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Comment by Jedd | Hacker News Reader

It's an emotionally charged subject, which is unfortunate as it's objectively fascinating from a purely historical perspective.

The simplified and (generally) commonly accepted narrative is that a cohesive group arrived here 45-60,000YA, lived peacefully and in harmony with the land right up until Europeans arrived.

There's some debate about the megafauna extinctions, but no conclusive evidence either way. (I did appreciate Dr Yuval Noah Harari's summary of the phenomenon in his book Sapiens.)

If it turns out that the original population was partly / mostly replaced (linguistically, culturally, genetically) relatively recently, that potentially complicates a lot of the cultural positioning.

As I say, it's a shame, as the migration (including ethno & linguistic) paths over the past ~100k years are just amazing.

View on HN

> the original population was partly / mostly replaced

Thats not what this data shows. What it does show is that some migrants from india joined the existing culture and left a genetic, and presumably, cultural mark. When a smaller population mixes genetically with a larger population they effectively add a small amount of novel genetic markers to the population in what we call introgression.

You're right. I should have chosen better phrasing - perhaps gene pool instead of population, and diluted (but that still seems awkward) rather than replaced.

Is an 11% genetic incursion a lot for ~ 150 generations? I don't know, TFA doesn't hint, and I suspect we don't have an abundance of natural experiments to compare with.

> Is an 11% genetic incursion a lot for ~ 150 generations?

I am not sure either. However, we do have a lot of natural experiments (and lab experiments) to explore this.

The 11% number comes from a clustering analysis. The user supplies k = number of ancestry groups, and the algorithm estimates proportion of genetics specific to each of k ancestry groups. So basically fancy k-means clustering. I don't know how robust it is and I would suspect a biased estimate.

As for over time... also complex. But I would imagine the best models would use exponetial distributions or similar as their basis (i.e. initially fast decrease in percentage followed by a slower rate of loss until equilibrium is reached).

>The simplified and (generally) commonly accepted narrative is that a cohesive group arrived here 45-60,000YA, lived peacefully and in harmony with the land right up until Europeans arrived.

This theory went down the drain when Europeans discovered Aboriginal shields (i.e. very fast). Spears and clubs are useful for hunting, shields only help against homo sapiens. They were fighting over resources just like anybody else, and their everyday lives were violent as hell, evidenced by parry fractures and skull cracks on fossil bones.

Also "living in harmony with the land" means watching your children starve to death after a dry spring.

It’s my understanding that while Harari’s books are fascinating and entertaining reads they’re mostly pop-science and lack much actual science. He’s a good storyteller but he presents his stories as though they’re fact when they are, at best, conjecture.

I got a few pages into Sapiens before thinking the same thing. I prefer a few rigorous ideas to a thousand flimsy ones.

> It's an emotionally charged subject

Agreed, and for no good reason too. All these notions of "purity of the blood" and that nonsense are shown up to be completely false when studied. We all collectively share lots of genetic code from many diverse ancestors, so I don't see why folks get all worked up about it.

> The simplified and (generally) commonly accepted narrative is that a cohesive group arrived here 45-60,000YA,

Isn't the fascinating question "How did they arrive" ?

My understanding is that timeline vastly pre-dates any kind of ship to make that voyage.

I think the gap between Asia and PNG (then connected to AU) has got down to 90km. Doable with bamboo rafts? Viewing a mountainous island from an elevated position would give them reason to attempt it. Timor to PNG is suggested as the water crossing needed.

And enough people made that crossing successfully to create a stable population of 320,000 people [1] without in breeding problems?

[1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/profile-o...

Aboriginal Australian do, in fact, suffer from a disproportionate number of hereditary diseases:

https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2020/212/5/lessons-learned-ge...

While there is considerable genetic diversity between Aboriginals as a whole, the diversity of individual communities is often quite low, and in response many communities evolved elaborate kinship systems to avoid too much intermarriage.

> The simplified and (generally) commonly accepted narrative is that a cohesive group arrived here 45-60,000YA, lived peacefully and in harmony with the land right up until Europeans arrived.

I thought it was generally accepted that IVC was an outside people too, from modern middle east, who emigrated less than 10,000 years ago (But much prior to Indo-European migrations).

> That potentially complicates a lot of the cultural positioning.

It should not. Most of the today's Indian culture formed in India despite some PIE roots.

> emotionally charged subject, which is unfortunate [...] The simplified and (generally) commonly accepted narrative [...] that potentially complicates a lot of the cultural positioning. [...] it's a shame

Uh... what's a shame? None of that stuff happened. You've picked a fight with a strawman here. No one is engaging like that with the linked article, or here in the HN thread, except you.

He's talking about the fact that Aboriginals, not unlike Native Americans, reject any attempt to explain their origin via science as they stick to the story of their origin that comes from their religion, and see the science based origin as disrespectful.

And I'm saying the place to have that fight is with the putative Aboriginals and not here on HN where everyone is just talking about the science.

I mean, I get it. People are mean. People are unreasonable. Lots of good discussion can't happen because people are mean and unreasonable. But you're not making things better by assuming bad faith and throwing shade at everyone else preemptively. That's just being mean and unreasonable.

It was very insightful for me to know that its common amongst Aboriginals there to have that view. I will corroborate it elsewhere now what I know what to look for.

Suggest you look at most popular mastheads in Australia, in particular the state funded broadcaster to see the phenomenon play out in reality.

No reason to say that though. The person you replied to was saying it is a shame it is an emotionally charged discussion and he is right. That one particular discussion on HN might not be emotionally charged doesn't negate his point.

Were you just pretending not to understand?

The best way to get an emotionally charged discussion on Hacker News is to put a caveat that it's unfortunate that a topic is emotionally charged. It's a lightning rod and discussion bridge for people who just want debate controversial issues. I certainly have been on both sides of it.

Got a source for this fact? Generalising opinions to a whole race is rarely wise. Perhaps like anyone else with religious beliefs, those who are offended simply want their culture respected.

> those who are offended simply want their culture respected

Even more so, in this case, considering my country's historical "handling" of ATSI culture, and the mobs in general.

some of them may not want their legal privileges backed by historical narratives compromised by scientific findings; this is very common with native american tribes, for instance the lipan apaches in texas. additional science can only hurt their position with respect to the BIA.

no:

The (only recently created) legal privileges of native title are severely limited and can be effortlessly extinguished. These limited privileges are based on (belated) recognition of prior occupation, but irrespective of how long people were here before colonisation.

on the other side of the ledger, significant legal harms are imposed on predominantly Indigenous regions, including apartheid-style laws that are applied on the basis of race, and lower standards of basic services provided through dedicated streams again predicated on race.

there are reasons to believe that some groups with legal claims have no legitimate grounds and only point to fragmentary records of prior occupants that they can provide no evidence of connection with. perhaps if you can manage to think past the scary words you can recognize that some people exploit systems to their advantage.

what reasons, what legal claims, and most of all: what advantage do you imagine Indigenous Australian people might gain on the basis of the extent of their heritage?

the sustained deficit of public housing? the lack of safe drinking water? the big blue signs slandering entire communities as drunken perverts? the mass sackings to force people onto quarantined welfare? the draconian star-chamber powers granted to the ACC? the systemic theft of hard-won social infrastructure?

because all of these 'advantages' are granted to anyone living in predominantly Indigenous postcodes of the NT, regardless of how long you dare to admit their ancestors were here.

i agree those are tragic, but those are not the people i am talking about

> Aboriginals, not unlike Native Americans, reject any attempt to explain their origin via science as they stick to the story of their origin that comes from their religion, and see the science based origin as disrespectful.

No, they do not all do this, and I'd caution you on speaking for a people that aren't a monolith within their mobs in the first place.

Aha I thought about replying to the parent comment.

(Long time no see)

Haha hows it going mate! There's a lot of sweeping generalisations in this thread. Should be expected considering the audience, I guess, but it's still disappointing

Would assume you're of or closely affiliated with Aboriginal heritage given the phrasing. My assessment of this is that if this were to become part of the established history of indigenous Australians, quite a bit of the narrative around 'ownership' changes dramatically.

I doubt it, either way they were here before Europeans who declared them non-human and assumed ownership of the landmass based on that declaration.

For the international audience, that UK assumption of "Terra Nullus" was knocked back and overturned by the Mabo decision of 1992:

    In Mabo v. Queensland (No. 2), judgments of the High Court inserted the legal doctrine of native title into Australian law.

    The High Court recognised the fact that Indigenous peoples had lived in Australia for thousands of years and enjoyed rights to their land according to their own laws and customs.

https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/mabo-case

I'm sorry, did all Europeans declare them non-human? What a sweeping weak sauce generalization about an entire group of people.

Ahh, sweet gotcha you found there fella. I don't think I need to explain to you the difference between members of the British government declaring Australia Terra-Nulius (with approximately 0 outcry from their citizens) and some bozo deciding that all Indigenous Australians don't believe in science. If you cant see the difference it's only because you choose not to.

It doesn’t, though. It doesn’t matter if they’re genetically intermixed with Indians at some point in the last few thousand years. They were still here before White Australia was. And where I live, we still fought wars to eradicate the local mobs. We still stole children from them, not that long ago.

I mean, if we are going to make these kinds of broad generalizations and comparisons, could we at least change “Native Americans” to “Christian fundamentalists”.

It’s not any less true.

Sure, let's change it to that. Does talking about "Christian fundamentalists" make you more comfortable than talking about "Native Americans"?

It doesn't seem difficult to find groups that reject science when it conflicts with their beliefs. Doesn't this make a stronger case for the person to whom you're replying? Humans are far from avoiding appeals to emotion, and that's doubly true for politically charged topics, which this very much is.

what I've noticed in my lifetime is that the attempted narratives of mainstream science continue to edge towards original local knowledge.

if locals abandoned their knowledge and accepted the 40,000ya story told when I was a kid, they'd be out by just as much given the 80,000ya now indicated by artefacts at M2, Madjedbebe; the oldest site of continual human habitation.

If I'm understanding you correctly, there are some things revealed by science that seem to match some kinds of ancient knowledge, but that could easily just be coincidence.

From the article: a legacy of distrust about biological research among Aboriginal groups means that genetic studies are viewed suspiciously and samples are hard to come by

> None of that stuff happened.

Could you please be slightly more specific about what you're contesting?

What they're talking about is a very active debate in Australia.

The simplified and (generally) commonly accepted narrative is that a cohesive group arrived here 45-60,000YA, lived peacefully and in harmony with the land right up until Europeans arrived

Is absolutely what a lot of, if not the majority of people, believe.

What's the commonly accepted view on the origin of dingos? I imagined they were introduced along with those humans 50,000 ya.

Did you have to look up the name of the author of Sapiens or you have it committed to memory?

I enjoyed the book, though I used the audio version which I suspect skews my opinion upwards. Thoroughly enjoyed it, but I understand some HNers have cause to argue with some of his conclusions.

Anyway, I looked up the author's name as I didn't trust my memory.

Does this affect your interest in the book?

No it's on my list to read, I was just curious if you had looked it up or memorized the name. Just a random passing thought I decided to turn into a comment. Thanks for answering!

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