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.'"

Comments

Always more to the legends and stories...

[YankDownUnder]

It's just too bad that so much of the Indigenous Australian's stories are "turned aside" by Western culture; they've been here AT LEAST 75,000 years (and most likely far longer than that) and there is so much within the framework of the Dreamtime stories and legends that bespeak heaps of extremely interesting occurrences - cosmic, geological and human. There's much more to be learned from studying what is left of their culture - and it's extremely important to preserve what we have now - for future generations. The Indigenous culture here is dying off at an alarming rate, and little care is aimed at this travesty.

Re:Always more to the legends and stories...

[krou]

On my brief visits to Australia, I was always fascinated by Indigenous Australian culture and history, and made a point of learning more about it. What struck me, though, was how present day Australia has assimilated their culture as a marketing tool, and done next to nothing to allow their people and culture to survive. You can buy cheap Indigenous Australian "art" tat at airports that are made in China, while the vast majority of Indigenous Australians seem to have been left to rot, poor and drunk, in the gutter. There is such a deep undercurrent of racism against them, that I find it remarkable that they still exist at all. Everywhere I went, I heard the same stories of how lazy and worthless they are, they just squander everything they're given, they're all just drug addicts and drunks, stupid, and child abusers, which sounded eerily similar to the attitude of whites towards blacks that I remember from South Africa. I see a deep irony whenever I hear white Australians talk about preserving the white, Christian culture of Australia as justification for their immigration policies: they basically don't want someone to do to them what they did, and are doing, to Indigenous Australians.

Re:Always more to the legends and stories...

[hwyhobo]

The Indigenous culture here is dying off at an alarming rate, and little care is aimed at this travesty.

Dying off of cultures and civilizations is a natural process. What must be preserved is their collective knowledge. Written records of their stories may one day prove to be a giant shortcut for future research.

Re:Always more to the legends and stories...

[neonsignal]

Talking about 'them' and 'us' is perhaps the first root of your problem.

If you really think that Aboriginal cultures are 'nomadic' and 'have no concept of ownership of land', then you aren't even at a wikipedia level of understanding of traditional cultures. Not to mention that many Aboriginal Australians are living in cities.

You are correct that the problems are complex, which is why the solutions need to go beyond political grandstanding and patronizing platitudes. At the root of the matter is a lack of respect.

Prejudice is to pre-judge a person. There is plenty of that going around in Australia, whether or not you like to think of it as racism.