this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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[–] fiat_lux@kbin.social 53 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Aboriginals didn’t even have a way to make fire, write, make wheels, or farm.

Incorrect, indigenous Australians used fire extensively for land management. They were the first society in the world that we have evidence of milling seed for flour (36k years ago), they had yam plantations, built stone weirs for fish farming, and a bunch of other things. The reason people believe they didn't is because their way of life was systematically erased and dismissed as 'primitive' by the colonialists.

They didn't use wheels, because many groups used waterways for transport instead. Other groups were on land where the environment wasn't really conducive to wheeled transport.

They also didn't have writing, instead relying on an extensive oral history, as many cultures have.

Please don't spread misinformation.

Australians want to burn coal and spread hateful lies in the international media.

Largely incorrect as well, even if Australians are having issues with their government and the mining/energy industries.

[–] r_wraith@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Incorrect, indigenous Australians used fire extensively for land management. They were the first society in the world that we have evidence of milling seed for flour (36k years ago), they had yam plantations, built stone weirs for fish farming, and a bunch of other things.

Interesting. Any sources I could look up?

[–] fiat_lux@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

You bet!

If you're not familiar with Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander cultures generally, the Deadly Stories history timeline and the rest of the site gives a good high level overview from an aboriginal perspective. Especially for the creation stories which is a core similarity between different groups. There's some who claim elements in the stories go as far back as when there were still megafauna. True? No idea. But fun to consider.

Bruce Pascoe wrote Dark Emu in 2019 which is a very important book about agriculture and tech that upset a lot of people. I've linked you a page that contains a brief summary plus links to academic responses to it, because it did cause controversy. Apologies for the school-age-centric link, there's a big push in education right now to teach kids about the aboriginal stuff they didn't teach adults, so links to aboriginal science tend to be at this level or uni research papers.

The whole movie about the writing of that book, criticism and backlash is up on ABC iView - The Dark Emu Story if you're keen for something more human that gets into the racism of erasing aboriginal science too. A shit VPN might be needed, but I doubt ABC has done much more to geoblock.

Short article on aboriginal engineering, from NITV who cover news from an aboriginal perspective.

Older article on fire as land management by aboriginal peoples with a few pics is a good entry point for that topic. Fire is a huge part of many aboriginal groups, so the idea they didn't have it is frankly ridiculous on the surface. Like they only ate raw food and huddled in caves for warmth for 60k years or something, i mean come on.

And just because I enjoy it, this map of the aboriginal groups in Australia. Also because people keep talking about Aboriginal Australians as though they are a monolith. There are at least 250 languages.

[–] r_wraith@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you very much for the information. I will check it out.

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