Why were Australian Aborigines So Primitive?

Connections between Aboriginal people and other cultures on the docks of Australian harbours have been an important and previously neglected link to the outside world and warrant further studies. As an example of this dockland cultural connection, John Askew in 1852 recorded the natural inclination and gravitation of visiting Maori to the local Aboriginal people. Askew recorded his adventures and experiences as a steerage passenger in the Australian colony noting that eleven of the crew on the ship to New Zealand were Maori. Whilst berthed in Newcastle the Maori crew left the ship and walked the streets and docks of Newcastle. He noted not only his own but also the bewilderment of the local populace at the Maori appearance:
Aboriginal contacts with non-Europeans

janusdviveidis said:

That could be one of important reasons if it were really true. They they had few opportunities for contact and learning new ideas, but as I have mentioned already New Guinea is very close. Straights have many islands and New Guineans even though also quite primitive comparing with some other cultures were very advanced when compared with Australians. They developed agriculture on their own, imported some crops, they were building houses, using bows and arrows, had much better stone tools, had boats usable for hoping from island to island. Guineans also had domesticated pigs and chickens. Agriculture was developed in New Guinea something like 5000 B.C. , so Australians had almost 7000 years to learn these things from their neighbors, but they didn't.
Gap between Australia and New Guinea is only 150 km and there are hundreds of islands in the straits. So why not try and cross it, attempt some trade, see how people in world live, flirt with exotic women?

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You forgot to mention that New Guineans were one of the first peoples in the entire WORLD to develop agricultural societies. I know that over the years they didn't developed more complex or advanced societies like what we saw in East Asia or the Middle East and the Mediterranean world, but it still quite an achievement for the ancient inhabitants of New Guinea.

Update information: It has been recently discovered that pottery existed in new Guinea 3000 years ago as well (imported from an nearby culture), but they later on abandoned that technology for unknown reasons.

Links: 3,000-Year-Old Pottery Discovered in Papua New Guinea - Archaeology Magazine

Archaeological Dig in Papua New Guinea Unearths 3,000-Year-Old Pottery | Archaeology | Sci-News.com

But when it comes to the Australian Aborigines, I think that Sephiroth is right. Australia was not a heavily populated area, but New Guinea was. Maybe that's a crucial factor...

HuminBehaviorz said:

Aborigines are not Negroids. They are Australoids. Negroids are actually their most distant relatives. Their closest relatives are (as you stated) people from the East Indies and the Andaman islands, followed by mongoloids, then Caucasoids. Anyway regardless of what racial category they fall into, what does that have to do with my post? I don't think their race has anything to do with their level of technological development.

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Aborigines are related to Melanesians, i.e. the people of New Guinea and nearby islands, as far as Fiji. They are more distantly related to what used to be called 'negritos', i.e. the indigenous peoples of South-East Asia, which includes the Andaman islanders. Probably they were related to the indigenous peoples of India, before the Dravidians, who are known as the Mundas/Adivasi. However the Mundas speak Austroasiatic languages (related to Vietnamese and Khmer/Cambodian) and do not seem to retain much genetic or linguistic trace of their presumed Australoid ancestry (the possible exception being the Veddas of Sri Lanka, who may preserve some pre-Austro-Asiatic vocabulary in their language, although this is not confirmed).

They are not closely related to Africans, and most are not closely related to East/Southeast Asians or Austronesians (with the exception of the negritos who have a lot of admixture from them).

Lawnmowerman said:

PC Mumbo jumbo

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No. It is mathematical realism. Prehumans first started making stone tools a few million years ago. And it took that long to reach modern technological levels. When the Australian Aborigines separated from the rest of humanity about 40,000 years ago, which is only about one percent of the time back to the beginning of prehuman tool use, most humans were not much more advanced than Australian Aborigines were when Cook arrived.

For the first 99 percent or so of technological advancement, the ancestors of Australian Aborigines advanced at the same ultra slow rate as your ancestors, because their ancestors were pretty much the same as your ancestors. It is only in the last one percent or so of the story that the ancestors of Australian Aborigines advanced more slowly or even regressed.

And since that last one percent of the story happens to be the period when civilization appeared and progress became more and more rapid in the other continents, the progress of the Australian Aborigines seems abnormally slow, when actually it was the usual and normal rate of progress over the last few million years. The question should really be why did civilization progress so abnormally and unusually fast as it has on the other five inhabited continents - agonizingly slow though that progress seems to those who live through it.

Better worded than before, but it is still irrelevant, and is attempting to be as PC as possible.

We are not looking at the evolution of mankind over the course of history but over the past 10,000 years. Where it would seem that pretty much the rest of the world surpassed the Aboriginals at about the 5,000 year mark.

They couldn't develop agriculture.

They had been untouched for literally millennia. MANY millennia.

It's not like in Africa or the Americas, since they had developed bronze, iron working, legal systems, advanced religions, social castes/structures, standing armies, and advanced art like the Inca skulls, Mayan pyramids, Benin Bronzes, Great Zimbabwe, etc. and advanced administrative structures and taxation.

I think there is a lot to where a people live, since some areas are better amenable to advanced civilisation. The Aussie Outback or the Queensland rainforest...not so much. Not much buffalo, or cattle, or iron or gold to mine, or llamas, or horses and bison or potatoes and yams and maize to cultivate.

notgivenaway said:

I think there is a lot to where a people live, since some areas are better amenable to advanced civilisation. The Aussie Outback or the Queensland rainforest...not so much. Not much buffalo, or cattle, or iron or gold to mine, or llamas, or horses and bison or potatoes and yams and maize to cultivate.

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The Australian environment is very diverse, a tribe that lived near Sydney Harbor would have developed ways to fish, or as some Victorian tribes did, actually build eel traps, a tribe which lived in the desert just didn't need to develop those skills.

notgivenaway said:

They couldn't develop agriculture.

They had been untouched for literally millennia. MANY millennia.

It's not like in Africa or the Americas, since they had developed bronze, iron working, legal systems, advanced religions, social castes/structures, standing armies, and advanced art like the Inca skulls, Mayan pyramids, Benin Bronzes, Great Zimbabwe, etc. and advanced administrative structures and taxation.

I think there is a lot to where a people live, since some areas are better amenable to advanced civilisation. The Aussie Outback or the Queensland rainforest...not so much. Not much buffalo, or cattle, or iron or gold to mine, or llamas, or horses and bison or potatoes and yams and maize to cultivate.

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There was neither buffalos, cattle, iron gold, horses and potatoes in New Guinea either...but they were one of the first societies to develop agriculture.

Can't we also make the assumption that maybe in some way Australian Aborigines didn't developed advanced and agricultural societies because they made a CONSCIOUS decision not to go down that road?

There are numerous cases of Hunter-gatherer and Nomadic societies in Ancient Near East and Mesoamerica that were made up of former civilized people that were just fed up of living like serfs and paying high taxes to a Landlord, and just decided to adopt a more freer lifestyle with some less advanced tribes.

People have to bear in mind that civilization is not appealing to everyone and the quality of life and the Standard of living of people didn't at all rose up when they decide to settle in a place and adopt intensive agriculture.

Naomasa298 said:

Which civilisations in particular?

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I mean civilization in general in its first stages

I would argue that the Australian Aboriginals should be classed as being civilised.

They had a social structure, laws & punishment for breaking them, tribal boundaries, conducted trade & wars, had a method of land transfer, art such as dance, set ways of food gathering, semi permanent settlement.

All they lacked was writing but they didn't need it.

History Never Repeats said:

I would argue that the Australian Aboriginals should be classed as being civilised.

They had a social structure, laws & punishment for breaking them,

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True

History Never Repeats said:

tribal boundaries,

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True

History Never Repeats said:

conducted trade

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Untrue

History Never Repeats said:

had a method of land transfer,

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Untrue

History Never Repeats said:

art such as dance, set ways of food gathering, semi permanent settlement.

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True

Lawnmowerman said:

True
True
Untrue
Untrue
True

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Aboriginal tribes did conduct trade with neighboring tribes, they would often come together in large groups and exchange items and food.

On the land transfer, it was observed that they had a method of passing land from one generation to the next, this was noted in the Mabo judgement, in which Queensland government had observed in the 1880s that there was a form of collective land use that was transferred, also some tribes had laws around how certain places were to be used, this could be seen as a form of land management.

HuminBehaviorz said:

Everything you mentioned can be found among all people's of the entire world though. Even some animals do these things with the exception of art, dance, and trade. Also my question wasn't whether or not they were "civilized." My question is why they were generally less technologically and/or culturally advanced than everyone else.

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I think a big reason for the lack of technological development can be traced back to the lack of outside influences, most other parts of the world difference cultures would cross paths hence what worked well for one group would be picked up by others, the Aboriginals generally didn't have this.

HuminBehaviorz said:

True but even then though, Native Americans and Polynesians were isolated from Europe, Asia, and Africa yet they were quite a bit more advanced than Aboriginals.

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As I was typing the comment I did think about the American Indians and even the South American tribes were often very advanced compared to the Australian Aboriginals, but again whilst they were cut off from European/Middle Eastern influence, could they have influences once another due to the diverse nature of the difference groups across the Americans.

The tribes that were the most advanced were the first ones to be wiped out by the Europeans. Those that were left lived in the more inhospitable regions. The original post is based on the false premise that the lack of technological advancement of these tribes is indicative of Australian aboriginals as a whole.

Dan Howard said:

The tribes that were the most advanced were the first ones to be wiped out by the Europeans. Those that were left lived in the more inhospitable places with a corresponding lack of technological advancement. It doesn't make sense to use these tribes as a basis for how advanced aboriginals were as a whole.

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No. Not true.