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Aboriginal Folklore Leads To Meteorite Crater

Posted by samzenpus on from the bunyip-approved dept.

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.'"

7 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Always more to the legends and stories... by YankDownUnder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
    1. Re:Always more to the legends and stories... by krou · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
    2. Re:Always more to the legends and stories... by hwyhobo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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      End anonymous moderation and posting on /.
    3. Re:Always more to the legends and stories... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:Always more to the legends and stories... by Jacques+Chester · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --

      Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.

    5. Re:Always more to the legends and stories... by neonsignal · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Re:This is not one of those cases by derdesh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.