Ancient stones map the sun
Could be upwards of 10,000 years old
"This can't be done by guesswork."


Dubbed Wurdi Youang, the strange stone arrangement was found on property near Mt Rothwell, 80km west of Melbourne - its two points set in perfect alignment with the setting sun on a midsummer's day.

CSIRO experts believe the ancient Aboriginal sundial could be upwards of 10,000 years old, an estimate that would have it pre-date the famous neolithic Stonehenge and the only remaining ancient wonder of the world, the Egyptian Pyramids

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/ancient-aboriginal-eyes-were-on-the-skies/story-fn5fsgyc-1226000523978#ixzz1D3M45Lt9



Or there was another race here before Aboriginals migrated here from India.

Couldn't invent anything more advanced than a rock tied to a stick but were astrologers. Methinks not.

Well ...

Dubbed Wurdi Youang, the strange stone arrangement was found on property near Mt Rothwell, 80km west of Melbourne - its two points set in perfect alignment with the setting sun on a midsummer's day.

I can totally see a witch doctor / shaman / whatever type dude sorting out the equinoxes by noting when the setting sun reached a particular marker. It would have been killer information for working out how much hunting and gathering was needed and shit, and when the turning point to preparing for winter by slaughtering the shit out of megafauna was.

We're not talking about mapping the constellations or noting that planets move about here, its recording what point on the horizon the sun got to in the middle of summer, and understanding that this has a relationship to the seasons. Totally doable with rocks tied to sticks tech.

OK, rocks laid on ground tech.

Newgrange is dated around 3000BC and during the winter solstice (if there isn't any clouds which in Ireland is unlikely) the sun shines directly into the chamber and lights up the entire inside. Pretty amazing bit of rock building that one.

So they recorded observations of the sun moving?

Considering its a giant bright thing in the sky that moves, its probably the most obvious thing to record the movements of.

http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/indigenous/technology/

Aboriginal people achieved two world firsts with stone technology. They were the first to introduce ground edges on cutting tools and to grind seed. They used stone tools for many things including: to make other tools, to get and prepare food, to chop wood, and to prepare animal skins.

Stone fish traps are used in rivers where water levels rise and fall. Stone fish traps on the Darling River at Brewarrina are used to catch fish after rain. The Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape in south-west Victoria contains the remains of one of Australia's largest aquaculture systems and the only remaining permanent houses built by an Indigenous community in Australia.

last edited by FaceMan at 16:49:48 05/Feb/11

i thought (from memory) that the relationship between stonehenge and astronomy was only discovered after they used computers to work out where the stars were at the time the thing was constructed... and thus show that stonehenge aligned with the stars at that time period



so working on the assumption that the Aboriginals supposedly created this thing several thousand years ago, has the current "discovery" allowed for spatial drift to show an alignment of celestial spheres at some distant time in the past?


which brings me neatly to a joke i heard...

A British Archaeologist, a American Archaeologist and a NZ Archaeologist were all sitting around discussing their recent excavations.

The Brit says "we dug down 40 feet and found copper wire, thus proving that the Brits had the telephone in 1850!"
The Yank says "we dug down 50 feet and found copper wire, thus proving that the Yanks had the telephone in 1799!"

The Kiwi tells them both, "thats nothing! WE dug down 100 feet and found ZERO copper wire - thus proving that the Kiwis had wireless!"

:)

they invented mapping the stars 1000 years ago, then moved onto hollow sticks you blow through, and sniffing petrol.

Boba doesn't need to worry about centerlink, his wife will buy him a BMW when ever there is a problem.

Aboriginals are the only ancient civ never to make use of the wheel or a shooting weapon. BS they could map the sun.

^ you should try dream time

some of the posts in this thread are disgusting.

Get a fucken cluepon. Maybe you are the one that should be going back to school.

Maybe you should wake the fuck up and take a look around you. Stop watching feelgood today tonight episodes and you might start pulling that massive head out of your fucken arse.

I think it just goes to show you can't leave a people in isolation and expect them to build some grand utopia. Humans need to be hating, killing and out thinking each other to advance.

Just clear up the meaning of life for me and we'll put an end to this argument, ok?

Why don't you go ahead and tell us which society you think that is, dazed.

which society still tries to conquer the world?

Almost all societies have a desire to explore, where did Aboriginals come from in the first place? If they don't they don't progress and move forward... oh what

oh hey, dazedandconfused is back for his monthly dump in someone's thread.

dazedanconfused is why we shouldn't get sydneysiders on this forum. Sorry heards.

Genetics says they came from India, southern India and might be Tamils, yes like the refugees from India, travelled here gradually when sea level was much lower 20 000 years ago but maybe even further back.

Some people believe Australia was connected to India at some stage in the past.

why then is Australia in its usual place in your map faceman? image fail

FaceMan, I haven't seen that particular version before but you could be referring to the theory of Pangea when the world was considered to be one land mass.

Pangea is also used as evidence for "Expanding Earth Theory" which goes against the common scientific consesus which is that the world is more likely to be shrinking due to thermal expansion as the molten iron core cools.

did you notice one is a different colour ?

Maybe you are more used to colouring in your own pictures with crayons.

I won't be baited into an argument that I never took part in to begin with. Choose what you want to measure a societies worth by, just don't expect everyone to swallow the bullshit of comparing them in one category and then claiming they are worthless because of it.

ok. one is a nomadic tribal society which failed to learn a number of basic skills that we attirbute to civilised society in the last 3-4 millennia . To name a few, farm, domestic animals, permanent structures, wheel, number system (one and many lol), written alphabet.

Three contributions are a straight stick, a curved stick and a hollow stick.


The others, lets just say the chinese, north african, south american, multiple european and Hellenic cultures accomplished all of that, and more.

ok. one is a nomadic tribal society which failed to learn a number of basic skills that we attirbute to civilised society in the last 3-4 millennia . To name a few, farm, domestic animals, permanent structures, wheel, number system (one and many lol), written alphabet.

Three contributions are a straight stick, a curved stick and a hollow stick.


The others, lets just say the chinese, north african, south american, multiple european and Hellenic cultures accomplished all of that, and more.

Western society also manages to destroy entire ecosystems by spilling oil using their great technology. Let's not count that but, because the glorious rewards outweigh the downsides, right?

Western society also manages to destroy entire ecosystems by spilling oil using their great technology. Let's not count that but, because the glorious rewards outweigh the downsides, right?

Yes, yes they do. Idiot.

Whatever lets you sleep at night. You shouldn't let opinions get out in place of contentious research either.

The cause of the extinction is an active and contentious field of research. It is hypothesised that with the arrival of humans (around 48,000-60,000 years ago), hunting and the use of fire to manage their environment may have contributed to the extinction of the megafauna.[2] Increased aridity during peak glaciation (about 18,000 years ago) may have also contributed to the extinction of the megafauna. Some proponents claim a change in the climate alone caused extinction of the megafauna, but these arguments have to account for the fact that megafaunal species comfortably survived two million years of climatic oscillations, including a number of arid glacial periods, before their sudden extinction.

New evidence based on accurate optically stimulated luminescence and uranium-thorium dating of megafaunal remains suggests that humans were the ultimate cause of the extinction of megafauna in Australia.[3] The dates derived show that all forms of megafauna became extinct in the same rapid timeframe — approximately 47,000 years ago — the period of time in which humans first arrived in Australia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_megafauna

The reason its contentious is that in the name of PC whitey has romanticised the shamastic, tribal culture of indigenous Australia to the point where its no longer recognisable against the available historic record.

Western society also manages to destroy entire ecosystems by spilling oil using their great technology. Let's not count that but, because the glorious rewards outweigh the downsides, right?

get off the internet then!

Who said anything about the internet.

you said our great technology

Who has romanticised it?

You, for one.

Indigenous Australia was a brutal, primitive and ironically racist place.

One of the traditional tribal punishments is spearing where the victim gets speared into the leg. This type of punishment is often shown in Aboriginal movies and imposed if you don't follow the tribal law.

Here's a personal account by Henry Long about receiving a spearing.

I got speared in the leg, too, for being cheeky. I got hit on the head, too, by all my old people. The spear came out of the calf of the leg. My old father did that. I was a cheeky bloke fighting the other fellas over some silly things I been doing in my young days. I was going with the wrong girls. My skin gorup is Milangka. I was with someone from a wrong skin group...
After you've taken your punishment then people don't worry about you. —Henry Long, Aboriginal man [15]

Read more: http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/law/#ixzz1DAQ0HQaI

In 40,000 years this egalitarian culture was still officially spearing people in the leg for running with chicks who had the wrong skin.

You, for one.

Indigenous Australia was a brutal, primitive and ironically racist place.

I have actually not taken a stance at all, if you read back.

In 40,000 years this egalitarian culture was still officially spearing people in the leg for running with chicks who had the wrong skin.

And? Islam still removes hands for stealing. The only reason it offends you so much is because, like most of us westerners, we have our heads so fucken far up our own arse that any deviation from our sensibilities is considered a crime. Unless that deviation has enough support and the libtards get a hold of it that is.

two barbarians don't make a civilised being.

Another brilliantly intellectual opinion. You do realise your moral compass with regards to OTHER cultures means fucken squat? All it serves to prove is you have a fucken opinion on another cultures methods which you have no right to have, considering the history of your own.

once upon a time we all lived in caves, later reading and schooling was seen as a threat, later smallpox was an epidemic with no known cure, later blacks were property, later women were property.

There's nothing with progression if it improves the quality of life.

haha, watch this retard back-peddle

Please, enlighten us with your intellect. Do you approve of tribal punishment, child marriage, female circumcision, women as property and the other hallmarks of more tribal/traditional societies?

Do I think that western society has evolved past those? Yes. And I'm not ashamed to say so. By way of the enlightenment and other free-thinking academic movements, western society is by far a better, easier, happier, safer, healthier, etc, etc, society to live in today.

Western society is EXACTLY the same as it was 1000 years ago, with a shiny tech and morally righteous veneer glazed over the top. Are you so arrogant as to think the west perpetrates anything LESS than what you just listed as barbaric on every other culture and every exploitable environment on the planet? Wake the fuck up. How many Iraqis are fucken dead from the western hand because of an illegal war? The list goes on. No evolution has taken place. I dare say we are one of the most unhealthy civilizations, if you take into account the obesity and medication epidemic. We have the least leisure time of any civilization, so there goes happier and easier.

All it serves to prove is you have a fucken opinion on another cultures methods which you have no right to have, considering the history of your own.

So... you're making a judgement on what we are allowed to think or believe based on our ethnicity? RACIST!

How many Iraqis are fucken dead from the western hand because of an illegal war?

Again, you are painting the entire western world with one brush... that's some whole new level of super racism there, Hitler.

Western society is EXACTLY the same as it was 1000 years ago

Again, super racism since the cultures & societies of countries such as the UK, Germany, Spain or Greece are all quite different. Anyway, let's look at things that have improved over the last 1000 years in the Anglo-European world:
-Women's rights
-Children's rights
-Gay rights
-Animal rights
-Welfare
-Government (i.e. democratisation)
-State health care
-Free education
-Abolishment of slavery, indentured servitude, castes etc

You'll be hard pressed to find another group of cultures in the world with all of these things. I'm not saying that we're perfect; we're just not all the baby-killing, demon-spawn rapists you make us out to be.

I won't be baited into an argument that I never took part in to begin with. Choose what you want to measure a societies worth by, just don't expect everyone to swallow the bullshit of comparing them in one category and then claiming they are worthless because of it.

i think a good yardstick is how many people a society can support weighted by how well and long the people in the society live. still a very wishy washy measure but modern western society is far superior than traditional aboriginal society. unless you hate people (in which case vhemt is for you) 20,000,000 people with modern living standards > 500,000 people with hunter/gatherer living standards. it might be harder to compare an early agricultural society with a hunter gatherer society because the early agricultural societies lived a subsistence existence. but even critics of modern society have to admit that individual members in modern society live lives comparable to lives in hunter gatherer societies AND modern societies supports a shit load more people. i doubt you could make the case that aboriginals lived lives 40x better than modern australians :)

last edited by hast at 09:47:21 07/Feb/11

If racism is pride in bettering society, then yes, sir.

I'm not sure why guys are replying to dazedandconfused.

You cannot reason with someone like that. Logic and rational argument just doesn't work. It's like trying to clean up oil paints without turpentine.

Black Middle Class children in America always score higher than black children from poorer welfare reliant families. Same genes different environment.

Culture != race / genes. Which is the whole point, actually.

That pic Hardware looks pretty communist to me,
Besides, its blatant BS
Aboriginals are actually pretty smart as a race. They realised air dynamics, the first of any civilisation,
They were the best environmentalists as they didnt hunt species to extinction, They also were the first to realise the benefits of back burning
In terms of governance, they are IMO the best, more so than modern democracies. (More than half of people today in Australia are completely ignorant and stupid, racist and obnoxious so how can people like us vote sensibly)
I could go on...

http://www.wesleylikesgoon.net/wesley3.swf

fundamentally altered the environment via burning which extended and enhanced central Australian desertification:

Complete crap sorry,
There are trees in Australia with seed pods in the bark. This particular tree (name forgotten) needs fire in order to hatch the seed pods and reproduce.
There is also a species of moth, one type all black and one type all light brown. During a bushfire only the light brown moths are eaten and for every other day only the black moths are eaten. Bushfires as you can hopefully see now are essential to the Australian environment and its well-being.
Back burning also kills off all the underperforming vegetation and the new growth is more resilient and lush.
So I fail to see your point as above. It was the White man as I remember and over-logging which caused the desertification of Australia's middle.

Women are not permitted in the ruling tribal councils. Punishment is barbaric -- how about being speared through the leg for dating a girl from the wrong skin group?

If we were still a hunter/gather civilization I believe women wouldn't be allowed in our governing class either. Not to be sexist, but this is universal the world over at this stage in development or whatever you want to call it. I think there are underlying reasons for this that go beyond sexism.


As for species extinction, there is a note to be made that larger animals will die out even without human intervention. What I ment before is that they will change their diet from one animal if it is scarce to a more abundant animal. I doubt this was shared practice between tribes though.

It was the White man as I remember and over-logging which caused the desertification of Australia's middle.

how about you do a little less 'remembering' and a little more research.

this is an extraordinary claim, i would like a little substantiation if you wouldn't mind.

There were no forests in central Australia when whitey arrived, inland desertification pre-dates European settlement. Your memory is flawed. After literally millions of years all of the large mammals became extinct when humans arrived 47k years ago. Why was this?

I never said there were forests, merely implied that there was no desert. Can you back up that claim of desertification?

My theory is that Aboriginals never 'arrived' in Australia similar to Europeans (as in by boat). They travelled here on land when Australia was apart of the supercontinent. This means that they came here well before 47 000 years, which is also well before when the larger animal species died out. This is an unresolvable point because we keep finding new skeletons etc which predate previously accepted timelines.

My theory is that Aboriginals never 'arrived' in Australia similar to Europeans (as in by boat). They travelled here on land when Australia was apart of the supercontinent.

This theory is wrong, like most of your drivel today.

Humans arrived in Australia via migration 47,000 years ago, a few bajillion years after the continents separated.

You are suggesting that humans arrived in Gondwana -- during the Mesozoic period, a few hundred million years before the human species even existed. This is demonstrably not true (by orders of magnitude) and no skeletons dug up anytime soon will change it.

I think he's saying that people were here 180-200 million years ago during the Gondwana break-up fade!

I'm sorry but that has just made my day, its awesome and right up there with the young earthers :)

They were the best environmentalists as they didnt hunt species to extinction

Yes they did, the Australian megafauna died out en masse when humans arrived in Australia 47,000 years ago. Surviving large fauna is either very fast (roos, flying birds and emus), nocturnal or badarse crocodiles.

Indigenous Australians completely obliterated large mammal species and fundamentally altered the environment via burning which extended and enhanced central Australian desertification:

Same thing the Maori and other Island hopper groups have done over the millennium. I read an article a few weeks back about a scientist who said new evidence was showing species wiped out by islands hoppers were wiped out a last faster then originally thought and thats what caused them to continue moving islands in the pacific.

"A number of major changes in forest exploitation and management regimes occurred with European occupation of the continent. As early as the 1790s, regulation of over-cutting of prized species was necessary."

That has nothing to do with aboriginal management of the land.

I 100% concede the point that whitey did some ignorant things when it came to managing the Australian landscape -- the mistakes that Europeans made when trying to farm Australia the way that Europe is farmed are well-documented. We're working on it, we're learning and doing better (we do that in the West; constantly evaluate the way we're doing things, learn from mistakes and pinch good ideas from other cultures).

The point of contention is the quality of land management pre-European settlement. Many people like you assert that the first Australians didn't have similar impact when the evidence is pretty clear otherwise. The reality is that the indigenous folk had a deep impact on the environment -- just like every other species on the planet that is introduced to a new region.

Regarding the point of land management I'd just be repeating what i've already said.

The argument of wildlife management is debatable so i wont get to much into it.
IMO the Aboriginals as tribes knew the importance of selective hunting but probably not as a whole. I think they've been around alot longer than what people give credit for.

If they came here around 50 000 years ago, why did they just give up the technology of watercraft and sea-fareing? If they did come here by boat then they can be credited with being the earliest civilization for making watercraft (the earliest canoe ever discovered is around 8 000 BC and the credit is currently held by the Netherlands).

If they walked here it was most likely through the strip of PNG/Indonesia/S.E.A before it was cut off

I dont want to go on because im just sounding like Aboriginal's are the best race on earth. They have their flaws too. Im just sick of people slandering them when not all facts are known.

I'm going to try comic relief again.

There's only one way we can solve this.

Lol at all the Noble Savage admiration in this thread.

Aborigines never stopped using boats; they were crafting & using seafaring vessels when Europeans arrived.

What else would you use Wikipedia for?

Wikipedia is fail. I refuse to use it for anything other than a guide.

Given the number of amazingly wrong things you've said in this thread I think you need to start with a guide and then expand your horizons some.

Primary school article about aboriginal watercraft.

Tied bark canoes were used along the south-east coast of New South Wales
Source: Aboriginal Technology: Watercraft, Alex Barlow, Macmillan Education Australia (1994)