Creators Or Destroyers?

Creators Destroyers? The Burning Questions of Human Impact in Ancient Aboriginal Australia or » PETER HISCOCK INTRODUCTION: QUESTIONS OF HOW AND WHY The Fall of Humanity depicted in the Book of Genesis portrays traumas associated with the transition from foraging to farming. That T transformation of human social and economic life is depicted negatively, and is associated with both suffering and shame. While in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had an abundance of fruits to pick, but after the Fall they and their descendants had to sweat and labour to farm the land for a living. The transformation from a life of ease to one of labour was accompanied by momentous cultural shifts, such as the transformation from peace to murder as Cain slaughtered Abel, a shift requiring the development of elaborate social processes to regulate conflict. This Old Testament narrative illustrates, actually epitomises, long-standing imagery of hunter-gatherers conjured by agriculturalists. Biblical visions of lost Edens emerge in many modern Western stories about the distant past and about the lives of foragers. (above) The story of the Fall provides one fundamental Bush fire at Captain element in the conceptual background of Creek, Central current debates about human impacts on Queensland, Australia. the environment. It is a narrative explored in visions about the nature of life and wilderness SOURCE: 80 TRADING 24 (OWN WORK) [CC- at earlier times: either before the coming of BY-SA-3.0 (HTTP:// CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/ humans or before the coming of agriculturalists LICENSES/BY-SA/3.0)], VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS to the Australian landscape. 40 Humanities Australia Here I examine recent arguments by historians and natural scientists, as well as archaeologists, who have discussed the transformation of nature after hunter-gatherers and/or agriculturalists arrived in Australia. I focus on human use of fire and its articulation to society and belief. For reasons of time I will not deal with the ongoing debate on extinction of megafaunal taxa and whether it was a consequence of human over-predation. The propositions that have been advanced range from an argument that Aboriginal people created an Eden-like estate to the view that they destroyed the delicately balanced natural ecosystem they found in Australia. Intriguingly, both arguments adopt the narrative arc of Genesis; they both assert that Australia was once a bountiful, diverse and desirable place before the intrusion of humans. The arguments differ in their assigning of culpability for the Fall. The first reading, that Aboriginal Australia remained an Edenic place until the coming of Europeans, depicts foragers living harmoniously within the limits of their environment, most likely recognising its in a few that they are undoubtedly recovery character and enhancing it, until the intrusion narratives played out in purportedly historical of agriculturalists destroyed the balance and interpretations. I will illustrate this shortly. created the Fall. The second reading, that A related issue is the constraints on the arrival of humans in Australia led to the historical interpretations created by imposing extinction of megafauna and subsequent vivid images from the historical record upon impacts on small fauna and flora, implies that the distant past. As an archaeologist I explore Adam and Eve’s self-interest meant they would the immense span of time in which humans inevitably violate the rule of the Garden, and have occupied Australia and the rapidity and that humans are inherently destroyers of their frequency of social and economic changes that own environments. took place during that period. Recognition of (above) These biblical parallels might seem substantial change in the cultures that lived Fig. 1. Peter Brown’s incidental and accidental except that almost across Australia underpins my conclusions, evocative artistic depiction of a man twenty years ago Carolyn Merchant, then especially those that have proved challenging. from the terminal professor of environmental history, philosophy Conclusions such as my argument that, Pleistocene period, and ethics at the University of California obviously, Aboriginal people did not colonise based on Coobool Creek skeletons. Berkeley, argued robustly that much Western Australia. We know that Australia was COURTESY PETER BROWN history about the colonisation of the New colonised by populations of modern humans World can be coherently read as ‘recovery descended from Africans who had migrated (opposite) 1 narratives’. That is, as stories of decline out-of-Africa, moved across South Asia and The Expulsion Of from a golden age that finish with hope of eventually crossed the water barriers separating Adam and Eve from Eden. Fresco by redemption in the form of some return to the the Pleistocene continent of Australia (Sahul) Masaccio. 1426-27, original Edenic state or at least a reorientation from the Pleistocene continent located in Cappella Brancacci, of current environmental relationships to Southeast Asia. These humans were the distant Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence. create some simulacra of that state. This ancestors of Aboriginal people; but as far as we SOURCE: WIKIMEDIA narrative arc occurs in some prominent recent know they would not have been recognisably COMMONS, PUBLIC Australian publications; indeed it is so explicit Aboriginal, physically or culturally. Their DOMAIN (PD-ART). Humanities Australia 41 descendants became Aboriginal as they evolved, time around 3000 to 4000 years ago. Possibly adapting to the continent they inhabited. When these diffused in parallel with the Pama- confronted with scientific interpretations Nyungan spread, but that is not yet established. of the African origins of humans Aboriginal In roughly the same period some specific people sometimes object, insisting they came implement forms such as microlithic backed from Australia. In many ways they are right. artefacts began being produced in vast numbers While their immensely distant ancestors came for a comparatively short time. Around the from Africa, people who were physically and coastal plains of southern Australia, where they culturally Aboriginal evolved here. were used as craft tools to work skin, bone and This evolution of Aboriginal life may not wood, they proliferated between about 3500 to technically have been continuous, in the sense 2000 years ago.4 They were manufactured and that change happened at a constant rate, but used in great numbers for about 500 to 1000 the indications in the archaeological record years in each region, and then the technology suggest changes occurred repeatedly and was, gradually, entirely abandoned. sometimes frequently throughout the last In Northern Australia Paul Taçon and 50,000 years. The resolution on cultural change his colleagues have shown that the imagery is far higher in recent millennia as a result of used in the nineteenth century to represent the better preservation and easier discovery the Rainbow Serpent, a significant figure in of archaeological materials. So I will simply post-contact cosmology, could be traced in the give examples from the last ten millennia, the sequence of rock art in Arnhem Land. Versions final fifth of the time people have been in this of the image first appear in the Yam phase, continent.2 which might be something like 4000 to 6000 At the start of this period in the south-east years ago, and the images began to look like some populations were still deforming the those used historically probably in the last skulls of their infants so that adults of their two or three thousand years.5 Rock art from group were visibly distinct and distinguishable earlier time periods depicts the world in very from members of other groups (fig. 1). This form different ways, with images of half-animal/half- of public signalling vanished around 9000 years human beings roaming the world with humans, ago and was never again used in Australia.3 sometimes attacking them. This seems an Although linguists have struggled to archaeological signal of a fundamental change define the date precisely, they argue that the in world view, including a significant change in Pama-Nyungan language family spread from religious expression. somewhere near the Gulf of Carpentaria In the last 1000 to 3000 years there are across the southern 70 percent of Australia, notable economic reorganisations in a number perhaps between 5000 and 10,000 years ago. of regions. For instance, the intensified The precise direction and mode of dispersal earth mound building in Victorian wetlands is still being investigated, but it is reasonable probably represents not only greater emphasis to consider the impact of this major language on exploitation of wetland resources but also replacement on the way people named and increased sedentism. Meanwhile across almost thought of their world. I would expect that the entire northern coastline, the system of mythologies, cosmologies and ontologies were intensive exploitation of rich mollusc beds by substantially reworked, not simply maintained moderately large sedentary groups, leading and accurately translated. The alternative to the creation of large mounds of shell, possibility is that there may have been collapsed as mangroves colonised previously dispersals of people, invasions/replacements open beaches. The point of my two examples perhaps, creating cultural disconformities. is to emphasise regional differentiation: as one Substantial shifts in technology occur in settlement system becomes sedentary another this

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