider Aboriginal and (2) it doesn't automatically mean that modern Aboriginal culture dates back to that date. Somantics, but I'd wager a Sahul individual would regard a Modern Aboriginal in similar ways to the Modern Aboriginals and Cook's mob.

You have to look at the whole of the evidence Prof; distribution of the oldest occupation sites, the physical anthropology and the DNA evidence all tell the same story. Of course, culture can't be static and languages, material culture, kinship rules, creation stories, beliefs, food processing, food rules, etc must have changed significantly over that time. The bloke who died around 14,000 years ago and whose skull was found at Keilor in 1940 would not have been able to converse with the blokes who made their marks on Batman's treaty and would have been puzzled by their artefacts, ceremonies and behaviour. There are obviously spatial differences as well as temporal. The Tasmanian Aboriginals that Protector Robinson brought with him to the Port Phillip colony were useless in their intended roles as intermediaries and were shunned by the locals. However, genetically they are still the same people and direct descendants of the first colonisers.

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #52 – January 29, 2025, 05:34:31 pm

Quote from: kruddler – on January 27, 2025, 12:29:30 pm

Thry,
As best as i can tell your biggest issue is with the population figures quoted and that not lining up with what you deemed normal for other parts of the world.
Is that a fair comment?

My question to that is, how the hell did anyone come up with any kind of estimate 200+ years ago that was even slightly accurate?

Looking at Perth as an example. The Dutch first arrived late 1600s. French early 1800s. Wasn't until 1830ish that anyone thought enough of it to do something with it.
Cook was long dead before any of that (post Dutch) so how could he provide an estimate on anything happening outside of his little area on the east coast?

Australia is a huge country with every kind of biome spread between its sea borders. Any kind of extrapolation for population figures are going to be far from accurate that long ago.

Sort of.

When I see a continent like Australia, lag so far behind population growth (compared with even a small dot in the ocean like samoa according to the time of arrival, to the time of european arrival), and then the claims made by people are that the continent was covered with 250 to 400 nations, it makes me wonder where all the people were.

Yeah I get it, they lived differently and didn't expand their population in line with modern populaces, but the world over people did this, yet not here. Makes me wonder why or why not. No assumptions made, different way of life is fine.

See this bit here from DJC: The cave is abandoned by 6.8 ka when the island becomes increasingly distant from the mainland coast. According to what I have looked up, the cave is abandoned 6,800 years ago, or 4800 BC, was first occupied, 49000 to 44000 BC, marine resources appear in the diet 42,500 years ago or 40,500BC at the Cave. What this indicates, is that people would have been living around said Cave for a long time, (long enough to experience the sort of tropical storms, that would see people leave and chose to return) perhaps long enough for it not to have had marine resources nearby it, yet never thought to move to Australia until after sea levels rose and made life difficult in the cave? people around the planet have evolved at different rates, so it stands to reason, that people here in Australia would have too. After all, its a continent.

In lieu of other evidence, we must assumed that the cave was inhabited by indigenous, but what if it werent, and the people there died out or were a different species of human altogether?

Regarding the estimates they are what we have. They could be true, false, wildly inaccurate, but generally speaking, the numbers are estimated from somewhere. I chose to think, that Cooks estimate is a estimate of what he saw in front of him. so 110 000 at botany bay and the surrounds. Not, on the continent. Too large like you state. Thing is, if there were 110 000 around then, then the 750k to 1.1 million isnt wildly inaccurate, but we should see a lot more evidence of these peoples way of life, unless we choose not to recognise it or the biggest cover up in history has occurred (of very large proportions I might add).

We look at Australia today, 25 million people, the bulk of which are in major cities like Melb, Syd, Perth, Brisb, Adelaide and then people dotted around the country, but european settlement chose most of the places based on geography and trade links to the rest of the world. It's a bit of a coincidence that they decided in such a large place, with such few people to displace the only ones that were here, and they simply didnt find somewhere else to live, and potentially defend their way of life there.

I just can't quite understand the logic, and that might say more about me than anything else. I would have thought that 50000 years to 0 AD and then 2000 years should yield much more sizeable populations, particularly in a country where food was abundant, and there are examples of Aboriginal people building houses, dams, sowing crops, irrigation, tilling the land, and altering the course of rivers.

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #53 – January 29, 2025, 06:16:46 pm

@Thryleon
Do you think that population lagging compared to a small pacific island might have something to do with 'population density'.
Modern Australians tend to cluster in cities, country folk in towns.
Go outside those areas even today and you can go for miles without contact, even in a car.
Now do it on foot, and it could be weeks, months before you came into contact with other people....and the interacting with that group may not have always been a positve one.

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #54 – January 29, 2025, 06:44:56 pm

Living away from the coast comes down to food and water (resource) availability. This dictates that in many parts of Australia, Aboriginal population density was/is low.

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #55 – January 29, 2025, 07:20:09 pm

Quote from: Thryleon – on January 29, 2025, 05:34:31 pm

Sort of.

When I see a continent like Australia, lag so far behind population growth (compared with even a small dot in the ocean like samoa according to the time of arrival, to the time of european arrival), and then the claims made by people are that the continent was covered with 250 to 400 nations, it makes me wonder where all the people were.

Yeah I get it, they lived differently and didn't expand their population in line with modern populaces, but the world over people did this, yet not here. Makes me wonder why or why not. No assumptions made, different way of life is fine.

See this bit here from DJC: The cave is abandoned by 6.8 ka when the island becomes increasingly distant from the mainland coast. According to what I have looked up, the cave is abandoned 6,800 years ago, or 4800 BC, was first occupied, 49000 to 44000 BC, marine resources appear in the diet 42,500 years ago or 40,500BC at the Cave. What this indicates, is that people would have been living around said Cave for a long time, (long enough to experience the sort of tropical storms, that would see people leave and chose to return) perhaps long enough for it not to have had marine resources nearby it, yet never thought to move to Australia until after sea levels rose and made life difficult in the cave? people around the planet have evolved at different rates, so it stands to reason, that people here in Australia would have too. After all, its a continent.

In lieu of other evidence, we must assumed that the cave was inhabited by indigenous, but what if it werent, and the people there died out or were a different species of human altogether?

Regarding the estimates they are what we have. They could be true, false, wildly inaccurate, but generally speaking, the numbers are estimated from somewhere. I chose to think, that Cooks estimate is a estimate of what he saw in front of him. so 110 000 at botany bay and the surrounds. Not, on the continent. Too large like you state. Thing is, if there were 110 000 around then, then the 750k to 1.1 million isnt wildly inaccurate, but we should see a lot more evidence of these peoples way of life, unless we choose not to recognise it or the biggest cover up in history has occurred (of very large proportions I might add).

We look at Australia today, 25 million people, the bulk of which are in major cities like Melb, Syd, Perth, Brisb, Adelaide and then people dotted around the country, but european settlement chose most of the places based on geography and trade links to the rest of the world. It's a bit of a coincidence that they decided in such a large place, with such few people to displace the only ones that were here, and they simply didnt find somewhere else to live, and potentially defend their way of life there.

I just can't quite understand the logic, and that might say more about me than anything else. I would have thought that 50000 years to 0 AD and then 2000 years should yield much more sizeable populations, particularly in a country where food was abundant, and there are examples of Aboriginal people building houses, dams, sowing crops, irrigation, tilling the land, and altering the course of rivers.

I haven't forgotten you or your propositions Thry

Let's start with Boodie Cave. First of all, there's absolutely no evidence that some other people lived there. In fact, apart from the "Hobbits" (Homo floriensis) and Solo or Java Man (Homo erectus), there's no skeletal evidence of any hominins in our part of the world until the first modern human skeletal remains were found in Niah Cave in Borneo and at Lake Mungo. The Niah Cave individual lived around 38 ka and Mungo Man around 42 ka.

Back to Boodie Cave - The Sahul continent as it was 50 ka was very different to the Australia we're familiar with. Apart from the much larger land mass and much of the continental shelf forming an extensive coastal plain, the climate was much colder and much drier than it is now. So, rather than the first Australians finding a welcoming coastal fringe with a tropical hinterland, the continent was far more arid than it is now. At 50 ka, Boodie Cave was optimally located to provide access to the Pleistocene coastline and the extensive arid coastal plains. As the temperature gradually increased, the conditions became less arid, and access to the coastline was less difficult. By 6.8 ka, when the cave was abandoned, the degree of difficulty in accessing the now Barrow Island meant that it made more sense to focus on the resources of the mainland coastline and the now much wetter coastal fringe.

It's worth noting that occupation of Boodie Cave would have been seasonal. The people who occupied the cave would have had a seasonal round determined by the availability of resources like berries, tubers, shellfish, migrating or spawning fish, bird and reptile eggs and so on. It's also worth noting that caves aren't terribly comfortable places to live and have never been first choice occupation sites. Most of the places where the Boodie Cave people spent their time would have been what archaeologists call "open sites". Open sites are located strategically throughout the landscape on spurs, dunes, near the confluence of rivers and many other landforms. Each open site or cave (or more often, rockshelter) would have provided access to a range of resources within a foraging radius; the distance people could walk, gather tubers or bludgeon a goanna, then walk back to camp. Open sites are much harder to detect than cave sites and generally don't have the same good conditions for preserving what the occupants left behind.

Now, even after the end of the Pleistocene and much warmer and more pleasant conditions, better access to potable water and resources, what is now the Australian part of Sahul wasn't all that welcoming with most of the continent still arid or semi-arid. Even now, agricultural activity is largely restricted to the coastal fringe or irrigated areas and most grazing is on rangelands with low stock numbers. Our soils are generally poor, and that's despite dumping most of Nauru on our farmlands. Of course, most of the 27M Australians live in large cities or around the coast. The population density of much of arid and semi arid Australia is probably less than what it was 200 years ago.

As mentioned previously, our native flora and fauna has very little in the way of species that may be domesticated and even fewer that would provide a return on the energy investment required to do so. The First Australians arrived with a very basic toolkit but came up with some significant innovations. Edge ground tools or axes were first developed in Australia and Japan tens of thousands of years before they appeared elsewhere. Seed grinding technology was also first developed in Australia. Then there's the extensive fish trap or weir systems at Brewarrina, southwestern Victoria and other places. These required intense communal efforts over centuries but provided abundant resources ... provided the rivers and streams continued to flow. The Aboriginal population densities in those areas was higher but, for most of Australia, the lower population densities reflected the carrying capacity of the land without access to the innovations of the industrial revolution, plants and animals that could be productively domesticated, or Nauru's superphosphate.

Now, a quick visit to Polynesia: The Polynesians, or Lapita People, were relative latecomers to Oceania, arriving in western Oceania around 3 ka. They had a sophisticated toolkit, ocean-going canoes, and domesticated plants and animals including sweet potato, taro, bananas, yams, breadfruit, sugar cane, pigs, dogs, and chickens. The dogs were largely herbivorous and were bred as food animals. They also had the benefit of making their homes on islands that had more productive soil, a settled, milder climate and abundant maritime resources, and not as many deadly creatures. It would be surprising indeed if their populations didn't increase quickly, then plateau. Of course, many of the Polynesian voyages of discovery were driven by population pressures and warfare.

Re: First Nations, Science and Politics

Reply #56 – February 07, 2025, 07:59:34 pm

The left really can't help but become what they despise.

After months of endlessly berating Dutton as a racist, misogynist, bigoted, etc., etc., labelling him as a person who was destroying our countries international relations with it's top trading partners through Trump like rhetoric.

Now they get one photograph next to a Chinese high roller and Dutton is a communist spy!

What a bunch of weathervanes, they make a flock of sheep look like extroverts!