They were supposedly here for 10k years, depending on who's reporting, before whites. Yet, with all that knowledge, they didn't have steel knives or spear points, glass beads, guns, whiskey, horses, or any metal anything. They didn't have the wheel, medicine beyond a witch doctor, not even matches to light a fire.
So where is that 'Indigenous knowledge' that they're famous for?
Leaving Australia tomorrow after 2 weeks here. I'm taking a few hours of quiet time in the Sydney hotel while the 3 women (Tom is sometimes the worst) take a $100 city tour. Not my thing to run around looking at buildings, much less pay that kind of money for it.Two weeks of non-stop chatter - somr of it on it'd 3rd or 4th circuit - has me around the bend... farther!
. Can't they just STFU for a couple hours? (NO!)
There is knowledge and there is knowledge....I was thinking much the same a few days ago- the Abos knew their stuff, for their minimlist, subsistence on -the-edge-of-starvation hunting/gathering lifestyle, and who is to say it wasn't better to leave it so? It was certainly adequate - sort of - to their needs. "Necessary" invention is a mother, and all that.... They had like 40,000 years to fix the place up, and didn't. It wasn't due to a lack of intelligence or critical thinking. In many ways, our industrial/inventive culture isn't doing any favors for either the world or our (and many other) species. It certainly makes our lives easier, if more demanding and hectic.
Why fix it if it ain't broke? Tinkering up conveniences, and their maintainence, just leads to more work. My stable of toys attests to that. If staying alive takes up most or all your time, where is the time for invention and manufacture of "conveniences", even to make life easier? Much like conservation can only be afforded by wealthy cultures. Truely poor ones may not ever have the manpower to fug it up too much, tho the Maori seem to have managed it somewhat in extincting some flightless birds in NZ on their arrival. They did not need up-scale (relatively) tools that helprd extinct the do-dos and passenger pigeons, and almost the American bison.
If your level of knowledge is adequately meeting your needs, why look elsewhere- especially if you haven't a clue there is an "elsewhere". If it appears tho, no-one seems to turn it down, while still trying to maintain the familiar staus quo. No one likes change if it doesn't benefit one directly.
Can't say western civiliation here or the Americas has really benefited the natural environment, nor the working survivalist knowledge of it the Abos and NA natives had or have. Which doesn't mean they ain't making chit up as they go, for the bucks. Certainly they are quick to adopt other western tech and bad habits. I also learned early on in my co-hab in Eskimo villages that "joking" the white guy is a fine and popular sport.
People who live in grass houses shouldn't stow throwns, or something like that.
Supposedly, most or all cultures have a flood story - but I wonder how many of these came to them umpteenth hand over fireside chats - or firewater. Eskimos have related to me mammoth-hunting stories, which I stronly suspect were not handed down through the generations, but (ahem) "adopted" once those big bones, tusks, and teeth were explained to them. Still, who knows?