This Is How "Unsettled" Australia Was Before The British Arrived In 1788

[Violet_Crumble]

Apparently, Tony Abbott needs to brush up on his history.



http://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/this-is-how-unsettled-australia-was-before-the-british

[Squinch]

1. I happen to be reading a lot about the US before and just as the Europeans came

and one of the really terrible things I am learning is the way the European diseases acted as a plague to the Native Americans. There are estimates that 90% of the Native American population died from European diseases between about 1500 and 1700 (those are not sourced dates, but just the impression I have of the time period from what I am reading.)

Did the same happen with the Aboriginal Australian population?

[Violet_Crumble]

2. It sounds like very similar things happened to the Aboriginal population...

I read somewhere that their population around the time of the First Fleet arriving was over 250,000 and by the early 20th century had dropped to around 60,000. Considering European settlement of America happened about 200 years before Australia, there's a lot of similarities. Not taking into account that settlers killed a lot of them, the main introduced disease I've always heard of was Smallpox.

I found a thesis on introduced diseases written by someone at the uni I went to before my work/study balance went out of whack and I had to drop out.

https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/.../02Whole_Dowling.pdf

[Squinch]

3. Shoot. It's telling me the link is an "invalid identifier." That sounds pretty fascinating, though.

I always imagine what it must have been like to be someone who survived, and saw 90% of his world die off. It was the end of the world for them.

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4. Try this url. It's a pdf, so hopefully this will lead you to it...

One really sad thing that I learnt when we were studying European settlement in Australia was that there was no resistance from the indigenous population around Sydney Cove when the First Fleet arrived. They apparently had no idea what that first bunch of settlers meant for them and their future, but must have been bemused watching that first lot running out of food when there was so much around them if they'd known where to look for it.

Here's the link. I hope this one works

https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/7529

[Squinch]

5. It works! Thank you!

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6. "The gap between the health status of each has widened rather than narrowed over the last one

hundred years."

That's so disturbing.

[marble falls]

7. Have you read "1491" by Mann or "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Diamond?.........

History in the new world generally doesn't start until the white guy shows up.

[Squinch]

10. Putting both on the library hold list. Thank you!

[krispos42]

9. "Guns, Germs, and Steel"...

An awesome read all about this stuff. It was the germs that wiped out so many native peoples.

[marble falls]

11. Another good one is "Collapse" also by Diamond. Its got an important section on Australia.

[krispos42]

15. I picked it up at Goodwill a couple of months ago

It's on my "to-read" list.

[marble falls]

16. Kick it to the front of the line. You'll be glad you did.

[Cartoonist]

8. Christians

I always like to jump in on threads like this to disparage religion. The natives weren't Christians, therefore they were savages. Killing them was not a sin, and the idea that they were God's children never entered the Christian mind. Whenever anyone spouts the absurd line about how much good religion does, I merely point out that religion has killed more people than any other group. And that includes the Nazis and the Commies. They number their victims only in the millions. Christianity numbers them by the continent.

[marble falls]

12. In junior high school in the sixties I read a book reviewed in Time about missionary work in ....

China that included diary and journal entries by a Baptist missionary that included one about how many Chinese he had converted and then sent onto Heaven by his own hand. That was some shocking stuff for a Missouri Synod Luther Leaguer. Then I found out the feet of clay Martin Luther walked on.

G*d is not so well served by churches much of the time. Its hypocritical to point so many fingers at Islam.

Wish I remember the title or author or at least what month it was in '64 or '65 the issue of Time came out.

I don't despair of religion so much as I find overt religionists despicable.

[Cartoonist]

13. The individual and the organization

It's a mob mentality. Individual humans can be decent and have a personal relation with spirituality. It's the organization of religion into a political force that degenerates into evil. It pits people against each other. There is blood spilled when protestants and catholics collide. Just as blood is being spilled when sunnis and shiites collide. Will we ever learn?

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14. St Augustine said, "Preach the Gospel daily. If necessary, use words."