Aboriginal science: their knowledge completely underestimated by white Australia
Aboriginal people – how to misunderstand their science, The Conversation, Ray Norris, 21 April 14 Just one generation ago Australian schoolkids were taught that Aboriginal people couldn’t count beyond five, wandered the desert scavenging for food, had no civilisation, couldn’t navigate and peacefully acquiesced when Western Civilisation rescued them in 1788.
How did we get it so wrong?
Australian historian Bill Gammage and others have shown that for many years land was carefully managed by Aboriginal people to maximise productivity. This resulted in fantastically fertile soils, now exploited and almost destroyed by intensive agriculture.
In some cases, Aboriginal people had sophisticated number systems, knew bush medicine, and navigated using stars and oral maps to support flourishing trade routes across the country.
They mounted fierce resistance to the British invaders, and sometimes won significant military victories such as the raids by Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy. Only now are we starting to understand Aboriginal intellectual and scientific achievements.
The Yolngu people, in north eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, long recognised how the tides are linked to the phases of the moon.
Back in the early 17th century, Italian scientistGalileo Galilei was still proclaiming, incorrectly, that the moon had nothing to do with tides.
Some Aboriginal people had figured out how eclipses work, and knew how the planets moved differently from the stars. They used this knowledge to regulate the cycles of travel from one place to another, maximising the availability of seasonal foods.
Why are we only finding this out now?………..
Still to learn
In recent years, it has become clear that traditional Aboriginal people knew a great deal about the sky, knew the cycles of movements of the stars and the complex motions of the sun, moon and planets………
kids studying science today could also learn much from the way that pre-contact Aboriginal people used observation to build a picture of the world around them.
This “ethno-science” is similar to modern science in many ways, but is couched in appropriate cultural terms, without expensive telescopes and particle accelerators.
So if you want to learn about the essence of how science works, how people learn to solve practical problems, the answer may be clearer in an Aboriginal community than in a high-tech laboratory. http://theconversation.com/aboriginal-people-how-to-misunderstand-their-science-23835
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