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