Discussion: The Challenges & Opportunities in Pre Colonial Australia for Alterative History

[Xel]

Welcome to the thread, the goal here is to try and outline the real history of pre colonial Australia and to discuss potential avenues for alternative history and the challenges there-in. Before we begin in earnest I would like to note I have read the Lands of Red & gold and enjoyed it, but that its understanding of Pre Colonial Australia and First Nations cultures is rather outdated, which is probably the best place to start, IE, what is know about Pre Colonial Australia? (My main sources for this are Dark Emu, the Biggest Estate on Earth and William, Alan (24 April 2013). "A new population curve for prehistoric Australia". Proceedings of the Royal Society.)

A common recurring element I see when this topic comes up is that Australia was too environmentally desert-ous and lacking in both beasts of burdens and domesticable crops for much to easily change. This stance lines up with older historical records and revisions, but isn't actually reflective of the current archeological, or historical understanding of the continent anymore. I obviously cannot transcribe the entire books, though I can link a useful YouTube video that covers some additional points, but I can provide a rundown of some major points:

1. There's little to no archeological evidence of large-scale warfare which influenced tool design and was likely informed by the need to large-scale cooperation to effectively manage the land.
2. Colonial explorers often compared Australia's environment to that of an expansive park, but claimed it was natures clumsy hand when in fact it was land management on an epic scale designed to create vast herding grounds and forests, which also protected crop growing spaces and settlements from wild animal incursions and made them easy to manage.
3. The different language groups were not isolationist or cut off from one another, records show of items from the Far East making their way through trade networks far into the middle country and the wheatbelt took up more than half the country and stretched from the far South East being grown in the North West. We know that the 'Message Stick' was a widely respected tool for communication across the lands. There is confirmed records of Macassan contact with Australia, as well as evidence of the Sama-Bajau and & the Kilwa Sultanate engaging in trade with the First Nation, along with Javanese contact with Australia which references their sailors going passed Tasmania!. Plus possibly a Chinese settlement given the Chinese statue of Shou Lao, the Chinese god of longevity dug up in 1879 near Darwin, its theorized this one is tied to the expeditions of Cheng Ho. (This article discusses it more, though I am unsure on some of its reliability.)
4. We know that stone houses and monolithic stone structures akin to those seen across the world were present but the former were destroyed by invaders and the latter were usually destroyed and or attributed to some mysteriously missing white people. There were also various types of automated fishing structures such as fish traps in rivers that are over 8000 years old at least and exist at different levels that work like a maze to trap fish; as well as larger structures that funneled water & fish into basins for catch and use.
5. Large-scale cooperation across national and language lines was seen when it came to orchestrating burning offs of forests to prevent forest fires, manage the herds and improve the soil. there was also much coordination in the construction of large kennels to herd thousands of kangaroos into for culling to control the population, as well as many other such events.
6. Indigenous communities actually had several examples of domesticated crops, not just the nuts, but also vast fields of wheat that were formed into bails that stretched on further than the eye could see and was used to make an extremely soft and fluffy flower for cakes. They also had yam farms and several fruit crops, the latter of which were turned into an edible paste and more, with many of these being extremely ancient practices. They also discovered a way to engage in long term food storage for some of these products and overall produced a surplus which would be stored, traded or gifted; they also had rows and rows of massive enclosed cooking stoves.
7. The current estimates for the overall population pre the introduction of foreign diseases or invasion is 1.2 million. Most structures and settlements however were designed with the purpose of not damaging or disrupting the land long term, or designed to just be temporary for the more nomadically inclined, which lessened their archeological footprint.
8. Attached here is a good radio interview discussing how horrible of Australia's native wildlife are for sedentary domestication. But in the short term, they dig, they run, they rarely have a hierarchal structure, they can be very violent and they don't breed super efficiently and are incredibly hard to pen even by modern standards.

So, with all that (& so much more, they are really good books) in mind, what makes writing alternative history challenging? Well, to put it bluntly, the land is extremely ecologically fragile, perhaps more-so than any other on Earth, or close to it and on a massive scale.

Some examples include:

• Vast tracks of grassland that seemed ideal for grazing being completely unable to handle cloven hooved animals, which compacted them down so much the land became bone dry.
• Indigenous communities warning colonizers to do burn offs but being chased away, leading to massive forest fires within a year along with the animals and invasive weeds quickly growing out of control.
• This one isn't directly from the books, but its been observed that detrimental environmental changes have caused many great lakes to become salt lakes and there isn't a convenient way to fix that once it happens.
• Knock on effects from these and other factors caused mass die offs at incredibly quick rates, leading to advancing deserts and large-scale ecological collapse; factors like these and overcoming these challenges can be reasoned to inform a great deal about the First Nations cultures and practices.

What this ultimately means is that the continent is vastly less forgiving to its tenants than others are, with experimentation, large-scale projects or even mere accidents able to render an area unlivable within a handful of years. In other words, the First Nations had pretty much mastered interacting with and living off the environment and turning the continent into a vibrant place, even now many scientists are using Indigenous land management as the basis for improved policies. What this means is that causing radical changes in the continent requires more than introducing a staple crop or forges ETC.

This of course doesn't mean one can't do alt histories, or not create radically different cultures and societies, it simply means the process involves different challenges than in other locales or times. Australia has a rich and extremely long history and while the land is incredibly hard to work, there are plenty of alternative paths one can create with some creativity and a lot of luck.

 

[TheKutKu]

Tom; McConvell, Patrick; Rhodes, Richard A. (2020). The Language of Hunter-Gatherers || Small Language Survival and Large Language Expansion on a Hunter-Gatherer Continent. have an interesting remark

"The arrival of the dingo or Asian dog in Australia by 3,800years ago (Corbett1995) suggests to many that contact with Asians occurred atleast at this period. " "Now we come to the most speculative part of my hypothesis. If theAustronesians had made contact several millennia earlier along the same seacoastsas did the later Macassan visitors, is it possible that this may haveimparted relative epidemiological immunity to the Aboriginal peoples ofthose coasts? In turn this would, if true, suggest that the remaining populationsof the Australian continent were far more susceptible to exogenous epidemicdisease. Were they to have been severely or largely reduced by epidemicdisease, the scenario would then exist for a replacement spread of both popula-tion and, in its wake, language. The catastrophic demographic effects onAboriginal people of epidemic disease introduced from the Indonesian archi-pelago in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are well known" "As a consequence of the foregoing scenarios I propose that serious considera-tion be given to the possibility that the Pama-Nyungan expansion may have beentriggered, above all else, by a catastrophic population collapse outside the non-Pama-Nyungan zone, due to epidemic disease introduced by Asian contact."



If dingos were really introduced by a probably austronesian population (that seems to fit archeological evidence, but recent genetic one suggest an earlier migration) and there was contact between the two, and if this contact led to a certain amount of depopulation which participated in the Pama-Nyungan expansion, then I wonder if this couldn't have resulted in permanent Austronesian settlement in queensland? Since apparently they didn't settle much in island melanesia due to the higher local population density.

Such permanent settlement could probably interact and trade with the Australian population, without drastically disturbing it. Then give it 4,000 years of cultural exchange and maybe it could evolve toward larger, austronesian-sized, aboriginal polities and social organisation.

 

[Xel]

I wonder if this couldn't have resulted in permanent Austronesian settlement in queensland? Since apparently they didn't settle much in island melanesia due to the higher local population density

OK, I need to go away and do some added research, but this idea definitely has potential, with or without the dingoes specifically; of course, it of course begs the question what this would change?

Spoiler

This map covers the OTL areas covered during in the expansions, and there's even theories that they travelled as far South America from Polynesia due to the spread of the sweet potato. So off the cuff, this would add the entire, extremely large coast, of 'Australia' to the navigable territories, and likely allow for extended and more consistently projected trade and travel ports.

Beyond this, during the First Millennium CE, most of the Austronesian inhabitants in Maritime Southeast Asia began trading with India and China, while it wasn't until the tenth century that Islam was introduced, so that's at least a thousand years of potentially uninterrupted trade and travel that could potentially encompass Australia to a far greater degree now too. (Plus, unlike the Europeans, the Islamic expansions were less genocidal anyway and so less destructive to local peoples and cultures.

Broadly speaking, its hard to say what or how much this might have changed, but if it did lead to a vaster more interconnected oceanic trade and travel network, this could well have led to the bleed-in of stuff like smelting, certain none destructive livestock or gun powder through mundane or malevolent means perhaps?

 

[Arkenfolm]

Ages ago after I read Lands of Red and Gold, I hashed out a brief TL that involved the same Australian agriculture POD but tropical in origin instead of temperate (so Far North Queensland). I still would love to do that one of these days, but I would need to know more on the archaeology and ethnology of the area as well as that of Papua New Guinea and adjacent regions. It seems very hard to get an indigenous Australia that doesn't have a serious connection to that part of the world.

My idea is still broadly the same. Some development in New Guinea spreads to the Torres Strait Islanders which spreads to Australia proper. This would get Queensland and maybe Top End/Kimberley in the Austronesian sphere of interaction although I'm not sure what goods the Aboriginals might offer before gold mining starts (maybe their pepperbushes). The climate there is conducive to growing some Austronesian plants (a few of which natively grow in Australia anyway). This would lead to MANY permanent villages, a reduction in nomadic groups , and other changes associated with agriculture, but not necessarily state societies given the history of Papua and the eastern islands of Indonesia.

1. There's little to no archeological evidence of large-scale warfare which influenced tool design and was likely informed by the need to large-scale cooperation to effectively manage the land.
2. Colonial explorers often compared Australia's environment to that of an expansive park, but claimed it was natures clumsy hand when in fact it was land management on an epic scale designed to create vast herding grounds and forests, which also protected crop growing spaces and settlements from wild animal incursions and made them easy to manage.

I'm not sure if that's the case when the similar environment of prehistoric California we have ample evidence of warfare while the natives also used large-scale land management for their staple "crops". Lots of other groups globally used similar systems of controller fires to drive animals and increase the yield of wild plants (or indeed to encourage particular plants). I believe in the Australian case, the bunya ceremonies involved dispute resolution which suggests there were what we'd identify as wars.

I put "crops" in quotes because I'm not sure if there's any real genetic evidence of domestication of Australian crops nor actual farming as would be understood by every agricultural people the world over, or indeed the Aboriginals themselves (at least according to Wikipedia where Aboriginal languages seem to have no words associated with agriculture while nearby Melanesian languages do). The sort of land management and gathering was very common in complex hunter-gatherer societies (and to a degree in simpler hunter-gatherer societies), but it wasn't farming by any definition.

1. The different language groups were not isolationist or cut off from one another, records show of items from the Far East making their way through trade networks far into the middle country and the wheatbelt took up more than half the country and stretched from the far South East being grown in the North West. We also know northern nations regularly traded with Makassan fishermen and that the 'Message Stick' was a widely respected tool for communication across the lands.

Wasn't there no evidence of Indonesian trepanging until several centuries ago, which corresponded to increases in social complexity on Sulawesi?

1. We have found archeological evidence of a permanent town/city with a population of over ten thousand which doesn't appear to have held any special significance (Thus meaning it wasn't likely an exception to the rule) and is comparable to plenty of the powerful middle age cities of Europe. The current estimates for the overall population pre the introduction of foreign diseases or invasion is 1.2 million. Most structures and settlements however were designed with the purpose of not damaging or disrupting the land long term, or designed to just be temporary for the more nomadically inclined, which lessened their archeological footprint.

Citation on that permanent town/city? I doubt it would be comparable to medieval Europe and likely seasonal/temporary (or permanent on a much smaller basis but swelling seasonally for trade) since sustaining a population that size without agriculture is impossible because the community would run into issues with sanitation, it would attract pests, and most importantly, they would quickly deplete their local resources from firewood to game animals forcing the community disperse.

So, with all that (& so much more, they are really good books) in mind, what makes writing alternative history challenging? Well, to put it bluntly, the land is extremely ecologically fragile, perhaps more-so than any other on Earth, or close to it and on a massive scale.

Some examples include:

• Vast tracks of grassland that seemed ideal for grazing being completely unable to handle cloven hooved animals, which compacted them down so much the land became bone dry.
• Indigenous communities warning colonizers to do burn offs but being chased away, leading to massive forest fires within a year along with the animals and invasive weeds quickly growing out of control.
• This one isn't directly from the books, but its been observed that detrimental environmental changes have caused many great lakes to become salt lakes and there isn't a convenient way to fix that once it happens.
• Knock on effects from these and other factors caused mass die offs at incredibly quick rates, leading to advancing deserts and large-scale ecological collapse; factors like these and overcoming these challenges can be reasoned to inform a great deal about the First Nations cultures and practices.

What this ultimately means is that the continent is vastly less forgiving to its tenants than others are, with experimentation, large-scale projects or even mere accidents able to render an area unlivable within a handful of years. In other words, the First Nations had pretty much mastered interacting with and living off the environment and turning the continent into a vibrant place, even now many scientists are using Indigenous land management as the basis for improved policies. What this means is that causing radical changes in the continent requires more than introducing a staple crop or forges ETC.

I disagree when it's precisely those radical changes that is what spurs innovation in human cultures like the dawn of agriculture being linked to climate shifts. Practically the entire world has permanently ecologically altered by humans, often with dramatic consequences such as Roman deforestation, silting of rivers in Northern Europe because the forests were cut down. There is also evidence Australia itself had these changes thanks to humans where as in the Americas, ancient Aboriginals help kill off the megafauna and potentially contribute to the desertification (although that may have been just as much climate-related).

I will say that too often in alternate history, introducing a crop is just simplified as introducing a crop and not the lifestyle/ecological shifts necessary. I'm guilty of that myself, although if I started my TL now I probably would've done better.

As for Australia, it's clear you would need special land management because of those factors you mentioned. LORAG offered one path, the hydraulic civilization model which is plausible, but there are others. Oasisamerica had MOSTLY egalitarian cultures (some were more stratified at times, but no true states) cooperating on maintaining irrigation and engaging in extreme dryland farming while co-existing with mostly nomadic mountain tribes/small scale hunter-gatherer villages in a very diverse linguistic environment. Could such a model work in Australia? I suspect so, with all its benefits and pitfalls. Now granted, Australia is more environmentally diverse, but the same model could apply everywhere. I suspect communities which place a huge emphasis on flood control.

I think we see more alt-Mesopotamias and alt-Europes more often in alternate history because it's MUCH easier to write and readers have a better frame of reference. It's hard to make those ethnographic/archaeology texts accessible, and if you're a good enough writer and scholar to be writing alt-history based on those sources, you're probably good enough to write an actual book for a mainstream audience on an actual culture which is something the world very much needs.

 

[Xel]

Ages ago after I read Lands of Red and Gold, I hashed out a brief TL that involved the same Australian agriculture POD but tropical in origin instead of temperate (so Far North Queensland). I still would love to do that one of these days, but I would need to know more on the archaeology and ethnology of the area as well as that of Papua New Guinea and adjacent regions. It seems very hard to get an indigenous Australia that doesn't have a serious connection to that part of the world.

My idea is still broadly the same. Some development in New Guinea spreads to the Torres Strait Islanders which spreads to Australia proper. This would get Queensland and maybe Top End/Kimberley in the Austronesian sphere of interaction although I'm not sure what goods the Aboriginals might offer before gold mining starts (maybe their pepperbushes). The climate there is conducive to growing some Austronesian plants (a few of which natively grow in Australia anyway). This would lead to MANY permanent villages, a reduction in nomadic groups , and other changes associated with agriculture, but not necessarily state societies given the history of Papua and the eastern islands of Indonesia.

Sounds like it could be a fun idea, though yeah the level of study needed makes things tricky, especially as there were already a lot of staple crops so would the introduction of another cause major changes, or would it be more tied to a connection to the North which could extend into say, China?

... I really should have read the second paragraph before writing the above, LOL. But yeah that sounds like a good starting point. As to what goods, hmm, they're a bit far from the wheat belt so that's off the table, traded fruits, vegetables and spices may have potentials, I know one area that also traded in pearls but I can't remember where that was >< I think a more federated society would be the most likely development, but that might just be me.

I'm not sure if that's the case when the similar environment of prehistoric California we have ample evidence of warfare while the natives also used large-scale land management for their staple "crops". Lots of other groups globally used similar systems of controller fires to drive animals and increase the yield of wild plants (or indeed to encourage particular plants). I believe in the Australian case, the bunya ceremonies involved dispute resolution which suggests there were what we'd identify as wars.

I put "crops" in quotes because I'm not sure if there's any real genetic evidence of domestication of Australian crops nor actual farming as would be understood by every agricultural people the world over, or indeed the Aboriginals themselves (at least according to Wikipedia where Aboriginal languages seem to have no words associated with agriculture while nearby Melanesian languages do). The sort of land management and gathering was very common in complex hunter-gatherer societies (and to a degree in simpler hunter-gatherer societies), but it wasn't farming by any definition.

That's fair, the second segment of that was just my theory, though I do think a very unstable environment might discourage people from going to war, but the the Bunya Ceremonies as you mention likely played a key role in that too given the scale they operated on and their overall function. thanks for sharing, I will need to read more on those!

I'll be providing a link further down that references this, but long story short there's several examples of crops that show signs of domestication, one of which can no longer even grow without human intervention. It operated in a different way nd on a different scale to the homestead farms seen in other parts of the world, but it was very much farming.

Wasn't there no evidence of Indonesian trepanging until several centuries ago, which corresponded to increases in social complexity on Sulawesi?

I was mostly noting that to highlight that the people weren't isolated into little villages or clans that never engaged with each other or the outside world, the broad strokes goal of the initial post was to address as many of the stereotypes as I could and the idea that the First Nations were all totally isolated from one another and couldn't conceive of anything beyond what they saw in their immediate field of vision is a common one I encountered growing up.

Citation on that permanent town/city? I doubt it would be comparable to medieval Europe and likely seasonal/temporary (or permanent on a much smaller basis but swelling seasonally for trade) since sustaining a population that size without agriculture is impossible because the community would run into issues with sanitation, it would attract pests, and most importantly, they would quickly deplete their local resources from firewood to game animals forcing the community disperse.

This video references it (Along with covering the domestication of plants specifically, but the expert who investigated the foundations of the ancient city was Dr Heather Builth. As noted, they did indeed use agriculture, there were also large fish ponds and managed rivers, food preservations systems, ETC.

I disagree when it's precisely those radical changes that is what spurs innovation in human cultures like the dawn of agriculture being linked to climate shifts. Practically the entire world has permanently ecologically altered by humans, often with dramatic consequences such as Roman deforestation, silting of rivers in Northern Europe because the forests were cut down. There is also evidence Australia itself had these changes thanks to humans where as in the Americas, ancient Aboriginals help kill off the megafauna and potentially contribute to the desertification (although that may have been just as much climate-related).

I will say that too often in alternate history, introducing a crop is just simplified as introducing a crop and not the lifestyle/ecological shifts necessary. I'm guilty of that myself, although if I started my TL now I probably would've done better.

I was mostly arguing here that certain things are unlikely to be just stumbled on or suddenly embraced in Australia that were in other places, mining for metals or instance would cause a lot of environmental damage and gold at least is entirely useless to the practically minded person, which would also discourage smelting. Not saying it couldn't happen, but its a much steeper hill to convince people to climb compared to say, building bigger boats and travelling further to explore and trade.

As for Australia, it's clear you would need special land management because of those factors you mentioned.

LORAG offered one path, the hydraulic civilization model which is plausible, but there are others. Oasisamerica had MOSTLY egalitarian cultures (some were more stratified at times, but no true states) cooperating on maintaining irrigation and engaging in extreme dryland farming while co-existing with mostly nomadic mountain tribes/small scale hunter-gatherer villages in a very diverse linguistic environment. Could such a model work in Australia? I suspect so, with all its benefits and pitfalls. Now granted, Australia is more environmentally diverse, but the same model could apply everywhere. I suspect communities which place a huge emphasis on flood control.

I think we see more alt-Mesopotamias and alt-Europes more often in alternate history because it's MUCH easier to write and readers have a better frame of reference. It's hard to make those ethnographic/archaeology texts accessible, and if you're a good enough writer and scholar to be writing alt-history based on those sources, you're probably good enough to write an actual book for a mainstream audience on an actual culture which is something the world very much needs.

Mhm, that is one of the common challenges/hurdles, especially as most things one could think of or reach logically were already being done.

Sorry who is LORAG? As to hydraulic civilization, huh, interesting though I am not sure what that would change in the broad strokes beyond introducing despotic cultural trappings? I confess I know little of water management so I am unsure what could change in terms of their use, but there are some high mountains with lakes at the top so... Something there maybe? I am unsure about flood culture... Though there are the South-East rivers which we currently use for rice fields, creating dams in those might have potential for some changes?

Oh definitely, heck I love engaging with this concept and I still struggle with it; but still I wanted to discuss ideas and also highlight a lot of common misconceptions surrounding the land and its people.

 

[Xel]

Some interesting trivia, this is the First Nations grain/wheatbelt compared to what the modern days:

 

[Godot]

What a coincidence this thread popped up - I'm working on a map of Australia for my wip timeline and had many related questions.

For instance, what, if any, native political organization occurred? To what extent were groups or tribes or confederacies or states or statelets able to negotiate treaties? Maintain capitals? Negotiate with foreigners? Wikipedia and other surface level sources seem to paint Aborigine political organization as never rising above the tribal level, but I'm not so sure.

 

[Xel]

What a coincidence this thread popped up - I'm working on a map of Australia for my wip timeline and had many related questions.

For instance, what, if any, native political organization occurred? To what extent were groups or tribes or confederacies or states or statelets able to negotiate treaties? Maintain capitals? Negotiate with foreigners? Wikipedia and other surface level sources seem to paint Aborigine political organization as never rising above the tribal level, but I'm not so sure.

Ooh that should be interesting, best of luck!

So in the broadstrokes there was a lot of organization both within the individual first nations and across national boundaries.

For instance, the First Nations engaged in grand scale land management which required the coordination's of thousands of people across various national and even linguistic lines to engage in burnings that created massive grazing land for the wildlife, while keeping the animals out of their farmlands. The 'Message Stick' was also a widely respected tool for communication across the lands. & in the East there was also the The bunya feasts which would bring thousands of people from as far afield as Victoria and Western Queensland and would involve corroborees, trading, sharing food, arranging marriages and resolving issues of law. Beyond that and broadly speaking, at least as I understand it, leadership was managed through a council of elders, not all old people were elders not were all elders strictly extremely old, merely those who had earned high esteem, or otherwise earned a high position and had a decent amount of experience.

The map I am linking here is a good reference for the national/territorial boundaries you'd be working with. However it should be noted that while those smaller names like Wajuk or Yuat represent political bodies, they were also usually part of a larger coalition, such as the Noongar who were also largely matrilineal and used that to trace kinship lines. So you could view the smaller groups as individual states and the larger collectives or groups as the nation, though such terminology is that of outside ideas being applied and internally they'd have likely been viewed differently. I should also note there is little archeological evidence of warfare, despite the fact we know people could and would travel from one side of the continent to the other to trade goods and services.

As to capitals, we know of a city of over ten thousand in the Gunditjara lands; the dominant cultural belief however was that the people should leave the world as they found it and the lands sensitivity to change meant epic scale cities like Rome would cause a lot of environmental damage and thus be unappealing on a conceptual and social level. Thus, buildings were usually designed with that in mind; though there were also nomadic First Nations.

As to negotiation with foreigners, that's trickier, as not a lot of people came of the continent, though we know the Makassan fishermen did for trade, along with the Torre's Straight Islanders which was sort of a mutual cohabitation deal between a lot of different peoples. But otherwise until colonization the land and its people seem to have been largely left alone, though we do know that hospitality was very important to the First Nations as a lot of explorers were initially welcomed quite warmly, being given food and places to rest and generally treated with. Though we also have records of the First Nations losing their patience with the invaders and starting to attack them on sight if they wouldn't take the warnings and 'leave' lands that were already lived on.

NOTE:
Huh, fun trivia, but in 1944, a small number of copper coins with Arabic inscriptions were discovered on the Wessel Islands in the Northern Territory; they were identified as from the Kilwa Sultanate of east Africa, though it is unclear whether the ruler was from the 10th century or the 14th century.

 

[Citrakayah]

Generally I would suggest not using Dark Emu as a mainstay source. It is very controversial and has not just received criticism from anthropologists and historians but also by Aboriginal people. Treat anything you read it in that you can't find in more reputable sources as suspicious.

I do think fire stick farming is often overlooked, but this is less intensive and less fine-tuned than the field agriculture most of us are familiar with, and promotes a fundamentally different economic base and relationship with the land than more familiar practices--which, ironically, are often what gets focused on in these discussions. The most interesting possibilities, rather than talking about vast fields of wheat, large cities, and herds of kangaroo, revolve around trying to further explore what sorts of societies could use fire-stick farming. This would involve a certain degree of technological speculation but no one gives a shit when it's asteroid mining or space elevators so I think we can do that.

 

[Godot]

Ooh that should be interesting, best of luck!

So in the broadstrokes there was a lot of organization both within the individual first nations and across national boundaries.

For instance, the First Nations engaged in grand scale land management which required the coordination's of thousands of people across various national and even linguistic lines to engage in burnings that created massive grazing land for the wildlife, while keeping the animals out of their farmlands. The 'Message Stick' was also a widely respected tool for communication across the lands. & in the East there was also the The bunya feasts which would bring thousands of people from as far afield as Victoria and Western Queensland and would involve corroborees, trading, sharing food, arranging marriages and resolving issues of law. Beyond that and broadly speaking, at least as I understand it, leadership was managed through a council of elders, not all old people were elders not were all elders strictly extremely old, merely those who had earned high esteem, or otherwise earned a high position and had a decent amount of experience.

The map I am linking here is a good reference for the national/territorial boundaries you'd be working with. However it should be noted that while those smaller names like Wajuk or Yuat represent political bodies, they were also usually part of a larger coalition, such as the Noongar who were also largely matrilineal and used that to trace kinship lines. So you could view the smaller groups as individual states and the larger collectives or groups as the nation, though such terminology is that of outside ideas being applied and internally they'd have likely been viewed differently. I should also note there is little archeological evidence of warfare, despite the fact we know people could and would travel from one side of the continent to the other to trade goods and services.

As to capitals, we know of a city of over ten thousand in the Gunditjara lands; the dominant cultural belief however was that the people should leave the world as they found it and the lands sensitivity to change meant epic scale cities like Rome would cause a lot of environmental damage and thus be unappealing on a conceptual and social level. Thus, buildings were usually designed with that in mind; though there were also nomadic First Nations.

As to negotiation with foreigners, that's trickier, as not a lot of people came of the continent, though we know the Makassan fishermen did for trade, along with the Torre's Straight Islanders which was sort of a mutual cohabitation deal between a lot of different peoples. But otherwise until colonization the land and its people seem to have been largely left alone, though we do know that hospitality was very important to the First Nations as a lot of explorers were initially welcomed quite warmly, being given food and places to rest and generally treated with. Though we also have records of the First Nations losing their patience with the invaders and starting to attack them on sight if they wouldn't take the warnings and 'leave' lands that were already lived on.

NOTE:
Huh, fun trivia, but in 1944, a small number of copper coins with Arabic inscriptions were discovered on the Wessel Islands in the Northern Territory; they were identified as from the Kilwa Sultanate of east Africa, though it is unclear whether the ruler was from the 10th century or the 14th century.

Rule of cool critics be damned, I'm trying for independent Aborigine polities stretching into the modern day.

The question is, how unrealistic is that? Going into my my research I was hoping to find examples of more concerted diplomatic action or unity among Aborigines before and during first contact, but I can't find much.

 

[Xel]

Generally I would suggest not using Dark Emu as a mainstay source. It is very controversial and has not just received criticism from anthropologists and historians but also by Aboriginal people. Treat anything you read it in that you can't find in more reputable sources as suspicious.

So to note:
The first article is sort of the closest to veering in the direction of having a point, but I also can't read it, and by itself its a counter claim not definitive proof if that makes sense. IE, the author of one says X the author of another says Y and given Dark Emu's authors sources come solely from the accounts of colonizers, I don't feel one can question the veracity of his sources given they had a vested interest in downplaying anything and everything about the First Nations.
The second article doesn't actually disagree with anything the author says regarding the First Nations, it is merely critical of the language he uses for Hunter Gatherers, as he feels its dismissive of those who lived on what is now Tasmania.
The last article listed does not actually provide any proof the book has been in anyway "debunked" and the source of the claim is Mark Latham, a notoriously racist right wing operator. Broadly speaking, Dark Emu is consistently critiqued by aggressively right wing people who also want to ignore First Nation land claims, so they are incredibly unreliable at best and their arguments are inherently circular rather than evidence based.

Plus the Largest Estate on Earth makes pretty much all the same claims but has never received the same level of pushback as Dark Emu, given the author of the former is white, racism seems to play a key role in how certain factions respond to these ideas.

I would also note that my brother is an archeologist by profession and he not only stands by Dark Emu, but that the mining company he now works for also uses it as one of their main teaching aids when it comes to investigating locations for evidence of First Nation Land Claims and its been proven consistently useful in his field.

I do think fire stick farming is often overlooked, but this is less intensive and less fine-tuned than the field agriculture most of us are familiar with, and promotes a fundamentally different economic base and relationship with the land than more familiar practices--which, ironically, are often what gets focused on in these discussions. The most interesting possibilities, rather than talking about vast fields of wheat, large cities, and herds of kangaroo, revolve around trying to further explore what sorts of societies could use fire-stick farming. This would involve a certain degree of technological speculation but no one gives a shit when it's asteroid mining or space elevators so I think we can do that.

I confess I am not sure what you are arguing here.

Rule of cool critics be damned, I'm trying for independent Aborigine polities stretching into the modern day.

The question is, how unrealistic is that? Going into my my research I was hoping to find examples of more concerted diplomatic action or unity among Aborigines before and during first contact, but I can't find much.

Sounds awesome

It is sadly hard to get to without more set up beforehand; as noted one of the key issues is that the First Nations didn't really have a tradition of warfare, which means organizing, equipping and combatting the invaders was starting from like stage 1. & that's before the advantages of stuff like horses, massive waves of disease, the invaders presenting as nice at first to begin occupation & only then turning violent, all being compounded with the land being thrown incredibly out of whack. As it is there was a lot of unity and diplomatic action, but it was designed with a far more peaceful and sedate system in mind and so strained when put up against the more aggressive expansion of the invaders.

This of course doesn't mean it can't happen, just that you'd likely need to either set the divergent point further back or involve an outside power that might benefit from fucking over England's colonization by propping up local resistance.
There colonization took about 62 years in total, starting at 1788 and "ending" 1850; its been observed that the West Australian First Nations, having been hit much, much later, were able to hold onto their traditional identities more and avoided being targeted as heavily. So, you could also potentially lean on the idea of a larger migration West in the early-ish days of colonization, to sound the alarm and trying to organize a more aggressive and defensive resistance.

 

[Citrakayah]

So to note:
The first article is sort of the closest to veering in the direction of having a point, but I also can't read it, and by itself its a counter claim not definitive proof if that makes sense. IE, the author of one says X the author of another says Y and given Dark Emu's authors sources come solely from the accounts of colonizers, I don't feel one can question the veracity of his sources given they had a vested interest in downplaying anything and everything about the First Nations.

Here.

The second article doesn't actually disagree with anything the author says regarding the First Nations, it is merely critical of the language he uses for Hunter Gatherers, as he feels its dismissive of those who lived on what is now Tasmania.

To quote:

The more serious concern is that Pascoe takes these local examples and wrongly claims they apply continent wide [emphasis mine]. Sutton and Walshe suggest that the famous eel traps of western Victoria are unique, the Brewarrina fish traps have no equal in inland river systems and many First Nations peoples did not harvest and grind seeds.

I think that's a pretty significant issue in the book, especially when one considers potential ecological limits on applying some of these agricultural techniques continent wide.

The last article listed does not actually provide any proof the book has been in anyway "debunked" and the source of the claim is Mark Latham, a notoriously racist right wing operator. Broadly speaking, Dark Emu is consistently critiqued by aggressively right wing people who also want to ignore First Nation land claims, so they are incredibly unreliable at best and their arguments are inherently circular rather than evidence based.

Hannah McGlade also calls it false and inaccurate, and she is an indigenous rights activist. Quite frankly I am more interested in her objection than the politician's--but the article she wrote is behind a paywall, so I can just cite other articles that mention it.

I confess I am not sure what you are arguing here.

Look at the things you're talking about. Herding. Fields of wheat (which species?). Massive cities. Rather than looking at fire-stick farming as a method of production a civilization can pursue in its own right, you're projecting a Eurocentric model of civilization onto Australia (not that only Europeans had a civilization along those lines, but it's presumed to be the default because of Eurocentrism). A superior timeline, in my view, would not follow this model and would instead attempt to explore more thoroughly what kind of society we could see if we don't get monocultures, if we don't get ubiquitous herding and intensive agriculture, but instead see a continued development of fire-stick farming as an alternative to intensive agriculture that is worthy of full respect in its own right.

 

[Xel]

Here.

I'll give it a read when I have more time.

To quote:
I think that's a pretty significant issue in the book, especially when one considers potential ecological limits on applying some of these agricultural techniques continent wide.

Having read Dark Emu I don't recall it ever claiming there were eel traps continent wide or other similar things, it and the other sources I access all specify where these things take place and the people who utilized them. The observed point is that various things along these same general principles but adapted for their areas, were seen across the continent, as was continually recorded by the invaders. To quote the video I link, the point is that cultivation was not a bug or an isolated idea, but a recurring feature across the continent, explored in a multitude of ways.

Hannah McGlade also calls it false and inaccurate, and she is an indigenous rights activist. Quite frankly I am more interested in her objection than the politician's--but the article she wrote is behind a paywall, so I can just cite other articles that mention it.

Fair enough, but that rolls right back into my earlier point that its a "One person says X another person says Y" situation. That is to say, I don't see an inherent reason why I should assume the critic is correct, especially given the widespread use and respect of Dark Emu in the archeological community; especially given the Biggest Estate on Earth says more or less the same things but never got this kind of blow back.

Look at the things you're talking about. Herding. Fields of wheat (which species?). Massive cities. Rather than looking at fire-stick farming as a method of production a civilization can pursue in its own right, you're projecting a Eurocentric model of civilization onto Australia (not that only Europeans had a civilization along those lines, but it's presumed to be the default because of Eurocentrism).

What would you call creating large grazing lands and managing the population of animals used for food? As to fields of wheat/grain, off the cuff there's, Themeda triandra, millet, Triodia and Wattleseeds, plus there's the massive grainbelt map mentioned above. I confess I don't really see how its projecting. The ABC, a rather reliable news and education outlet, is also still interviewing the author as late as 2021 regarding grains and seed management.

A superior timeline, in my view, would not follow this model and would instead attempt to explore more thoroughly what kind of society we could see if we don't get monocultures, if we don't get ubiquitous herding and intensive agriculture, but instead see a continued development of fire-stick farming as an alternative to intensive agriculture that is worthy of full respect in its own right.

Where exactly is this idea I was disrespecting the idea came from, or suggesting a monoculture, I haven't even outlined an alt timeline yet.

 

[Xel]

Huh, this is interesting, an article on the Artesian Basin.
& here is a map of groundwater sources across the continent (OO) I did not know there was that much groundwater.

 

[Arkenfolm]

I neglected to mention this regarding outside contact with Australia--because of the very limited nature of contact (with Papuans via the Torres Strait Island prior to the Makassan contact), Australia was not exposed to the full nature of ideas, technology, and population migrations which seem certain to have spurred differing developments elsewhere. This meant the same population of not much more than 1 million Aboriginals at most (which might be an overcount, and undoubtedly in some periods the population dropped from drought or nearby volcanism in New Zealand/Melanesia) was mostly to themselves, as opposed to the Americas which also had a bottleneck but had a much larger land area and population meaning more chances for experimentation.

To a degree this is geographic (Australians don't have many resources to attract outside traders and their continent is dry and distant), but I am certain this could have been mitigated over the millennia, and the answer how/why lies in Papua and eastern Indonesia.

Sounds like it could be a fun idea, though yeah the level of study needed makes things tricky, especially as there were already a lot of staple crops so would the introduction of another cause major changes, or would it be more tied to a connection to the North which could extend into say, China?

The idea was that Australia being so distinct would make more attractive for trade from Indonesian civilisation who would introduce the sort of "Southeast Asian" model for civilisation (i.e. political mandalas) and they'd export gold, pepperleaf, etc. and the political elite would follow a sort of garbled, syncretic version of the Hindu-Buddhist fusion as seen on Java. I'm not content with now how I did it for many reasons, like given how I'm not content with how I started my current TL in light of what I know now, I'd want to check the archaeology of eastern Indonesia and Papua (and of course Australia) before starting things.

I used the (probably more accurate, population estimates are always a huge debate) estimate of 750K for all Australia back then. The idea, is that there's a difference between managing a crop and farming it, and Australia may have been at their limits of what they could do with their current system. Therefore, if they more intensively farmed a crop, they'd have to move toward a system we see on other continents with a more uniform level of complexity (like irrigation networks everywhere feasible) and of course urbanisation. This doesn't always make a complex hierarchal state-level civilisation, but there's clearly differences in the agricultural Puebloans compared to the proto-agricultural Basketmaker cultures. The population would certainly increase, potentially rapidly, like we observe in the Americas or indeed the entire world in the Late Neolithic since intensive agriculture produces more calories on limited land.

That's fair, the second segment of that was just my theory, though I do think a very unstable environment might discourage people from going to war, but the the Bunya Ceremonies as you mention likely played a key role in that too given the scale they operated on and their overall function. thanks for sharing, I will need to read more on those!

An unstable environment seems to encourage warfare, given both written history and archaeology. For instance, the collapse of the Akkadian Empire and Old Kingdom Egypt around the same time, the collapse of the Han, Parthians, and Roman Crisis of the Third Century within the same few decades (climate-related), the mid-17th century Qing conquest, Thirty Years War, English Civil War, among other examples. It happens in smaller-scale societies too (i.e. Crow Creek massacre). It's probably an animalistic instinct (starved animals are easy to manipulate and can be very aggressive) that makes it easy to get people to plunder and kill when times are bad.

I was mostly arguing here that certain things are unlikely to be just stumbled on or suddenly embraced in Australia that were in other places, mining for metals or instance would cause a lot of environmental damage and gold at least is entirely useless to the practically minded person, which would also discourage smelting. Not saying it couldn't happen, but its a much steeper hill to convince people to climb compared to say, building bigger boats and travelling further to explore and trade.

I doubt Australian Aboriginals are immune to the same societal changes that made people the world over start mining gold despite the challenges. Societies can change over the course of time after all. What's offensive and obscene to a culture may be divinely ordained a thousand years later, like if we postulate gold mining being crucial since the gold now goes into religious artifacts that the ruling class derives their legitimacy from (or otherwise places some role in the legitimacy of social institutions). I believe the origins of true metalworking (not just using native copper/native gold) lay in pottery and working with lead and copper ores. Australia has plenty of both, at least some of which should be exploitable even by ancient peoples and don't lie in the deep Outback (i.e. Broken Hill).

Sorry who is LORAG? As to hydraulic civilization, huh, interesting though I am not sure what that would change in the broad strokes beyond introducing despotic cultural trappings? I confess I know little of water management so I am unsure what could change in terms of their use, but there are some high mountains with lakes at the top so... Something there maybe? I am unsure about flood culture... Though there are the South-East rivers which we currently use for rice fields, creating dams in those might have potential for some changes?

LORAG=Lands of Red and Gold. And yes, the Victoria/New South Wales area is perfect for that sort of water management. As you mentioned, there was a limited amount of that even OTL. It's worth noting that globally, dams of various sorts evolved out of weirs every single time and a dam of course lets you control the water by storing it, reducing its flow (check dam), etc. It seems non-agricultural peoples didn't build dams not because they couldn't, but because they had no reason to given it was largely for irrigating crops. Yet even some groups who minimally relied on agriculture built these dams (evidenced by Mogollon culture peoples who we know mostly hunted and gathered).

Regarding your criticism of LORAG, even years ago I always thought it could've done more with the non-agricultural peoples (although they were referenced as pastoralists and such) especially since in the non-agricultural areas of that TL (everywhere north of southern Queensland) the population is both relatively dense and would be able to have at least emu pastoralism as a reliable food source along with trading for stored food (wattleseed stores very well of course) meaning there'd be even more trade with the Papuans in that TL. But I guess it was necessary since the vision was showing how the Australians interact with a recognisable world (Early Modern Europe and Asia) so having the Australians start indirectly influencing things via butterflies just wouldn't be the same.

This video references it (Along with covering the domestication of plants specifically, but the expert who investigated the foundations of the ancient city was Dr Heather Builth. As noted, they did indeed use agriculture, there were also large fish ponds and managed rivers, food preservations systems, ETC.

Video unfortunately does not have links to the sources used. I want to see the exact sources used and not a popular take on them, because the claim sounds incredibly spurious. I can only find summaries of Dr. Builth's work, but the summary of one regarding Mt. Eccles/the Gunditjmara notes that their eel-farming is analogous to examples globally, some of which I do have plenty of sources on. The fact of the matter is we just don't see permanent cities of more than 1-2K people in areas without agriculture, and communities of those sizes tend to have large fluctuations because of sanitation, resource depletion, the fact some resources are available only in certain seasons, etc. We do see seasonal inhabitation of much larger sizes (i.e. Celilo Falls) and even non-agricultural people building large monuments over the span of a few months/years (i.e. Poverty Point), but this is again, seasonal. It just doesn't biologically work out.

 

[Citrakayah]

I'll give it a read when I have more time.

Having read Dark Emu I don't recall it ever claiming there were eel traps continent wide or other similar things, it and the other sources I access all specify where these things take place and the people who utilized them. The observed point is that various things along these same general principles but adapted for their areas, were seen across the continent, as was continually recorded by the invaders. To quote the video I link, the point is that cultivation was not a bug or an isolated idea, but a recurring feature across the continent, explored in a multitude of ways.

Fair enough, but that rolls right back into my earlier point that its a "One person says X another person says Y" situation. That is to say, I don't see an inherent reason why I should assume the critic is correct, especially given the widespread use and respect of Dark Emu in the archeological community; especially given the Biggest Estate on Earth says more or less the same things but never got this kind of blow back.

Prior to Dark Emu, Pascoe was a writer of, as I understand, fiction. McGlade's background as an academic--one specializing in indigenous issues, as far as I can tell--makes me trust her judgment more than Pascoe's. And besides, I'm not saying that he's necessarily wrong--but it's a non-academic book written by someone who's priorities I consider suspect (because what I've read does make a pretty good case that he buys a Eurocentric developmentalist view of history), that's received a lot of pushback not just from white experts, but from indigenous ones as well. In combination, those factors would make me distrustful of any work.

What would you call creating large grazing lands and managing the population of animals used for food?

In this case? "Fire-stick farming." Herding is when you have a set group of animals--cows, for instance--and you go out and watch those particular cows and move them around and keep them in a massive group that is far larger than they'd normally be in. You control their breeding on an individual basis and you can walk right up to them.

This is not, as I understand, what happened with kangaroo populations in Australia. The animals are less micromanaged, for instance. Less tame. It creates a landscape with a fundamentally different character from the intensive cultivation of, say, France, because the result is an ecosystem that, while transformed to make human life easier, isn't funneling nearly 100% of its easily available calories into the human species. Contrast this with fields of grain or herds of cattle, where non-productive plants are considered weeds, predators are exterminated, and the entire enterprise is basically designed to support as massive a population base as possible.

As to fields of wheat/grain, off the cuff there's, Themeda triandra, millet, Triodia and Wattleseeds, plus there's the massive grainbelt map mentioned above. I confess I don't really see how its projecting.

Those aren't wheat. They're grain, but not wheat. Except for wattleseeds aren't grain but are trees. Is that nitpicking? Sort of, but for wattleseeds it is an important distinction.

Where exactly is this idea I was disrespecting the idea came from, or suggesting a monoculture, I haven't even outlined an alt timeline yet.

Part of it was, I admit, influenced by the source you're using, but it's also what you're giving focus to, and what you're not giving focus to. These

vast herding grounds and forests, which also protected crop growing spaces and settlements from wild animal incursions and made them easy to manage.

vast fields of wheat that were formed into bails that stretched on further than the eye could see and was used to make an extremely soft and fluffy flower for cakes

permanent town/city with a population of over ten thousand which doesn't appear to have held any special significance (Thus meaning it wasn't likely an exception to the rule) and is comparable to plenty of the powerful middle age cities of Europe

are all stuff that looks like the "marks of civilization" if you adopt a Eurocentric analysis, where the important things are that you have enormous fields of grain, exploit the landscape, and have lots and lots of populous cities (which suck to live in and have a negative natural population growth rate). What I am proposing is that, unless there is very good evidence that those things were the default across most of Australia, it's best if they remain marginal elements of an Australian timeline and that, if I'm right and fire-stick farming was the dominant subsistence method for the majority of the continent, we try to create a timeline that further develops that to greater and greater heights while not buying into Eurocentric assumptions about what path a society will go down.

This is the same approach I advocate for the forest gardening of the Pacific Northwest.

And "fields of wheat" are a monoculture. The very term "grain belt" suggests a monoculture.

 

[Xel]

Video unfortunately does not have links to the sources used.

The links are found in the summary:

Spoiler

SOURCES (Affiliate Links) Dark Emu - https://amzn.to/2V0U3aF The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia - https://amzn.to/2Xhrd38 Other Sources https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/7433514... http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13033/... http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9943/9... http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12928/... https://www.adelaide.edu.au/efn/publi... https://theconversation.com/splendour... https://australianmuseum.net.au/blog-... https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn... https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/he... https://www.heritagedaily.com/2017/02... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-1... https://www.theguardian.com/environme... http://museum.wa.gov.au/sites/default... https://www.theguardian.com/australia... http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/s... https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/... https://www.foreground.com.au/environ... http://www.nationalunitygovernment.or... https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/... https://tuckerbush.com.au/murnong-yam... https://austhrutime.com/millet_harves...

I neglected to mention this regarding outside contact with Australia--because of the very limited nature of contact (with Papuans via the Torres Strait Island prior to the Makassan contact), Australia was not exposed to the full nature of ideas, technology, and population migrations which seem certain to have spurred differing developments elsewhere. This meant the same population of not much more than 1 million Aboriginals at most (which might be an overcount, and undoubtedly in some periods the population dropped from drought or nearby volcanism in New Zealand/Melanesia) was mostly to themselves, as opposed to the Americas which also had a bottleneck but had a much larger land area and population meaning more chances for experimentation.

To a degree this is geographic (Australians don't have many resources to attract outside traders and their continent is dry and distant), but I am certain this could have been mitigated over the millennia, and the answer how/why lies in Papua and eastern Indonesia.

Comparative isolation would definitely influence things in that regard, after all, tons of invocations flowed into the 'West' via the silk road just to name perhaps the most overt example.

I would note the dryness wasn't the case until post colonization and there certainly are plenty of mineral resources, but as they weren't being accessed, no one would know they were were.

The idea was that Australia being so distinct would make more attractive for trade from Indonesian civilisation who would introduce the sort of "Southeast Asian" model for civilisation (i.e. political mandalas) and they'd export gold, pepperleaf, etc. and the political elite would follow a sort of garbled, syncretic version of the Hindu-Buddhist fusion as seen on Java. I'm not content with now how I did it for many reasons, like given how I'm not content with how I started my current TL in light of what I know now, I'd want to check the archaeology of eastern Indonesia and Papua (and of course Australia) before starting things.

I used the (probably more accurate, population estimates are always a huge debate) estimate of 750K for all Australia back then. The idea, is that there's a difference between managing a crop and farming it, and Australia may have been at their limits of what they could do with their current system. Therefore, if they more intensively farmed a crop, they'd have to move toward a system we see on other continents with a more uniform level of complexity (like irrigation networks everywhere feasible) and of course urbanisation. This doesn't always make a complex hierarchal state-level civilisation, but there's clearly differences in the agricultural Puebloans compared to the proto-agricultural Basketmaker cultures. The population would certainly increase, potentially rapidly, like we observe in the Americas or indeed the entire world in the Late Neolithic since intensive agriculture produces more calories on limited land.

That does sound like an overall intriguing idea, but I can also see why you'd want to revise it and re-experiment after accessing more resources.

I should note the 750K estimate, as I understand it, is not well regarded these days, to quote the article via Wikipedia: Indigenous Australia: Indigenous Health in James Jupp (ed.), The Australian people: an encyclopedia of the nation, its people and their Origins, Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-521-80789-1 T
"This article says the First Nations population of Australia in 1788 was around 750,000 or even over a million. The Australian Bureau of Statistics also did an Experimental Projections of the population, Canberra, ABS, 1998 – which estimated populations for each state and for Australia as a whole total being 418,841. Epidemics of smallpox occurred in 1789 and 1829–31. The article provides evidence these epidemics traveled several hundred kilometres 'severely depopulating' nations who had not yet had first contact with Europeans."

A later one put the population at over 900K while others argued over two million & the most recent and archeologically based one is 1.2 million and it was listed as around 500 years ago before a presumed plague started sweeping across the First Nations.

An unstable environment seems to encourage warfare, given both written history and archaeology. For instance, the collapse of the Akkadian Empire and Old Kingdom Egypt around the same time, the collapse of the Han, Parthians, and Roman Crisis of the Third Century within the same few decades (climate-related), the mid-17th century Qing conquest, Thirty Years War, English Civil War, among other examples. It happens in smaller-scale societies too (i.e. Crow Creek massacre). It's probably an animalistic instinct (starved animals are easy to manipulate and can be very aggressive) that makes it easy to get people to plunder and kill when times are bad.

While a fair point, those were examples of societies that had grown used to a stable and easily accessible source of food suddenly being denied it along with a ton of other social strife. The First Nations on the other hand had to perform constant maintenance to avoid the whole system collapsing, which seems to have inspired a more conservationist mindset.

I doubt Australian Aboriginals are immune to the same societal changes that made people the world over start mining gold despite the challenges. Societies can change over the course of time after all. What's offensive and obscene to a culture may be divinely ordained a thousand years later, like if we postulate gold mining being crucial since the gold now goes into religious artifacts that the ruling class derives their legitimacy from (or otherwise places some role in the legitimacy of social institutions). I believe the origins of true metalworking (not just using native copper/native gold) lay in pottery and working with lead and copper ores. Australia has plenty of both, at least some of which should be exploitable even by ancient peoples and don't lie in the deep Outback (i.e. Broken Hill).

Point, I was basing this claim on the fact that mining is detrimental to the environment which would have much more notable impacts on the First Nations than it would elsewhere, so unless the minerals were of very practical use, the idea of spending resources, time and sacrificing land that could be better used in other means wouldn't really take off. Copper, tin or iron, sure I could see people making the calculated play for those, but golds only pretty, so if the cost of getting it is too high then the idea of it being worth something may never take off. Oooh fun trivia, I have a mineral map of Australia,

LORAG=Lands of Red and Gold. And yes, the Victoria/New South Wales area is perfect for that sort of water management. As you mentioned, there was a limited amount of that even OTL. It's worth noting that globally, dams of various sorts evolved out of weirs every single time and a dam of course lets you control the water by storing it, reducing its flow (check dam), etc. It seems non-agricultural peoples didn't build dams not because they couldn't, but because they had no reason to given it was largely for irrigating crops. Yet even some groups who minimally relied on agriculture built these dams (evidenced by Mogollon culture peoples who we know mostly hunted and gathered).

Regarding your criticism of LORAG, even years ago I always thought it could've done more with the non-agricultural peoples (although they were referenced as pastoralists and such) especially since in the non-agricultural areas of that TL (everywhere north of southern Queensland) the population is both relatively dense and would be able to have at least emu pastoralism as a reliable food source along with trading for stored food (wattleseed stores very well of course) meaning there'd be even more trade with the Papuans in that TL. But I guess it was necessary since the vision was showing how the Australians interact with a recognisable world (Early Modern Europe and Asia) so having the Australians start indirectly influencing things via butterflies just wouldn't be the same.

Ah I see. Mhm, I could definitely see that and you raise some very intriguing and insightful points here to be sure, definitely lots of potential for some intriguing changes through this, I think Perth also has Swan River? Oh I also shared these which might be of interest: Artesian Basin & a map of groundwater sources across the continent (OO) I did not know there was that much groundwater.

Mhm, I enjoyed the story but even ignoring the initial basis of the continent I found the sort of "mesoAmerica but in Australia" thing to be the strangest, but yeah that is also weird but given the premise I can see the motivation.

Prior to Dark Emu, Pascoe was a writer of, as I understand, fiction. McGlade's background as an academic--one specializing in indigenous issues, as far as I can tell--makes me trust her judgment more than Pascoe's. And besides, I'm not saying that he's necessarily wrong--but it's a non-academic book written by someone who's priorities I consider suspect (because what I've read does make a pretty good case that he buys a Eurocentric developmentalist view of history), that's received a lot of pushback not just from white experts, but from indigenous ones as well. In combination, those factors would make me distrustful of any work.

Since August 2020, he has been Enterprise Professor in Indigenous Agriculture at the University of Melbourne and more pointedly, his sources were taken right from rea life accounts and as I've noted previously the Biggest Estate on Earth makes pretty much all the same claims and both are utilized in education, industry and widely respected in the archeological field. I also find the idea he subscribes to the Eurocentric developmentalist view of history rather baseless.

In this case? "Fire-stick farming." Herding is when you have a set group of animals--cows, for instance--and you go out and watch those particular cows and move them around and keep them in a massive group that is far larger than they'd normally be in. You control their breeding on an individual basis and you can walk right up to them.

This is not, as I understand, what happened with kangaroo populations in Australia. The animals are less micromanaged, for instance. Less tame. It creates a landscape with a fundamentally different character from the intensive cultivation of, say, France, because the result is an ecosystem that, while transformed to make human life easier, isn't funneling nearly 100% of its easily available calories into the human species. Contrast this with fields of grain or herds of cattle, where non-productive plants are considered weeds, predators are exterminated, and the entire enterprise is basically designed to support as massive a population base as possible.

That is literally what they are described as doing though, up and to controlling the breeding with the kennels system I mentioned and only a handful of years after being stopped from land maintenance, invasive weed species and out of control animals did destabilized the areas afflicted.

Those aren't wheat. They're grain, but not wheat. Except for wattleseeds aren't grain but are trees. Is that nitpicking? Sort of, but for wattleseeds it is an important distinction.

Fair enough, my brain sort of puts those two together cos bread.

Part of it was, I admit, influenced by the source you're using, but it's also what you're giving focus to, and what you're not giving focus to. These

I have several sources and the purpose of the initial post was to disabuse the reader from the stereotypes of the continent being one gigantic dust bowl of death and desert misery until the Europeans showed up and magicked up grass.

are all stuff that looks like the "marks of civilization" if you adopt a Eurocentric analysis, where the important things are that you have enormous fields of grain, exploit the landscape, and have lots and lots of populous cities (which suck to live in and have a negative natural population growth rate). What I am proposing is that, unless there is very good evidence that those things were the default across most of Australia, it's best if they remain marginal elements of an Australian timeline and that, if I'm right and fire-stick farming was the dominant subsistence method for the majority of the continent, we try to create a timeline that further develops that to greater and greater heights while not buying into Eurocentric assumptions about what path a society will go down.

This is the same approach I advocate for the forest gardening of the Pacific Northwest.

And "fields of wheat" are a monoculture. The very term "grain belt" suggests a monoculture.

(Shrugs) I'm fine with that if you want to make suggestions or discuss ideas along those lines, but I'm not going to ignore dozens of sources, the Biggest Estate on Earth or Dark Emu and treat them as marginal to none existent when I've not been presented with any reason to think they are inaccurate.

I don't know much about this.

If you want to take issue with the idea of the Graineblt, you'll need to take it up with Dr Norman Tindale, I didn't invent it after all, I'm just referencing his work.

Sorry if my tone comes off as a touch snippy at the end, its not intentional.

 

[Xel]

Here.

OK so due to my power flicking on and off constantly I haven't been able to reach much of this but I ended up sending it to my archeologist brother and I've decided to adopt his stance on the article so here's the gist:

• The article is fairly well written and researched (Though so are Dark Emu & the Biggest Estate on Earth).
• Opinions on Dark Emu have been heavily politicized by supporters & critics since day one which can be problematic when trying to understand the factual elements.
• The term agriculture/agriculturist might be imperfect, not due to a lack of capability, but because horticulture & advanced resource management practices are more apt.
• He also notes that agriculture can have a very technical meaning and that agricultural societies, and especially industrial societies, which have agriculture as their foundation can cause profound environmental destruction.
• I'll leave out one bit off commentary as it discussed something irrelevant but he caps off with the stance that Dark Emu is a great book but it is a somewhat simplified picture of something incredibly complex and varied, so a more nuanced understanding needs to be considered.

 

[herkles]

Something I have often wondered is that given Australia's closeness to Indonesia, how come it was largely ignored by the various empires of the region or was it not ignored? Either case something that could be interesting is if the region was closer integrated into maritime south east Asia or at least the coasts are?

 

[Xel]

Something I have often wondered is that given Australia's closeness to Indonesia, how come it was largely ignored by the various empires of the region or was it not ignored? Either case something that could be interesting is if the region was closer integrated into maritime south east Asia or at least the coasts are?

That's a good question we know there was some engagement but not a lot and seemingly limited awareness.

If I had to venture a guess I'd say it had to do with ocean currents. The the current leading to the continent current from what is today Indonesia would take one West and away from the continent, while South Equatorial current would mostly connect one to the South Pacific over what we call Asia itself.

This wouldn't be able to stop dedicated groups from the North from heading South, but they seemed to be more focused on their neighbors or their own Northern influences, but one could definitely change that up if they so wished and have it be fairly believable.

Interestingly one could also easily have the Chinese Treasure Fleet land there, as the path it followed would easily lead them into the currents of the Indian Ocean off the coast of the African continent and that could smoothly transition them into the West Australian Current, then back up to 'Indonesia' and home again.