Podcast #269: Ancient Australians

Introduction: My guest this week is an independent scholar of early Australians who goes by the pseudonym “Mungo Manic.” In our long and wide-ranging conversation, he spoke to me in detail about many aspects of precolonial Australian life including local religious practices, initation rites, intertribal warfare, sexual mores, the relationship with the local environment, the introduction of dingos and the few but important points of contact with the world outside Australia. Because of Australia’s almost unique isolation from the rest of the world for so many centuries, ancient Australian history provides us with a window into humanity’s deep past and with many insights into what it means to be human. 

Iona Italia: Welcome, Mungo.

Mungo Manic: It’s very good to be here.

II: Thank you so much. I’m going to refer to you as “Mungo” throughout because I know you’d like to remain anonymous and that’s fine. Just to let people know that I do know your real identity, so I know that you’re not an imposter or a serial killer or something. Well, actually I don’t know that for certain but seems highly unlikely. And one thing that did surprise me is that you are not Australian—which is fine. I’m not Australian either. But that raises the question, I think, of how you first became fascinated by this topic. Tell me about that. What first attracted you to this subject about which you are so obsessive and thorough?

MM: I am obsessed. I am definitely obsessed. So yeah, if you can’t tell from my voice, I was born in America. I live in America. I have visited Australia. I do love Australia and Australians. But I would say my obsession started relatively recently in my life. And it was triggered by reading a book on prehistoric cultures around the world. I’m not sure when it was written, maybe like the early 2000s. And when I got to the chapter on Australia … I was reading through the whole thing, when I got to the chapter on Australia, it was so apparent that they weren’t telling me the entire picture, just based on the differences, how the scientists and stuff were talking about the other continents of the world. Australia was very different. And it piqued my curiosity to figure out what actually happened, what these cultures were actually like.

And the more I read, the more I realised how unique the people of Australia were compared to anywhere else in the world. It is the only continent that never experienced the agricultural revolution. It has this continuity going back to our earliest human ancestors. And there’s so much that we can learn about humanity from these people, from these cultures.

II: Thank you so much. Let’s maybe start with a question of terminology. You said that you dislike the terms both “Aboriginal” and “Indigenous.” Usually when I’m talking about this group of people, I call them “early Australians” or I use the terms Aboriginal and Indigenous, which are basically synonyms, interchangeably. But you’ve said that you reject, you dislike both terms and you prefer to think in terms of foragers versus farmers. And in fact, you told me, I’m quoting: “The lack of an objectively verifiable definition of ‘Aboriginal’ has resulted in confusion, censorship, and the destruction of all of Australia’s ancient human fossils.” Do you want to start by talking a bit about terminology and why you don’t like to talk about Aboriginal or Indigenous Australians?

MM: Yes. Now, the thing I dislike more, though, are grammar Nazis or people that get too uppity about terminology. That’s my personal choice is to avoid those terms, but I do not mind what other people prefer—except when it comes to scientists, because scientists are supposed to be super precise, right? That’s the whole point of science: to figure out what the differences between things are. And I would say they have completely dropped the ball in this area. Aboriginal and Indigenous … well, it’s interesting. I was actually looking up the history of the word of the origins of Aboriginal and Aborigines, and it actually traces back to an Italian tribe called the Aborigines, who were the predecessors of the ancient Romans. And supposedly, there’s even different Roman writers who said they were nomadic, said they didn’t live in cities, they didn’t have government. I thought that was hilarious that there is that connection to an ancient, actual tribe, an actual group of people. And then, slowly, the British Empire started colonising the world and they would meet these people that they didn’t really have … they didn’t know where they came from so they would call them ‘aborigines’ and there’s also a Latin root there of “from the beginning,” aborigine and then over time, especially in Australia, that noun became a proper noun and a proper adjective, which is why they capitalise it:  Aboriginal, to refer to a specific group of aborigines. There was aboriginal Canadians, there was aboriginal Taiwanese. This was not an Australian-specific term. I have to admit, I haven’t studied the colonial history as much as the pre-colonial stuff. But my understanding, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that basically as these people got absorbed or destroyed by disease and violence, that term ‘aboriginal’ lost any kind of like racial or genetic definition. I think probably around the 1960s or 70s, but it’s still hung around. There’s people today that identify as Aboriginal, but there’s no genetic definition of Aboriginal. And I would say there’s no cultural definition of Aboriginal. I would even go so far as saying there’s no legal definition of Aboriginal. So in my mind, using the same words to describe the people who may have ancestors, whose ancestors lived in Australia before 1788 or whatever, to use that same word is rather misleading and at least from a scientific perspective, it’s not useful at all.

II: I don’t know about the legal definition, but I think one of the definitions that’s used if you are applying for specific grants or jobs or other things that are reserved for Aboriginals, I think the definition is you identify as having Aboriginal ancestry and you’ve also lived in an Aboriginal community where people have accepted your claim to be Aboriginal, which is, of course, a really woolly definition. And there are definitely many people who have no Aboriginal ancestry who claim to be Aboriginal because there are a lot of incentives, just as there are in Canada and elsewhere.

MM: Right, and then that’s a whole other political thorny issue. When I’m on Twitter, I try to avoid the political ramifications. I know I can’t avoid it completely, but I would say that what you just described is the three-part test. It’s called the three-part test: self-identify as Aboriginal, accepted as Aboriginal by an Aboriginal community, and also have Aboriginal descent. The issue with that definition is that you cannot define a word using the word itself. It’s complete circular reasoning. So there’s no way to tell, at least from an objective perspective, “Well, this person is Aboriginal because he’s accepted by other Aboriginals.” Does that make sense? Because in order to say that those other people are Aboriginal, you would have to define Aboriginal. And then you’d have to say, well, are they accepted by Aboriginal communities? And then there’s also the thing of Aboriginal descent. I think with the land or the native title stuff, it’s a little more cut and dried. They have an actual list of ancestors that you have to show descent from. So at least that is objectively verifiable. As it’s commonly used by politicians and scientists, only the first part of the three-part definition is used. So in genetic studies, they will say Aboriginal is a cultural category and it’s based on self-identification. There is no genetic basis of Aboriginal. And I don’t think most people who use those terms realise that that is what scientists are saying now.

I think in most people’s minds, when they think of Aboriginal or Aborigine, they think of someone in the desert playing a didgeridoo, maybe with some pipe clay on them. But that’s not the case. There’s Aboriginal people with blue eyes, blonde hair, red hair, freckles. In one genetic study, one of the participants had 100 percent European DNA. And he was included in the study because he identifies as aboriginal. So my approach is just to say, “Okay, that’s fine. Whenever I use the word ‘Aboriginal’ and in this context as well, I’m referring to someone that identifies as aboriginal.” I try to be much more specific in my terminology when I’m addressing the foragers and the hunter-gatherers who lived in Australia before colonisation, because I think there’s a huge difference, if that makes sense.

II: Yeah, that makes sense. I hear you often using the term ‘ancient Australians.’ So what we’re talking about also is a specific population living in a specific place at a specific point in time. I think we will come back to this idea of the genetic heritage a bit later, because I want to talk about that in relation in particular to Tasmania. But I have a lot of questions for you. I think the best place to start is what you’ve called “the question behind all questions,” which is how and when did the first humans get here—I’m in Sydney, so clearly I’m talking to you from Australia. I’m one of the most recent Australians. I got here two years ago, but how and when did Homo sapiens get here?

MM: I don’t know. That’s the simple … that is the only thing I can say with certainty. There is a lot of theories. It’s one of the most controversial questions. It’s hard to know, judge the data. There seems to be evidence, the most secure evidence seems to be from Northern Australia, Arnhem Land, about 65,000 years ago. There’s a few places, including I think near Sydney, where there’s some old hearths potentially, maybe some shell middens that date back to like 120,000 years, but no definite human artefacts have been found in association with those. But even the 65,000 date is controversial. Some scientists think that it’s misdated, think that termites may have messed up the, the layers. But I would say in general, at least 50,000 years, there’s enough sites in Australia that are 50,000 years old that I would feel confident saying that at least by 50,000 years ago, there was humans in Australia. I’m not sure who they were. There’s certain cultural continuity between the earliest artifacts and later ones. But there’s some differences as well. But yeah, I would say Homo sapiens were there at least 50,000 years ago.

II: And do you think that there were different waves of immigration to Australia? Do you think that the people who, for example, the first Europeans encountered when they arrived in Sydney Cove, were they descendants of the first group of people to have arrived here, or do you think that they were descendants of some later wave of people? Are there any clues as to how that happened?

MM: This is the even more controversial question. 65,000 years is earlier than a lot of dates for out of Africa, not necessarily out of Africa, but there’s a lot of research going on about Neanderthal admixture, when did humans first intermarry with Neanderthals. And those numbers are all around 45,000 years, 50,000 years. So in a recent study about these archaeological finds in Timor, basically, if 65,000 years is the first date of humans in Australia, they were likely from an earlier wave out of Africa and do not have living descendants today because they would not have carried those Neanderthal genes that we have. So I would say that that’s one piece of evidence. Another piece of evidence that suggests potential waves is in the fossil record. There’s a lot of different morphology. During the 80s and 90s, there was a big debate about gracile versus robust skeletons.