Lorenzo wrote:
>
> I contend that some of them thought that their "spears"
> were finely crafted. The Chinese found that bamboo can
> make a very sharp knife, and a fire hardened piece of
> wood can be brought to a fine edge.
the point was not an attack of neanderthal weaponry, but
I was making the point that if mammoths were hunted with
spears, then hunting a smaller and almost passive animal
like a kangaroo is not a challenge.
> Again and again please do a better job of describing hunting
> and wild animals -- it seems that you all grew up in a big
> City and have strange, unrealistic ideas about animals and
> hunting.
Quite the opposite,in fact. I made the point that Australia
presents a unique array of animals, and no doubt hunting
practices develop as a result of the conditions that exist.
I wasn't extrapolating possibilities from hunter gather
hunting practice, but rather reporting on what is done to a
small extent today, and is the best evidence of what was done
before the western world came to Australia.
Or I could get more firm and say "Wrong" ideas
> about animals and hunting. So how on earth could you
> propose something about wild animals and wild humans?
Oh I don't know, perhaps my experience living in the bush?
Your knowledge (judging from your email address) is
probably extremely accurate for what went on in your
neck of the woods, but as I said Australia is unique, and
just as our animals developed/evolved totally differently,
no doubt so did hunting methods.
> The "American Indian" had no trouble getting food until
> forced to live on poor land!
And the american indian is similar to Austrlian aborigines how?
>
> I propose that the reason we have trouble completing the
> fossil chain is that the shoreline went up and down every
> 50K years, and covered the evidence we seek. We are left
> with only the campsites that were on high ground.
I don't know if this is the reason (I believe it contributes, but
there may be others) but I have no doubt that even if
a species was hunted to extinction, 1-200 years later not much will be
left. A lot of the most fertile areas in this country are now cities.
They were settled due to the fertile land, over time, the cities grew
as populations did. There may well be bones from all sorts of
creatures under them
>
> We have plenty of evidence from stone age men, why is it so
> hard to understand.
Why is it so hard to understand that different conditions
of animal & plant availability affect the way in which people
co-existing in the same area must obtain adequate nutrition?
I don't mean this nastily so please don't take it as an attack.
Another contributing factor is that even up to the 70's
Austrlian politicians pushed the theory thsat Austrlia could
provide food for not only its citizens, but to the rest of the
world. This myth persists. We do have good conditions for raising
cattle and other edible animals, to a degree. The cattle stations
arent huge because of the number of cattle, but because
of the amount of land it takes to feed them in this climate.
The one thing we do have in abundance is land.
John McKenzie
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