Talk:Prehistory of Australia

message: From my reading, 'anthropology' was all the rage in the 18th C. (ie from initial contact): and has continued ever since.Thus I have removed sentence which claims otherwise. Eric A. Warbuton 03:08, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Initial anthropology

message: The term 'arid' has a technical definition of 'less than 250mm pa' from Groves 'Australian vegetation' (This is an encyclopedia-not the womans weekly-so can we be accurate) which is less than 40% of the land mass of Aust. And importantly the majority of tribal Aboriginals do not live in these areas- they live in the tropics and sub tropics.
Also I dont know the reason for leaving 'remote' in the text is: it adds nothing to it. Can someone tell me?  Eric A. Warbuton 06:15, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: ARID

message: Can someone add another chapter about how the tribe leader is chosen or who can marry who and so on. Efansay 09:57, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There was no "leader" in a group. Elders were respected and obeyed due to the fact they were a) a source of knowledge, and b) experienced. But there was no single leader for any group. In excessively simplistic terms, you might say Aboriginal societies were egalitarian gerontocracies, but that's fitting Western concepts onto Aboriginal forms of social organisation. Regarding marriage, see skin group. Aridd (talk) 09:56, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Politics and Social Orginization

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thread_title:  Copyright problem removed 

message: i'm parking some links here for further work, maybe should also be in History_of_Indigenous_Australians &/or History_of_Australia#Aboriginal_Australia but this seems like a good start because of the "Culture and technology" section.
Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps / Baiame's Ngunnhu State of New South Wales and Office of Environment and Heritage
Portland: Indigenous History
"Fishers and Farmers: historicising the Gunditjmara freshwater fishery, western Victoria" Ian J. McNiven and Damein Bell, The La Trobe Journal, No 85, May 2010
Figure 15 Pencil sketch plan of an extensive eel channel facility covering 6ha, near Mt William (Robinson journal, 9 July 1841)
Figure 16 Aboriginal pencil drawing of an extensive eel channel facility at Mt William (Robinson journal, 18 July 1841)
"No Stone Unturned"  Broadcast: 17/05/2015 5:27:25 PM, Reporter: Prue Adams, Landline, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
David Woodward ☮ ♡♢☞☽ 12:51, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Engineering of landscape 

message: The text states that fires became frequent over the last 70000 years a.o. because of human activity, but this is confusing since there were certainly no humans in Australia 70000 years ago. Probably the meaning is that the initial fires had natural causes but later fires may in part have been caused by humans. Please correct.Helenuh (talk) 09:37, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: No humans in Australia 70,000 years ago? That's actually far from certain... Yeti Hunter (talk) 23:28, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

text: this still cannot proof anything. The only thing is that the fire increased but nobody can proof this like a DIRECT man action. The continous attempts to show, by many wikipedians, that all the exictions are belonged to human activity is simply annoying. 
No matter about this, but this paragraph is cleary unbalanced:
Archaeological evidence (in the form of charcoal) indicates that fire, over 100,000 years (from ash deposits in the Coral Sea) was already a growing part of the Australian landscape.[26] Over the last 70,000 years it became much more frequent as hunter-gatherers used it as a tool to drive game, to produce a green flush of new growth to attract animals, and to open up impenetrable forest.[27] Densely grown areas became more open sclerophyll forest, open forest became grassland. Fire-tolerant species became predominant: in particular, eucalyptus, acacia, banksia, casuarina and grasses.
The changes to the fauna were even more dramatic: the megafauna, species significantly larger than humans, disappeared, and many of the smaller species disappeared too. 
The direct cause of the mass extinctions is uncertain: it may have been fire, hunting, climate change or a combination of all or any of these factors, although the rapid decline of many species is still a matter of dispute.[29] With no large herbivores to keep the understorey vegetation down and rapidly recycle soil nutrients with their dung, fuel build-up became more rapid and fires burned hotter, further changing the landscape.''
Those are frankly speaking, WEASEL WORDS to describe what happened in Australia 50,000 yrs ago. Evidently a lot of editors are posed their knowledge with Flannery babbling, that is itself, barely scientific, just like the 'blitzkrieg' model, that in Australia simply wouldn'work.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.11.0.22 (talk) 18:55, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Fires and extinctions

message: This article has huge amounts missing in terms of description of Aboriginal life pre-colonisation, a subject which is of great interest to many people. Books on this from the 1800s to 1900s are abundant and easy to access (Tom Petrie, William Buckley, Douglas Lockwood etc.), and some tribes in Australia still practice culture (Martu people of WA, Yolngu of NT etc.). PDFs of Yolngu law as it has been practiced for 1000s of years has been written down by the elders for the broader public to understand, and is easy to access with a google search. Is there any particular reason for this?Alabama81bornandbred (talk) 10:09, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Missing Elements

message: List of time periods has the 
# Old world-centric periodization (label can be questioned, other periodicalizations can also belong to humans, such as point-3 below),  
# Marxian stages of history (additional reading Historical materialism
# Mythological and astrological time periods. 
Questions: Please add your own questions and/or answers. 
* (A) Are there more types of classification/periodization? 
* (B) If so, which ones are respectably appropriate for the indigenous cultures? 
* (C) How do indigenous people periodicalize their own history (from any other nation)? For example, some colonised cultures periodicalize their history as (c.1) precolonization, (c.2) colonization (era of invasions/foreign rule) and (c.3) post-independence (home rule).  
* (D) How do Australian indigenous people periodicalize their own history (from their own cultural perspective)?
Please participate:
Please invite others who you think might be able to shed more light. Silent and shy readers please provide your opinion on the discussion above. There are no right or wrong answers. Please do not be shy. Additional reading - History of the world (this article uses the old world-centric classification) and Periodization (for general reading). Thanks. 202.156.182.84 (talk) 21:57, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see what this has to do with this article? – Joe (talk) 22:04, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Please let it flow, say for a week, and see where it leads. We might surprise ourselves. After a week, we can reconsider, and if found unsuitable here then we can move this thread to the List of time periods talkpage (if such a move is possible, else we just copy paste there after closing the discussion here). 202.156.182.84 (talk) 22:19, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

text:  "Precolonial would be far worse, as it defines Aboriginal past entirely in terms of the conquerer's impact."  Thanks for your explanation Garyvines. I am glad we did not close out this discussion. Your refreshing insight is enlightening.  Wow. touches my heart, mind and the essence of wikipedia" I confess, I was blinded to it. You open up a while new world of open brainstorming. Just a smiple thing opens up new vistas if our mind is open. Thank you. Wonderful. My gratitude and respect for you. 202.156.182.84 (talk) 18:25, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

text: Silent shy readers: please express yourself Fresh ideas are better than the conformist jaded cliches. "Experts are nothing but educated fools." You are encouraged to just shoot direct and blunt from you heart. Encourage others too. Make it inclusive. Human are good. There should not be any packing order at wikipedia, you are at par regardless of age, gender, degrees, anonymity of wikipedia is good. All of must remind ourselves to behave equal. Admins, older and experienced editors have no extra rights, they just have extra tools. If they break the rules or play gods or unfair, they can be sanctioned and fired permanently. Please express yourself freely. 202.156.182.84 (talk) 18:25, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Please try to stick to concrete suggestions for this article, . Talk pages are not a forum for general discussion. – Joe (talk) 20:48, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I note that a corresponding article for America (the continent) is titled Settlement of the Americas. That would be less fraught than this current title is as is evident in all the discussion. We live in an era when calling the event of 1788 the 'Settlement' of our country is a discredited history, and every Australian should be aware that the early arrival and the presence of people here extends so far back. There is already a redirect from Settlement of Australia, so would others support, given the sensitivities expressed above, changing the title to Settlement of Australia or even Settlement of Australasia, which would be a deservedly and appropriately more comprehensive article. If so we can initiate a proposal for one or the other of those name changes. Jamesmcardle(talk) 23:21, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please help: What are the alternative ways of periodicalization of history? 

message: Could anyone please tell me if I should have changed it to "the "Diprotodontidae family" instead? Sorry to passive-aggressively brag about adding italics to the article in this section's heading, by the way, but I didn't want to be dishonest by leaving out the italics here.--Thylacine24 (talk) 01:02, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changed "the Diprotodon family" to "the genus ''Diprotodon''" 

message: Why is this article below contradicted this article that seemed to suggest that written records of the area started in 1606, yet the "Prehistory"(in quotes for obvious reasons) of Australia article says written records of the area started in 1788?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_exploration_of_Australia
Even more contradictions are found here...
"Indonesian "Bajau" fishermen from the Spice Islands (e.g. Banda) have fished off the coast of Australia for hundreds of years. Macassan traders from Sulawesi regularly visited the coast of northern Australia to fish for trepang, an edible sea cucumber to trade with the Chinese since at least the early 18th century."
And Indonesia have written records back then too.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thebeatles2020 (talk • contribs) 10:21, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: I would like to propose preserving the first article name. 'Prehistory' is no longer used to describe the precolonial period of Australian history and is considered a biased tem by most Australuan archaeologists and those hostorians who engage with Aboriginal history. There is considerable overlap in the existing articles in any case.Garyvines (talk) 11:16, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: (This is being discussed at Talk:History_of_Indigenous_Australians#Merge_History_of_Indigenous_Australians_and_Prehistory_of_Australia). – Joe (talk) 09:01, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

text: What the heck is a hostorian? Dimadick (talk) 10:06, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge [[History of Indigenous Australians]] and [[Prehistory of Australia]] 

message: At one time, not sooo long ago, this was a strong candidate for the oldest human remain in Australia.  It is still a relevant item and should be mentioned in the article. Kdammers (talk) 05:30, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Talgai Skull]] 

message: The section Culture and Technology contains this paragraph:
"The initiation of young boys and girls into adult knowledge was marked by ceremony and feasting. Initiation rites included female genital mutilation, ritual gang raping, penile subincision."
Surely these three things were not the only types of initiation rituals. Listing only these three examples, regardless of whether they are documented by reliable sources, contravenes WP:NPOV
Moreover, to a reader, it comes across as though whoever wrote this went through sources to look for most contentious examples of initiation rites. Regardless of whether that was their actual intention, it creates the appearance of a lack of neutrality.
I propose that the paragraph be replaced with a summary including a broad range of examples of the types of initiation rituals noted in historical literature - not just restricted to specific examples of rituals that readers would find offensive or unacceptable. 121.200.4.5 (talk) 03:56, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. You have described the problem well. HiLo48 (talk) 05:35, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV of paragraph on initiation rites under Culture and Technology