> See the attached article by Jared Diamond.  It is absolutely fascinating
and
> also explains why the Tasmanian Aborigines lost the ability to make fire.
>  http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/diamond_rich/rich_p1.html  Ken
 Interesting article Ken but in terms of the Tasmanians I'm still dubious.
Even today when Aborigines have been exposed to the western world for 2
centuries and are using matches and lighters you can still usually find
someone who can light a fire the old way.  Even assuming that the Tasmanians
relied on keeping a fire going continually to minimise the necessity of
lighting it through a traditional method someone would have retained the
knowledge and usually firemaking has a whole dreamtime story behind it with
the individual pieces of firemaking apparatus having symbolism.  I'm not
convinced that they abandon these things so readily.  I think we would have
to look at the ethnographic sources that say the Tasmanians didn't have fire
to find out what was really happening.

Cheers

sean