Strange, I was always under the impression that it was the British who conquered Australia. But I'm happy to be corrected. Where is this mysterious White Nation you're speaking of?
Sanga, certainly there are large (and small) carnivores around the world that are very sadly much much closer to the precipice than dingoes ..... such as a number of small leopards, west African lions, tigers, rhinos, etc, and lets not forget the large Eagles of the tropics, and indeed Tasmania, among way way too long a list unfortunately ....... :-C
That's what conquests usually are. It's not an "insipid" word; to everyone with a modicum of historical knowledge it implies a whole host of things that would be considered criminal or even monstrous in a civilized society. And no, the British Empire was not more brutal than other empires in history; it's just that most people don't know anything about those other empires.
The point is that every time people use actual insipid wordings like "The White Man"(TM), they are helping construct a dumb, inaccurate, collectivist mythos that only lends itself to racist narratives from either side. Let's be exact here.
. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of smug self satisfaction when on the dominant side rewriting (perverting) the course of history.
Don't worry, I know about the plight of the aboriginal Australians, and many other people around the world.
I'm on the side of facts and modern science, which is based on observable facts.Your further post shows you know exactly what "conquering" is .... so don't be surprised when someone arcs up and calls you out over your hair splitting semantics and focus on the term "The White Man" (whether it is trademarked or not!
Can you prove that this alleged "colonial thinking" is special to (European) empires of the modern era? Because, looking at other cultures and ancient times, I don't think it is.
But Tasmanians are people and hence, not relevant to this thread.
Except that's utter, anti-historical BS. White people aren't special, other people have done the same before and since. Get over it.
The typical MO of people, including the ones you're referring to, is to wipe out the local megafauna by way of exploitation or competition, and generally change the environment. The aboriginal Australians of yore did the same (obviously, I'm not blaming their modern descendants - nor anyone else's - for that). Where are Megalania, Diprotodon, Bullockornis, Thylacoleo etc. now?
John,
there seemed to be a fairly homogeneous Dingo here as far back as ~3500 years ago.
John,
It is thought that the Dingo's ancestors would (probably) have required human assistance to cross the small oceanic barriers that still remained even during the lowest of sea levels over the last ~12000 - ~3500 years or so.
Although after reading the rather lengthy Wikipedia article I get the impression that there is not a precise consensus amongst the expert scientists - anything is possible I suppose, and there are schools of thought that there was more than one particular instance of introduction of genes, though, from what I can understand (admittedly my head's still fairly spinning after reading that and a few other articles!
As such, I have never heard of the Dingo being referred to as an 'alien' species before - likely no more 'alien' in practice than indigenous Aborigines here. It is thought that Thylacines existed on mainland Australia until around ~2000 years ago. It is also thought that Dingoes (though probably in concert with Aborigines at the time) exerted pressures that led to their almost certain extinction on the mainland.
The whole ancient history of Australia, it's changing climate, and evolution of native flora and fauna, including Megafauna, and the arrival and ongoing existence of first people's here is rather fascinating, and I think rather fluid and evolving in hypotheses and supporting facts.
The Marsupial Lion was certainly a carnivore, and it's cause of extinction is not precisely known ...... perhaps aborigines were responsible for one of the earliest extinctions of a carnivore? I don't think anyone truly knows for certain.
My own personal view is that Aborigines did have mild and slow impacts on this country in concert with the changing position of the continental plate and climate. This occurred over 10's of thousands of years, and so most species had time to adapt.
The situation since the arrival of White Man ~200 odd years ago has seen deleterious impacts exponentially rise as fast as a nose dive off a cliff! , as our recent extinction record shows.
Certainly this is when the genetic dilution of the established and stable Dingo genome started, and it is these feral domestic dog escapees that are regarded as 'alien'. Some researchers think this is so irreversible that the genetically pure Dingo is now actually (or inevitably) gone, and so is replaced by the concept of an 'evolving' Dingo. One of the difficulties in keeping hybridization out of the population is that currently one of the prime methods of differentiation between pure bred Dingoes and degrees of hybridization (as little as 10%) is to measure the cleaned skull of the animal - not a prescription for ongoing survival of the individual animal! :eek!:
All in all a rather complex situation ...... :cat:
Chosun :gh:
:eek!:
