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Comment by Perenti | Hacker News Reader

CPY people in central Australia practice subincision as a manhood ritual. In order to concieve they tie the penis together with their wives' hair. They only did/do this in times of plenty though. Otherwise the subincision means semen just dribbles down the scrotum, and not into the wife. Seems they knew what went where.

The spirit of a new embryo came from a waterhole, with the help of the Rainbow Serpent. But they knew where babies came from.

Spitting/throwing seeds of fruit on the ground is a lot like planting them.

I know of no evidence that Indigenous Australians were so hungry that they were only sporadically fertile. Source?

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For one, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12337490/. There's plenty of research on mythology of various tribes regarding the matter. Some had various suspicions and practices such as above, none had a consistent viewpoint of fatherhood, semen, conception etc comparable to that of people who observed domesticated animals.

Interesting that you link to one of Gillian's papers, I met her in the 1980s.

From the full paper of the link you gave, regarding traditional method of abortion in Southern Arnhem Land women:

    Voluntary controls are of course an important issue in any discussion of overall fertility.

    A detailed survey of the available information on contraception, abortion and infanticide among Aborigines has revealed that Aboriginal women saw children as a contingent good (Cowlishaw 1979).

    First there were widespread attempts at contraception by taking medicine, performing rituals and avoiding coitus.

Which poses the question, why avoid coitus if there is (as you claim) no understanding of fatherhood and conception.

Hmmm... only read the abstract, but the idea that indigenous australians _in general_ were starving pre-colonisation is demonstrably false, just consider the eel farms and factories in Victoria

I wonder if they read the paper either, it talks of many things, diet, work levels, nutritional levels, etc.

It does include the extract:

    It is the accepted view that huntergatherers in general and Australian Aborigines in particular were neither undernourished nor overworked.

    But it is necessary to know more of the balance between work expenditure and nourishment, and the particular qualities of the diet that may have some bearing on fertility.

    (Robson, 1975:51)

How do you think living in balance with the environment looks? It's essentially food equilibrium, as everywhere else in nature. Dry year = death.

Also they were eel traps, not farms or factories, were only available to a miniscule fraction of the tribes and they still were in equilibrium with eel supply.

Agricultural Revolution is not called revolution for nothing, that's basically when human population started growing after millennia of stability caused by equilibrium with food supply (aka hunger).

It's amazing how you went from 'there was no agricultural revolution in Australia' to 'Aboriginal Australians never figured how seeds work, or the link between pregnancy and sex'. I've witnessed firsthand from many – of course, not all – Australians that they are motivated to believe that indigenous Australians are mentally deficient as a way to paper over past atrocities and to justify the degradation and exclusion of them from society.

You might want to give 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' a read, which provides a different and more compelling hypothesis to 'eurasian man smarter' for the beginning of the agricultural revolution.

I passed no judgement on Aboriginal intellectual ability, you're projecting.

What is different about Aboriginal Australians (in your mind) that caused you suggest they "never figured how seeds work, or the link between pregnancy and sex"? Do you think it took modern science for humans to make these simple deductions? Tell me your hypothesis.

Just wasn't their time. Modern humans spent about 200k years without figuring it out as well, Australians were not that far behind. The sex-pregnancy link was figured out by observing domestic animals, a luxury they didn't have. They developed (or retained?) unique features too, such as being able to sleep in the open in sub-zero temperatures.

> The sex-pregnancy link was figured out by observing domestic animals, a luxury they didn't have.

You really do live in some far removed fantasy world don't you.

I have rarely met any people that watch and know more about the plants and animals in their environment than australian aboriginals.

They know what feeds on what, when different animals breed, when plants produce fruit, when they pollinate.

You can't hunt kangaroo, for example, without knowing their movement patterns and it's a nice day out watching kangaroos lounge about feeding, mounting, and moving with the sun.

There's entire long standing practices about not hunting where kangaroos breed, etc. to keep numbers up.

The mindset that you've apparently missed is that of "keeping" domestic animals .. it was never a thing to people that were always surrounded by and living in the midst of animals they knew, watched, and knew where to find as needed.

Elcho Islanders don't keep birds in a cage, for example - that's a European thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbSxc6Y1aVA

Surely you'd know kangaroos are way more plentiful now that a lot of the forests have been cleared? They sure knew a lot of stuff, but these two they didn't.

Being a hunter-gatherer meant breeding until you match the area's carrying capacity, i.e. adding any more people causes hungry deaths. Aboriginal Australians caused extinctions of quite a few species after their arrival as they were unconsciously searching for the equilibrium.

> Surely you'd know kangaroos are way more plentiful now that a lot of the forests have been cleared?

The forests were cleared before Europeans arrived using bushfires

> Aboriginal Australians caused extinctions of quite a few species after their arrival as they were unconsciously searching for the equilibrium.

This isn’t particular to Australia. Every land where humans appeared, megafauna vanished because they were the easiest thing to hunt and didn’t breed quickly enough.

"Fire stick farming" didn't clear that much. The most fertile lands (i.e. south east) just converted to eucalyptus sclerophyll forests that are easier to hunt in.

Either way my point about equilibrium (that means borderline hunger on average, hungry deaths every few years) stands.

> Just wasn't their time

So just happenstance?

> Modern humans spent about 200k years without figuring it out as well

Say that were true, your amazement in your OP would be a little strange.

> The sex-pregnancy link was figured out by observing domestic animals, a luxury they didn't have

I'll point you back to the sibling comment as evidence to the contrary:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37972080

Rituals around coming-of-age, first menstruation etc. also seem to oppose your claim. Plus also: common sense (have sex, pregnancy bump appears, baby comes out). The ability to deduce is common to all humans. If you think that indigenous Australians lack this faculty, that's kind of amazing.

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