The Australian Aborigines
by George Weber
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Table of Contents
1. The Australian Aborigines 2. The European Invasion 3. The Extinction of the Australian Pygmies (by Keith Windschuttle and Tim Gillin) 4. The Australian Aborigines and their strange linguistic split 5. The first Australians - the archaeological evidence |
1. The Australian Aborigines
2. The European Invasion
3. The Australian Negritos
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Joseph B. Birdsell (mentioned in the text of the Windshuttle-Gillin article - see link below) shown in a strangely rare photograph with an Australian pygmy, possible a Negrito. Birdsell's height is 186 cms (6 ft 1 in.) and that of the twenty-four-year-old male of the Kongkandji tribe next to him is ca. 140 cm (4 ft 6 in.). The photograph was taken at the Mona Mona Mission, near Kuranda, North Queensland, in 1938. |
Aboriginal and other surviving "remnant populations" tend to be badly treated and despised by the majority populations, virtually everywhere. They are often pushed into a precarious fringe existence and pressurised to "come into the mainstream of society" (an expression widely used in India towards the Andamanese Negrito, for example). The "mainstream of society" is not just in India regarded (by the members of that self-appointed "mainstream", at least) as the pinnacle of human development.
In practice, this attitude always produces the same result for the ancient surviving minority populations: loss of original culture without adequate acquisition of a new culture, coupled with an existence on the fringes of the meainstream society in grinding poverty with alcoholism, drugs, prostitution and other social evils. Efforts to "acculturize" such populations are pracically never adequate, sufficiently funded or even intelligently carried out - and so hardly ever successful. Bureaucrats tend to make the decisions and minority tribes are expected to be properly grateful if their children get a little primary schooling. Of course, they should also be keen and ready to accept all the values of the dominating mainstream society. As in the Andamans, so in Australia.
The societies who treat their most ancient human groups in this way are invariably proud of their own ancient past but such pride rarely goes back further than the earliest mainstream written records, temples or traditions. Rarely if ever are the miraculously surviving representatives of a remoter past treated with any kind of respect or allowed any dignity. Instead, it is utomatically assumed, to be "civilized" and "joint the mainstream."
It is no coincidence that many of the tribal names given to such ancient living groups by their new masters mean "slave" while the ancient peoples' own names often mean "human beings". The widespread present-day attitude towards aboriginal populations all over the world rarely comes from ill-will or conscious racism. Much much more common is a lack of respect and a cultural arrogancewhich comes from a widespread ignorance about a country's prehistory. Such crass ignorance in most countries is by no means limited to the less educated classes.
Australia and Tasmania is the area we are concerned with here and it must be said that the "Australians" (i.e. migrants from Europe and elsewhere that have arrived only in the past 200 years) have made serious efforts to make amends for the atrocities committed against the aboriginal population in the past. The Australian aborigines have recently received many rights long overdue to them, along with legal possession of their ancestral lands. The trend is indeed good news, but unfortunately there have been some dismaying side-effects in Australia with overshooting "political correctness".
Scientific investigations (especially archaeology and DNA analyses) in Australia have been hampered by the arrogant attitude of past archaeologists. The pendulum has now swung to the other extreme and the Australian tribes on whose land archaeological finds are made can now insist that the finds be immediately reburied without scientific investigation. This even if the remains are thought to be 50,000 year old and most unlikely to be connected with the present-day local tribe. Some tribes do not insist, but others do. In many cases it is not known what happens to the finds once they are handed back - they simply vanish and are presumably reburied. A Tasmanian group of activists collected Tasmanian human remains to burn them (even though the genuine (and extinct) Tasmanians did not practice the burning of their dead. Also, self-appointed aboriginal political activists insist (without producing evidence) that all Australian aborigines are one people and not (perhaps) several. The result is that the Australian pygmies have vanished from literature and the Tasmanians are just "ordinary" aborigines. Tje activists try to block all and any research which they regard as hostile. Given the aborigines' treatment in the past, such (over)reactions are understandable. Not all aboriginal groups agree with this self-damaging attitude, however, and some tribes have begun to cooperate with scientists and to take an informed interested in their own past.
As soon as the first aboriginal scientists graduate, they will realise what an appalling disservice their patronizing "politically correct" white advisors have done them. The present aborigines' children and grandchildren are unlikely to be pleased.
In the meantime, one would have thought that the academic establishment of Australia would make every effort to explain patiently and respectfully the purpose of scientific research and try to motivate the aborigines to participate in the great enterprise and in the interpretation of any results. The aborigines should also be told that their wonderful "dreamtime myths" do not clash with scientific results but that the two complement each other. In fact, there is no other place in the world where they complement each other more spectacularly!
One would have thought so, but one would often have thought wrongly. Some scientists do try to make these points but under the dead hand of guilt-ridden "political correctness", too many do not. The attitude is widespread that results which do not fit accepted politically correct ideas must be false and cannot be published. Older results from times when political correctness was unheard of are airbrushed out of existence, denied or ignored. How very reminiscent of the dear old Soviet Union!
Treating aboriginal populations correctly and with respect is not a simple or an easy matter. Conflicting aims have to be somehow reconciled. Difficult or not, it must be done and our hope is that the information we present on this Web-site will go some way to change popular attitudes towards aboriginal populations in those countries that are lucky enough to still have such citizens. If it annoys the politically correct, well, we will have to learn to live with their wrath.
An article by two Australian writers has made a splendid case for the "missing" Australian pygmies (Negritos?) and the inanities of "political correctness". The existence of Australian pygmies was general knowledge until the 1960s what had been widely recognized facts suddenly vanished from the scientific radar.
The "case of the vanishing pygmies" provides a fascinating example how quickly science can turn into obscurantist twaddle when facts are "adapted" for political reasons.
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Keith Windschuttle and Tim Gillin The Extinction of the Australian Pygmies This text was originally published in Quadrant,
June 2002 ( http://www.sydneyline.com/Pygmies Extinction.htm
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One counter-argument against Windschuttle's and Gillin's case is the claim that the short-stature of the Barrineans could have developed in situ, i.e. the Barrineans are "normal" Australian aborigines that have adapted to their jungle environment by developing short stature. It is the same argument that claims the various Negrito groups are not really related because each group could have developed separately under similar environmental pressure. Unfortunately for this argument, the Negritos have a great deal more in common that short stature.
T.J. Gillin has this to say on the subject:
"Environment presumably plays some role in pygmyism, but it would be a mistake to assume all examples evolved in situ in their current homeland. Kalahari Bushmen are often classed as pygmoid but live as far from the jungle as could be imagined. These people may have had a 100,000 year tenure in Africa and have inhabited diverse homelands from one end of the continent to the other. ...Besides, it is not clear that Atherton rainforest peoples (the Australian pygmies - George Weber) actually developed their short stature in North Queensland rainforests. For one thing, those rainforests have not always been there. Djirbal stories from the Atherton say it was open country when people arrived. Earth scientists tell a similar story. During the last glaciation rainfall levels fell 50%, eucalypt forest expanded and rainforest retreated to a few "refuge areas". Only in the last 10,000 years have rainforests re-expanded. If pygmyism developed locally, it was presumably developed in this period. Is this enough time? Was the local population isolated enough? Does anyone really know?
4. The Australian Aborigines and their strange linguistic split
5. The first Australians - the archaeological evidence
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Last change 1 January 2008
