No truly agricultural society can be based on native grain species that grow abundantly in wet years, but will not grow in dry years. Settled, Aboriginal ‘farmer’ societies would not have survived Australia’s ruthless swings from droughts to floods.
All in Debunking Dark Emu
Parents, Is Young Dark Emu Appropriate for your Child?
Distinguished academic Professor Marcia Langton has warned against “scaring the living daylights” out of children when teaching the history of violence against indigenous people.
How Low Can a Writer Go in Re-writing our Colonial History?
Fact checking of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, leaves the author open to a serious accusation of deliberately hiding evidence.
Did the Dutch Teach Aborigines How to Cultivate Yams?
Were Dutch survivors of the Batavia wreck responsible for introducing yam agriculture to the Aborigines?
Mr Pascoe is Full-Steam Ahead - No Stooking Here!
Innocent transcription errors or wilful attempts to slant the narrative? Read our review and critique and you decide!
Fact Checking of Mr Pascoe's Grain Stores
Is Mr Pascoe describing a real Aboriginal grain store or constructing a hypothetical, idealised one?
Bogan Picks and the Case of the Missing Hoe
Another case of Cultural Appropriation? Torres Strait Islanders had agriculture, but Australian Aborigines did not.
Mr Pascoe’s ‘Hoes’, 'Megafauna Butchering Tools' or a Simple Pounding Tool? - It’s your Bogan Pick
A 1 metre Bogan pick so large you can’t lift it above your waist.
Really?
Mr Pascoe’s ‘Stone Hoes’ - But Wait There Are More
If the Aborigines really had ‘stone ploughs’ to till and cultivate their crops, why weren’t hundreds found, complete with their wooden handles?
Mr Pascoe's Cultural Appropriation
Mr Pascoe claims this photograph is of an Aboriginal ‘Dome’ house that his great, great grandfather may have used while living at Lockhart River in Queensland. Actually, we find that it is a ‘Dome’ house constructed by the Meriam people from the Torres Strait Islands and shows Melanesian and Polynesian influences. It is not Australian Aboriginal at all, and is not from the Australian mainland.
Mr Pascoe's Imaginary Aboriginal Irrigation Schemes
The few, recorded Aboriginal dams were constructed to conserve flood waters for drinking water, not to irrigate crops.
Real Examples of Non-farming Aboriginals
There is abundant, authenticated evidence of the Aboriginal Hunter-Gatherer society. But you may need to put on your ‘Rose-Coloured-Glasses’ to find the “evidence” of Mr Pascoe’s Aboriginal Agriculture!
We Respond to a Reader's Comments on our Critique of Mr Pascoe's Dark Emu.
The Six Main Centres of Pre-historic Agricultural Society - And the Australian Continent Wasn’t One of Them
The Gerritsen-Pascoe Theory of Aboriginal Agriculture - a Scholarly Rebuttal
This is not “domesticated yam farming with sowing, cultivation, irrigation and crop protection”, but instead is traditional foraging and gathering.
Chairman Pascoe’s Great Leap Forward - Do What I Say, Not What I Do
Rather it is a case of Chairman Pascoe’s Great Leap back to the Past with his Australian Agricultural Revolution!
Emeritus Professor David Frankel, archaeologist from La Trobe University, supports Mr Pascoe's Theory - or does he?
Mr Pascoe favourably cites the work of Professor Frankel, but does Frankel’s work support Pascoe’s Aboriginal Agriculture Theory? We would suggest not!
Mr Pascoe's Main Reference Source Bombs
Explosive new revelations about who supplied the basis of Dark Emu
A Literary 'Ménage à trois'?
In a world of Fakenews, to maintain the faith of the general public, academics, writers and journalists need to be seen to be avoiding Conflicts of Interest in the work they publish, or at least making Declarations of Interest where appropriate.
'Romancing the Stones' - Mr Pascoe's Stone Village Houses
Stone house villages? Really?