Were there pre-colonial civilizations in Australia?

Question

Does Australia have pre-colonial civilizations that are equivalent to America's Maya, Aztec or Inca?

If they don't, how come there weren't any huge and prosperous native civilizations in Australia?

Are there any plausible reasons or explanations for that?

Answer 1

see this link

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/aborigina...

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Australia has an indigenous population that have lived in australia for 40 000 years+

I dont know why they didnt grow HUGELY powerful. they had no enemys, but they also had little contact with the outside world. when Aus was colonised they were still using spears and boomerangs...maybe that was all they needed for hunting, gathering etc?

Answer 4

Hi.  Australia certainly had a pre-colonial population.  Australian Aboriginals are one of the world's oldest and most stable cultures with an uninterrupted chain of identity stretching back at least 30,000 years, probably more.

Certainly if you apply a european definition of "civilization" they never developed one.  This formed the legal basis for their dispossession from all property rights for over two hundred years (GoolgeWiki the doctrine of "terra nullius").

Australian aboriginals never developed beyond clan organisation and an early neolithic technological development.  They did not have complex textiles, (although they certainly knew how to weave) metallurgy, agriculture or writing beyond the most symbolic cave art.

Why ?  No idea.  They just do not seem to be wired up to operate as a European or Asian is.  There is no physical explanation in terms of geography.  Much of Australia is very harsh and really only supports nomadic hunter-gatherers but it is an entire continent and there are certainly enough areas that are mild and would support settlement as well as the fertile crescent did.

Conversely, "they had everything they needed" does not explain it either.  There are a lot of climactic factors in Southern Australia that present physical challenges that would reward technological innovation - a blanket for freezing Tasmanian winters, for example, but this just never happened.

The closest analogy seems to be Southern Africa.  It would appear that without interaction from the outside if a homogenous culture develops organised around small clan groupings then this just never germinates into a technological society.

Maybe this indicates that the true driver for human technological evolution (which you will note I am pretty much using as a synonym for civilization) is essentially military.  If your only competitors are similarly small clan organisations you have no incentive to develop beyond that.  It is only in a heterogenous social environment where the threat of a technlogoically advanced external force drives technological change within your own society.  This has a "chicken and egg problem", however as clearly neolithic societies did develop, although I guess they took a h**l of a long time to do so - about 600 000 years of static social structures and then one explosion from the indo-europeans.  Maybe the true nature of humans is to stay static unless they are forced to change and our euro-centric viewpoint hides the fact that we are the exception.

The other problem with this "time casule" arguement is that there was certainly some interaction with polynesia and asia, and Melenesians had even more contact but similarly had no development beyond the tribal whereas other isolated populations did develop through internal competition.

Some bunny-huggers present the precolonial period in an unduly rosy light  as some sort of primitive bliss in which everyone lived in harmony with nature and each other - holders of an older wisdom that we Westerners are only now beginning to appreciate.

Some rednecks opine that they were just a bunch of useless throwbacks who spent 40,000 years complaining about being cold rather than invent trousers.

As usual the truth is probably in the middle.

I appreciate that this does not really answer your question, certainly as to the "why" part.  It is hard to get a decent discussion on these points without politics and racism (in both directions) clouding the issue.

Answer 5

First, we should define "civilization" so we can answer the question accurately.

civ·i·li·za·tion (sv-l-zshn)

n.

1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.

2. The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch: Mayan civilization; the civilization of ancient Rome.

3. The act or process of civilizing or reaching a civilized state.

4. Cultural or intellectual refinement; good taste.

5. Modern society with its conveniences: returned to civilization after camping in the mountains.

Or a definition from another dictionary:

Civilization, or civilisation, is a word describing a type of society. It comes from the Latin word civis, meaning someone who lives in a town. A civilization is a complex society, where people live together in cities. To be called a civilization, the people must have a way of farming, people who can be scientists or thinkers, people who rule over most of the people, writing, religion, Art, and money.

1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.

2. The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch: Maya civilization; the civilization of ancient Rome.

3. The act or process of civilizing or reaching a civilized state.

4. Cultural or intellectual refinement; good taste.

5. Modern society with its conveniences: returned to civilization after camping in the mountains.

Or from yet another:

Main Entry: civ·i·li·za·tion  

Pronunciation: \ˌsi-və-lə-ˈzā-shən\

Function: noun

Date: 1772

1 a: a relatively high level of cultural and technological development; specifically : the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained b: the culture characteristic of a particular time or place

2: the process of becoming civilized

3 a: refinement of thought, manners, or taste b: a situation of urban comfort

— civ·i·li·za·tion·al  \-shnəl, -shə-nəl\ adjective

There were no pre-colonial civilizations in Australia.

There were people who had a society, but by no definition could they be called a civilized society.

Politically incorrect? Yes. Historically accurate? Yes.

Who knows why? Probably because they could manage with a primitive hunter/gatherer society and no-one ever felt the need to advance any further, but it's an inescapable and inarguable fact that there was no progress beyond the society that existed in pre-colonial times and there was no civilization.