Feeding 1.6 Billion People — Dark Emu Exposed - And the Assault on Australian History

Dec 20

Dec 20 Feeding 1.6 Billion People

Academic Rebuttals, Country & Culture, Politics

In this post we will look at one aspect of the false narrative that pre-colonial Aboriginal people were actually ‘farmers.’

Author Bruce Pascoe, and the supporters of his book, Dark Emu, imply that Australians should be in awe and have deep respect for the fact that Aboriginal people allegedly, ‘successfully farmed and managed the land’ in a ‘sophisticated’, ‘productive’ and ‘caring’ way over the past 50,000, 60,000, 65,000 or 70,000 years [the length of time depends on one’s narrative - see below].

This, it is alleged, enabled Aboriginal people to produce enough food to feed 1.6 billion Aboriginal people over the course of their ‘civilization’ before the arrival of the British.

To the layman this does indeed sound awe inspiring.

This amazing ‘fact’, and the ‘re-interpretation’ of pre-colonial Aboriginal people as societies of farmers, was further developed by Aboriginal film maker, Rachel Perkins, in her SBS documentary, First Australians.

In the film, University of Melbourne’s, Professor Janet McCalman, tells us that Aboriginal people were ‘productive’ enough to support about ‘1.6 billion lives’, She confirms her agreement with Bruce Pascoe’s thesis that Aboriginal people ‘farmed’ the land to high level of ‘productivity’ in the video clip below [at 01:00].

“We've had this debate about, ‘Australia was a terra nullius and it was a wasted landscape and people hadn't used it and hadn't farmed it.’ They've discovered that in fact it's probably supported about 1.6 billion lives. And that's how productive Aboriginal people were able to make this part of the earth, which has the most irregular and unreliable rainfall and [is] the driest continent on earth.”

- Professor Janet McCalman

How Impressive Is it Really to Feed 1.6 Billion Aboriginal People over 70,000 Years?

In this post we will unpack Professor McCalman’s claim to see if it really is valid and as awe-inspiring as she would have us believe.

When Professor McCalman says, “they’ve discovered”, she is referring to the work of the academic, Dr Len Smith, from the ANU School of Demography.

Smith published an article in 2002 entitled, “How many people had lived in Australia before it was annexed by the English in 1788? “

In the concluding paragraph of his article, Smith summarised his detailed research to arrive at his “middle estimate” that, “… over 1.6 billion people have reached their first birthday over the 70,000 years of human occupation of Australia…”

It is this number - 1.6 billion - that has become the accepted wisdom within the academy for the number of Aboriginal people that have lived here, on “Country”, since man’s first colonisation of the continent.

Figure 1 - Excerpt from p15, Smith, Len, *How many people had lived in Australia before it was annexed by the English in 1788?* In the book: *The Aboriginal Population Revisited* (pp.9-15) Editors: Gordon Briscoe, L R Smith, January 2002. *Source:* *full article here*

Smith also included a table that summarised his “middle estimate” figures - an assumed average annual population of 1,000,000 people, with a life expectancy at birth of about 29 years and a time-period of human habitation of the continent of 70 millennia.

Smith then applied two more factors to account for birth and survival rates (Columns 3&5 in Figure 2) to obtain the total number of Aboriginal people, who reached the age of 1 year, as being more than 1.6 billion over the 70 millennia (Column 6 in Figure. 2)

**Figure 2 - Table 2.2 on p14 of Smith showing “middle estimate” as shaded line.**

In our opinion, the methodology used by Smith to estimate the total number of people supported (fed) in Australia from the time of the arrival of man to 1788, when the British arrived, is most likely broadly correct.

However, Smith’s paper is some twenty years old and some of his base assumptions might be disputed by other researchers today. For example, it is now generally accepted that anatomically modern humans (AMH) - who ultimately developed into the Aboriginal peoples - have been on the continent (Australia) for about 50,000 years, not the 70,000 years used by Smith (See our reference in a previous post).

Smith also assumed an average population size ‘over the period since settlement’ (70,000 years prior to 1788) as being 1 million. There is much dispute of this number, and unfortunately it is probably something we will never really know accurately [We plan a post this controversy at some later date].

Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, we will accept his estimated figure of a total of 1.6 billion people as having lived, and having been fed to their first birthday, by Aboriginal societies prior to 1788.

This figure of 1.6 billion is taken as a symbol of the success of Aboriginal societies, and it is now promoted by academics as ‘accepted scholarly evidence’, for example, by Professor Janet McCalman in the SBS First Australians documentary film clip above.

On the face of it, Professor McCalman’s claim does appear to sound like an impressive result for pre-colonial Aboriginal societies.

But is it really?

According to a recent Australian Government Department of Agriculture report, Australian farmers today produce enough to feed some 80 million people per year - 26 million here in Australia, plus another 54 million overseas (Figure 3).

So, by doing some basics maths, we can see that modern Australian farmers can do in just 20 years what it took, according to Professor McCalman, Aboriginal people to do in 70,000 years, that is feed 1.6 billion people [for modern Australia: 20 years x 80million/yr = 1,600 million = 1.6 billion].

Readers need to let that sink in for a moment - Professor McCalman is trying to inspire awe and respect for an Aboriginal economic system (hunter-gather or, as she and Pascoe prefer, ‘farming’) that took 70,000 [50,000] years to do what modern Australia can do in just 20 years.

Professor McCalman’s comparison is just delusional - clearly the Aboriginal economic system is not fit for purpose today and it should not be advanced as being a credible option during the education of our children.

But before we Australians rest on our laurels, another sobering comparison needs to be made.

What Australia can do in 20 years - feed 1.6 billion people - modern China can do in just over 1 day.

Think about that for a moment - the power of the modern Chinese economy is such that every day China has the productive, trading and logistical power to feed 1.4 billion mouths. Every day - day in, day out.

What Aboriginal societies took 70,000 years to achieve, modern China can do on a daily basis.

These comparisons just emphasis the point that we Australians, as a modern society, are delusional and highly irresponsible if we continue to ‘Indigenise” our education system by forcing our children to learn an Aboriginal language, and promote the study ‘Indigenous farming systems’, as if they have any relevance for farming practices today. We are not making this up - check here to see what one of Australia’s premier Universities is offering its students.

[see also Note 1 below for comparitive calculations]

Note 1

Another way to look at the comparative power of Aboriginal, Australian and Chinese societies to '‘feed mouths”, that accounts for the differing life expectancies of each of the populations, is to look at the “mouths-fed on a yearly basis.” (Aboriginal life expectancy was say, 30yrs but in modern Australia and China it is about 80yrs).

Using the real parameter of Aboriginal occupancy of 50,000 years with an assumed population of 1 million per year over this time (but probably only 300,000) gives 50 billion total mouths fed on a yearly basis

It takes modern Australia only 625 years to feed 50 billion mouths on a yearly basis (625 yrs x 80 million fed per yr)

It takes modern China only 36 years to feed 50 billion mouths on a yearly basis (36yrs x 1.4bn fed per yr)

Were Aboriginal Societies “Civilizations”?

The film-maker is using four different voices - herself and three independent academics - to repeatedly make the false assertion that Aboriginal societies were ‘civilizations’ - no they weren’t if we are are to maintain the meaning of the word ‘civilization’.

The ideological indoctrination technique of “repetition” is used here as an attempt to firmly establish in the viewer’s mind that Aboriginal societies were “civilizations” and thus on an equal par with Egypt and Europe.

A simple study of the true definition of what a “civilization” is, shows the film-maker’s lack of understanding of her use of the word.

“The word civilization relates to the Latin civitas or 'city'. As the National Geographic Society has explained it: "This is why the most basic definition of the word civilization is 'a society made up of cities.'

A civilization is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).

Civilizations are often characterized by additional features as well, including agriculture, architecture, infrastructure, technological advancement, a currency, taxation, regulation, and specialization of labour.

Historically, a civilization has often been understood as a larger and "more advanced" culture, in implied contrast to smaller, supposedly less advanced cultures. In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists, Neolithic societies, or hunter-gatherers…” (Source: Wikipedia).

We all know what a “civilization” is - and Aboriginal societies, despite being some of the most successful hunter-gather societies in the history of mankind, were not “civilizations.”

It is a blatant, unscholarly and highly disrespectful attempt by the academics in this film-clip to use Orwellian-like techniques to dumb-down and indoctrinate their audience, especially our students and real Aboriginal people.

How Long Have Aboriginal People Been in Australia?

Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) have been in Australia a very long time. The current, commonly accepted length of time is about 50,000 years based on strong archaeological evidence, plus human genetic evidence.

In a recent post we discussed the archaeological evidence, plus the human genetic evidence, that supports the current consensus amongst most of the scientific community - that man could not have arrived in Australia much earlier than about 50,000 years ago.

It is also important to remember that the people who arrived in Australia 50,000 years ago were not the Aboriginal people we know today - we designate them proto-Aboriginal peoples. Over the millennia, they became the Australian Aboriginal people of today.

Thus, when academics and commentators, such as in the film clip above, claim that Aboriginal people have been here for 60,000 years, 65,000 years or 70,000 years or more, they are mistaken. In our opinion, they are just quoting these timespans for political reasons, to support the Aboriginal ‘bigger, older, best' narrative.

Pre-Colonial Aboriginal Life Expectancy

Len Smith, in his work above, estimated that the average life expectancy of pre-colonial Aboriginal people was about 29 years (see Figure 1 - 28.8 years; range 19.0 to 38.8 years).

In Australia, the Aboriginal activists incessantly harangue Australians and our governments for the "devastating effects of colonialism." One measure they focus on is the "gap" of 8 years less in life expectancy between Aboriginal people and Australians as a whole.

They view the fact that Aboriginal people on average die some 8 years younger than the rest of us (approx at 73 yrs compared to 81 years (avg M+F)) as being solely an "evil" of which Australia should be ashamed. They do not publicly accept that Aboriginal people themselves may have agency in this outcome.

But when the British colonised Australia in 1788, Len Smith tells us that Aboriginal life expectancy was estimated to be only about 29 years - typical of hunter-gatherer societies around the world.

So colonisation has in fact lead to a more than doubling of life expectancy for Aboriginal people - between the 1788 and 2023 it went from 29 to 73 years!

Perhaps, the wisdom of Margaret Thatcher is appropriate here.

Is the following classic exchange in the UK parliament during Question Time, on 27 November 1990, a proxy for "Closing the Gap" statistics in Aboriginal Australia?

In the video clip below, Prime Minister Thatcher explains that everyone has benefitted from her economic reforms, even if the gap between rich and poor is wider. She explains that the liberals would effectively rather the poor be poorer, to make the gap smaller between the rich and the poor.

Thus paraphrasing Thatcher, would Aboriginal activists rather all Australians die 8 years younger, to "close the gap" with the life expectancy of their fellow Aboriginal citizens, rather than admit that colonisation has more than doubled their own life expectancy?

[See also a similar point made about colonisation by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price that sent the Aboriginal activists and their apologists into an apoplectic meltdown for her audacity to state the obvious - that overall, colonisation has been a nett good for Aboriginal peoples].

And finally, although the chart in Figure 4 is not enough “evidence” to be definitive, one conclusion does suggest itself : was the “gap” between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people the same - about 8-10 years [29 vs 39] - in 1790 as it is today [73 vs 81]?

That is, since colonisation, there doesn’t appear to have been much change in “Closing the Gap” in life expectancies.

This implies that the act of colonisation is not a contributing factor to any observed differences between the life expectancies of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.