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...

[Anonymous Coward]

And what would you suggest we do to fix this? We've tried the 'just leaving them alone'. We've tried the 'throw copious amounts of money at them to promote development'. We've tried the 'educating them to help themselves'. We've tried both the carrot, and in the past, the stick, unfortunately.

But nothing changes. And you can understand why ... their culture is most fundamentally a nomadic one. They have no concept of 'ownership' of land or property, and rarely stay in one place for long. Thus no amount of providing infrastructure does anything ... they simply aren't interested in that. They are quite happy doing what they've done for the last 80,000 years. And more power to them I say - except that the scourge of alcohol and other Western influences has corrupted this traditional lifestyle for many to such a point where their societies collapse.

Australians are just as ashamed at the situation as you are. We've handed back vast tracts of traditional lands to the Aborigines (much like the Indian Nations in the US), but the native Americans seem to have done much better for themselves than the Australian Aborigines (from what I have seen during my numerous trips to the US, they are quite prosperous on their reserves and have good self-determination and leadership).

Sure there are some racists around, like anywhere, but I firmly believe the vast majority of Australians are not prejudiced against the Aborigines. But the problems you describe are deep and very, very difficult to fix.

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

[ACDChook]

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.

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

[phyrz]

I spent a bit of time during some touristy native american stuff while i was in canada and alaska last year, those tribes are (were) WAY more advanced than the Australian native peoples that the comparision just doesn't apply.

Native americans built full blown cabins where aborigionals largely still lived in caves and temporary shelter. They had a far better chance at integration.

Yeah its sad whats happened to the aussie abos, but at the end of the day they, as a people, need to save themselves - they have been given whatever resources they need. And perhaps they are making progress like alcohol bans in some towns up north, mon-fri boarding schools for children so they get proper rest at night, and pouring money into aborigional art and expression (hip-hop, dance and so on).

The biggest problem is that a large proportion of this and the next generation of aboriginal kids will be growing up with fetal alcohol syndrome. those kids dont have a chance.

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

[MichaelSmith]

Its about the worst possible interface. Aboriginal people are about the most primitive culture in the world today. They were always going to get steamrolled by Europeans.

As a white Australian I would favour vastly expanded alcohol and petrol bans. Lets talk about the entire Northern Territory. Include South Australia and Western Australia more than 100km outside their capital cities.

I live in Melbourne and a schoolmate of my son is Aboriginal. He is being raised by a white woman who adopted him and arranged for him to have a liver transplant, which saved his life. She takes him home to see his birth family every year. Its a variation of the mistake which led to the stolen generation, but its the only way for this boy.

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

[MichaelSmith]

One thousand years is a long time. If you put your mind to it you could walk from Africa to Asia or Europe in a year. I reckon 1000 years is easily enough to go from Africa to Australia. Quite possibly 100 years. Remember they are not diffusing like animals. Once they decide to go from A to B that is what they do. And the people who left Africa at 70000 BP were genetically identical to us, with the same potential.

And I have this idea that sometimes the safest way to be is to move fast, especially if you have the intelligence to make good mental maps. That way if you strike a problem you can use your map to find a solution.

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

[Potor]

Once they decide to go from A to B that is what they do.

Are you implying that they knew what B was, and where it was? If they didn't, they were essentially wandering.

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

[kklein]

Then you have no idea what is happening in Australia.

Weaker cultures/civilizations being replaced by stronger ones is exactly what has been happening in Australia, and North America, and South America, and that's only in the last couple centuries. It has happened countless times throughout history. It's normal. That's isn't an excuse to be dicks about it, but it happens to every culture eventually. We're sitting here typing in the language of the people who had their own fine and dandy language which was decimated by Nordic raiders who took over the northern parts of their island and started supplanting bits of their culture with their own, then came the Normans who enslaved them for 300 years and relegated some of their best words (fuck, shit) to the "dirty" category... Oh, and don't forget about the Romans...

We are the lucky benefactors of several waves of colonization. Just because our culture was the last to really go on a colonizing bender doesn't mean we were the first, or the last.

That's what "natural" means.

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

[Jacques Chester]

Dissipation is slower than centuries for two reasons:

1. People get used to where they grow up. It's not as though every generation set themselves the task of moving as far from their parents as possible.
2. Land bridges depended on ice ages. Australia was settled by (depending on who you consult) 2 or 3 waves of humans, corresponding with ice ages making it possible to easily reach Australia from the Indonesian / PNG archipelago.

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.

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

[krou]

I went from insightful to flaimbait to troll. Tough crowd. Now I just need funny and interesting, and I'll have a full set.

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

[Jacques Chester]

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

Most traditional Aboriginal cultures have already been lost since British settlement. Depending on who you ask, there might have been 600 independent cultural-linguistic "nations" in Australia in 1788 with the British claimed approximately 2/3rds of the continent as "New South Wales".

Nevertheless, a large amount of traditional culture still exists throughout the centre and north of the continent. I am from Darwin in the Northern Territory, for example. Just a few hundred kilometres from that beautiful little town you can find traditional law being practiced in all directions.

What cultures have survived are being studied by anthropologists, linguists and the like. Similarly, dreamtime stories and rituals are often sought for insight they can give into historical events and geological features.

I don't think that all elements of some existing traditions are praiseworthy and deserving of retention. In many places, for example, traditional law is brutal and inhumane. However, much as European culture grew out of the comparable brutalities of the classical world, we can adopt and learn the best elements of tradtional cultures and combine them within our own in the centuries ahead. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Stasis can be as destructive to cultural survival as anything else.

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

[drinkypoo]

This is NO DIFFERENT from what racially privileged people have been doing EVERYWHERE since the dawn of racial privilege. I could as easily rewrite your last sentence as "I see a deep irony whenever I hear white Americans talk about..." etc etc. Oh noes the border is failing, the brown people are coming back! We invited them back... to clean hotels and offices and pick lettuce and strawberries.

I live in Lake County, California which gives me some very close perspective on what you are talking about; for over 10,000 years it was the home of the peaceful Pomo people who enjoyed a land covered with acorn-dropping oaks and filled with deer and elk, a lake filled with fish, and a day's walk to a coast well-encrusted with shellfish (and peopled with other peaceful peoples.) I live in Kelseyville, named after a slaver rapist whose wife helped bring him to his deserved conclusion by sabotaging the weapons. Every time I go out I encounter Pomo-lite who glare at me (I'm big and somewhat evanescent in most lighting conditions) for my part in their oppression, though all I ever did to them was run reports against a casino database for one of their casinos. For my part, I'd prefer to return this land to the way it was before "we" came to mess with them, but you'd have to replant it with oaks and wait a hundred years before it would even be possible.

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

[Jacques Chester]

But nothing changes. And you can understand why ... their culture is most fundamentally a nomadic one. They have no concept of 'ownership' of land or property, and rarely stay in one place for long.

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!

We've handed back vast tracts of traditional lands to the Aborigines (much like the Indian Nations in the US), but the native Americans seem to have done much better for themselves than the Australian Aborigines...

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.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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

[corbettw]

Strictly speaking, the language we're using right now came from those Nordic raiders. The one used by the indigenous people in Britain was more like modern Irish (not that you hear that much anymore, either).

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

[anss123]

You're wrong! Before Europe there were no wars or famines and people had perfect teeth. I've seen plenty of movies so I know it's true.

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

[digitig]

I spent a bit of time during some touristy native american stuff while i was in canada and alaska last year, those tribes are (were) WAY more advanced than the Australian native peoples that the comparision just doesn't apply.

Native americans built full blown cabins where aborigionals largely still lived in caves and temporary shelter. They had a far better chance at integration.

So you define "advanced" as "more like you"? Has it occurred to you that permanent shelter is just not the issue in a generally warm place like Australia than in a generally cold place like Alaska? That they might not have made those "advances" because they have no need of them? That "integration", whatever benefits it might have, might not be the best way to preserve the culture, and that the later is a valid choice?

pouring money into aborigional art and expression (hip-hop, dance and so on).

Hip-hop is an aboriginal Australian form of expression?

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.

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

[AndersOSU]

Here's the problem. There's 7 billion of us. Either we continue with industrial agriculture or three-quarters of us die. If you're intent on protecting your young you'd be better off figuring out how to make industry less destructive than trying a return to pre-industrial ways.

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

[elrous0]

Wow, looks like someone really bought into that noble savage horseshit. I can almost picture the wind blowing through the Indian's hair as I read your post. But here is my non-hippie interpretation of the noble native American (you politically-correct types might want to avert your eyes):

The "Native Americans" were actually many different tribes, many of whom despised one another. They fought wars with one another where torture, enslavement, rape, and various other atrocities were common. Some even practiced human sacrifice. They did not use "every part of" whatever animal they killed. They were not environmentalists. They were not peaceniks. They weren't even really "natives" (having immigrated from Asia once themselves). The relationship between Europeans and natives was a very complex one. It was not just a case of evil Europeans stealing the land of the noble savage and displacing some romantic hippie communal lifestyle. Some tribes welcomed Europeans, some fought them (using the same brutal tactics they used before the colonists came), some assimilated, some didn't. Many tribes appreciated the technological improvements of the Europeans, some spurned them. Different European "tribes" also treated the natives differently. The Spanish were much more open to intermarriage with the natives than the English. The French were more reluctant to build permanent settelments than the Spanish, British, or Portugese. Again, it was all a very complex cultural interaction--with plenty of atrocities and injustices to go around on all sides.

Today's Native Americans still love to bitch about the evil white man--but few turn down our vaccinations or technology. And far too few turn down our hand-outs and alcohol. When they build casinos, they don't do it with "noble savage" architects. Again, it remains a complex situation--easy to romanticize, but much harder to *really* understand.

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

[rident]

I had the same opinion when I read that. The Lakota, Mandan, and other tribes from northern North America required better shelter to survive. They had very large animals (bison) to kill and process for food, shelter, and clothing. There are also vast forests as you progress farther north in their area of what is now the northern Minnesota and southern Ontario. All of which makes a big difference when you need to learn to survive. It's -9 F outside right now and I'm guessing the temps weren't that much different back then. Compare that to the arid plains, desert, and relatively small prey size which the Aboriginals had to contend with. I saw others mention the concept of land ownership. That was also a new idea to Native Americans when the Europeans arrived also. Sure there were tribes with their semi-staked out hunting lands and there were battles over that space but I would say it was more for basic resources which grew or fed upon that land than the land itself.

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

[Virak]

There is no "divorce from nature". In fact, man is doing the most natural thing possible: expanding and consuming until nature's limiter of resources, death, kicks in. This sort of thing isn't particularly odd in nature, the only difference is that usually there are other predators and such that keep the other species in line. Humans, however, are the predator above all predators, and with all these shiny toys we've built up over the millennia, there's not really any threat from any animal on the planet to us, so the usual checks and balances that would keep such behavior from going to such pathological extents do little.

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

[AndersOSU]

It's not a european trait, it's a human trait.

The privileged want more privilege, and they get it by taking from the already less privileged.

In Europe, the pendulum was on it's way back to (relative) equality since the feudal system collapsed (for a whole variety of reasons, severe inequality cannot be sustained in the long run.) When Europeans started establishing colonies, it was a whole new dynamic, and exploitation ruled.

If you look, you will find throughout history dominant cultures expanding and crushing native cultures (with varying degrees of success). There undoubtedly used to be hundreds, if not thousands of native European cultures, but waves of empire building and proselytizing has smoothed out all but the subtle differences. Africa was much more culturally diverse before the zulu expansion, and the han didn't always dominate interior china. As a rule, the dominant culture gets that way by eliminating or occasionally merging with competing ones, but either way no culture goes on unchanged.

History of civilization in a nutshell:
1. Identify the traits of a group different from you.
2. Deny resources to anyone with those traits.
3. Profit.

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

[Nadaka]

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.

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

[Just Some Guy]

We must soon advance on a personal level to no longer need more than the quintessential Australian aboriginal. Imagine, if you will, yourself in their clothes by the side of a road as a glutton in a SUV drives by, when re-evaluate the meaning of "primitive".

Imagine the same Aborigine seeing your coddled butt parked in a Starbucks with a laptop and sneering at your "gluttonous" neighbors.

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

[BobMcD]

Has anyone tried ASKING them what they want, instead of just assuming a solution?

I'd assume the answer would be:

"Pack up your belongings and go back where you came from."

Not sure how much that helps...

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

[shutdown -p now]

So you define "advanced" as "more like you"? Has it occurred to you that permanent shelter is just not the issue in a generally warm place like Australia than in a generally cold place like Alaska? That they might not have made those "advances" because they have no need of them?

That's irrelevant. It's true that, if advances aren't really needed, they won't be made (or will be made and then quickly discarded). However, regardless of the reasons, the civilization with more advances is, well, more advanced, pretty much by definition.

That "integration", whatever benefits it might have, might not be the best way to preserve the culture, and that the later is a valid choice?

Not integrating is a valid choice, absolutely, but if you don't integrate, then don't complain that the society you didn't integrate into doesn't consider you a part of it, and speaks in "us vs them" terms.

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

[digitig]

That's irrelevant. It's true that, if advances aren't really needed, they won't be made (or will be made and then quickly discarded). However, regardless of the reasons, the civilization with more advances is, well, more advanced, pretty much by definition.

Too simplistic. I bet the aboriginal society is more "advanced" than White or Asian Australian in terms of surviving in the bush. "Advances" aren't simple, counatble things.

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

[BobMcD]

The smallpox thing is not a myth. There is no evidence to suggest it did not happen, and there exists documentation to suggest it did. You can doubt it if you'd like, but you have no basis for the label of 'myth'. Even if it were not successfully carried out, even the act of planning it is despicable, so I fail to see what your nit is gaining, exactly.

These people are not being turned into anything. I am demonstrating how our colonial governments treated them a sub-human, and subjugated them summarily, but that does not change them in the slightest.

Saying there was no 'these people' is like saying there are no 'white people' because they all come from various European ancestors. You're varying the definitions of the words to make a point, and I find this form of argument non-compelling.

Finally, I'm not necessarily advocating their nobility in a vacuum. But once compared to the absolutely vile behavior that was inflicted upon them as a group, they do come out looking far better. Bear in mind also that WE are the ones that wrote the history books! So it stands to reason that the events depicted are the MOST FAVORABLE ACCOUNT POSSIBLE. And in that light, I must wonder about the motivations for your 'horseshit' position.

Personally I hope that we look back on what we did and remember how vile it was. Otherwise we'll simply wind up making these same mistakes in the future. Attacking the 'noble savage' notion as an apologist is shameful behavior.

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

[drinkypoo]

Wow, looks like someone really bought into that noble savage horseshit.

Wow, looks like I'm about to get a ration of propagandist bullshit.

I can almost picture the wind blowing through the Indian's hair as I read your post.

She bit into a York(tm) peppermint patty.

But here is my non-hippie interpretation of the noble native American

It's also non-relevant. As is the fact that you're not a hippie. You're also not the president, but you didn't mention that.

The "Native Americans" were actually many different tribes

You are hereby fined your fucking credibility for misusing quotation marks. Now, I do understand that you're just flying off on a fucking rant here, which you're entitled to do any old time. But you're doing it in response to my comment, and like it or not, that makes it a reply to what I said. And nowhere in my comment did I in fact actually use the words "Native" or "American". Once you get that whole Mitochondrial Eve thing then the Native part falls apart; and "American" covers a lot of ground. Instead, I talked about the people who live[d] where I'm living now. We find arrowheads here occasionally; there's a nice little promontory and even today, this spot is fairly heavy with assorted small game. A bear has come through and crapped in our yard a couple times; at least, I can't imagine what else would have crap that big with meat and berries in it. Maybe sasquatch, eh?

Anyway, you used my discussion about some specific people as the launching-off point for your own personal rant about natives as if I had no fucking idea what I'm talking about. But nothing I said in my comment warranted your wankery. Rein it in, me laddo. Go bad-mouth "Native Americans" in your journal or something. Certainly there are plenty that deserve it. Of course, being subjected to a couple hundred years of ridicule and occasional attempts at genocide can change a people. When the 1st US Cavalry came out here and slaughtered the occupants of what's now called "Bloody Island" after a different band of Pomo rose up against their Kelsey oppressors. And these people were living in peace and managing their lands. You can come up here and argue with them about how they know fuck-all, though.

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

[spasm]

"They have no concept of 'ownership' of land or property, and rarely stay in one place for long"

I'm going to pick on this specific example of horrendous ignorance, but believe me it's just a single example of the kind of nonsense I'm seeing on this thread.

The historic problem hasn't been that Aboriginals haven't had a concept of land ownership, rather than they have a whole body of legal concepts which are more complex than the feudally-based concepts brought by Europeans, and hence were rarely recognized as such. Let me give you an example. Any one geographic space may have multiple rights and duties associated with it. The right to hunt geese during the early part of the wet season. The right to collect turtle eggs when turtles are hatching on beaches. The right to move through the area. The right to set up camp during the dry season when there are few food resources. The 'ownership' of, or association with specific dreamtime entities whose stories connect with that area in some way. These different types and levels of ownership can and often are held by different groups, families, and individuals. There's any number of examples of what has gone wrong when Europeans have attempted to engage with this system even with good intent. A mining company, for example, might seek permission to do exploratory drilling, and ask around to find out who 'owns' the land. Directed to some imposing looking elder, they ask if he is the owner of the land and he says yes. They ask if there's any religiously sensitive places in the area and he says no. The offer a payment in exchange for exploratory drilling. All good, right? Except when the mining company rolls the drills out, all hell breaks loose with other groups of people turning up saying that they're the owners and they weren't consulted at all and there's a number of important religious sites within the area and so on. The mining company throws its hands up in disgust and declares the local community is just trying to screw them for more money. The real problem being the elder they consulted in the first place turns out to have rights to hunt in the area during parts of the year (and hence felt fine saying yes he 'owned' the land because loosely translated he did), but was either unaware or didn't care that other groups also had ownership rights over different aspects of the land and that there's a number of sacred spaces connected to exclusively-female dreamtime stories that he was (appropriately) unaware of, and so on. And this is what can happen when people are acting with good intentions, let alone if someone is actually deliberately trying to screw the locals over. Aboriginal law has complex, multi-layered conceptions of legal rights and ownership where there are many simultaneous and overlaying categories of ownership; European property law is largely an extension of feudal property law and, by contrast, is simple, static, and does not allow for simultaneous multiple types of ownership. To the frustration of both Europeans and Aboriginals, trying to shoehorn Aboriginal property law into European property categories for the sake of expediency and to allow things like mining or property development to be pursued in a timely manner has rarely produced entirely satisfactory results.

To get back to my original point, the idea that Aboriginals "no concept of 'ownership' of land or property" merely displays breathtaking ignorance, and the fact that this is a widespread understanding among European Australians is, I think, both a national embarrassment and the basis for much of the ongoing misunderstandings between Australians of all backgrounds.

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

[PaganRitual]

relatively small prey size which the Aboriginals had to contend with
Drop Bears, while relatively small in size, are vicious fuckers that will have torn a hole in your jugular and be drinking the warmth of your life force before you even realise what the hell is going on.

It's bloody obvious when you know its there

[Anonymous Coward]

Here it is. I went looking for it when the original story broke, without a picture or link, and easily found it. I knew where Palm Valley was, and from there the crater was pretty obvious. Mind you, it would be easy to dismiss it as an odd shaped formation if you didn't know you were looking for a crater, so hats off to Hamacher and the accuracy of "legend".

The most intriguing paragraph...

[Angostura]

.... as far as I'm concerned is...

Despite the link to the dreaming story, weathering and the absence of meteorite fragments suggest that the crater is millions of years old and humans could not possibly have witnessed the event, Hamacher said.

.

His suggestion is that Aborigines may have learned to recognise craters from more recent impacts and then deduced the origin of the Palm Valley and Gosse's Bluff craters. Now, I don't know about you, but that feels extraordinarily unlikely to me, given the frequency of large meteorite strikes. But that might just be because I don't have the aboriginal sensibilities for land features.

Re:The most intriguing paragraph...

[Arker]

Much of "dreamtime" and similar bodies of lore elsewhere, but the australian dreamtime is the canonical example by most accounts, is "cultural geography." The stories were adaptive strategies for human groups which travelled great distances and relied on their knowledge of local features for survival. If a person can predict features of geography in an area he has never been before because he remembers stories which encoded those features, this is a huge advantage. So that accurate information can be decoded from them should hardly be surprising.

Nor would it be very surprising that they correctly deduced that craters are caused by meteor impact. The frequency of *large* meteorite collisions may be quite low, but the frequency of medium and small impacts is orders of magnitude greater, and they also leave craters. Simply dropping a rock into a still body of water forms a crater as well, even though it erodes away in the blink of an eye many people have sat dropping rocks into a pond and observing what happens as well.

Re:The most intriguing paragraph...

[dargaud]

His suggestion is that Aborigines may have learned to recognise craters from more recent impacts and then deduced the origin of the Palm Valley

I would like to point to a similar story. In France the town of Rochechouart sits on a meteor crater. The name of the town, dating back centuries, literally means 'Fallen rock'. But the crater is 200e6 years old and is hardly recognizable from the ground (it's 21km in diameter, yes, it was a big hit). So who and how did they name the city ?

Re:The most intriguing paragraph...

[MichaelSmith]

His suggestion is that Aborigines may have learned to recognise craters from more recent impacts and then deduced the origin of the Palm Valley

I would like to point to a similar story. In France the town of Rochechouart sits on a meteor crater. The name of the town, dating back centuries, literally means 'Fallen rock'. But the crater is 200e6 years old and is hardly recognizable from the ground (it's 21km in diameter, yes, it was a big hit). So who and how did they name the city ?

Many people in history and pre-history mined meteorites for iron. They learnt to associate meteorites with impact events and so associated iron mines with impacts.

Re:The most intriguing paragraph...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:The most intriguing paragraph...

[DavidTC]

They don't need to witness an event.

They just need to see a meteor in the sky, and then later find the crater.

As was pointed out, the entire purpose of dreamtime is to know the landscape. They know the landscape very well. They're going to notice if a big damn crater shows up.

Hell, they don't even need to figure out that a specific meteor in the sky caused the later. They see meteors all the time, they know about the 'shooting stars' as Europeans called them, and they apparently came to the same, logical conclusion that they were stars that had broken loose and fallen down. (They already knew that some of them were loose, aka, the planets.)

As any fool can figure out how impact craters work by watching rocks drop into water, it seems a very logical conclusion that an brand new geographic feature that looks like what happens when rocks are dropped into water was made by something dropping into the land. Duh.

So what drops from above? Well, there are stars up there that come loose...maybe a star hit here!

And once they knew that land can suddenly be shaped like that, and that the 'story' for such land is 'it got hit with a falling star', of course they're going to label the other places where land is shaped like that with similar stories. (As that is, in fact, the entire point of dreamtime, to make up stories for the land so you can remember what the damn thing looks like because you haven't invented maps yet.)

Wonder...

[plasticsquirrel]

I wonder how many "myths" have such a basis in true events? I'm reminded of the "hobbit humans" story where the native people had stories about them that had been passed down reliably for thousands of years. It seems that in our rush to be certain about our world, we are often too eager to dismiss the ideas of ancient people. It is unfortunate as well, because they cannot defend themselves, so they are especially easy prey for academics looking for notoriety.

Re:Wonder...

[c6gunner]

It seems that in our rush to be certain about our world, we are often too eager to dismiss the ideas of ancient people.

The continued popularity of Judaism - and it's offspring, Christianity and Islam - tends to counter your claim. As does the number of people who have adopted various older forms of beliefs, from Paganism to Buddhism to Feng Sui and Tai Chi. If anything, the opposite of your claim is true - people tend to have a knee jerk tendency to accept the "wisdom" of "ancient culture", while rejecting "western science" as commercialized or "closed minded".

It is unfortunate as well, because they cannot defend themselves, so they are especially easy prey for academics looking for notoriety.

Nonsense. College campuses and left-leaning political movements are chock-full of people willing to jump to the defense of any culture which incorporated mysticism. If you want evidence, just attended any protest put on by "environmental" groups, and ask a random person about their spiritualism.

Re:This is not one of those cases

[derdesh]

Okay, I admit, I RTFA, and the crater in question has been dated as millions of years old, long before *anyone* claims humans capable of cultural transmission visited Australia.

According to the article, the author himself thinks that the aboriginal Australians were sophisticated enough to recognize impact craters on the landscape, and what might have caused them, and concoct legends about falling objects to explain them.

With all due respect to the parent post, the Indigenous Australians may have great knowledge that has been dismissed by their Western colonizers, but this is not evidence of such.

Ah, what a wonderful plot addition this will be

[Enleth]

Just as I was thinking of some way to spice up a Call of Cthulhu adventure located in Australia for my players - a million years old crater from the aboriginal dreams pops up, and it's a genuine, real one. A little too far to the east for the original plot location, but that's nothing, just might be a tad more difficult for them to reach. Brilliant.

Emu Dreaming

[idji]

A very recent podcast with transcript (3. Jan 2010) called Aboriginal Astronomy from Radio Australia was about this topic, referring to this book Emu Dreaming by Ray Norris

Aboriginal names for crater areas are well known.

[popoutman]

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.....

Re:Coordinates!

[bcmm]

I had a look on Google Earth, and couldn't see anything out of the ordinary at that spot, either from a flat photo or from elevation (and it's in a nice high-resolution bit, presumably because it's only 15km from the nearest populated place - not far in Australia).

24*3'10.06" S 132*42'36.98" E in DMS, for anyone else trying to see it. (* in place of degree sign because slashdot hates us).

Re:what the story doesn't mention...

[Hognoxious]

like English, but without grammar or meaning

Well the story's about Australia, so that kind of fits.

A similar "legend" from Siberia.

[imtheguru]

" In remote central Siberia, there was a time when the Tungus people told strange tales of a giant fireball that split the sky and shook the Earth. They told of a blast of searing wind that knocked down people and whole forests. It happened, they said, on a summer's morning in the year 1908. "

About 20 years later the legend of the fireball led to the search and discovery of what has become known as the 'Tunguska Event'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

As seen in Carl Sagan's Cosmos, episode 4, Heaven and Hell.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/63316/cosmos-heaven-and-hell

Cheers.

Re:Coordinates!

[corbettw]

Look a little to the northeast of that location, just south of the fossil river. It's plain as day.

Re:This is not one of those cases

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

According to the article, the author himself thinks that the aboriginal Australians were sophisticated enough to recognize impact craters on the landscape, and what might have caused them, and concoct legends about falling objects to explain them.

With all due respect to the parent post, the Indigenous Australians may have great knowledge that has been dismissed by their Western colonizers, but this is not evidence of such.

So, figuring out what happened after the fact is not as impressive as witnessing it?
Seems backwards to me.

There are always possibilities....

[mark-t]

• We are wrong about how long humans have been on the planet
• We are wrong about how long ago the impact was
• We are wrong about the level of sophistication of pre-human ancestors in the area to relate such folklore
• It is a serendipitous coincidence that such folklore happens to appear to match up with an actual meteor impact.

The latter seems to me to be the most likely explanation at this time. There would need be far more such occurrences before I would even begin to start to presume one of the others.