An interesting anthropological read:
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/
Smoky bandit said:Yep .....But they are not extinct.....I work with a couple
BigWave said:An interesting anthropological read:
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/
:8HeadsUp said:Smoky bandit said:Yep .....But they are not extinct.....I work with a couple
Pygmies or mental midgets ?
I agree with the idea that people can adapt in size to suit there environmental situation rapidly but think there is very strong genetic evidence to support the pemise of more than one wave of people.goldierocks said:I would be a little wary of Windschuttle and Quadrant (i.e. strongly political rather than a scientific journal or scientist). A desire for multiple waves of different people, questioning who are the "first" people. You may have heard of the "history wars". The basic descriptions are presumably accurate though, but I suspect that the genetics are known by now (those on other aborigines in general do not show much support for distinct waves of migration, but do show some evolutionary links with "negrito" and other people of southeast Asia). Not so much as mixing of different groups but as a continuum (so southern Indian people and particularly those in the Andaman Islands who recently killed a missionary there are quite close genetically to Australian aborigines). Stature can change quite rapidly more or less in place to suit local conditions (many such people seem to live in rain forests), and is not a reliable indicator of a different wave of people. Local conditions such as dense vegetation, limited sunlight etc can have evolutionary effects - there are pygmy humans in the African Congo but also pygmy elephants and pygmy deer - pygmy elephants also occur in the thick forests around Knysna in the South African Cape. These Australian have no relationship at all to the "pygmy" people of Africa of course (no more than you or I) - who are genetically somewhat similar to other people of that continent. It is just a descriptive term relating to size as used here.
Interesting though.
Where? There is plenty of evidence for that elsewhere in the world, even in New Guinea where there are at least two waves (most PNG people seem to be a later wave than Australian aborigines based on DNA studies), but I am not aware of any GENETIC evidence for it in Australia (i.e. there quite possibly are multiple waves in Australia but not of GENETICALLY distinct people (i.e. differing DNA). I have only found limited studies of DNA done in Australia, so it does not exclude the possibility - but I suspect that any actual genetic evidence is lacking at this time. What I have read seems to indicate one group starting in northern Queensland and spreading out into Australia with time, but DNA differences are small.Goldfreak said:I agree with the idea that people can adapt in size to suit there environmental situation rapidly but think there is very strong genetic evidence to support the pemise of more than one wave of people.goldierocks said:I would be a little wary of Windschuttle and Quadrant (i.e. strongly political rather than a scientific journal or scientist). A desire for multiple waves of different people, questioning who are the "first" people. You may have heard of the "history wars". The basic descriptions are presumably accurate though, but I suspect that the genetics are known by now (those on other aborigines in general do not show much support for distinct waves of migration, but do show some evolutionary links with "negrito" and other people of southeast Asia). Not so much as mixing of different groups but as a continuum (so southern Indian people and particularly those in the Andaman Islands who recently killed a missionary there are quite close genetically to Australian aborigines). Stature can change quite rapidly more or less in place to suit local conditions (many such people seem to live in rain forests), and is not a reliable indicator of a different wave of people. Local conditions such as dense vegetation, limited sunlight etc can have evolutionary effects - there are pygmy humans in the African Congo but also pygmy elephants and pygmy deer - pygmy elephants also occur in the thick forests around Knysna in the South African Cape. These Australian have no relationship at all to the "pygmy" people of Africa of course (no more than you or I) - who are genetically somewhat similar to other people of that continent. It is just a descriptive term relating to size as used here.
Interesting though.
I have not seen that article - do you know the programme? Genetic markers (alleles etc) are not quite the same thing as being a different people - one can have the same haplogroup (clade) or subclade but contain markers of other people - unless you are African, you like me have about 2% Neanderthal genes - if you have Asian ancestry you might also have up to 6% Denisovan genes, but neither tells much about different waves of people or makes us Neanderthal or Denisovan (although my wife might suspect the former - but the poor old Neanderthals get a bad press). Such markers are often too small a difference to tell us much about waves of movement of peoples, which tends to be at haplogroup and subclade level. I have typical R1a haplogroup but my wife has J - mine is typical of a wave of Middle Eastern people who brought farming into Europe about 10,000 years ago, she is more typical of people who never left the Middle East-Levant (e.g. Jews, Arabs, some North Africans and Iranians). So she and I represent two distinct waves of migration (also, an earlier haplogroup of European hunter-gatherers in Europe from 40,000 years ago were displaced by my R1a mob). R1b tend to be later again (eg Slavic people entering Europe from the east after R1a). African people lack either Neanderthal or Denisovan genes (representing an ultimate source area for all Homo sapiens) and are mostly L from memory that evolved to haplogroups like U and R in the Middle East. A complication is that changes in a haplogroup can represent local factors and not always emigration of peoples (eg one subclade evolved entirely in Europe - H? but entirely from R1a I think - this is all from memory and may contain a few minor errors. People in northern India are a later migration into India of the same Middle Eastern farmers who enteres Europe 10,000 years ago. The Roma ("gypsies") then originated in northwest India and migrated into Iran for a couple of hundred years, moving into Europe 1000 years ago - they were thought in those days to be from Egypt and hence called gypsies, but their DNA and language is from India.Goldfreak said:That is true for the Y or male lineage amongst aboriginals which has little foreign influence over 50000 years but the mitochondrial DNA does contain other genetic markers from other people's. So they said on the ABC anyway.
They are now formally known as Homo floriensis and are not the same species as Homo sapiens and we have not evolved from them. They appear to have decreased in size because of environmental factors (a common thing on islands), perhaps evolved from an earlier species of Homo such as those originally known as Java Man and Peking man (I think species Homo robusta but have not checked). Despite being a different species from us, they, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo heidelbergensis, Denisovans (not yet called Homo denisova because we only have some fingerbones not a skeleton) and probably one other hominin species coexisted with us until they progressively died out between 30,000 and 16,000 years ago depending on species. Only we now survive, as the most intelligent species and most dangerous species of any life on Earth.Gunter said:There was that amazing discovery of about 6 skeletons of 3 foot tall humanoids in Indonesia , a few years back , so why not ? Indonesia was once connected to Australia by land !
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