Origins of the Australian Aborigines: Help!

I Belive that the aboriginal people come from the survivors of Mu. I belive this empire sunk as the continents and plates shifted, creating the world we know today.

The Australian Aborigines arrived in Australia via South East Asia and New Guinea.

There is no evidence for Mu, so speculating that somehow the DNA of Australian Aborigines was altered to hide the fact they came from a mythical lost continent is rather absurd and lacking any credibility.

But it is a fact that all continents were joined together at one time then drifted apart. I don't think it's impossible that Mu and Atlantis were apart of those continents and simply sunk as the plates shifted and the earth changed.

reply to post by cenasangel


Well, the continents were in more or less their modern arrangement roughly twenty million years ago. That's about fifteen million years before anything that was even kinda human-like poked its head above the grass in Tanzania. Unless you think Mu / Atlantis were ruled by empires of birds or kangaroos or something...

The aboriginal people date back 40 thousand years.

reply to post by cenasangel


So that means the Aboriginal people knew the world pretty much the way we currently do - the same continents in the same position. No lost continents, no secret worlds. Human beings migrating from Africa several tens of thousands of years ago.

reply to post by davesidious

That is a really good question. Did early peoples just follow the game (foods), or did they know where they were going?
From what I hear people can go into trance and tap into ancient DNA knowledge.
The Amazonian tribes, for example, have not used try-and-test methodologies for their vast knowledge of healing plants. Instead, they took psychedelic plants and saw the "spirit" of different potencies.

reply to post by halfoldman


Don't think of human migration in the same way that birds migrate every year. It wasn't the same people finishing the migration who started it - it was finished generations upon generations later, after very slow progress. New generations were born, and through the normal machinations of life (hunting trips, getting lost, simply exploring), they found a suitable piece of land not too far away from where they came from (maybe a few miles, maybe 100), and settled. That process continued for generations, and by the end of it, humans had spread for thousands of miles, and adapted to the different environments they found themselves in (or died because they didn't). You can read more here. It's fascinating. Or, if you know how, check out The Incredible Human Journey on the BBC.

Do you know what the life expectancy of a person in the Amazon rainforest is? It's not great. If that's trapping into ancient DNA knowledge, then it's not very good, as people die there from all sorts of diseases and insect/arachnid/snake bites every day. There is no evidence of any healing from going in to a trance other than the chemical reactions between whatever drug they're on, and their body. Ibogaine is a great example of that - it makes people "trip balls", but it will essentially reset the addictive parts of the human brain. If you are a chronic heroin addict, a few doses of ibogaine, and you've kicked your habit. It has nothing to do with ancient DNA, but chemical reactions. It's science, not mysticism

reply to post by halfoldman


Neither. More likely they just expanded and went wherever the going was good. The first Australians were some brave SOB's, though. Undoubtedly they knew there was land to the south - birds came north from there, so they would have figured on there being at least a few islands over the horizon. Also, more recent Polynesian colonists could apparently detect land by feeling the pattern of the waves against their feet. I wouldn't be surprised if the aborigine's ancestors didn't have similar methods. Still, you've got to have some serious stones to pack up your stick and dog in the canoe and sail out of sight of land in a canoe and hope to hit a land mass of some size or shape.

I remember watching a docu ages ago that mentioned that Aboriginals may have originated from what is now Sri Lanka. Tried to find a mention of the doco on youtube but to no avail.

reply to post by Flighty

It's an unproven hypothesis. Sri Lanka's aboriginals, known as Veddas and now almost extinct as a distinct ethnic group, are said to bear similarities to Australian aborigines.

Some of the 'evidence' offered for the hypothesis is rather, well, skeletal:

The skeletal remains of dogs from Nilgala cave and from Bellanbandi Palassa, dating from the Mesolithic era, about 4500 BCE, suggest that Balangoda People may have kept domestic dogs for driving game. The Sinhala Hound* is similar in appearance to the Kadar Dog, the New Guinea Dog and the Dingo. It has been suggested that these could all derive from a common domestic stock. Balangoda Man

We know now that all humanity is ultimately of African origin; genetic evidence confirms it. This being so, Balangoda Man, even if he was ancestral to the first Australasians, was only an interim forebear; the ultimate ancestors of both groups lived in Africa.

Attempts to confirm a migration route from Africa to Australia via South Asia using DNA evidence have so far drawn a blank:

We conclude that there is currently no convincing genetic evidence that supports the postulated Middle Paleolithic migration of modern humans from Africa to the Sahul through South Asia. This does not necessarily mean that such a migration never occurred, since archaeological evidence does document modern humans in Sahul by ∼60,000 years ago. However, it is possible that subsequent Upper Paleolithic migrations in Eurasia erased the genetic traces in contemporary populations of this early event in our history; in any event, the “southern route” hypothesis still awaits genetic support.

-- Cordaux, R. and Stoneking, M., South Asia, the Andamanese, and the Genetic Evidence for an 'Early' Human Dispersal out of Africa: 2003, Liepzig; Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

* The 'Sinhala Hound' is the common native 'pi-dog' of Sri Lanka

reply to post by Pilgrum

The Sahul time simulator indicates earliest civilisation in Indonesia (Java) around 140-180k years ago.

Eh?

The earliest civilization on Earth dates back no more than ten thousand years. Unless you're reading from the Mu and Atlantis hymn-sheet like that other chap (or chappix) that posted after you.

reply to post by Astyanax


Yeah, I remember most of the actual information in the documentary was the comparisons of skull shape and other skeletal similarities.
Interesting, thanks for going to the trouble of supplying that additional information.

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
reply to post by halfoldman

 

Neither. More likely they just expanded and went wherever the going was good. The first Australians were some brave SOB's, though. Undoubtedly they knew there was land to the south - birds came north from there, so they would have figured on there being at least a few islands over the horizon. Also, more recent Polynesian colonists could apparently detect land by feeling the pattern of the waves against their feet. I wouldn't be surprised if the aborigine's ancestors didn't have similar methods. Still, you've got to have some serious stones to pack up your stick and dog in the canoe and sail out of sight of land in a canoe and hope to hit a land mass of some size or shape.

Brave indeed, especially when one considers the marsupial megafauna they may have encountered in Australia. I wonder what this may have entailed 40 000-70 000 years ago.
Sometimes when hearing the didgeridoo one could swear one hears frightening echoes from that time.

From anthropological observations made I too believe that Australian aborigines are descended of an admixture of two main types of hunter/gatherer humankind ~ all originally out of Africa ~ who reached Australia at different times over many thousands of walkabout years.

These being the curly haired Negrito type who I believe reached Australia first and the straighter haired Dravidian type out of South India. Who it was introduced the placental mammal dingo dog ~ a form of the Indian wolf, Canis indica perhaps ~ to Australian Marsupial Animals Shore.

Truganini, the last full blooded Tasmanian aborigine ~
en.wikipedia.org...
~ was largely of the curly haired Negrito type, her 'wiki' photograph suggests to me:

When travelling between Camooweal, Queensland and the Flynn Flying Doctor Memorial, at Three Ways, in the Northern Territory of Australia, I had a shy Warumungu aborigine woman travelling companion: Until she and her white Australian husband headed south to Tennant Creek, and I, thumbs up again, headed north to Darwin. To ancient memory I would say that the Warumungu woman fellow traveller was more of the straight haired Dravidian type of aborigine, than was Tasmanian Truganini:

A key memory of a visit to Mount Wellington near Hobart, and to the Port Arthur penal settlement ruins on the Tasman Peninsula, was that the Katabatic Antarctic winds blowing strongly thereabouts were decidedly chilly. Definately anorak weather when I was there; which was when the introduced Aesculus hippocastaneum chestnut trees ~ buckeyes to Americans ~ were of autumnal leaf tones, in readiness to fall!

To have been a near naked black aborigine in such a climate, must have been a trial for those who suffered it at their extremities; in that marsupial Tasmanian devil extremity home!

A Tasmanian nurse of my Innisfail Etty Bay courting, one of two Australian Margarets I knew, thought me too bold in my approaches upon her: Whereas in the case of the Perth WA Margaret nurse, she was the bold one, initially:
Takes all sorts to make a world!

Apropos your mention of the book 'Cape York: The Savage Frontier' ~ which I can't say I've read. When visiting Cooktown on Cape York I passed by a mountain of giant black boulders on which few Eucalypts had been able to gain a hold, compared with neighboring slopes, and just north of the Lions Den Hotel pub at Helenvale. Called Black Mountain in English, the Australian aborigine name is Kalkajagga. Which I was informed translates to Mountain of Death:

reply to post by Epipactis

A fascinating post - pity it ended mid-sentence.
Liddell also claims that the Aborigines are a mixture between "negrito Papuans" and a later migration of "Dravidians". This theory seems to be pretty old, although Liddell adds his own spin by claiming the "negritos" only arrived 4000 years ago, and the Dravidians as recently as 1000 years! He also paints the Dravidians as villains who slaughtered the truly indigenous negritos. This all seems to have some political agenda to undermine the "aboriginality" of modern aborigines, and to dismiss the specific violence of white settlement.
If such migrations happened over tens of thousands of years the argument may be more plausible. Perhaps there was a constant stream of admixture from New Guinea across the Torres Strait. The DNA link to New Guinea has been shown. If the Veddic Dravidians did travel to Australia it must have been an epic sea voyage, since they left no markers behind in any population en route from India.
The problem with Liddell is that by his version one can take a modern "Papuan negrito" and a "Vedda Dravidian" (whatever these misnomers may actually mean), interbreed them and presto: one should have an Australian Aborigine!
The problem is that neither the Tasmanians nor the mainland groups correspond to any other living, historical population. Despite some similarities, the negritos look different to the Tasmanians, and the Veddas look different to the Aborigines. The various historical negrito groups aslo do not look like one people, except that they are shorter and vaguely more African than their neighbours. Both the negritos and Veddas also use the bow and arrow or blowpipe (unlike the Aborigines), and speak unrelated languages to the once 600 aboriginal languages.
Perhaps 70 thousand years ago the ancestors of the Aborigines and other dark-skinned Pacific peoples shared a common ancestor. This would account for some of the similarities amongst them. This first migration out of Asia 70 000 years ago moved along the Asian coast, eventually into Australia, leaving isolated pockets behind to evolve their own features and cultures, until they were influenced and abosrbed by later waves of migration.
40-70, 000 Years of isolation in Australia could account for the development of regional Aboriginal variations. It was certainly enough time to create even more striking variations elsewhere (in Africa the pygmies, Khoisan and Bantu variations all split from a common group). Tasmania was isolated from the mainland about 10, 000 years ago, and this would have sufficed to create a localized appearance. However, the appearance was always closest to the mainland Aborigines, rather than to any other group.
The differences are actually unremarkable, when one considers the wide variations of Europeans and the Africans they descended from.
The following site explains it much better, and the confusion early anthropologists encountered when they attempted to classify Aborigines on physical observations is at times quite amusing:
www-personal.une.edu.au...




[edit on 30-12-2009 by halfoldman]

Originally posted by davesidious
reply to post by halfoldman

 

"Do you know what the life expectancy of a person in the Amazon rainforest is? It's not great. If that's trapping into ancient DNA knowledge, then it's not very good, as people die there from all sorts of diseases and insect/arachnid/snake bites every day. There is no evidence of any healing from going in to a trance other than the chemical reactions between whatever drug they're on, and their body. Ibogaine is a great example of that - it makes people "trip balls", but it will essentially reset the addictive parts of the human brain. If you are a chronic heroin addict, a few doses of ibogaine, and you've kicked your habit. It has nothing to do with ancient DNA, but chemical reactions. It's science, not mysticism

My thoughts here were mainly influenced by Graham Hancock's book "Supernatural" (www.grahamhancock.com...) .
I have no idea what the average age of an Amazonian Indian is today, and what it was in pre-Columbian times before the imported diseases preceded the conquest. Tribal warfare would certainly have affected life spans at times. Suffice to say that the populations were large enough for means of population control, and most of the indigenous maladies had a treatment or cure (in fact one solution to population pressure is migration). The Incan and Mayan surgeons were amongst the most advanced in the world at the time. This indigenous knowledge also gave science quinine, aspirin (white willow bark), the birth control pill (from a central American yam), and curare.
Whatever the average lifespan, there could have still been loads of old people, and in South Africa the San (Bushmen) were renowned for their longevity. Even in the West one could say that mystecism led to science, and the mystery schools were known for their psychedelic initiation rites.
I just find the idea that humans could be led by trances, dreams and mystic states fascinating. Some scientists have even noted this (notably Francis Crick, who thought of the double DNA helix while tripping on '___').
Whatever the case, to my knowledge Australia has no psychelic plants (I speak under correction), so if the ancestors of the Aborigines had some supernatural guidance, it was achieved by different methods.
Unfortunately neither science or mystecism can cure death, but mystecism could make the human journey more bearible.

[edit on 30-12-2009 by halfoldman]

reply to post by halfoldman


Average age of Indians in all nations is currently pretty low, due to disease, violence, and alcohol - both North and South.

However, when the unwashed masses first came to this hemisphere, they were pretty amazed by the age of the elders they encountered. if one avoided death from war or accident, you could probably expect a 110-year run before all those diseases came over on the boats. Even nowadays, Indian elders tend to be some really old people.

Some of it may be genetics - I'm sure that the leathery old guys managed to spread their leathery old genes around a fair bit. But mostly it's environmental. People (not just indians) who live the lifestyle of native cultures tend to be healthier and more fit, though they have the drawback of lacking modern medicine if something does happen.

Strenuous work with lots of leisure time, paired with healthy food in sustainable amounts (the average caloric intake of a San bushman is 2100 calories, his daily usage is about 1900) is the ideal situation for the human body. Treat it that way, and you'll live forever, barring disease, accident, or violence.

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
reply to post by halfoldman

 

Was a bit depro and working through my New Year's hangover, but Walking Fox, you made my day. I mean how can one improve on descriptions like the "leathery" and the "unwashed"

?
I'm a bit uncertain on people leading "native lifestyles". That could include everything from agricultural city states to hunter gatherers. It could mean a plant based diet, or an Inuit diet of meat and fish. I suppose it would certainly be organic and exclude factory farming.
I'm not so sure on "strenuous work". Hunter gatherers usually had large amounts of leisure time. This was something the Europeans could not handle about native cultures. Part of the justification for missionizing and colonizing was to save the natives from their "sins" of "sloth" and "indolence". Idle hands were considered the devil's play things. Personally I think it was sheer spite born from jealousy on the part of the Puritans and Victorians - misery loves company.

[edit on 1-1-2010 by halfoldman]