Don't Accept That Mr Pascoe's Ancestors Have Been Here For 120,000 years? Maybe You have an 'Element of Racism'.
In a recent on-line interview with Neporendi Aboriginal Forum Inc., Mr Pascoe laments,
‘…to have this incredible history, you know we're talking 120,000 years minimum [the time of Aboriginal occupation of Australia] now because the excavation at Moyjil down near Warrnambool…has come up with an age of 120,000 years and there are some people who are beside themselves with anger and frustration that we're talking about these ages. You know, there's all these excuses about why this is wrong, you know the science is wrong, the method is wrong, but really, it's been examined again and again, and the same figures come up. It actually started out at 80,000 years, they re-examined, it came up with a hundred thousand years. They did tests on a midden 100 meters away and it came up with 120,000 years.
This is irrefutable now, and to be trying to resist this information is an element of racism. You know I might be wrong, but explain it to me. Explain why people are resisting information of such credibility by such eminent scientists. Why would you resist it? What's the point? Because you don't want a sophisticated Aboriginal culture. You don't want that because you don't want people to investigate the stolen land.’ - Posted on 25/8/2020. Listen here from 16:10 onwards. - [our emphasis]
Well Mr Pascoe, the reason why there has been considerable scepticism of this claim for a human presence of 120,000 years in Sahul (Australia before the sea-level rise) is because even the scientists who did the excavation and wrote the report say the evidence is only,
‘marginal’ and not ‘definitive and irrefutable for such a substantial claim [of 120,000 years] to be considered credible… At this juncture, [the site] does not meet this high level evidential threshold’. - See below Reference 2 - Conclusion on page 110-111.
So if you question Mr Pascoe’s claims of 120,000 years or more for this site, Mr Pascoe is incredulous and can only assume that for skeptics ‘to resist this information is an element of racism’.
In the following sections of this post we will summarise the currently accepted views on mankind’s occupation of Australia and see if Mr Pascoe is, once again, ‘just making stuff up’ about our country and selectively quoting to support his divisive narrative and re-writing of our history.
How long is it since Mankind Colonised Australia?
Map 1. Locations for sites listed in Table 1. Source : Jim Allen and James F. O’Connell, Australian Archaeology, the official publication of the Australian Archaeological Association Inc., December 2014, Volume 79:86–108
Table 1. Generally accepted age estimates for early human colonisation of Sahul and nearby islands shown in Map 1. Based on calibrated radiocarbon dates and other radiometric age estimates. Plus signs under each polygon indicate the central tendency; bars under those signs show two sigma limits bracketting that tendency. Tails show the absolute outer limits for each date or age estimate. (larger image here) Source : Jim Allen and James F. O’Connell, Australian Archaeology, the official publication of the Australian Archaeological Association Inc., December 2014, Volume 79:86–108
In 2014, a complete review of the scientific literature was made by Jim Allen (from Archaeology Program, La Trobe University) and James F. O’Connell (from Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City Utah, USA) to summarise the dates of mankind’s presence in Sahul , the continental mass consisting of Tasmania, Australia and New Guinea.
Their paper’s Abstract and Conclusion were as follows:
Abstract : This paper updates our previous analyses of the evidence for the timing of human arrival in Sahul. It reviews advances in dating technologies, summarises new data for sites published a decade ago or earlier, and examines the evidence from sites published since 2004. Extensions in time for first arrival can be attributed to improvements in both luminescence and radiocarbon dating techniques and especially the refinement of 14C calibration. The similarity of the ages of the earliest dates and their consistency with data from eastern Asia and Wallacea suggests that the discipline has now defined an event horizon that places first colonisation near but somewhere short of 50,000 years ago.
Conclusion : A strong argument can be made that the first humans arrived in Sahul shortly after 50 ka—on current evidence not earlier than 47–48 ka. This body of evidence is now sufficiently robust to suggest that dates for sites well in excess of this figure should be treated as outliers in the data. As a matter of course, these sites will require especially close scrutiny before acceptance. – [our emphasis]
So as of 2014, it was generally held within the scientifc community that humans arrived in Sahul, (and thus Australia after it separated due to sea-level rises) around 47-48,000 years ago. Or, for the sake of the general public discourse say, 50,000 years ago. ‘Dates for sites well in excess of this figure should be treated as outliers…and these sites will require especially close scrutiny before acceptance’.
This result was after decades of research and improvement in techniques that ultimately led to dismissing claims for human occupation of more than 100,000 years for some sites. (eg: for Jinmium which, when re-dated, was shown to be only about 22,000 years old (ibid., p89).
But archaeologists continue to dig and since 2014 further work has been done at a site known as the Madjedbebe rock shelter, which is located on the western edge of the Arnhem Land plateau in the Northern Territory. This site is now providing evidence that some archaeologists say indicates the presence of the, ‘Human occupation of northern Australia by 65,000 years ago’. - See article in Nature here
Over the coming years, peer-review and much debate will decide if this new date of 65,000 years is valid, although to some already it is highly unlikely given the genetic evidence now available - See article in the Conversation here.
We do note however, even this is far short of Mr Pascoe’s 120,000 years.
We are all ‘Out of Africa’
‘In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans, also called the "Out of Africa" theory is the dominant model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens). It follows the early expansions of hominins out of Africa, accomplished by Homo erectus and then Homo neanderthalensis.’ - Source Wikipedia
Figure 1. Mankind (as Homo sapiens) spread ‘Out of Africa’ on a journey to fully colonise Sahul (Australia) by some 50,000 years ago, during which time the unique Aboriginal societies developed. Meanwhile, their cousins, the proto-Europeans, were migrating slowly northwest from the Middle East as the ice-sheets receded in their colonisation of Europe. Both groups of cousins were later to unite in New South Wales in 1770 - 1788. - Source - Urutseg and Altaileopard - Public Domain Wikipedia
How Accurate is Pollen and Charcoal For Dating?
In his book Dark Emu, Mr Pascoe claims that,
‘Palynologists [pollen grain specialists] such as Singh and Kershaw have evidence which they suggest supports the fact that Aboriginal Australians began using fire as a tool over 120,000 years ago — even though most archaeologists believe human occupation of the continent occurred no earlier than 60,000 years ago’. - Dark Emu, 2018 reprint, p161.
and also,
“The need for further examination of ancient Aboriginal influence on Australian plant communities and landscapes has been stressed by AP Kershaw, the environmental scientist whose survey of Site 820 [see below] was designed to study the human presence in Queensland. He claims, ‘The weight of available evidence points towards Aboriginal burning as the most likely cause of vegetation changes…and this implies that people have been present on the Australian continent for at least 140,000 years.’
That this claim is contentious is obvious, but earlier pollencore studies by palynologist Gurdip Singh at Lake George, near Canberra, show similar activity resulting in sudden changes in land use. Singh proposed that this dramatic change in vegetation was a result of Aboriginal fire-stick farming'“- (ibid., p61).
The paper by AP Kershaw, which Mr Pascoe cites, is here. Kershaw’s work relates to a couple of bore holes at Site 820, some 60-80km off the Queensland coast near Cairns, that were drilled through the ocean floor from a research ship in about 280m of water. The bore holes were 400m deep through the sediment and, at every 10metres, the survey team collected a 5mL sample of the core that was sent to Kershaw’s team for pollen and charcoal analysis, some 44 samples in total from the bore-hole.
So think about that for a moment. Forty-four, level tablespoon sized samples, taken from 400metres of ocean floor sediments and then analysed for micron-sized particles of pollen and charcoal, the results of which were to be used to decide in what year Aboriginal people were first present in this part of north east Queensland. As a methodology, this sounds a little ‘dodgy’ to us. And not just to us, but also to the ‘father’ of Australian archaeology, John Mulvaney who, in his book with archaeologist Johan Kamminga, Prehistory of Australia, Smithsonian Institutional Press/Allen & Unwin, 1999 writes,
‘The pollen analyst Peter Kershaw…reported a…pattern in pollen and charcoal from seabed cores drilled 80 kilometres from the coast of north Queensland, on the outer edge of the continental shelf. Kershaw dates this event to about 100,000-140,000 years ago…This dramatic claim has not stood unchallenged. Archaeologist Peter White has examined the pollen diagram and argues that a similar influx of charcoal not attributed to human presence also occurred more than a milion years ago, and that the later concentration of charcoal is not part of a trend and is likely to be a chance occurrence due to variation in hydrology. There can be no single signature of prehistoric Aboriginal burning because different vegetation communities require different burning strategies. Currently, there is no consensus among pollen analysts and ecologists that a dramatic, sustained increase in charcoal particles in a water-borne sediment indicates a human firing regime rather than natural causes. Claims for human activities 60,000 or over 100,000 years ago based on pollen and fire records are not sufficiently convincing to project Australian prehistory well beyond the time depth demonstrated by the more reliable archaeological findings.- (ibid., p146).
Archaeologist Peter White’s rebuttal of Kershaw’s Site 820 paper is here, which also includes a further response by Kershaw.
Similarly, Mulvaney and Kamminga, (ibid., p145-146), cut Mr Pascoe’s claims for over 120,000 years, based on Singhs work at Lake George, down to size when they write,
‘[A] consideration which interests some prehistorians is the inferences to be drawn from charcoal. As the human population spread across Sahul they took with them fire, and the potential to create cultural landscapes by constant burning. Since the 1980s it has been pollen analysts who have reconstructed past vegetation patterns and fire histories, and who initially claimed to have the evidence for the earliest human presence in Australia. These histories are interpreted primarily from identification of preserved pollen grains extracted from sediments from the beds of lakes or swamps… [One] pollen record [that] figures prominently in these claims, and media reports about them have contributed to the widely held assumption that people must have come to Australia before 50,000 years ago,…was made in the early 1980s by the ANU palynologists Gurdip Singh and E. A. Geissler for Lake George, near Canberra.
The pollen in their cores indicated cycles in vegetation, from open herbaceous vegetation during glacials to Casuarine woodland and forest during interglacials, over a period of hundreds of thousands of years. A vegetation shift to eucalypt-dominated forest along with a dramatic increase in charcoal particles occurred in sediments believed to have been deposited around 125,000 years ago. Singh and Geissler argued that phenomenon may indicate human intervention in the fire regime. Richard Wright, a Sydney University archacologist, has since shown that the vegetation change they identified probably occurred about 60,000 years ago, which is still beyond the known archacological record.
Currently, the only certainty about the record of fire in the Lake George cores is that there was a marked increase during the Holocene and the change from fire-sensitive species to eucalypt dominance possibly was coincidental’. - [our emphasis].
So to our mind, Mr Pascoe has selectively seized on these dates of 100,000 to 140,000 years ago, resulting from some very disputed research work, to ‘inflate’ the time that Aboriginal people may have been in Australia. This is very surprising to us, given that we should all be fascinated enough that mankind has been here in Australia for at least 50,000 years. Why the need to try to inflate the figure by relying on unsubstantiated, and somewhat ‘shaky’, research findings?
And why does Mr Pascoe raise the possibility that skeptics are racists for just doing their job as scientists - questioning, peer-reviewing and forever challenging their colleague’s findings? That’s how science works, and accusations of ‘racism’ are totally uncalled for.
Why Can’t We Get The Bogans Just to Accept It?
Mr Pascoe was interviewed at the 2019 Byron Writers Festival by former ABC 4Corners presenter and journalist, Kerry O’Brien. He has been awarded two honorary doctorates: Doctor of the University from the Queensland University of Technology and Doctor of Letters honoris causa from the University of Queensland.
And consider what Mr Pascoe told former ABC 4Corners presenter and journalist, Kerry O’Brien, in 2019 at the Byron Writers Festival,
“I was really alarmed when Jim Bowler, the archaeologist who worked on Lady Mungo and Mungo Man at Lake Mungo. When he worked at Warrnambool…and came up with an age of …occupation at Warrnambool in Victoria of 120,000 years. Australia accepted that with incredible equanimity; or silence*. 120,000 years is 50,000 years before ‘Out-of-Africa’. What were Aboriginal people doing here 120,000 years ago? The old people have always said, ‘we have always been here’…This is startling news. Not for us. This is startling news for the world. We are talking about the beginnings of human society, and it happened here; this is our land.”
And Kerry O’Brien, clearly an educated man, doesn’t raise an eyebrow at this date, but chips in with,
“And we don’t get it do we? We don’t get, what that means and how special it would be for this modern nation, not just to embrace it, but in embracing it, being a part of it.” - Listen from 19:19 here
Mainstream Australia may not be very intellectual and lack the academic achievements of Mr O’Brien and Mr Pascoe, but we have common sense and can do basic maths. We are not so stupid and gullible that we would accept without skepticism that Aboriginal people were having a BBQ down at Warrnambool 120,000 years ago, when we understand that mankind only left Africa some 70,000 to 100,000 years ago.
To quote Australian historian, Professor Gregory Melleuish,
‘Why are Australian Intellectuals and academics so hostile to contemporary Australian Life? Why do they so often hold disparaging views of their fellow Australians?’ -
Why indeed.
*Mr Pascoe claims that the reports of the work at Warrnambool indicating an Aboriginal occupation of 120,000 years were accepted, ‘with incredible equanimity or silence’ by Australians. Is this just Mr Pascoe ‘making stuff up again’? The results of Jim Bowler’s and John Sherwood’s work were very widely publicised in Australia, so there was hardly a ‘silence’ - see all the reports at the time in, The Age , The Guardian, The Herald Sun, The Standard, The Canberra Times and even the Australian Museum amongst others. So it was hardly a ‘silence.’
However, Mr Pascoe is correct in claiming that Australians may have shown ‘incredible equanimity’ [defn: calmness and composure, especially in a difficult situation]. We all were very skeptical and thought it was a ‘rubbish’ conclusion to draw from the limited amount of evidence presented by Jim Bowler’s team, but it put us in a difficult situation as we we were all too polite to say so in public.
To paraphrase Professor Melleuish (Reference 1) again,
‘[A]cademics…are more interested in imposing their views on the wider population than they are in allowing for freedom of speech and expression. Academics, like many other intellectuals, have a very high opinion of themselves and their rightness. Humility is not a virtue in their world. If you are right and you have good intentions then surely you should not only be heard but should also prevail.’
So how dare Australians shrug their shoulders after reading the news reports about the ‘120,000 year old’ site at Warrnambool. Well, we were just being polite and didn’t want to say that we all thought it was a bit of academic BS and the researchers needed to come back with some more definitive evidence before we all jumped onto our rooftops to patriotically wave our flags.
And it wasn’t just us. Even the Australian Museum issued a disclaimer,
‘Recently published dates of 120,000 years ago for the site of Moyjil in Warrnambool, Victoria, offer intriguing possibilities of much earlier occupation…The site contains remains of shellfish, crabs and fish in what may be a ‘midden’, but definitive proof of human occupation is lacking and investigations are ongoing’.
This is museum-speak for, ‘we really wish it was true, but at this stage it looks fanciful and we are too polite to say so.’
References for this Post
Reference 1 : Melleuish, G., Australian Intellectuals -Their Strange History and Pathological Tendencies, Connor Court Pub. 2013
Reference 2 : the actual paper cited by Mr Pascoe is by Jim Bowler, et al, THE MOYJIL SITE, SOUTH-WEST VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA: EXCAVATION OF A LAST INTERGLACIAL CHARCOAL AND BURNT STONE FEATURE — IS IT A HEARTH?, The Royal Society of Victoria, 130, 94–116, 2018 - See here
Images from the Warrnambool ‘120,000 year old’ site.
