Talk:History of Indigenous Australians/Archive 1

Archive 1

Before British arrival

I'm delighted to see such a comprehensive and detailed discussion of the fact that Aboriginal peoples were not "unchanging Stone-age peoples", as is still taught in many public schools in Australia. The information on eel-farming and burning/landscape management is excellent. I would like to add information on pre-colonial water management and on archaeological evidence for large settlements using hearths and longhouses in (I think) Victoria, which I learned about from an Aboriginal lecturer at the University of Queensland. I have citations for the water management, and am tracking down the citations for the hearths and longhouses. Drvestone (talk) 17:11, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I added the latest citation for the population figures, which said "citation needed" previously. I can add citations on eel-farming and burning when I add information on water management. I am trying to go through here and wherever it says "citation needed" add any appropriate citations I know of. Drvestone (talk) 18:09, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the para about tribal warfare 'massacres' and allegations of a pre-existing 'pygmy' race in Australia that was allegedly exterminated by ancestors of modern Aborigines. While there is abundant cultural evidence of long term low-level tribal warfare consistent with other hunter gatherer societies, there is neither archeological nor oral history evidence for large scale massacres prior to the arrival of Europeans. The notion that there was ever a pygmy race in Australia is one held by a tiny group of right wing historians and is not backed by archeological, linguistic or genetic evidence - which would be inexplicable were they to have been as widely distributed as Windschuttle and Gillan claimed. The oldest human skeletal remains found in Australia, Mungo Man were of an individual who was 193cm tall. No skeletal remains consistent with an extinct pygmy race have ever been found. Even if there was ever such a race, there is furthermore no evidence as to why they disappeared. Indeed, the very weak photographic and colonial anthropological evidence cited by Windschuttle and Gillan suggests that if they have been exterminated it was during the period of European colonisation. 203.220.105.34 (talk) 14:41, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Cannibalism

The claims of cannibalism in Queensland are debated,and I think the consensus is not that cannibalism took place, and that this may be a colonial construction to paint Aboriginal people as "depraved savages". In resource-rich Queensland, with plenty of other sources of protein and other foods, there is little ecological reason to suppose that cannibalism would have made sense, in contrast to some Pacific Island cultures. The most recent scholarly work, R. Evans (2007), A History of Queensland, (Cambridge U Press) makes no mention of cannibalism in the work on prehistory, nor does he cite Roth. Drvestone (talk) 17:23, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

World War II history

In tropical north Australia, Aboriginal men were specifically recruited as soldiers by the Australian government, because they knew their lands best, and were best suited to spot invaders. (Though they were a bit bemused by white invaders asking them to keep out other invaders.) They also were much better than white soldiers at surviving and thriving in these remote tropical environments. OK if I add a sentence or two with some historical information about this, including citations? Drvestone (talk) 17:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, please go ahead. Better to directly make edits and then leave an explanation on the talkpage. Never too late to do the right things. 202.156.182.84 (talk) 15:45, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Origins

update needed: The quoted reference to Dortch and Hesp appears to be superseded by Hesp, P.A., Murray-Wallace, .V., Dortch, C.E., 1999. Aboriginal occupation on Rottnest Island, Western Australia, provisionally dated by Aspartic Acid Racemization assay of land snails to greater than 50,000 yr B.P. Australian Archaeology 49, 7–12. which claims only "greater than" 50ky BP with the qualification provisional. I suggest the Rottnest date should be omitted entirely if the original claim has been retracted and the later claim is only provisional. Qemist (talk) 03:21, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Megafaunal Extinctions

The comment in 'Long History in Australia' that the Aborigines were responsible for megafaunal extictions via firestick farming states 'The Future Eaters' by Tim Flannery for evidence. Flannery makes no such claim. He states that he believes the hypothesis unlikely and firmly supports the the overkill or Blitzkrieg hypothesis instead. The reference or information presented needs to be changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.217.154.106 (talk) 08:08, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Outdatedness

For the sake of hygiene a comment on this article being classed as "outdated."

It is common practice for inconvenient opinions to be rubbished as not conforming to supposedly objective criteria of good scholarship. One example is the way neoliberal economists working for Capital attack left-wing economists; another is the attack by US neoconservative Israel supporters on pro-Palestinian writers such as N. Finkelstein.

In the present case, Wiki readers are supposed to believe that this article is "outdated". The allegation however is seemingly aimed at banning all use of white eyewitness accounts of Aborigines in the period 1788 -ca 1990,if those accounts do not suit the current political agenda of Australian indigenising nationalists. The underlying falsehood is that history and politics are like natural science ie that there is objective progress,so that eyewitness accounts of eg Aboriginal infanticide are allegedly "outdated" in the way that the Physics or Chemistry of 1850 is outdated. On the contrary, primary sources in history are always more valuable than secondary ones. Jacques Roux (talk) 08:38, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Problems with this article

While this article contains some good material, it suffers from poor organisation, lack of a neutral point of view, and insufficient citations. Parts of it read like an undergraduate essay. I wish I had time to fix it at the moment, but I would suggest that the sections titled The Long History in Australia and Before British Arrival be rewritten and reorganised. Probably a division into Pleistocene and Holocene eras would be the most logical way to arrange the material. Much of it needs citations and as mentioned needs to be put into more neutral language. (eg Statements like "Clearly, the Aboriginal people of Australia were not "people of an unchanging stone age" as they have been so often portrayed by European colonists, but inventive and creative individuals living within cultures that over the millennia had become finely attuned to the rhythms and changes of the "droughts and flooding rains" that characterise the Australian environment.". However true this may be it needs to be expressed differently using citations, rather than as a conclusion of the preceding statements. If appropriate citations cannot be found it should be removed.) The material in the Origins section is in conflict with overlapping topics on Wikipedia and should better reflect the consensus view of archaelogists. It also appears to reflect certain strands of Australian archaeology in the 1990s and needs to draw on more recent material. I'll come back when I've got some more time and see if I can't improve it, or hopefully someone industrious will have taken up the challenge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.202.43.54 (talk) 07:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you this article reads badly and lacks a lot of relevant information. It hardly touches on the fact that we now believe that the aboriginals were more of an agrarian society and not predominantly hunter gathers. The article suggests the opposite. It should really be cleaned up and have another section added discussing the theory's surrounding aboriginal farming, permanent settlement, architecture etc. There are multiple books written on the topic and plenty of references to it in the original writings of explorers and early Europeans to inhabit the country. It’s simply been suppressed. I would suggest a re-wording of the entire article and adding this information. A good book to read for more information is: Dark Emu - Black seeds: agriculture or accident? I would offer to re-write the article but I do not have the time at the moment. Wonx2150 (talk) 09:20, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

ref

how do you fix ref 27 (to the episode of Message Stick called "Lest We Forget")? Even though the address "http://www.abc.net.au/tv/messagestick/stories/s1904340.htm" is correctly entered in the section, on the actual page the link goes to "http://www.abc.net.au/tv/messagestick/stories/s1904340.htm%7CLest" which goes to a 404. 58.108.225.227 (talk) 15:37, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

An incorrect argument name was being used, so the link was being treated as an internal wikilink instead of an external URL. It's now fixed. -- Avenue (talk) 23:39, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Warfare

The reference given for the warfare statistics (http://cniss.wustl.edu/workshoppapers/gatpres1.pdf Anthropological Quarterly) is dead, I have added a citation needed tag. Considering how little evidence there is that Indigenous Australia had a system of warfare at all, I'd be very interested in seeing this cite. Hexyhex (talk) 11:10, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Oops, should have been a dead link tag. Fixing now! Hexyhex (talk) 11:18, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

1 to 5 billion people in Australia?

You sure about that? fwiw That content was added here. SlightSmile 19:53, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

It's referenced? Why did you remove it?Oranjblud (talk) 14:19, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I've long heard that the world population reached 1 billion only in 1804. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nemoscis (talk • contribs) 11:14, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

That would be the population at any given point. The figure in the billions refers to the cumulative population, i.e. every person who has ever lived (in Australia, in this case). TompaDompa (talk) 16:41, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Number of indigenous deaths at the hands of white people

In the 'impact of brittish settlement: 1788-1900' section, it is written: "The number of violent deaths at the hands of white people is still the subject of debate, with a figure of around 10 000 - 20 000 deaths being advanced by historians such as Henry Reynolds."

I have added a sort of 'disclaimer' to this sentence, relating to scholarly concerns (referenced) regarding the methodology behind figures such as these:

"However the methodology behind figures such as this one has been criticized due to the fact that only white deaths were documented in frontier conflicts, forcing historians to estimate a country-wide white-black death ratio and infer from this the number of Indigenous deaths".

Bill

Mungo Man

Mungo man is mentioned in this article (it is relevant) but it has been proven LM3 is not related to Indigenous Australians. This should be made clear in the article, as it is misleading. Cerumol2 (talk) 23:22, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

about extinctions

Some articles in wiki says firmly that this or that species was killed by human with the exact timeline, as soon as humans went in Australia. Time like 46.000 years ago or so, ah the sudden extinction of diprodon and the like... now in this article we see that humans could have been also there at 50,000, 60,000 70,000 or even 200,000 years ago. LOL, so what is the credibility of the human 'blitzkrieg' then? see the diprodon article and thell me if it is compatible with the timeline here! no way. someone could fix this instead of those nonsense? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.20.209.65 (talk) 05:23, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

History?

There's a fair slab of this article that doesn't deal with history at all. History being a recorded narrative of events. --Pete (talk) 06:45, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

If you read the word very strictly, you are correct. (In general usage, at least in the USA, "history" can be loosely used to mean "things that happened in the past", but of course for an encyclopedia being stricter is likely the correct course.)

Maybe create a separate article "Prehistory of Australia" and put the prehistoric bits of this article in there?

IAmNitpicking (talk) 13:23, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

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Word choice ... Mongolian army?

The article says, "Each day the women of the horde went into successive parts of one countryside, with wooden digging sticks and plaited dilly bags or wooden coolamons ..."

"Horde" is Mongolian for "army". I doubt the Australian indigenes were also Mongolian. Is this a term of art I don't know from anthropology, or just a weird word choice? I also don't know what "parts of one countryside" means. IAmNitpicking (talk) 19:13, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

"Horde" is a depreciated technical term in anthropology. Band society. David Woodward ☮ ♡♢☞☽ 09:20, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Reversion

I don't know why you think the previous version was more accurate.

1. The absence of a mention of Aborigines after the referendum is proof that the Constitution changed: previously they were listed as an exception to the Commonwealth's power to make racial laws. I explained the change concisely.

2. The Commonwealth doesn't have rights; it has powers and responsibilities. The thing about rights is that they can't be taken away, whereas powers and responsibilities can be taken away by referendum. Rights belong to individuals, not governments.

Grassynoel (talk) 02:09, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

deep spiritual and cultural connection to the land

This type of language appears a few times in this article with no citation. It sort of reads like an advert for Australian tourism. --Zaurus (talk) 03:26, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

120,000 years possible hearths and shell middens

As of December 2019 ongoing research of apparent hearths and shell middens. "layer has been dated by techniques known as optically stimulated luminescence, thermoluminescence and amino acid racemisation at 120,000 years of age." Further results by hearth expert due in March 2020. "The Coast Diaries: Warrnambool, where human history may be rewritten" Sydney Morning Herald. Guardian Australia same study March 2019 "'A big jump': People might have lived in Australia twice as long as we thought". Original paper PDF THE MOYJIL SITE, SOUTH-WEST VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA: FIRE AND ENVIRONMENT IN A 120,000-YEAR COASTAL MIDDEN — NATURE OR PEOPLE?

There had been two previous environmental studies dating occupation to 130,000 based on deforestation by "firestick farming" mentioned in Ancient News article, including:

The relatively 'fire-tolerant', Eucalyptus-dominated forests started to expand onwards from the last interglacial, some 130 000 years ago, in conjunction with large increases in the amount of charcoal in the sediment. Since then, not only did the amount of charcoal remain at a generally high level but the overall dominance of open, eucalypt forest is maintained throughout during the warmer periods except for a cool-temperate interstadial interval (zone D) during the last glacial.

— "Late Cainozoic History of Vegetation, Fire, Lake Levels and Climate, at Lake George, New South Wales, Australia" G. Singh and Elizabeth A. Geissler, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 311, No. 1151 (Dec. 3, 1985), pp. 379-447

Some of this material had been added to Indigenous Australians page lead section. David Woodward ☮ ♡♢☞☽ 10:08, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Prehistoric Australia, History of Indigenous Australians, Australian archaeology all have the same scope: the period between the first person on Australia to European colonization. History of Indigenous Australians is the most complete and cohesive of the 3, so I suggest redirecting the other 2 into this one.   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  14:28, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I would agree with merging the first two. They clearly have the same scope. The title Prehistoric Australia is a poor one anyway, because it feeds into the concept pushed occasionally here by bigots that the residents pre-European times were a prehistoric people. Australian archaeology, however, has a broader scope. The section "Underwater and maritime archaeology..." covers more recent events. Archaeologists also frequently study history since white settlement quite extensively. The Level Crossing Removal Project in my suburb of Melbourne had some archaeologists doing some work where the station master's house had been until 1973. HiLo48 (talk) 00:40, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

The article title is actually Prehistory of Australia, just as a clerical note. :-) Definitely agree with leaving out Australian archaeology, which must include industrial archaeology as well as other post-colonial investigations. I'm not in principle opposed to merging the other two, but don't have time to look at the articles in detail right now. One issue is article size, and I'll also just note here the ongoing challenges of keeping "Aboriginal Australian..." articles in sync with "Indigenous Australian..." articles, which has to be kept in mind whenever changes are introduced. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:16, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose merging any. There is some duplication in the current content, but they definitely have different scopes. Australian archaeology covers a regional specialisation of the field of archaeology, and as others have pointed out covers historic/post-colonial archaeology, as well as aspects of professional practice which would be out-of-place in either of the other two articles. The other two currently overlap more, primarily because History of Indigenous Australians contains a lengthy summary of material which Prehistory of Australia should be the main article for. But we shouldn't equate the history of a contemporary people with distant prehistory. History of Indigenous Australians should focus more on recent history (extended to the present day, which obvious is out of the scope of the prehistory article), while Prehistory of Australia has the scope to go into more detail on things like early hominid dispersals, artefact typologies, genetic history, etc. That would be undue weight for an article about the history of a contemporary people (there is probably a little too much of it in the article at the moment), and in that sense merging lends more credence to the fallacy that Aboriginal Australians were "prehistoric" until they met Europeans, not less. The way these articles are structured now is also consistent with what we do for the rest of the world, with most regions having separate Archaeology of/in *, Prehistoric/Prehistory of *, and History of * articles. – Joe (talk) 15:26, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

There is no doubt the Archaeology article must be separate, but I see no problems with merging the other two into History of Indigenous Australians. Firstly, the title does not say it's primarily the history of a contemporary people (if you want THAT article, maybe it needs to be created), and by removing the title referring to prehistory, we remove the problem of them being seen as "prehistoric". HiLo48 (talk) 22:29, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

History of Australia already exists if you're looking for recorded history (i. e., after European colonization)   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  00:25, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

@HiLo48: By "a contemporary people" I mean that there are Indigenous Australians alive today, so yes that article is obviously about their history. We have separate articles on the prehistory and history of almost every other region because they are separate subjects of study that involve different types of material and vastly different periods of time. I don't see why Australia should be an exception. If we merge lengthy discussions of tens of thousand year-old fossils, stone tools, megafauna hunting, etc. into History of Indigenous Australians the implication that they are prehistoric will be crystal clear, even if "prehistory" isn't in the title. – Joe (talk) 11:54, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

It's an interesting topic for discussion, but I'm not sure we will agree. HiLo48 (talk) 22:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose Australian archaeology covers the development of the field of archaeology in Australia and is not limited to events and projects linked to prehistorical/precolonial research. Prehistory of Australia overlaps with History of Indigenous Australians in some ways, but to merge them pressuposes the assumption that 1. the indigenous people of Australia only "exited prehistory" under the impact of colonization 2. the identity of the people who after European colonization became the "Indigenous Australians" is the immutable identity of the archaeological cultures which developed in the "prehistory" of Australia. I think that this is a very constrictive reading based on culture-historical archaeology and a merge unintentionally would project the modern identity of the Indigenous Australians back to a distant past in which they didn't need to be defined as Indigenous and interacted with each other as various regional identities emerged and disappeared over time.--Maleschreiber (talk) 15:37, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

@Maleschreiber: There's too much redundancy because by your description, everything discussed in History of Indigenous Australians will already be discussed in Prehistoric Australia and History of Australia. Rather than calling out specific races, it'd be better to stratify it like Prehistoric and Historic (since prehistoric and historic are by definition the sum of everything that happened)   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  16:04, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Agreed on that point, structuring articles around stratification leads to a much "cleaner" end result. I think that if we follow that methodology, then articles shouldn't be merged. A side comment: While I can accept a post-colonial reading of "prehistory" as "history" in some ways in the context of the indigenous communities, the assertion that the history of Indigenous Australians began at least 65,000 years ago when humans first populated the Australian continental landmasses (History of Indigenous Australians) looks very awkward and should probably be restructured as the article progresses.--Maleschreiber (talk) 16:23, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

The implication from using both a - much needed - post-colonial reading and maintaining the use of some analytical categories like "prehistory" and "history" in the way that they've been traditionally defined is that a "cleaner end result" isn't a "clean result" in terms of a strict definition between prehistoric and historical phases in the timeline of Australia like the following article highlights: Australian archaeologists dropped the term ‘Stone Age’ decades ago, and so should you.--Maleschreiber (talk) 16:47, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Prehistory doesn't necessarily equate to Stone Age, it just means there are no written records from that time. For example, "Prehistoric China" extends all the way to the Bronze Age   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:18, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

• The preface of Prehistory of Australia (2nd edition published this year) includes a relevant section on terminology, including:

In 1988 a meeting of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies resolved that it would use the term 'history' in referring to the Aboriginal past before written records. Despite this, the term 'prehistory' is embedded in archaeological writings in Australia and overseas [...] We understand the study of history to rely substantially on documentary (and recorded oral) evidence of events, and prehistory to be reconstruction from many kinds of evidence, especially archaeological data. While these two scholarly disciplines are closely linked, their methodologies are quite different, and their accounts of the human past are framed within vastly different time-scales and levels of resolution—most events in a history are not in focus in a prehistory.

This seems to justify maintaining a standalone article on Australian prehistory (which this book is an excellent source for). – Joe (talk) 14:27, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

• @HiLo48, Laterthanyouthink, Joe Roe, Maleschreiber, and Kerry Raymond: It seems Australian archaeology will remain its own article, but where are we in moving the contents of History of Indigenous Australians to Prehistoric Australia and History of Australia?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:34, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Dunkleosteus77: Both Maleschreiber and I have argued that they're linked, but distinct, topics. And the source I quoted above backs that up. If the concern is repetition of content, I think it would make more sense to reduce the undue weight on the distant past in History of Indigenous Australians and move anything not already covered to Prehistory of Australia.

P.S. You might want to redo the pings. They don't work if you edit them into a comment afterwards. – Joe (talk) 22:49, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

• OPPOSE There are separate articles for Prehistoric Britain, Prehistory of France etc. There should be some cleaning up of both articles to reduce duplication and make a clearer distinction between the periods. It would be appropriate for the History of Indigenous Australians to include a summary of the pre written record period and link to the Prehistory of Australia article in the same way that History of the British Isles does. Garyvines (talk) 09:15, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

@Garyvines: So you propose a small section which duplicates Prehistoric Australia, and the rest of the article will be a duplicate of History of Australia?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  18:42, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

@Dunkleosteus77: Following consideration of comments by @Iain Stuart: and @Laterthanyouthink:, I don't support a single article covering all of the period of Aboriginal history, but reitorate the fact that Wikipedia consistently has separate articles for prehistoric and historic periods of national, regional and cultural groups histories. Prehistory is also a clearly defined period in Wikipedia articles (although there are some problems such as the use of Prehistory of the United States to refer to geological periods). The Category National_prehistories, lists 63 subcategories and 39 pages, suggesting that the approach to separating historic and prehistoric period is consistent with Wikipedia's general style. In terms of having Indigenous views represented in the editing - I note that there have been attempts to do so more generally - e.g. https://indigenousfutures.net/iif-wikipedia-edit-a-thon. I have also noticed edits by Aboriginal people on various related articles, but cannot find a link to any Aboriginal Wikipedians group.Garyvines (talk) 03:43, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

• Firstly - the term and disciplinary scope of Australian Archaeology includes Maritime Archaeology, Historical archaeology, Industrial Archaeology and Contemporary Archaeology. On this basis it would not seem helpful if Wikipedia defined Australian Archaeology solely as being Indigenous Archaeology (no matter what some Australian archaeologists think). Each subdivision has its own scope of work and its on methodological approach.I would keep Australian archaeology separate.

As for Indigenous Archaeology, although I graduated with honours in Prehistory back in the day I was soon told by Aboriginal people that there was a feeling that the term Prehistory was seen as less than History and I believe that is one reason the degree course was changed to Archaeology. So I think that the History of Indigenous Australians might be better - with a separation into Pre-Contact, Contact, and Post-Contact sections recognising that contact is a period that occured at different times and and duration across Australia.

However is there some way for Wikipedia to consult with the Indigenous community in this issue which would seem to be the logical proceedure. Iain Stuart (talk) 21:35, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

I like your suggestion Iain. Consulting with the indigenous community is difficult, because there is no single community nor any universally accepted spokesperson for Indigenous people. HiLo48 (talk) 22:44, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

So are we instead favoring moving Prehistoric Australia to History of Indigenous Australians? (for the record, either title is fine by me; my problem is having 2 separate articles with the same/heavily overlapping scope)   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  23:37, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

There is a lot of overlap (and don't forget Aboriginal Australians#Origins), but I am worried about a couple of aspects of merging. One is the length of the article - I would not like to see another one as long and unwieldy as Indigenous Australians - and the other is the work involved in merging. It would require a lot of time and care to integrate, and both articles need more citations. And just having a look at the "1940s-present" section, there is obviously a lot missing there still. As HiLo says, there isn't one single spokesperson - and I haven't come across a single editor who has declared themselves Indigenous as yet (although several have knowledge via studies or working with people). I have had some correspondence with someone at AIATSIS - only involved in the website and marketing side of things, but I could ask him if he has any suggestions or knows anyone there willing to offer an opinion on the "prehistory" term? I think it might be useful to separate pre- and post-colonial history, one way or another, for better coverage. I know the terms pre- and post-contact are used quite a lot, but don't forget there was also contact before settlement/invasion - with Makassans (whole article here, although scarcely mentioned in this one), the odd Dutch or English explorer, etc. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:21, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

It would be good to get additional perspectives of course, but in the meantime we should be looking at how published sources, including ones from Indigenous perspectives, treat the topics and what terminology they use. So far I have not been able to find sources that substantiate the idea that 'prehistory' has fallen out of use due to Indigenous objections, and lots to suggests that it remains in common usage in Australian archaeology [1][2]. And while I'm not familiar with Australia, I know in the Americas at least terms like pre-contact, pre-colonial, pre-Columbian, etc. are heavily criticised for centring Indigenous histories around the pivot point of when Europeans first encountered them. In any case, the issue of naming is secondary to the proposed merge here. There seems to be broad agreement that whatever we call it, the prehistoric/pre-colonial/pre-contact period should be treated separately from the historic/colonial/post-contact period, which is what matters as far as the merge is concerned.

Speaking purely chronologically, and using the usual definitions of "prehistory" and "history", there's actually very little overlap in scope between Prehistory of Australia and History of Indigenous Australians. Prehistory covers the tens of thousands of year-span between the peopling of the continent (or earlier) and the time when written or oral histories become widely available; history covers the period from around the same time and continues to the present day. And the overlap shrinks even further if you also consider the differences between the study of prehistory and the study of history in terms of their evidence used (material culture/environmental records/genetics vs. written/oral accounts), methodology (archaeological/palaeoscientific vs. historic/ethnographic), and dominant research questions (migration/culture history/human ecology vs. sociology/colonialism/etc). – Joe (talk) 08:45, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

• Prehistory is a term that hasn't been used by Australian archaeologists for decades - not only because most of our Indigenous colleagues find it offensive, but because it imposes a northern hemisphere/European value system and has a lot of colonial baggage. One way of engaging with Indigenous communities about this might be to contact the Australian Indigenous Archaeologists'Association http://www.australianindigenousarchaeologistsassociation.com.au/ Drspacejunk (talk) 01:15, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

@Drspacejunk: Do you have any sources that could back up the assertion that it is no longer used? Above I posted an excerpt from Prehistory of Australia, which was republished this year and uses "prehistory" not in its title and throughout the text. A Google Scholar search also returns hundreds of uses of the term in scholarly works published since 2010. The way we title articles on Wikipedia follows common usage in reliable sources, so unfortunately if there are Indigenous objectives to the term prehistory we can't really do anything about it until the archaeological community changes its terminology. – Joe (talk) 08:09, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I would support a clear distinction between the theory and practice of archaeology in Australia and the History of Indigenous Australians which covers a wider range of evidence than just archaeological evidence (for example tradition and culture, documentary records and so on). Aboriginal people have expressed to me their concern with the term prehistory as it implies that Aboriginal people lacked a history until the colonisers arrived. To me as an archaeologist trained in the late 1970s in a Prehistory department the term meant before writing and I hadn't really thought of how Aboriginal people might have thought about it.

It seems to me that the subjects of the article have a voice in the discussion about how their past should be discussed and I am not sure whether this debate allows for that.

Looking at Dr Space Junks comments I too was shocked at the use of the term prehistory by my colleagues. But also noted that many of the articles used the terms rhetorically much in the way Foucault used the term "archaeology" in his philosophical writing. As an Editor and President of The Royal Australian Historical Society as well as an archaeologist I can say that the term "prehistory" to refer to the archaeology of indigenous or First Nation peoples would not be used or used with caution. I am surprised that the Prehistory of Australia retains that title. i am assuming that this because the book is the third edition of the title. Iain Stuart (talk) 22:33, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi Joe, I had a look at your Google Scholar search, and I can tell you that a good proportion of the citations are by people who are not archaeologists or are not Australian. To be honest, though, I was quite shocked to see those that were both using 'prehistory' in the last decade. The archaeological community has changed its terminology, which I can say as a practitioner, teacher and active participant in the community over the last 35 years. For example, at my university, we explicitly teach archaeology students not to use it! You would have to look through all the literature which does not use prehistory to see this change I guess. I will have a think about a source. Drspacejunk (talk) 06:35, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Well I'd say to consider you an expert on the field, and a good source on the matter. I don't want to offend people, so seeing as this is the case, I SUPPORT moving Prehistory of Australia → History of Indigenous Australians. We don't have a series on Prehistory of... for every continent (for example, Prehistory of North America redirects to History of North America) so I'd argue the title History of Indigenous Australians does have precedent if we're trying to remain consistent across article titles.   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  19:17, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Support merging prehistory of Australia and History of Indigenous Australians, oppose merging Australian archaeology and History of Indigenous Australians. Some of the scope of the Australian archaeology article stands on its own despite overlap. Deku link (talk) 09:02, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Question about lineage and timeframe

I might be misinterpreting the data, so please help me out here. As I understand it, according to the data, artifacts proving human presence in Australia date back to 70.000 years ago (Rottnest Island). Yet, after much debate (scienctists, eh?) a consensus has been reached, generally accepting and applying a 60-40.000 year timeframe for the date when humans, about to become Australia's first people, set foot on its shore in a bit more than one small step for man. Next, as I understand it, their offspring colonizied the continent, living there for thousands of years, forming a lineage leading all the way back, at least, to the earliest human remains retrieved from Australian soil (old uncle Mungo Man). So far, so good. But then there's the findings of the 2013 genotyping study, indicating that Aboriginal Australians, indigenous people of New Guinea and of the Philippines are closely related, having diverged from a common origin(!) - no sooner than - "approximately 36.000 years ago". Now what to make of that? Is it proof for the First People's Navy venturing back to the mainland, mingling with cousins they've left behind some 10.000 or more years ago and, by way of an anthropological equivalent to the grandfather paradox, themself becoming that "common origin"? I find it impractical for them, to stem from a lineage that is supposed to be younger than their own people Down Under who, at that point, have already been marring those poor mites for more than 4.000 years. Any ideas? Or better yet, additional data? 2003:CA:3F1D:67E9:6987:F8AE:7A40:E4E5 (talk) 13:00, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

The 2013 study says "It has been suggested that the ancestors of aboriginal Australians and Papua New Guineans diverged from the ancestral Eurasian population 62,000–75,000 y ago (7) and, based on archaeological evidence, reached Sahul (the joint Australia–New Guinea landmass) by at least 45,000 y ago" which does seem to contradict Rottnest Island's 70,000 ka date. The 2013 study's date of 45,000 years ago cites other studies which claim sites predating this are problematic and their calculated ages should be discounted for the meantime. It seems the 2015 study about Madjedbebe, which claims it to be roughly 65,000 years old as some priors had posited, is a response to those kinds of arguments. As for the current state of the debate, I haven't looked into it yet if someone could find more recent literature reviews Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 17:07, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Another option might be to rename Prehistory of Austalia to Pre Contact History of Indigenous Australians and rename History of Indigenous Australians to Post Contact History of Indigenous Australians.Garyvines (talk) 10:24, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Merge History of Indigenous Australians and Prehistory of Australia

I would like to propose merging History of Indigenous Australians and Prehistory of Australia 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) 11:15, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

• Support for obvious reasons. Thebeatles2020 (talk) 00:33, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

As an archaeologist working in Australia, I'd strongly support this merger TheShippingPrayer (talk) 11:41, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

• Support seeing as I proposed this 2 years ago Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 00:29, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
• @Garyvines: Have you seen the discussion above about this same proposal? If Australian archaeology has dropped the term "prehistory", I agree that's a strong reason to at least reconsider the title of prehistory of Australia – though as for merging, I'd still question whether it's helpful for readers to bundle together material on hominin migrations and megafaunal extinctions that happened tens of thousands of years ago and material on 19th century British colonialism and contemporary Australian legislation. However, at this point, we don't have any sources to back that assertion up and, as I said in the last discussion: Prehistory of Australia, which was republished [in 2021,] uses "prehistory" not [just] in its title [but] throughout the text. A Google Scholar search also returns hundreds of uses of the term in scholarly works published since 2010.. Back in Jan 2021 Drspacejunk said she would think about sources that talk about the term "prehistory" being problematic, but then the discussion petered out. To be clear I don't doubt that you know what you're talking about, we just need the published sources to satisfy Wikipedia policies WP:COMMONNAME and WP:V. – Joe (talk) 13:05, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

  Also @Iain Stuart: who has provided some useful insight above. – Joe (talk) 13:10, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Request for this article to be renamed/moved/redirected to History of First Nations peoples in Australia

Hey All,

I've seen that this has been discussed before with no real resolution, I have created a temple Template:First Nations Australians which is based on Australian Government Style Manual[11] and a couple of other sources, I have also added it to this page. According to the style guide 'First Nations Australians' is now the preferred term over 'Indigenous', I feel like Wikipedia should also reflect this change. I have already made this change on Racism in Australia and Institutional racism § Australia. If anyone else would like to help with either the template, or changing 'Indigenous' to 'First Nations', 'First Australians', 'First people', etc. that would be great.

Thanks,

AverageFraud (talk) 07:32, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't ready for this move. First nations is not an article in its own right. It's simply a redirect to Indigenous peoples. So you're tackling the whole breadth of Wikipedia here, not just Australian articles. HiLo48 (talk) 09:30, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

When referring to Wikipedia here I am referring to only the Australian articles, as they are the ones relevant to this discussion. AverageFraud (talk) 10:47, 2 December 2022 (UTC)