Population of Indigeonous Australians, before the sea level rises slowed it down to visiters not new

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I read where scientists have estimated that around 500 thousand to a million Aboriginals may have been here when the first fleet arrived.1788.

Using those two figures I have been trying to figure out how many people actually made an entry onto this continent , originally I guess from Africa?

The entries would have been from 60 thousand years ago to about 6 thousand years ago when it is suggested that the sea level rose and stopped the flow of peoples' actual entry onto Australia.

Meaning I guess that after 6000 years ago, only visitors may have made their way to the shores of the now "water bound" continent.

And not many if any settled as the sea crossing was much harder, they may have come to trade.
There may not have been many.

So the question is , how many people would have needed to enter over the thousands of years to build a population of 500 to a million.

Wide scope but its all estimation.

I think the original Australians came in different groups over the many generations and were wanderers, but settled the continent , therefore making terra nullus (I think its called) wrong.

There were then, first nations people here with similar stories and languages and laws from places we now know as QLD, NT, into NSW and right across the continent to the far south west of Australia, WA.

Apparently the more south of NSW and also in Arnhem land for some reason there are different types of stories and languages. Maybe the south eastern peoples came earlier and Arnhem land people came later after the diagonal typed advancement down into WA, from the north east of the continent.

???
 

Northalives

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I remember from studies I did years ago reading that the Aboriginal population in Australia was something around 650,000 to 700,000 for over 40,000 years or so.

It took a dramatic dive, as you would expect, with the arrival of the Europeans but now, it's about the same as it was before the Europeans arrived.

It is a testament of how advanced and intricate the relationship with not only the land which owns Aboriginal peoples, but also the complex and immutable obligatory relationship they have with each other.

To survive and maintain a relatively stable population number for 40,000+ years in this harshest of harsh continents is extraordinary.
 
I remember from studies I did years ago reading that the Aboriginal population in Australia was something around 650,000 to 700,000 for over 40,000 years or so.

It took a dramatic dive, as you would expect, with the arrival of the Europeans but now, it's about the same as it was before the Europeans arrived.

It is a testament of how advanced and intricate the relationship with not only the land which owns Aboriginal peoples, but also the complex and immutable obligatory relationship they have with each other.

To survive and maintain a relatively stable population number for 40,000+ years in this harshest of harsh continents is extraordinary.

I'm sure there were ups and downs...

Climate changes, diseases come and go (there was still some contacts to the north after all), conflict, fires, etc etc etc.

Just because none of this is documented doesn't mean it didn't happen.
 
I'm sure there were ups and downs...

Climate changes, diseases come and go (there was still some contacts to the north after all), conflict, fires, etc etc etc.

Just because none of this is documented doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I ran a couple of formulas and it simply didn't make sense. There must have been some natural caps as you suggest.
 
I ran a couple of formulas and it simply didn't make sense. There must have been some natural caps as you suggest.

It's a natural thing for all creatures to populate until the resources they rely on are fully utilised. As those resources wouldn't be stable, neither would the maximum population.

To expand beyond that would require either finding new resources, alternative resources or better means to exploit said resources (obvious examples being farming, better fishing techniques and the like).
 

kfc1

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Aboriginal tribes practised infanticide - some debate as to whether it was to maintain population levels (i.e. a tribe could only feed a certain number of people) or for other reasons. That may well be the artificial cap you refer to Power Raid
 
Aboriginal tribes practised infanticide - some debate as to whether it was to maintain population levels (i.e. a tribe could only feed a certain number of people) or for other reasons. That may well be the artificial cap you refer to Power Raid

Seems an odd practice to use purely as population control considering the number of infants surviving to adulthood would be relatively small. It's like throwing away half your lotto tickets to improve the chance the remaining ones will win.

I can't say I've seen of it being used, but it's more likely to have been for those with obvious disabilities, etc. Perhaps some as a result of status within the tribe if times were tough, but even that seems a big stretch for what were really just extended family groups.
 
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Seems an odd practice to use purely as population control considering the number of infants surviving to adulthood would be relatively small. It's like throwing away half your lotto tickets to improve the chance the remaining ones will win.

I can't say I've seen of it being used, but it's more likely to have been for those with obvious disabilities, etc. Perhaps some as a result of status within the tribe if times were tough, but even that seems a big stretch for what were really just extended family groups.

That is a good answer on infanticide. These people were nomadic hunter gatherers, I would imagine only children born seriously sick and lame that were not going to make it were perhaps just left behind , or maybe killed for their own sake. This would be logical considering the lives they led.You'd have to be strong.

But I have not heard of cultural infanticide?
 

kfc1

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Something interesting I came across a while ago:
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/85590904

Also this:
http://m.theaustralian.com.au/news/...113906387?nk=33855e785e0f50aca305256c957d505d

After colonisation children were also murdered by aborigines for being mixed-race but I think that's a separate issue not related to 'traditional' infanticide in aboriginal culture.
I see your point. This throws another question out there for sure. I have heard that some mixed race children were removed for being in danger of abuse or death.The stolen generation?? Really I don't know?
 
I see your point. This throws another question out there for sure. I have heard that some mixed race children were removed for being in danger of abuse or death.The stolen generation?? Really I don't know?

I suspect it was more a case of...

Aboriginals live in worse conditions than 'average'
Children living in worse than <certain level> were removed and put in places with conditions above that level.

As you would expect, that led to, proportionally, far more Aboriginals were affected by this, and the places they went to were (largely) non-aboriginal.

Treating people 'the same', without regard for situation/broader factors is both 'fair' and 'unfair', depending on perspective.
 

kfc1

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I suspect it was more a case of...

Aboriginals live in worse conditions than 'average'
Children living in worse than <certain level> were removed and put in places with conditions above that level.

As you would expect, that led to, proportionally, far more Aboriginals were affected by this, and the places they went to were (largely) non-aboriginal.

Treating people 'the same', without regard for situation/broader factors is both 'fair' and 'unfair', depending on perspective.
Keith Windschuttle goes into great detail to examine the stolen generation claims in NSW and comes up with some quite different conclusions to the mainstream (which is mostly based on a single piece of research). He has published a book on it which I have partially read but need to re-borrow and finish it when i have the time and inclination. Some of his work and subsequent articles have been published on the quadrant.org website.

The NSW evidence is quite interesting to read and supports what you suggested above to an extent. It has been a while since i read though, so my memory of the exact details is hazy. Definitely worth a read whatever your views are.

WA may well tell a different story but the records are only available in Perth, so not easy to access for a Sydney-based researcher.
 

little graham

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To survive and maintain a relatively stable population number for 40,000+ years in this harshest of harsh continents is extraordinary.

They say there was about a half million 80 thousand years ago. Our technology has yet to able to trace their DNA further back than that. They were never African monkeys, unless a hypothetical immigration happen alot early than anyone suggests. That makes the old (now recanted) out of africa theory a repeat.

These people were smarter than us.
 
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They say there was about a half million 80 thousand years ago. Our technology has yet to able to trace their DNA further back than that. They were never African monkeys, unless a hypothetical immigration happen alot early than anyone suggests. That makes the old (now recanted) out of africa theory a repeat.

Once again. Amongst the scientific community, the "Out of Africa" theory, is the most widely accepted model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans, which includes Australian Aboriginals. The concept was largely speculative until the 1980s, when it was corroborated by a study of present-day mitochondrial DNA combined with evidence based on physical anthropology of human fossils. However there are differing theories on whether there was a single exodus or several. The evidence now appears to be leaning towards several.

In 2011, the sequencing of a West Australian Aboriginal man's hair showed he was directly descended from a migration out of Africa into Asia that took place about 70,000 years ago. The finding, published in 2011 appears to have rewritten the history of the human species by confirming humans moved out of Africa in waves of migrations rather than one single out-of-Africa diaspora.

The study was based on a lock of hair donated to British anthropologist Alfred Haddon by an Aboriginal man from the Goldfields region of Western Australia in the early 20th century.

The genome, shown to have no genetic input from modern European Australians, reveals the ancestors of the Aboriginal man separated from the ancestors of other human populations some 64,000 to 75,000 years ago.

http://austhrutime.com/genetic_evidence.htm

Dr Irina Pugach and Dr Mark Stoneking, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany suggested in 2013 that there was substantial gene flow between Australia and India about 4,320 years ago or about 141 generations ago. Dr Stoneking said there are two explanations for the Indian DNA link.

"It could have been by people actually moving, physically travelling from India directly to Australia, or their genetic material could have moved in terms of contact between India and neighbouring populations who then had contact with other neighbour populations and eventually, there would have been contact with Australia."

The study also made the point that the earliest Indian link occurred about 4,000 years ago during a time when dingoes first appeared in the fossil record and Aboriginal communities changed the way they sourced and prepared food.

The authors also found a common origin for populations in Australia, New Guinea and the Mamanwa (a Negrito group from the Philippines) and estimated these groups split from each other about 36,000 years ago. The researchers say this supports the view that these groups represent the descendants of an ancient southwards migration out of Africa.

Any suggestion that there was an Australian origin of homo-sapiens is pseudo-science at best and is not supported by the available genetic evidence at all.
 
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little graham

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So the question is , how many people would have needed to enter over the thousands of years to build a population of 500 to a million.



???
You'll find this interesting.

t is these blessings, insights and technologies, all originating in Australia, that is our focus and includes religion, language, art, astronomy, navigating by the stars, gender equality, democracy, technology of a level that is so advanced it is has just been equalled today and sometimes is beyond our reach, brain surgery, mathematics and all the hallmarks of cultured behaviour we mistakenly feel separates us from all other life-forms. This place and these people was the source from which all myths relating to the fabled Garden of Eden originated.

http://forgottenorigin.com/from-the-middle-part-1
 
This put a smile on my face

SOURCES:-

(1) Robert Plant & Jimmy Page (1971), “Stairway to Heaven” Led Zeppelin, (Atlantic), Song Lyric.

Always a credible source.
 

Northalives

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Aboriginal tribes practised infanticide - some debate as to whether it was to maintain population levels (i.e. a tribe could only feed a certain number of people) or for other reasons. That may well be the artificial cap you refer to Power Raid
To understand things like infanticide and other practices that were prevalent in Aboriginal Australia, one must first try and get an understanding of how Aboriginals saw themselves within the land that owned them.

The complexity of relationship and obligation between each other, between themselves as a group and other groups, the relationship and obligation of "skin", the obligation between an individual and his/her totemic ancestor, the relationship and obligations between the land and certain features of the landscape and oneself and so on and so forth.

In regards to infanticide, it wasn't done for any environmental considerations, eg. a "bad" season, that's a big no-no and euthanasia was never ever practiced. If of a child was born that was not "normal", "correct", that is, born with a "defect" or some deformity, it was not just a matter of killing the infant and that was that, far from it, it was a case of returning the infant to the spirits to be "corrected" and then it would be sent back to the mother.
 

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They say there was about a half million 80 thousand years ago. Our technology has yet to able to trace their DNA further back than that. They were never African monkeys, unless a hypothetical immigration happen alot early than anyone suggests. That makes the old (now recanted) out of africa theory a repeat.

These people were smarter than us.

You are the most racist poster on bigfooty.
 
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