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Aboriginal Folklore Leads To Meteorite Crater
An anonymous reader writes "An Australian Aboriginal dreaming story has helped experts uncover a meteorite impact crater in the outback of the Northern Territory. From the article: 'One story, from the folklore of the Arrernte people, is about a star falling to Earth at a site called Puka. This led to a search on Google Maps of Palm Valley, about 130 km southwest of Alice Springs. Here Hamacher discovered what looked like a crater, which he confirmed with surveys in the field in September 2009.'"
It's doubtful they've been here much longer than 40000 years. Genetic evidence indicates they are descended from the same group of people that left Africa about 70000 years ago as every other non-African person on Earth.
In a 1988 or 1989 edition of Astronomy Now (an english astronomy magazine), there was a very interesting article detailing Australian meteor craters.
In this article, there were about 30 craters listed, along with pictures and descriptions of the area, with the best-guess ages of the craters. Along with the radio-isotope dating, if there was a local name for the area that implies a large amount of sky-based fire in an area without volcanic activity, and without the vegetation to have a large bushfire.
A great examle of this is the Henbury Craters complex (NT, 24 34'S, 133 10'E) which is a collection of 14 craters, about 130 kilometres south of Alice Springs. They are scattered over an area of about one square kilometre. The craters range from 10 metres to about 73 metres across. The Aboriginal name for these craters is ''chindu chinna waru chingi yabu'' which roughly means ''sun walk fire devil rock''
text quoted from http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/trek/4wd/Over11.htm
Typical! I read the fine article, and it looks as though the article already has this listed.....
- This sig deliberately left blank. Nothing to see, move along.
Although the "roche" part of the town's name does indeed mean rock, the other part, Chouart, does not mean fallen. It comes from the name Cavardus, the original owner of the fortification built on a rocky pillar there. Check out the official town history through a translation machine of your choice: http://www.ville-rochechouart.fr/Tourisme/Histoire/index.php
Dissipation is slower than centuries for two reasons:
As for the grandparent's claim that Aboriginal Australians have been on this continent longer than 75,000 years, the evidence is based on a single highly polluted sample. The evidence for 40,000 years of settlement is much stronger and corroborated by multiple sites.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
Because of the construction of townships and outstations, this is no longer true. Or rather, it is not as completely true as it used to be.
It is very simplistic to say that "their" culture is nomadic. Firstly, there are dozens of distinct cultures, each with different features, languages and laws.
Secondly, aboriginals understand freehold title pretty well at this point. It's not as if they haven't hundreds of years of seeing everyone else have it except for them!
You are probably thinking of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory), the High Court decisions in Mabo and Wik and the Native Title Act which followed those decisions.
However, the Land Rights Act did not give aboriginals freehold or even leasehold. Instead it created monstrously bureaucratic Land Councils which have mostly enriched a very few at the expense of the many. Thus the average aboriginal living on "their" land which was "given" to them can't actually do anything with it. They don't own it, and they can't own it. Consequently they can't start a business, or own a house. They cannot get a loan secured by the land. They can't do anything with it, in fact, except hope that they have mates in their Land Council.
As for Native Title, again it grants nothing like freehold rights to land. All it grants is traditional rights, and only under very particular and difficult-to-prove conditions. Win Native Title and you might get Crown land back, but not always as ordinary freehold. Most likely you'll only get hunting rights or ceremonial access. Again it's basically economically useless.
Aboriginals are human beings. They behave according to their perceived self-interest. I suspect that if we gave them freehold of their land, instead of trying to put them in a sort of cultural museum to assuage our own guilt, we'd learn that they're a smart and capable people.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
Its a bit sad to see how racist some of the comments from fellow Australians are on this matter. Coories or any other "race" should not be judged on European standards.
The are not nomadic, the indiginues Australians lived in many differnt specific areas, and tended to remain in that area for a great deal of time.
To place them in a category of always drinking, or have no respect for property is just plain wrong, racist and stupid.
A group of people who can live for thousands of years, in harmoney with the enviroment, and not hurting anyone, no human sacrifices and generally peacefull.
Im embarassed to see other Australian, (even if we are all immigrants) showing so much racims.
What vast tracts of land were returned to the native american people? They currently have tiny tracts of the most desolate and inhospitable land in the US. Every time land was set aside for them in a binding treaty, that treaty was broken. I hear time and time again that in the US, treaty trumps all law, even the constitution. This is a lie, every single treaty with the native people has been broken. They were "given" (aka removed from all land that is not) all land west of the Apalacha's. That was taken and they were given all land west of the Mississippi. Then all land west of the rockies. Then a few large reservations. Then the reservations shrank. etc.