Something for Ruddock...
While we still have the "wheel" in our minds...
from: http://homepages.poptel.org.uk/racegallery/
Food Processor (v1.0)
Ch.3
According to a report from Sydney (Daily Telegraph, 11 April 1996), the
world's oldest evidence of human food processing, stone tools said to have
been used to grind grain, have been found at Cuddie Springs, New South
Wales, Australia. They date back 30,000 years - 20,000 years older than the
dates usually given for the beginnings of agriculture. If the finds stand
up to scrutiny, it's one in the eye for the lingering racial-scientific
notion that the first Australians are a peculiarly "primitive" people: the
fact that they were hunter-gatherers at the time of the European arrival,
rather than farmers, was always a major plank in the argument.
There's a big difference between agricultural society and simply
cultivating food to supplement a hunter-gatherer way of life, as Colin
Tudge emphasised at a Darwin Seminar held on May 9 at the London School of
Economics. Tudge, whose book The Day Before Yesterday: Five Million Years
of Human History is published by Cape, referred to a recent visit to
Australia. Talking to scholars there, he concluded that whereas the old
explanation for why the First Australians never practised farming was that
they were "primitive", the current view is that it was because nobody in
their right minds would try to cultivate Australia! One major factor, he
pointed out, is that only some kinds of animal can be domesticated. None of
these are indigenous to Australia: there's no way you can domesticate
kangaroos.
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