Talk:History of Indigenous Australians

message: The reference is  collected papers from a conference and I think the relevant paper in the book may be "Difficult to found an opinion': 1788 Aboriginal population estimates" J Mulvaney - The Aboriginal population revisited, 2002
The figure doesn't match the cumulatives on World population and it is believed that But 8 K years ago there were only [5 million]. Homo Sapiens in the world. I did a rough back of the envelope calc to check as the 1,6 billion seems very high. I think it assumes a constant population from the beginning. 
* 50 years average live span, (but hunter gatherer median is less than 40 Hunter-gatherer 1 Million population
* so 2 million people every century,  
* so 20 million every millennium
* so 70 millennium = 1400 billion  Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 12:51, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The  1,6 Billion Cumulative figure - Has anyone access to the reference? 

message: This new contribution seems to begin in the middle of a conversation, as if it's referring to something already said.
It is also unbelievably (and I mean that word literally) brutal and negative. It is sourced exclusively to books from the 1970s, both difficult to check, and from a time I personally no longer trust. HiLo48 (talk) 23:45, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: One of my prominent sources is 2002. You are right in saying that from today's perspective, human history is excessively brutal. It was once so in Europe and every other continent also. All these are important historical records. There are hundreds of records regarding pre-colonisation Aboriginal culture that describe these practices. The colonial era observers were not as much shocked by these as we are today, again because the world then was very different. The horrors of WWI and II were yet to come, etc.  Confuciussx (talk) 00:19, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I should say the significant sources are from 1996 and 2002. There is more contemporary literature also, but I think the topic is sufficiently covered - expanding it with further detail may seem excessive in comparison to the other sections of the article. I'm happy to consider suggestions. Confuciussx (talk) 00:23, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

text: If there ARE better sources, please provide them. Don't try to argue the case for what you believe by discussing other societies and the hypothetical personalities of the writers. That's original research, and unacceptable here. I wrote more than just about the sources. HiLo48 (talk) 00:25, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Valid points, however the text I added consists solely of facts supported by a broad variety of sources. I've added one more recent one, and renamed the section to "Childhood and adolescence" as a more appropriate title. There are other topics to be added here, such as passing down teaching and tradition - though these have been covered in other sections. Leaving at that and up to the community. Thank you for your comments. Confuciussx (talk) 00:50, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

text: I'll just repeat one more thing before I leave this for others to comment, The section is entirely negative. Did the children (and women) never have any fun? HiLo48 (talk) 01:34, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: You are free to add onto the section with reliable sources Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 06:16, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Children section 

message: This really discusses two things, homicide and warfare. They don't really belong together. As with the Children section discussed above, we have one book from the 1970s as a source. The other source is a more recent book. It draws the conclusion that because art scenes of apparent fighting are common (and they are), fighting was common. I am not convinced by such logic. HiLo48 (talk) 23:52, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I have removed the two sections; excessive quotations as well as outright copyright violation from https://psychohistory.com/books/the-origins-of-war-in-child-abuse/chapter-7-child-abuse-homicide-and-raids-in-tribes/  which is a Wordpress document, which we can't consider to be a reliable source. I find the content farfetched at best. Much better sourcing is needed for such outrageous extraordinary claims.  — Diannaa (talk) 20:21, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: All sources are facts - just because we fine cannibalism, infanticide and rape outrageous in 2023 it doesn't mean it didn't happen in the past, on large scale, and practically everywhere in the world, including pre-colonial Australia. I didn't reference a Wordpress site, but numerous academic journals and books, from broad range of sources dated from 1800s to 2000s. Confuciussx (talk) 20:50, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I will rewrite the section without copy&pasting, which is the only valid reason out of those you mentioned. Nevertheless, this should have been done as a note to me to correct something, not deleting new content wholesale - that's seems like just editing history not convenient to your world view - there's no place on Wikipedia for this. Confuciussx (talk) 20:52, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Warfare section 

message: The History of Indigenous Australians#Ecology section currently () has a paragraph 
The first part in particular is very weird. "these extinctions" seems to be referring to megafauna extinctions but "these" makes it sound like this is something discussed just prior yet the previous paragraph is on dingoes and SEA contact with zero mention of megafauna. Further, in the geography section 3 paragraphs back there is this unsourced text  which seems to partly contradicts what the ecology section says suggesting it's unclear rather than something most scientist accept. In fact even that earlier section is fairly unclear as it suggests that the introduction of fire-stick farming was responsible for the extinctions but then says they co-existed for 17,000 years, so does this mean that they only introduced fire-stick farming after living there for 17,000 years or that fire-stick farming caused the extinction of megafauna but it took 17,000 years? 
Nil Einne (talk) 14:57, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the article is clumsily worded in places, probably as a result of text referred in one part being later modified or deleted. I also agree that there is a philosophical problem with the claims that Aboriginal people "caused" extinctions, etc. These events were longer ago than almost anything else this encyclopaedia tries to write about with certainty. The scientists' views vary a lot. I believe our emphasis should be on that fact, and not write anything in Wikipedia's voice suggesting we actually know what happened with any certainty. HiLo48 (talk) 01:58, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Something lost in rewrite? Ecology section