Why did Austronesian speakers never settle in Australia? They settled everywhere else in Oceania, including New Guinea
That's actually a really good question, is there any evidence of Austronesian/Polynesian contact with Australia? or did they somehow miss the massive fucking island while managing to locate New Zealand and Easter island?
>>322654
They did seasonally, blandaed with native women to the point that the aboriginals started a tradition of carrying a screen to hide women behind when strangers came, introduced words/islam/dugout ships and planted tamarind trees
They didn't settle because Australia was too hard for them to survive and because they made money from the sea cucumbers they sailed their for by selling to Chinese.
>>322673
Oceanians don't do well on inhabited islands, they found it much better to just go somewhere no one had before.
>>322683
Truly they are the Ocean hipsters.
because there was nothing here for them to settle
>>322727
>Implying the east coast wouldn't be suitable, considering random coral islands were settled
>>322654
Because the Pacific is bigger than you think it is and you can only travel so far before you run out of food and water, they weren't on carracks or galleons they were on not much more than canoes
>>322736
In all likelihood they were aware of them, I mean New Caledonia.
As small to medium sized scouting and settling populations unfamiliar to food sources, material resources and stone quarries along with native peoples it wasn't worthwhile for then to settle.
That's just the reality of it, that and generally speaking Australian soil over all is rather spent.
I believe they did on the northern tip of Queensland, no?
I suspect it's because their seafaring lifestyle only suited them to a coastal existence. They also didn't penetrate into the interior of New Guinea AFAIK. The aboriginal Australians lifestyle was already adapted to life on a big continent (although you'd think the Austronesian's agriculture would give them an advantage regardless)
>>322744
How did Polynesians obtain sweet potato's, a species native to South America
>The sweet potato was grown in Polynesia before western exploration. Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated in the Cook Islands to 1000 AD, and current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia around 700 AD, possibly by Polynesians who had traveled to South America and back, and spread across Polynesia to Hawaii and New Zealand from there.[13][14] It is possible, however, that South Americans brought it to the Pacific,
>>322753
Might potatoes just have drifted over and established themselves on some island naturally?
>>322766
Sweet potatoes have crappy keeping qualities and rot easily.
>>322759
well it seems logical that contact had to at least have occurred, even if it was accidental due to being blown of course, like the vikings finding america, the geographic distribution of sweet potato was restricted to the Americas, how did it reach the south pacific to be utilised by Polynesians if not through contact between these regions, i'm not implying continued regular contact btw
Considering how far out into the deep blue Polynesians went in oder to colonize the islands of the Pacific, it seems extremely likely they also traveled to the Americas. But once they got there they found it already populated so buggered off back home.
>>322766
>Sweet potato is native to South America where archeological evidence has
shown that it was cultivated by at least 2500 B.C. It also forms part of the ancient
agricultural complex in Polynesia and this disjunct distribution has fueled various
theories about ancient migrations across the Pacific (DeRougemont, 1989).
Columbus took plants to Spain and Portugal on his return voyage in 1493. The
edible portion is the swollen storage root.
The crop is the seventh most important food staple in the world. It is, however,
sensitive to salinity, aluminum toxicity at low pH, and low fertility (Horton,
1989). Root growth is much more sensitive to salinity than vine growth (Greig
and Smith, 1962).
http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/20360500/pdf_pubs/P1567.pdf
>>322779
You need to learn more about the dissemination of sweet potato, it wasn't a uniform dispersal.
Here is a map that shows the three routes supported by linguistics.
Highland papuans whose societies shifted dramatically with sweet potato, got it long after Polynesians did through another route for example.
Tbh all it takes it's one canoe reaching Peru for it to spread.
>>322805
What point are you trying to make? I was trying to phase it in the terms most readily accepted for sceptics, I personally think that it is entirely possibly for multiple Polynesia contacts with the american continent, which seems evident from sweet potato and Californian plank sown canoes.
http://etc.ancient.eu/2013/03/26/polynesians-in-california-evidence-for-an-ancient-exchange/
>>322766
No, they wouldn't make the trip. Also the name for it in Polynesian languages has an Amerind origin, even if the plant could have made the move by a natural process, which it couldn't, the word for it wouldn't have.
>>322805
wait linguistics and not genetics supposedly explaining the dispersal of sweet potato?
>>322654
Because Ausfailia is literally a desert.
>>322822
I don't find it impossible but also find the notion that Native Americans can't construct canoes on their own is rather racist.
>>322833
The tripartite theory was formed using linguistics before the technology was avaliable and today genetic testing confirms it, it's just easier to show a map with different colors and arrows than link genetic studies.
>>322851
I'm Australian btw, but certainly they would be capable of coming up with this boat building technique, but the timing and the pre-existing technology in this form and the contact between these cultures could suggest a sharing of ideas, but for example, would the domestication of teosinte to corn in central america and the spread of this crop to Pueblo and Cahokia areas for example seem racist to you, or simply describing what has likely occurred?
how the fuck did they got on all those island with canoes
>>322932
By putting sails on them.
>>322968
certainly possible, but i would suggest that this is less likely than actually contact, for example look at the species which make it to the Galapagos, and the period of time which elapsed were many species actually underwent speciation which would seem to suggest travelling distances such as this is quote infrequent, and that Galapagos are closer than the furthest point reached by Polynesians, aka eater island, which is itself extremely isolated
>>323003
Easter island*
also the fact that the sweet potato is one of the rare species that is highly valuable to humans in terms of food production
>>322968
....um do you know how rare true seed of sweet potato is and the unlikely scenario that it attaches itself to a bird across the Pacific Ocean to an island and survive on its own?
>>323042
> do you know how rare true seed of sweet potato is
What the hell does that mean? It's a fucking seed, any sweet potato plant would have them.
>>323047
Have you ever taken the time to understand the things you respond to?
Sweet Potato very rarely produce true seed, varieties grow from vegetative propagation in farms and gardens
>>323069
>Sweet Potato very rarely produce true seed, varieties grow from vegetative propagation in farms and gardens
Nowadays corporations have bred plants to no longer produce their own seeds so that they can make farmers pay for new seeds every, natural sweet potatoes aren't like that.
>>322805
Found this pic with the caption
>The sweet potato made three independent trips to Southeast Asia. The Polynesians probably introduced it in 1100 A.D. (red). While the Spanish (blue) and Portuguese (yellow) brought other varieties from the Americas around 1500.
so the blue and yellow lines are almost irrelevant
>>323100
A study from the journal nature seem to be the source
>A genetic map of the potato's pathway published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1 throws support to a third school of thought. In the 'tripartite' hypothesis, developed in the 1970s by the archaeologist Douglas Yen, then at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, the sweet potato arrived in Oceania multiple times2. First, between 1000 and 1100 ad, Polynesian voyagers visited South America and brought the sweet potato back with them, later spreading it around other Pacific islands; Europeans then transported other sweet-potato lineages to the Philippines and the western Pacific in two separate waves from the sixteenth century onwards. From there, genetically distinct sweet-potato lines would have dispersed throughout Oceania.
http://www.nature.com/news/dna-shows-how-the-sweet-potato-crossed-the-sea-1.12257
>>322838
Wasn't like that until the aboriginals ruined it. They hunted by starting forest fires and killing the animals as they ran out or eating their cooked bodies. There's evidence that the continent was once heavily forested and populated until they burned it all down and started dying off when the food was gone.
>>322654
Indonesians do trade with the native near Darwin and that's all.Australia have a very bad weather to plant anything prior to modern technology and land wasn't that scarce desu
>>323075
....dude have you actually ever grown a Fucking sweet potato, they don't produce seed on a regular basis. I started the /Oceanian/ thread a couple days ago, literally have eaten and grown them my whole life using traditional varieties
Sweet Potato does not regularly produce true seed, if anything modern corporations spend big bucks trying to get them to seed and hybridize because it's so rare naturally.
>>323100
False, PNG gained most lines of sweet potato through the other two lines and look what the fuck happened in their highlands.
There entire culture is based around sweet potato, it ramped up the production of pigs and increased their population dramatically.
All in a couple hundred years
>>323137
There climate was already drying, they then burned as a response to the drying period.
>>323137
I'd like to see where you are getting that from, adaptations to fire in many Australian plant species across several families surely point to regular bushfire events over a long period?
>>323211
Search "fire stick farming."
They didn't "burn down the whole continent" but they facilitated the loss of plant life to a pretty high degree. There were no firefighting methods back then, you can imagine how long a forest fire could have lasted.
>>323249
>There were no firefighting methods back then
>>323257
fuck my mistake, misread firefighting for firelighting
>>323249
Dude you need to actually read and study more before you talk. Aboriginals in fact did know how to stop and slow burns and infact if they just burned a year or couple years after a wildfire to bring back fresh grasses they would have the fuel load to create catastrophic burns.
There was not great loss of diversity in flora life, as we can see today there are a number of refugia throughout Australia that retain fire sensitive plants.
The aboriginal populations created mosaic environments that facilitated the prey species and food species both they and prey consumed. They maximized biodiversity by creating edges that provided a much more complex range of micro and macro habitats.
It's not some stupid and random act to grab a lizard with no thought.
>>323211
The fire tolerance and fire attraction were traits that already existed in the plants themselves, the only changes that occurred was their range expanded by both natural and artificial means.
>>323260
That's not much better.
Mankind has been using fire since before we even evolved into Homo Sapiens.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/02/history-fire-million-homo-erectus_n_1397810.html
>>323288
That's what I mean, I thought the other anon was suggesting that Aboriginals only utilised fires started by natural means such as lightening, rather than intentionally creating fires
>>323211
What place doesn't have plants adapted to fire?
There have been wildfires long before humans existed.
>>323309
Not that anon but many Australian plant are actually reliant upon fire, as in the seeds won't germinate unless they have been subjected to fire or high temperatures from fire, not just fire tolerant plants
>>323316
I'd imagine this is true of many plants in all parts of the world, since they need a fire to clear out established plants and/or to enrich the soil for a rapid growth spurt.
>>323335
absolutely, but that post way made in response to someone claiming that aboriginal use of fire converted forest into desert, potentially more frequent fire may have provided an advantage to sclerophyll forest which is tolerant of fire, but suggesting that climatic factors aren't the main driver behind desertification of the continent seems incorrect
>>322654
Once the natives were mostly wiped out in North America, and stopped setting fired everywhere to thin out forests (to aid hunting presumably), the total forest cover and density of forests shot way up. Apparently when the first Europeans showed up most of Eastern North America was open forest they could easily ride horses through, but it turned to thick bush when the Indians were gone.
>>323279
You're talking about people who drink actual gasoline and sleep in the middle of the street like their some ancient geniuses.
They seriously had to put out a public service annoinment telling them not to sleep in the road because they think the place where cars drive is a good place to take a nap.
https://youtu.be/XA241Lg70fg
>>323249
Well I did, and
>There is no distinct change in fire regime corresponding to the arrival of humans in Australia at 50 ± 10 ka and no correlation between archaeological evidence of increased human activity during the past 40 ka and the history of biomass burning.
http://palaeoworks-dev.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Mooney-et-al-2011.pdf
Not saying they didn't practice fire based land management, I'm reading a paper and a literature review now that goes into spinifex grassland fire management but it doesn't seem high impact enough to cause the destruction of habitat, indeed it encourages biodiversity and with the lower intensity fires preserve the range and number of acacias which obviously being legumes are important for nitrogen fixing.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/39/14796.full
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr/11/c011p051.pdf
I'm yet to track down a source for the claim on Wiki that fire stick farming lead to the destruction of dry rainforest and replacement with savannah.
>>323335
Though not unique features, the range and breadth of fire adapted and pyriscent (needs fire or smoke to germinate) species is.
>>323392
>like their some ancient geniuses
Ironic.
They did. But they were burnt out by the aborigines. Only in the torres strait and some parts of the northern coast was there regular contact.
Btw, these fire "farming"aborigines were not the first people in Australia. It was accepted in anthropology that there were at least 3 broad phenotypes of aboriginal, with one group ( Barrineans) being very short, possibly similar to the negritos of south east asian and the andaman islands. There are photographs and remains of these distinct populations.
However, this theory became unpopular in australian anthropology in the second part of last century, especially with the whole 'been here 40000 years/ native title / oldest culture on earth thing.
It is career suicide to even mention this theory these days, even though there is plenty of archaeology that popints to several migrations. Just like how it is career suicide to suggest that aboriginals and their seasonal burning might have had an effect on the landscape
Although recently a genetic study found evudence of a wave of migration from India several thousand years ago, which cooincides with the time the dingo was introduced to australia. Apparently some NT tribes have about 10% south asian genetic markers. Predictably, this has not been followed up by any further studies.
>>323487
>it is career suicide
Why?
t. I don't know how academia works.
>>323503
dank menes
>>323503
Academia in general is very much about trends in the popularity of ideas. What usually happens is one generation of academics defines itself by attacking the ideas of the previous, which then becomes the defining dogma of that generation, and so on.
Anthropology is like this but exponential, partly because they got some stuff wrong early on and feel the field was used as a tool of oppression, and so now work very hard to distance themselves from this sort of thing.
And partly because it is one of the founders of the whole social justice movement, and so every new anthropologist has to seem like they are more progressive and toloerant than the last.
And so certain ideas become popular, certain become unpopular, and the field is very dogmatic and unwavering in its support for the noble savages it makes its living off of, to the extent that they actively support australian and american tribes refusing to allow scientists to inspect remains of people who were never their ancestors, because that wouldnt fit the narrative of 'this tribe has been here since the beginning of time in their ontological framework, and who are we to bring our western science facts into contradiction with their known experience?"
So please, take with a pinch of salt any paper you read claiming that the regular burning of vegetation would have had absolutely no effect on an environment that was probably already quite drybut could easily support megafauna until comparatively recently
>>323543
But how would any of that stop those scientists who don't care for politics at all and just want to do their thing in nooks and crannies? Couldn't they do further studies on "taboo" topics? I thought many had a lot of freedom on what to research?
>>323487
The three wave theory is outdated and wrong, no different than the racial physical "anthropologists" who call aboriginals proto-caucasoid and the missing link between early hominid and homo sapien.
The Indian study is only of Northern Territory and well after the establishment of the Sahul population.
Go back to /pol/ with your conspiracy theories.
>>323596
>outdated and wrong
No proof of this. And there will not be any proof, because it is just too unpopular to even bring up right now. Im not even a big proponent of the three wave theory, I just think all evidence should be available and studied before it is swept under the carpet and never mentioned again.
> only of the NT
I already mentioned this. It is unlikely more tribes will be forthcoming to volunteer for genetic studies which prove they do not have a 'connection to the land' going back to the dreamtime, becuase this is currently how native title is defined, and that is all anybody cares about.
The truth is, with Lake Mungo and the Barrineans and the recent South Asian genetic component, there is evidence for at the very least 2 waves of migration.
This is anathema to aborigines, because of ''muh dreamtime', and therefore not acceptable for australian anthropology to even initiate a dialogue on.
>back to pol
And Why dont you go back to the kekshed, you pathetic sjw shill ?
>>323288
The tasmanians did actually lose this tech. They were not able to start fires when first contacted.
>>323569
Because acaemia is very political, and anthropology especially so, becuase it has been at the very heart of social justice theory. What traps and feminists and sjws are saying now, I was hearing a decade ago. The knife's fucking edge of privilege checking.
It really is the kind of area where you can lose your job if people start to think you are not progressive enough. Everybody is extremely dogmatic and tows the line, because if you dont youve wasted most of your life becoming an academic, and have no useful skills in the real world. So you just keep agreeing with the party line, until you get tenure and a slight amount of security and freedom. At which point the next generation of superprogressive ultrasjws comes and denounces you as being outdated and wrong and a relic of an era where they didnt know better, and you are put out to pasture.
>>322753
we wuz incans
>>322753
They got it through trade, obviously.
I'm currently reading pic related, which is a very even-handed history of Hawaii. The author says he was warned away from writing such a book because it would kill any hope of an academic career if it didn't reflexively conform to the current politically correct dogma (everything white people ever did was wrong, we wuz aliʻi nui, Kamehameha dindu nuffin, etc, etc.) A professor friend flat out told him what they taught in schools was largely wrong, but he'd made his peace with it and went along to get along.
>>322654
Wait, isn't Austronesian a "race"? I assumed that that included Polynesians, Aborigines, Melanesians, Papua New Guineans, and any other various Southern people.
Please educated me.
>>324276
*educate
Why am I still drunk
>>324276
Austronesian is a linguistic group like "Slavic" or "Bantu".
> I assumed that that included Polynesians, Aborigines, Melanesians, Papua New Guineans, and any other various Southern people.
>Aborigines, Papua New Guineans
Doesn't include these two.
It includes Maritime South East Asians, Micronesian, Polynesians, and some people from Madagascar, the language group is said to originate from Taiwan.
>>323721
proofs?
>>326976
the are plenty of Austronesians in Papua new Guinea though and not all maritime south-east Asians are Austronesian speaking
>>323487
>>323543
>>323627
You should gather sources and make a full thread on this, seriously. There was a thread on Pama-Nyungan languages a couple weeks or so ago that started to get into aboriginal history, but it wasn't very popular and eventually dropped off.
It's a very interesting subject, and one that hasn't been discussed much now that twenty thousand year tribal tenure is now sacrosanct. There's a whole continent worth of history that people just ignore because >aboslol and >muhtitle. It would be nice to have a thread on it that didn't degenerate into either petrol memeing or thought policing.
>>326976
Australian Aboriginals were separate from all other races for 50,000 years.
How many generations (and years) are needed for a group to be considered a separate species?
>>323627
Perhaps it's unpopular because it's wrong or very unlikely?
>>327334
There is no 'amount of years' until a new species arises
The definition of a species is
>a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding.
>>323487
If that India Migration evidence is good then that might explain why abos look like dravidians, which other people have also noted the phenotypic similarities of the two
>>327442
Donkeys and Horses?
>>327647
>Most mules are sterile. Sterile hybrids are not species in their own right.
>Most hinnies are sterile. Sterile hybrids are not species in their own right.
>>327614
It has one been found in one population and only equals to 10%
Honestly if you mistaken a South Asian Tribal for a aboriginal you're blind. It's like confusing a West African with a Papuan or a European with an Asian person.
>>327273
Its hard to find sources, its just not discussed and no work is done to analyse it. tbqh, most sources are older, and methodology has improved since then
Pama-Nyungan ...Well thats a little close to home. I have seen people waste years of their lives trying to make theses that explain the strangeness of the relationships between these languages, trying to use computational models and stats to show spread of features and getting nowhere. Worried this person was nearing the end of her phd and had nothing to show for it, I suggested that, like CS or statistics, archaeology could have arole to play in linguistic analysis. this was dismissed. When I suggested the recent Indian migration could have had an influence on language change, for example on retroflex consonants, I just got avoidant, embarrassed silence. One can not mention a second or third migration in academics, as it goes against the current dogma. I dont think that person ever got her phd, which is a waste, because she worked very hard to try and make sense of those languages.
>>327614
The dingo is most closely related to southern indian wild dogs. It seems to have been introduced within the span of the indian migration as judged from the genetic analysis.
The 10% indian admixture in the NT tribe could be indicative of a larger spread throughout the continent, much like the aryan genetic component in india today.
Some indians facial features do look like aboriginals, and vice versa. And the retroflex consonants are mainly found in dravidian and aboriginal languages. Obviously no proof of relationship, but clues that should be investigated nonetheless.
There is also a medieval dravidian bronze bell that was found in new zealand by european explorers being used by the women of a tribe to cook soup.
What is certain, is that there was plenty of contact between australia and the outside world before europeans showed up. we need to truthfully explore the effects of this, rather than cover it up.
>>328094
There is no genetic proof stating Dingoes come from Indian wild dogs, the largest DNA study from 2014 does not state that at all. They derive from an ancient ancestor that gave birth to wolves and several dog lines.
Modern wolves are not the ancestors of dogs.
>>328191
I have not read that study, but it seems counter to several others that all agreed there was most genetic similarity with subcontinental wild canids. If i get time I will look into it - reference please?
>>328372
http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004016
>>327442
Well what about Neanderthals denisovans and humans?
They're considered three different species, yet modern human DNA they all interbred?
>>328436
Thats a fair enough point, it mostly reflects the fact that trying to impose a classification system will never be 100% correct, for example there is no real point in history that could be pinpointed when dogs first diverged from their ancestral species, In reality it's more of a gradient than a dichotomy.
For example the european bison and american bison are called different species, and this is justified by the fact that the populations never exchange genes in the natural environment, with human intervention they could interbreed with no trouble
>>328436
And some people do classify Neanderthals as homo sapiens neanderthalensis, with modern humans as Homo sapiens sapiens
>>322753
It is nearly completely accepted that the Polynesians visited Chile at the same time the Vikings visited Newfoundland
>>328532
That is what i was implying, they obviously had to have visited south america to acquire sweet potato, there is literally no other possibility unless it was the south Americans sailing into the pacific which is far less likely
i have always wondered why the majaphata or some other indonesian empire never settled or traveled to the coast of northern Australia.
Aparently some of them did travel to ausfailia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassan_contact_with_Australia
>>329516
First of all they weren't Indonesian empires, they were Indian and Chinese, and second Indonesia actually had wealth. Gold, Silver, livestock, etc. What could they possibly want out of northern Australia?
>>322745
This. The mineral resources are quite plentiful, but that requires a bit more time and effort. If native soil and crops didn't give aboriginals the means to settle down and extract minerals, why would foreigners totally unaccustomed to the land do any better? I really doubt Australia could have been colonized by sedentary people much earlier than it was.
>>328555
But not impossible. One of the incan emporers sent a fleet of ships to the west, the story goes it visited some islands and came back. And of course kontiki showed it was at least plausible
>>329545
>they weren't Indonesian empires, they were Indian and Chinese
wow thats the dumbest post ive ever read this week. what is it with with tripshits and spouting things they have no idea whatsoever? filtered
>>329545
>majapahit is indian and chink
unlike shailendras, majapahit ruler could trace their lineage to local usurper.
tripfaget.
>>329545
Absolutely potato-tier.
>>322675
>blandaed with native women to the point that the aboriginals started a tradition of carrying a screen to hide women behind when strangers came
why would they want to blanda with this? the screen probably made them look better lol
