On December 16 2002, the Melbourne academic Robert Manne accused me of plagiarism in my book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Manne said that on pages 377–82 I had used several passages written by the American anthropologist Robert Edgerton without properly attributing them to Edgerton’s own book Sick Societies. According to The Age newspaper, which put the story on page one, Manne said that “on several occasions Windschuttle had used Edgerton’s exact words”. The same day the Sydney Morning Herald ran a similar report on page two, only instead of outright plagiarism, the Herald quoted Manne accusing me of “soft plagiarism”. Both The Age and the Herald also published a column written by Manne about my book on the same day.
On December 13, while on a promotional tour in Tasmania, I had been telephoned by journalists from both newspapers asking for a response. I pointed out that I had quoted Edgerton himself on page 382, properly attributing him as one of the authors I had consulted. I wrote down and dictated the following statement:
It would be perfectly clear to any reader that the section of my book Manne discusses does not pretend to be original. It is a summary of the anthropological literature about pre-contact Aboriginal society. I used three main sources: several articles by Rhys Jones; H. Ling Roth’s The Aborigines of Tasmania and Robert Edgerton’s Sick Societies, plus a number of primary sources, especially the diaries of George Augustus Robinson. There are 20 footnotes to the text, referring to 27 different works. All of them are fully attributed in the text and footnotes. The similarities between Edgerton’s work and mine come from the fact that we are both summarizing Jones’s original essays.
Manne’s quotations are deceptively selective. He omits most of what I quoted from Ling Roth and Robinson to make it appear as if all I am doing is following Edgerton. No one who reads my book with an open mind would see this as any kind of plagiarism, hard or soft. The suggestion is false and defamatory. It is a measure of how desperate my critics are that they have to resort to character assassination and distorting my own text instead of debating the evidence I have produced about their fabrication of history.
In its December 16 story The Age also sought the opinion of Andrew Alexandra of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Alexandra appeared in the story as an independent commentator weighing up the evidence. The Age claimed he had “examined both books” and found that my lack of footnoting “ ‘looks pretty slipshod’ but did not believe it constituted plagiarism”. The next day I telephoned Andrew Alexandra to ask him why he had said this, given that my sources were all fully footnoted and fully attributed. He told me he had not “examined both books”, as The Age claimed. He had not, in fact, read either of them. He had only seen a document purporting to contain extracts from my book and from Edgerton’s, which had been supplied to him by a journalist from The Age. Later that day, he acquired a copy of my book and realized that The Age’s document had misled him. He then wrote an apology in the form of a letter to the editor. Alexandra’s letter said:
Your story “Historians in bitter ‘plagiarism’ dispute” (The Age 16/12) reports comments that I made on Robert Manne’s claim that in The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, historian Keith Windschuttle plagiarized from a book by Robert Edgerton. Early in its report, The Age incorrectly says that I “examined both books”; later it correctly says that I made my comments “after examining the passages for The Age”.
I asserted that Windschuttle had not provided appropriate references for a number of the factual claims that he made, such as “the archaeological record showing that Tasmanian Aborigines gave up eating fish about 4000 years ago”. I have now looked over Windschuttle’s book, where extensive referencing to the sources for the relevant factual claims is to be found.
Therefore, I apologise unreservedly to Keith Windschuttle for making the incorrect claim that he had not provided adequate referencing for such factual claims, and for any adverse inferences concerning his professional integrity that might have been made on the basis of that claim.
Andrew Alexandra, Abbotsford
The Age published this apology in its letters page, but did not give it any prominence. Despite the fact that Manne’s accusation had been a page one story, The Age did not accompany this letter with any follow-up news story. Moreover, The Age declined to publish a letter I had written to the editor about this matter.
A few days later, when The Australian newspaper contacted Edgerton himself at the University of California, Los Angeles, he denied the plagiarism charge. “I do not regard Windschuttle’s work as plagiarism and do not believe that he needed to cite me more than he did,” Edgerton told the newspaper (Australian, December 21-22).
However, the Sydney Morning Herald also contacted Edgerton and reported a different response. “It is true that Windschuttle several times paraphrases me in what could be seen as soft plagiarism,” the Herald reported him saying (December 23). But in a letter to me on January 24 2003, Edgerton denied he had said this: “I told them I wanted nothing to do with the issue and that I saw no wrongdoing on your part. They even misquoted me. When I was asked if I thought you had engaged in ‘soft plagiarism’ I emailed a reply that said, ‘perhaps but I can’t say because I don’t know what the term means’.”
Another story on this issue was published in The Australian (December 17), plus a column by Miranda Devine in the Sydney Morning Herald (December 19) and an opinion piece by Jane Sullivan in The Age (December 19)
The Age had based its original December 16 story on a document supplied by Robert Manne, in which he prepared a table comparing the text of thirteen extracts from my book with similar passages in Edgerton’s Sick Societies. Manne supplied this table to other journalists. He quoted part of this table in a letter to The Australian on December 23. I replied with the following letter in The Australian on December 24.
Robert Manne’s letter (December 23) quotes three sentences from my book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, which he claims I plagiarised from Robert Edgerton. In all three cases, however, the sentences come from primary sources that I cite openly and fully. Edgerton and I are both summarising and paraphrasing the same sources, a perfectly legitimate academic practice.
The first two sentences Manne quotes are: “The women alone collected shellfish and crayfish, diving deep into coastal waters.” (Fabrication page 379) and “The women used simple wooden digging sticks to uproot vegetables and wooden chisels to prise shellfish from rocks.” (page 377) My original source is Ling Roth’s The Aborigines of Tasmania (page 101): “These [shellfish] are often taken in deep water by the native women, who dive for them, and force them from the rocks by means of a wooden chisel.” Roth is the principal footnote I give (page 377, note 87) for this and other information about Aboriginal food sources. My information about these matters could not have come from Edgerton since he does not mention the Aborigines eating crayfish, whereas I do, following Roth’s discussion on pages 89 and 94.
The third sentence I am supposed to have plagiarised from Edgerton is: “Their entire catalogue of manufactured goods comprised about two dozen articles.” This information comes from Rhys Jones’s article “The Tasmanian Paradox”, page 197, where he writes: “There in its stark simplicity of about two dozen items is the entire corpus of Tasmanian technology. No simpler technology has ever been recorded in the world’s ethnographic literature.” Jones is my second major source, cited on page 378, footnotes 89 and 91.
These three sentences in Manne’s letter constitute his strongest case. The other ten examples in the list he has been circulating to journalists have even less credibility. He has stitched together various phrases I have used, all heavily edited, punctuated with numerous ellipses and carefully designed to disguise the fact that they are not full quotations from either my text or Edgerton’s.
If Manne was really concerned about academic probity he would not be mounting this irrelevant diversionary tactic but discussing the dozens of cases my book reveals where historians have falsified evidence, misquoted and distorted original documents, and invented atrocities that never occurred.
Keith Windschuttle, Paddington
I have since prepared the table below, which compares my own text, the comparable text from Edgerton, Manne’s version of what we both wrote, plus the original anthropological literature we both consulted and cited. The table shows that in each case of alleged plagiarism my text does not come directly from Edgerton but from one of the three anthropological sources I cite. It is inevitable, where two authors are summarizing and paraphrasing the same texts, that some of their terminology will be the same. Provided the sources are attributed properly, as Edgerton and I both do, this is perfectly acceptable academic practice.
It should also be clear there is not one sentence of mine that is the same as Edgerton’s – not even one clause. In no fewer than half of his examples, Manne’s own table did not faithfully reproduce either my text or Edgerton’s. Of his twenty-six quotations from both our texts, thirteen were reproduced accurately but thirteen were different to the originals.
Moreover, there is some information in the sentences of mine cited by Manne that could not possibly have come directly from Edgerton since his book does not provide that information. Edgerton does not mention that the Tasmanian diet included crayfish and mutton birds, whereas I do, following Ling Roth (Aborigines of Tasmania, pages 84, 87, 89, 94 and 102) and Rhys Jones (Why Did the Tasmanians Stop Eating Fish?’, page 21). Also, I say that Tasmanian technology included weaving needles and volcanic glass tools, citing Rhys Jones (‘Tasmanian Paradox’, pages 194 and 196), whereas this information is not to be found anywhere in Edgerton’s book.
Manne’s original charge of plagiarism studiously avoided any mention of the kind of comparisons that are made in the table below. He did not tell anyone about the relationship between what I wrote and the original works I cited as my sources. He based his public accusation solely on the similarities between Edgerton’s text and mine, without doing what he should have done, that is, comparing the two of us to the anthropological literature from which we both derived our information. Hence, Manne deceived his readers and the journalists who took his allegations at face value.
I should also note that, since preparing the table below, I have come across a discussion of the Tasmanian Aborigines by Jared Diamond in his 1997 book Guns, Germs and Steel. Diamond says he consulted the work of Rhys Jones but does not list Edgerton among his reading. Yet he opens his discussion (page 312) with a sentence very similar to that adopted by both Edgerton and me. He also includes some of the same detail that we both presented. In other words, three different authors have each read the anthropological literature about the Tasmanian Aborigines and, independently, have summarized it in much the same way. This is not plagiarism. It simply indicates there is a natural way to tell this story, which all three authors adopted. Diamond writes as follows:
When finally encountered by Europeans in AD 1642, the Tasmanians had the simplest material culture of any people in the modern world. Like mainland Aborigines, they were hunter-gatherers without metal tools. But they also lacked many technologies and artifacts widespread on the mainland, including barbed spears, bone tools of any type, boomerangs, ground or polished stone tools, hafted stone tools, hooks, nets, pronged spears, traps, and the practices of catching and eating fish, sewing, and starting a fire.
As I said in my original statement to the press, Manne’s allegation of plagiarism had nothing to do with his concern for academic standards. It was an attempt to divert public attention away from my exposure of the widespread fabrication in which historians of Aboriginal Australia have engaged. Bereft of an answer to these charges, Manne resorted to the only strategy left in his armoury: ad hominem abuse. It is his own decision to descend to such devious tactics that is the real issue here.
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Manne’s version of Edgerton |
Manne’s version of Windschuttle |
Full sentence version of Edgerton |
Full sentence version of Windschuttle |
Text of original source |
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When
Europeans first made contact with them in the eighteenth century, the
approximately 4000 Tasmanians then living had the simplest technology ever
reported for any human society. (p
47) |
When
first contacted in the eighteenth century, the Tasmanians were the most
primitive human society ever encountered. One measure of this was the
simplicity of their technology. (p
377) |
When
Europeans first made contact with them in the eighteenth century, the
approximately 4000 Tasmanians then living had the simplest technology ever
reported for any human society. (p
47) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
When
first contacted in the eighteenth century, the Tasmanians were the most
primitive human society ever encountered. One measure of this was the
simplicity of their technology. (p
377) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
No
simpler technology has ever been recorded in the world’s ethnographic
literature. (Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 197) The
outstanding feature of Tasmanian technology was its simplicity … (Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, pp 196) On
the island, people made their living through the medium of a technology, so
simple in the number and elaboration of its elements, as to stagger the
imagination. (Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 197) |
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Men
relied on one piece wooden spears and wooden clubs that they threw, along
with stones, usually with great accuracy. (p
47) |
The
men hunted with one-piece wooden spears, wooden clubs and stones. (p
377) |
Men
relied on one piece wooden spears and wooden clubs that they threw, along
with stones, usually with great accuracy. (p
47) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
The
men hunted with one-piece wooden spears, wooden clubs and stones. (p
377) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
To
hunt, men used one piece spears, between 4.5 and 6m long … (Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 196) A
stout, straight or fusiform stick … was used both as a throwing stick and as
a club to dispatch game which had been wounded or bailed up by other means.
Small spherical pebbles were also part of the projectile armoury, thrown
accurately in volleys by several men. (Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 197 |
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Women
used simple wooden digging sticks to prise up roots, wooden chisels to pry
shellfish off rocks. (p
47) |
The
women used digging sticks to uproot vegetables and wooden chisels to prise
shellfish from rocks. (p
377) |
Women
used simple wooden digging sticks to prise up roots, wooden chisels to pry
shellfish off rocks, short grass ropes to climb trees, and woven grass bags
to carry the fruits of their efforts. (p
47) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
The
women used digging sticks to uproot vegetables and wooden chisels to prise
shellfish from rocks. (p 377) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
These
[shellfish] are often taken in deep water by the native women, who dive for
them, and force them from the rocks by means of a wooden chisel. (Ling
Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p 101) These
[shellfish] were collected by women, who dived below water, prying the shells
off the rocks with a wooden wedge and putting them into small rush baskets
suspended from their throats. Rhys
Jones, ‘Why Did the Tasmanians Stop Eating Fish?’, p 20 Women
had a combination digging stick-club-chisel which was used for a variety of
purposes from digging up vegetable roots, ochre and killing game, to prising
bark off trees … (Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 197) Rocky
coast shellfish were obtained by diving, the women carrying in their hand a
small wooden spatula or wedge … (Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 197) |
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short
grass ropes to climb trees, and woven grass bags to carry the fruits of their
efforts (p
47) |
Their
most sophisticated possessions were grass ropes to climb trees and woven
grass bags … (p
377) |
Women
used simple wooden digging sticks to prise up roots, wooden chisels to pry
shellfish off rocks, short grass ropes to climb trees, and woven grass bags
to carry the fruits of their efforts. (p
47) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
Their
most sophisticated possessions were grass ropes to climb trees and woven grass
bags. (p
377) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
The
natives made use of a grass rope, which was passed round their body and the
tree [for climbing]. (Ling
Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p 143 – his square brackets) Bass
gives the following curious description of a basket: “The single utensil that
was observed lying near their huts was a kind of basket made of long wiry
grass … (Ling
Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p 145 – pages 142-5 have descriptions and
illustrations of Tasmanian basket work.) |
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In
all, the entire Tasmanian inventory of manufactured goods came to no more
than two dozen items. (p
47) |
Their
entire catalogue of manufactured goods comprised about two dozen articles. (p
377) |
In
all, the entire Tasmanian inventory of manufactured goods came to no more
than two dozen items. (p
47) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
Their
entire catalogue of manufactured goods comprised about two dozen articles. (p
377) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
There
in its stark simplicity of about two dozen items, is the entire corpus of
Tasmanian technology. (Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 197) |
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As
Rhys Jones has trenchantly pointed out, the Tasmanians either lost or abandoned
some seemingly useful forms of technology they originally brought to the
island. They once had bone tools, wooden boomerangs, barbed spears, but all
were gone long before the Europeans arrived. (p
47) [actually p 49] |
From
excavations … the archaeologist and prehistorian, Rhys Jones, has concluded
that several thousand years earlier, their technology had been more complex.
They once used barbed spears … They also used wooden boomerangs … However,
these had all been abandoned by the time Europeans arrived … (p
378) |
As
Rhys Jones has trenchantly pointed out, the Tasmanians either lost or
abandoned some seemingly useful forms of technology they originally brought
to the island. They once had bone tools, wooden boomerangs, barbed spears,
hafted stone tools, and edge-ground axes, but all these were gone long before
the Europeans arrived. (p
47) [actually p 49] [different
to Manne’s version] |
From
excavations of some long-used campsites and caves, the archaeologist and prehistorian
Rhys Jones, has concluded that several thousand years earlier, their
technology had actually been more complex. They once used bone tools, barbed
spears and weaving needles made of fish bone. They also had wooden
boomerangs, hafted stone tools, edge-ground stone axes and tools fashioned
from volcanic glass. However, these had all long been abandoned by the time
Europeans arrived. (p
378) [different
to Manne’s version] |
These
conclusions are based on excavations at a series of open and cave midden
sites in north west Tasmania. Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 194 In
coming to an explanation of the discontinuation of fishing; of the
abandonment of bone tools and the other items that they made; of why at the
South Australian threshold to Tasmania 10,000 years ago we have wooden
boomerangs and barbed spears and yet none were found in the Tasmanian tool
kit of AD 1800; of why again no hafted stone tools and no edge-ground axes
were in nineteenth-century Tasmanian technology, and yet both are now known
to have had a Pleistocene antiquity on the mainland …Rhys Jones, ‘Why Did the
Tasmanians Stop Eating Fish?, p 47 All
stone tools were held in the hand without the aid of any hafting technique,
and no edge ground axes have ever been found in an authentic context in
Tasmania… In higher levels, especially from 4000 BP onwards, there was a
steady and increasing introduction of high quality exotic raw materials such
as cherts, siliceous breccias, and spongolites ... (Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 194 …
the bone points and also the spatulae at Rocky Cape, were used as awls and
reamers in the manufacture of skin cloaks … Thus not only the bone tools
themselves but also the articles manufactured with them may also have been
discontinued… Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 196 |
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They
could not make fire by any of the methods known on the Australian mainland;
each Tasmanian band had to carry a burning firebrand at all times … (p
50) |
The
colonists were astonished to discover they could not make fire … They carried
firebrands and coals with them on their nomadic journeys … P
377) |
What
is more, they could not make fire by any of the methods known on the
Australian mainland; each Tasmanian band had to carry a burning firebrand at
all times or risk having no fire at all for warmth or cooking. (p
50) [different
to Manne’s version] |
The
colonists were astonished to observe they could not make fire, a skill that
even Neanderthal Man had mastered. They carried firebrands and coals with
them on their nomadic journeys. If the fires of one family were doused by
rain or flood, they had to go in search of others to ask for a light. (p
377) [different
to Manne’s version] |
Fire
was carried, usually by men, in smouldering slow burning fire sticks, but the
Tasmanians did not know how to make it (Plomley, 1962), having to go to their
neighbours for a re-light if their own sticks went out. Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 197 At
one time, the natives were said not to have known the art of making fire!
Calder declares (J.A.I. pp 19-20): “They were ignorant of any method of
procuring fire.” … Dove makes a similar statement, only he uses more words to
say it in (I. p 250), and Backhouse (p. 99) “learned that the Aborigines of
V.D. Land had no artificial method of obtaining fire, before their
acquaintance with Europeans ...” Ling
Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p 84 |
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Until
approximately 4,000 years ago, fish were an important food source for them,
but after that time fish disappeared from the archaeological record… (p
50) [actually p 49] |
Fish
were originally an important part of their diet but the archaeological record
shows they gave up eating fish … about 4000 years ago. (p
378) |
Until
approximately 4,000 years ago,
fish were an important food source
for them, but after that time fish
disappeared from the archaeological record… (p
50) [actually p 49] [same
as in Manne’s version] |
Fish
were originally an important part of their diet but the archaeological record
shows they gave up eating fish, and the manufacture of fish hooks and fish
spears, about 4000 years ago. (p
378) [different
to Manne’s version] |
…
when Rocky Cape was first occupied, 8000 years ago, bony fish, as represented
overwhelmingly by wrasses (‘parrot fish’) (Pseudolabrus sp) probably
contributed about 20% of the non –molluscan meat, by weight. This fraction
was maintained until some time between 3800 and 3500 BP when suddenly, fish
completely disappeared from the diet, and this state of affairs continued
until the ethnographic present … The dropping of fish from Tasmanian diet
sometime about three of four thousand years ago is now confirmed from other sites,
both in the north west and the south east of the island. Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 196 |
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Most
coastal Australian aborigines made fish a staple of their diet, and they were
incredulous when told that the Tasmanians did not do the same. (p
50) |
Mainland
Aborigines for whom fish was dietary staple, were amazed to find the
Tasmanians refused to eat fish. (p
378) |
Most
coastal Australian aborigines made fish a staple of their diet, and they were
incredulous when told that the Tasmanians did not do the same. (p
50) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
Mainland
Aborigines for whom fish was dietary staple, were amazed to find the
Tasmanians refused to eat fish, even though they were abundant in the sea and
the inland rivers and lakes, especially in winter when other food was
limited. (p
378) [different
to Manne’s version] |
The
Anbara [mainland Aborigines] shared Captain Cook’s amazement on being told of
a coastal people who did not eat fish. Rhys
Jones, ‘Why Did the Tasmanians Stop Eating Fish?’ p 41 …
for the Tasmanians, winter was the stress period, when they fanned out into
small groups along the west coastline and lived on those resources which were
still available if less rich in absolute terms than during the summer… To
have been able to bring fish into play as a complement to mollusks and
crustacea during stress periods would have been a great advantage … Rhys
Jones, ‘Why Did the Tasmanians Stop Eating Fish?, p 36 |
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Instead
of creating new and better forms of hunting, fishing or medical treatment,
the Tasmanians lived on, generation after generation, actually abandoning
previously useful practices without creating new ones. As Rhys Jones … rather
dyspeptically put it … 4000 years of isolation apparently led … to a “slow
strangulation of the mind” (p
51) [actually pp 50-1] |
Instead
of technological progress, the Tasmanians had experienced a technological
regression … Jones writes … “The world’s longest isolation, the world’s
simplest technology … a slow strangulation of the mind” (p
378) |
Instead
of creating new and better forms of hunting, fishing or medical treatment,
the Tasmanians lived on, generation after generation, actually abandoning
previously useful practices without creating new ones. As Rhys Jones, perhaps
the foremost student of Tasmanian ethnoarchaeology rather dyspeptically put
it, 4000 years of isolation apparently led not to more adaptive cultural
forms but to a “slow strangulation of the mind” (p
51) [actually pp 50-1] [different
to Manne’s version] |
Instead
of technological progress, the Tasmanians had experienced a technological
regression. Isolated from the mainland when the waters rose 10,000 years ago,
and lacking any outside source of competition or innovation, the Tasmanians
suffered the consequences. Jones writes: Like
a blow above the heart, it took a long time to take effect, but slowly but
surely there was a simplification in the tool kit, a diminution in the range
of foods eaten, perhaps a squeezing of intellectuality. The world’s longest
isolation, the world’s simplest technology … a slow strangulation of the
mind. (p 378) [different to Manne’s version] |
Seven
thousand years ago at Rocky Point, people were using one bone implement for
every two or three stone ones… Three thousand years later, the ratio of bone
to stone tools had declined to only one in fifteen, and by three and a half
thousand years ago, bone tools had dropped out of the technology entirely.
Paralleling this decline in numbers, there was also a constriction in the
range of tool types. Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 196 Demographically
and culturally, Tasmania was a closed system. Indeed it will become the classic
example of such a system, for no other human society, which survived until
modern times, had been so isolated so completely for so long. Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 194 Like
a blow above the heart, it took a long time to take effect, but slowly but
surely there was a simplification in the tool kit, a diminution in the range
of foods eaten, perhaps a squeezing of intellectuality. The world’s longest
isolation, the world’s simplest technology. Were 4000 people enough to propel
forever the cultural inheritance of Late Pleistocene Australia? Even if Abel
Tasman had not sailed the winds of the Roaring Forties in 1642, were they in
fact doomed – doomed to a slow strangulation of the mind? Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, pp 202-3 |
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Early
European observers called [the men] “indolent” … (p
48) |
The
first European observers called the men “indolent” (p
379) |
While
men often remained in camp resting or talking (early European observers called
them “indolent”), women fetched water and firewood and gathered vegetable
products. (p
48) [different
to Manne’s version] |
The
first European observers called the men “indolent” and “extremely selfish”
and said they treated their women like “slaves” and “drudges”. (p
379) [different
to Manne’s version] |
“The
men are very indolent, and make the women their beasts of burden, and do all
their servile operations, such as cooking, etc… The men are extremely selfish
…” Ling
Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, pp 113-4, quoting from R. H. Davies, ‘On the
Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land’, 1846 “…
they [the women] acted only as drudges to carry their spears and game”, Ling
Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p 114, quoting Calder, 1874 The
men considered it beneath them, and left it [the shellfish], and all other
troublesome services, to them, who, in nine cases out of ten, were no better
than slaves. Ling
Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p 114 |
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[Women]
alone collected shellfish, the dietary staple, by diving deep into coastal
waters … (p
48) |
The
women alone collected shellfish and crayfish, diving deep into coastal waters
… (p
379) |
They
alone collected shellfish, the dietary staple, by diving deep into coastal
waters where sharp rocks, unpredictable currents, and stingrays were
dangerous hazards. (p
48) [different
to Manne’s version] |
The
women alone collected shellfish and crayfish, diving deep into coastal
waters. (p
379) [same
as in Manne’s version] |
These
[shellfish] are often taken in deep water by the women, who dive for them,
and force them from the rocks by means of a wooden chisel. Ling
Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p 101 …
the fishing (for shell-fish only, obtained by diving) was resigned wholly to
them. The men, he said, considered it beneath them. Ling
Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania p 103 |
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The
job of climbing eucalyptus trees … to club possums to death also fell to
women. P
48) |
Women
also climbed trees to catch possums … (p
379) |
More
remarkable still, the job of climbing
eucalyptus trees (to a height of as much as ninety feet!) to club
possums to death also fell to women. (p
48) [different
to Manne’s version] |
Women
also climbed trees to catch possums and swam to offshore rocks and islands
for muttonbirds and seals. (p
379) [different
to Manne’s version] |
Possums
were caught and thrown to the ground by women climbing up the trunks of
eucalypts often more than 30m high. Rhys
Jones, ‘Tasmanian Paradox’, p 197 Women
also swam up to two or three kilometers across open sea straits with
dangerous cross rips in order to get to the offshore islands where there were
seals and mutton birds. Rhys
Jones, ‘Why Did the Tasmanians Stop Eating Fish?’, p 21 |
Sources:
Full references for the three main anthropological sources cited are:
H.
Ling Roth, The Aborigines of Tasmania, Halifax, 1899
Rhys
Jones, ‘The Tasmanian Paradox’, in R. V. S. Wright (ed.), Stone Tools as
Cultural Markers, Canberra and New Jersey, 1977
Rhys
Jones, ‘Why Did the Tasmanians Stop Eating Fish?’, in R. A. Gould (ed.), Explorations
in Ethnoarchaeology, Santa Fe, 1978