Discussions on the history and historiography of Australia's New England

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Introducing warfare in Aboriginal Australia

I am going off-line, probably for a week, because I am moving house. However, I just wanted to record this one from History and Futility, Steven Pinker on how the world has gotten much more peaceful, to come back too. It contains a link through to Pinker's original remarks.

There is a bit of myth in modern Australia that the Australian Aborigines lived peacefully in harmony with nature. The reality is far more complicated than than that - deaths from warfare appear to have been high relative to the size of the population.

I want to come back to this because it is relevant to my history of New England and the relations between groups in Aboriginal New England.

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