Timeline for Why didn't Aboriginal Australians invent agriculture?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 3, 2023 at 22:17 | comment | added | Robyn | @totalMongot They do know which conditions produce huge fires and which conditions produce small fires. They can control the conditions by setting fires at the right time of year in the right weather (and they know which time of year has the most changeable weather, has the most wind, etc), setting fires more often so shrubs and grass don't grow large, etc. | |
| Feb 3, 2023 at 18:45 | comment | added | totalMongot | @Robyn Ok they saw that fires were different depending on the field, but still they can't predict nor control how much the fire would burn, since they did not know how long the wind will blow, how it will blow tomorrow, etc... | |
| Feb 3, 2023 at 6:40 | comment | added | Robyn | @totalMongot "Controlling the intensity of the fire" means they know, and make use of, the different effects of a crown fire or a brush fire, a fire after wet or dry weather, etc. | |
| Jan 30, 2023 at 20:07 | comment | added | totalMongot | @Luaan Nice information thanks, but I wonder how the natives were able to "control the intensity and heat provided by fire" when they started lighting up large portions of territory? Also, did they stop fires after letting them spread on desired area, or did they wait for natural ending? | |
| Oct 15, 2019 at 6:25 | comment | added | Luaan | @JonathanReez It wasn't plain inefficient; it doesn't allow such population densities, but it also requires far less effort. For the amount of people it can support, the quality of life is far higher than in European-style agriculture (before mechanization, or at least inventions like horse collars). Agriculture in the more northern parts of Europe was quite a challenge compared to places like Algiers or Southern Italy. | |
| Oct 14, 2019 at 21:43 | comment | added | T.E.D.♦ | Best first answer by a new user I can ever remember seeing. Grats! | |
| Oct 14, 2019 at 21:24 | comment | added | JonathanReez | @Mark exactly. This answer makes it look as if Australians had some sort of super advanced technology that was beyond the understanding of Europeans. In reality they've used inefficient farming methods that have been long forgotten in Europe precisely because they're not efficient. | |
| Oct 14, 2019 at 19:08 | comment | added | gormadoc | @Luaan Natives on the eastern seaboard practiced farming in fields just like Europeans. In the Caribbean, the natives there also farmed, especially casava. The difference lay in the intensity of farming and how much of their diet came from that as compared to hunting and gathering. | |
| Oct 14, 2019 at 8:23 | comment | added | Dohn Joe | An australian tour guide told our group, when we were walking around the Uluru, that the Native Australians never gathered from the plants in close vicinity of the Uluru, since when heavy rainfall occurs, the water will transport the seeds of the plants from the Uluru far out into the land, thus spreading the seed further than manual seeding could achieve. Such behaviour can be considered to be some sort of farming. | |
| Oct 14, 2019 at 7:38 | comment | added | Luaan | This also probably happened in North America. When the first "explorers" arrived, they were fascinated by the environment, which to them seemed like a beautiful garden, which in turn helped the many references to the New World being Paradise. It didn't even occur to them that it wasn't natural - that the inhabitants cultivated the land to make it that way, just like we did back in Europe, because the natives were "so obviously primitive" (they didn't even know the Christian God, right?). Humans are that way sometimes. | |
| Oct 14, 2019 at 7:17 | vote | accept | Ivan T. | ||
| Oct 12, 2019 at 9:02 | comment | added | Ben McIntyre | Also check out Bruce Pascoe's 'Dark Emu' for references to crop harvesting, grain storage,and eel farming. | |
| Oct 12, 2019 at 8:44 | comment | added | Mark | I can't remember the term for it, but manipulating the environment to encourage the growth of useful plants is generally considered a form of "proto-farming". ("Proto-farming" because it permits higher population densities than straight gathering, but less than all-out Eurasian-style farming.) | |
| Oct 12, 2019 at 3:45 | review | First posts | |||
| Oct 12, 2019 at 3:56 | |||||
| Oct 12, 2019 at 3:41 | history | answered | Robyn | CC BY-SA 4.0 |