We Answer Some Academic Critics
From time to time we get some really odd emails and comments regarding our Dark Emu Exposed website.
A common criticism of our website from academics that contact us, or comment about us in the press, is that we are purveyors of the debunked theory of ‘social evolutionism’; that is, the belief that human societies necessarily ‘progress’ (evolve) from ‘simple’ hunter-gatherer to hunter-gatherer-plus (complex hunter-gatherer, hunter-gatherer-fisher) to horticultural, agricultural and/or pastoral and industrial societies.
For example, academics Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe in their new book, Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, tell us that debates around using labels such as, ‘hunter-gather’, horticulturalist’ and ‘agriculturalist’,
‘can sometimes attract outdated evolutionary schemes that operate on the discredited ‘primitive’ versus ‘advanced’ scale, also known as social evolutionism’ (ibid. p9-10)
Another academic Dr Ian Keen, has been more direct in his criticism of our Dark Emu Exposed website in his recent paper, ‘Foragers or Farmers: Dark Emu and the Controversy over Aboriginal Agriculture’, for our summary of pre-colonial Aboriginal society, where he writes,
‘The ‘Dark Emu Exposed’ website (Anon. 2020) provides an egregious example of evolutionist thinking: ‘Australian Aboriginal Society was a classic Stone-Age Hunter Gatherer Society prior to British settlement, with albeit a glimmer of an expected Neolithic advancement underway…’ - (ibid., p.3).
More recently we have received the following email message (with our text corrections where required ) from another academic,
‘As a qualified archaeologist and anthropologist I have read you[r] commentary on Dark Emu and it is simply culture war rubbish.
When I studied anthropology 30 years ago, the idea that your positing of traditional indigenous Australians being purely hunters and gathers was being questioned back then.
There is ample evidence that there has always been a mix of hunting and gathering and agriculture in small scale societies and here was no different.
It’s a bit typical that you people and [those] who sponsor you are too gutless to say who you are and importantly what your qualifications are, if any at all. And as for using this made up argument as a step to critique the ABC simply confirms your bias and insults the reader.
The vital sings [sic - signs?] of serious debate are no[t] headline[s] but credibility and integrity and this site lack[s] both.
Grow up
- Name supplied [Editor’s note - I think the content and tone of this email message says more about the writer and the current, parlous state of some sections of Australia’s academy than our humble, but interesting and topical website. ]
To many of us in mainstream Australia, it is starting to look like some academics are ‘losing the plot‘ in this debate around Dark Emu.
On the one hand, it was a board of academics themselves who granted Bruce Pascoe a Professorship, on the other hand, when we amateurs point out the absurdity of this, they attack us for not being qualified enough to speak on these topics, and then try to smear us as, ‘social evolutionists.’
But, you don’t have to be a highly credentialed academic to be able to have a good understanding of human societies, and to have a right to an opinion on their relative value.
From what we understand, most likely one or more small bands, in one or more waves, of highly intelligent and skilled humans arrived on Sahul around 50,000 years ago, after a revolutionary sea crossing from the islands to the north. They would have arrived with only with a relatively primitive tool kit.
Within the span of the next 40-50,000 years, they expanded to occupy [invade, settle, colonise - use the ‘label’ of your choice] essentially the whole continent. They developed a much more advanced tool kit that included various spear types, spear-throwers, ground-edged axes, complex woven nets, bags and bone needles, amongst other items.
They progressed their methods of food production with complex fish and eel traps, seed grinding and plant detoxification. Their kinship structures, spiritual, philosophical, and artistic systems, plus their knowledge of the Australian environment, became increasingly more complex and advanced compared to their more primitive state on arrival in Sahul.
Within the last few thousand years their societies (starting in the north) continued to evolve by domesticating the dingo, adopting the out-rigger canoe and trading items with foreigners, such as the Macassans and Torres Strait Islanders, and their languages continued to develop.
So, how is this not ‘social evolution’? Do academics expect us to believe that Aboriginal societies in 1788 were not more advanced when compared to those of the more primitive humans that arrived on the beaches of Sahul 50,000 years previously?
As for now, anyone can see that Aboriginal society has continued to evolve and advance such that today, Aboriginal people have adopted the Westminster Parliamentary Democratic model and Common Law for their accepted governance. They make their livelihoods in agriculture, industry and commerce and public service, with only very few still relying on predominately hunting-gathering to form the main basis of their income.
If one accepts the idea that successful societies make decisions that, in general and on balance, lead to their progress and survival, then one can’t ignore the evidence that agricultural/pastoral societies have, in general, been more successful than hunter-gatherer ones, and that industrial societies have, in general, been more successful than agricultural/pastoral ones. If this was not the case, societies would tend to revert back to the supposedly more ‘successful’ hunter-gatherer societies.
However, there may be considerable overlap between these types of societies. For example, complex hunter-gatherer societies like those of the Australian Aborigine were arguably more successful in terms of human fulfilment than say, some African agricultural or pastoral societies are today.
But to our mind, it is delusional to hold the position that Aboriginal hunter-gatherer societies in 1788, no matter how complex, or well-adapted to the Australian environment, that the anthropologists tell us they were, were not ‘primitive’ when compared to the more ‘advanced’ modern Australia agricultural/industrial society of 2021. (See Note 1 below).
And it is delusional to say that Aboriginal societies have not undergone, and will not continue to undergo, social evolution like most, if not all other societies around the world. One can plainly see that the majority of Aboriginal people today are expressing their own agency and have advanced to be successful members of the Australian agricultural and industrial society.
Further Reading
Note 1 : It seems to us that academics may be particularly keen to be seen as adherents of ‘cultural relativism’ where,
Cultural relativism refers to not judging a culture to our own standards of what is right or wrong, strange or normal. Instead, we should try to understand cultural practices of other groups in its own cultural context, (Ref here) or
Cultural relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, and not be judged against the criteria of another. (Ref. here).
To our mind this leads the academics, Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe in their new book, Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, to write,
‘We also take issue with the notion that recognisably European ‘settled’ ways of living, focused on material and technical ‘development’ in food production, are in any way to be valued more than the ways of living that existed in Australia before invasion'.’ (Page 2).
What is the definition of ‘value’ that Sutton and Walshe refer to? The Macquarie Dictionary tells us that ‘value’ is variously,
-‘that property of a thing because of which it is esteemed, desirable, or useful;
-material or monetary worth;
-to consider with respect to worth, excellence, usefulness or importance;
-to regard or esteem highly
American Norman Borlaug (1914 -2009) - Father of the Green Revolution : Source Wikipedia
Mankind greatly ‘values’ an economy based on agriculture over one based on hunter-gathering, even if it is complex. That is why we award things of very great value, such as the Nobel Prize, to outstanding contributions to agriculture, but not hunting and gathering.
Norman Ernest Borlaug (March 25, 1914 – September 12, 2009) was an American agronomist who led initiatives worldwide that contributed to the extensive increases in agricultural production termed the Green Revolution. Borlaug was awarded multiple honors for his work, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.
Borlaug received his B.S. in forestry in 1937 and Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position with CIMMYT in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties. During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. Borlaug was often called "the father of the Green Revolution", and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.
To our knowledge there are no such awards, or recognition of ‘value’, for economies based on hunting and gathering.
That is not to say mankind does not value hunter-gathering or Indigenous peoples or their culture or want to deny them the ability to continue to practice or sustain themselves by hunting and gathering. But what the world is saying is that, on the spectrum of economic systems, agricultural and industrial economies have a greater potential to provide a better way of living for more of mankind than hunter-gathering ones and so we should value them more.
Now before you all send us emails complaining that we are ignoring the spiritual and non-material values of Aboriginal society, which many of you no doubt consider to be of far more value than the basic material needs, we agree you do have a point, but we need more time and space to provide the evidence to show that you are wrong. We will try to address this at some stage.
