Monday, December 15, 2008

Aboriginal Australia, a few words.




Aboriginal Australia


Back when Neanderthals still ruled Europe, and our bead-making Cro-magnon ancestors were just arriving from Africa, the first aborigines were arriving in Australia in their dugout canoes. Their culture survived fifty thousand years, including the last ice age, making it by far the oldest continuous human culture on the planet, and consequently the most sustainable by any reasonable definition.

They lived on the hottest, dryest, and flattest landscape on earth, and they seem to have been the most peaceful civilization the planet has known, with little evidence of organized conflict of any kind. This didn't serve them well when the British arrived, who treated them literally like animals (under colonial law, the native aborigines were considered part of the "flora and fauna" of the land, the property of the landowner), and what happened next was atrocious even by American standards. 'Nuff said.

Their culture is based around the concept of Dreamtime, that the world is created by the dreams of all its creatures, with great respect accorded to every living thing, and a strong sense of the eternal present -- in contrast to our western notion of progress, which may or may not be compatible with actual long-term sustainability.

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