On
17/9/2003, Peter Macinnis posted:
peter macinnis has returned from his journey with the camels.
He was neither bitten, kicked or spat on, although five lovely camels
nuzzled him at separate times.
It was bloody dry, bloody hot and bloody dusty, so I am having a beer
and doing the first load of washing before reading the e-mail -- more
anon.
Paul
Williams replied:
> He was
neither bitten, kicked or spat on, although five lovely camels
> nuzzled him at separate times.
I've heard that isolation makes
for some strange bedfellows...
> It was
bloody dry, bloody hot and bloody dusty, so I am having a beer and
> doing the first load of washing before reading the e-mail -- more
anon.
Washing away those telltale camel
hairs on one's jacket...:-)
Look foward to hearing of your
exploits.
Eremia responded:
G'day Peter, I am so glad to hear that your back safe. I'm dying to
hear about your journey, the camels and the wonderful country. Did you
take photo's? What types of saddles did you have? Did you carry the
total of supplies, or did you have back-up?Please..please tell me about
the camels and what happened? Did you sleep by the camels each night? I
just love doing that because you can hear them chewing all night. It's
so comforting.
Oh..well I love it! Did you sleep in tents? What's the name of the
persons/people who took you bush??? Did you hobble the camels each
night? What side of the nose did they have their nose pegs?
Regards , Julia and my camels.
Peter
Macinnis replied:
To take these more or less
seriatim (the science comes at the end), the first thing you notice
about camels is their immense height and their apparent
restiveness. The restiveness is not unsurprising, given that many
o f them have been maltreated -- I have had two pre-battered dogs in my
life, and the attitude is similar, and like that of the camels, it is
allayed by gentleness. There is a smell, true, but it is not an
unpleasant smell, and there is a majesty in the way they hoosh down
into the kneeling position and settle their feet under them.
We had five camels for three
people -- we were lucky that Phil Gee had a light week (he leaves on
another light week tomorrow, and then the rest of his season is filled)
so there were no assistants, just two paying customers who pulled their
weight, learning the basics of working with four very experienced
camels (one of them, Julia, was a rather famous racer in her day,
called Wally) and a "young punk", Wahabi, who has still to discover the
joy of eating carrot and orange peel. The others were mature cows (I am
fairly sure they were all cows, but was neither assiduously avoiding or
studying their under-areas - I assume a bull has at least a visible
scrotum.)
Before I left Adelaide by painful
coach (even moire painful on my saddle-sore return), I spent some time
in the Mortlock Library researching John Horrocks, the man who was shot
by his camel in 1846, and I had a bit of an off-list chat with
Julia. I am now as satisfied as I can be that nobody on that trip
had any sympathy with animals -- or with Harry the Camel in particular
(the others included S. T. Gill, whose journal I now have, and a jinx
of a man called Theakston, a tent-keeper/cook called Garlick, plus
Kilroy and Jimmy Moorehouse). The shooting was an accident, but
Horrocks had some compassion for the camel. As he lay dying of
gangrene, he ordered that the camel be shot, not from revenge, as I had
suspected, but from a concern that camels might all be judged by Harry.
So I had already put down
mishandling as a likely explanation for the problems Horrocks' party
faced, but all my friends and acquaintances assured me that I would be
kicked, bitten and spat at. This did not accord with my
experience of making a zoo camel take a squashed fly biscuit in two
halves at the age of four, much to the distress of certain adults and
the satisfaction of the camel and myself. I approached the camels
with an open mind, knowing
that insurance premiums with biting camels would be horrendous. I
was not kicked (Wally bumped me with her foot once when I got in the
way -- it was like being knocked with a felt slipper), nor was I spat at or bitten, but I was nuzzled
from time to time. We were riding camels in a string, not
controlling our animals, and Wobbleguts who followed my camel, Goobs,
enjoyed surging up and laying her head on my thigh or snuffling over my
shoulder, or nudging me in the back or upper arm. I think she
liked the smell of my sun block.
The area we went into was in the
Denison Range, south of Oodnadatta, near the Peake Overland Telegraph
Line repeater station where telegraphists once sweltered as they
transcribed messages to and from Europe and then sent them on. This is
where Stuart passed through as he headed north, travelling from mound
spring to mound spring (artesian springs that slowly build up a mound
of minerals around the point where water comes out of the ground), a
path that Aboriginal people had walked long before -- the signs are
there in stone flakes scattered on the ground and more. Later carts and
drays hauled by bullocks and parched horses pushed through that way,
then came the telegraph line and the Ghan, a train line that pushed up
into the dry country. The camels were there before the Ghan, and
even afterwards, camels carried railway families from place to place,
and carried goods away from the rail line. Some camels even drew carts,
and they flourished in an area where cattle and horses could not.
Most of the rocks there are
metamorphic tantalisers, and there is copper in places, enough to bring
Cornish hardrock miners up from Moonta, and the hills are dotted with
small scrabble holes showing the colour of copper, and on an old wagon
trail, you can sometimes see a bit of ore that fell to one side, and
here and there you will see horseshoes that tell us there were those
unable or unwilling to use camels. Small traces tell the story, and everything picked up went back in
its place, to preserve the story for the next reader, in much the way
that we leave the words on a page as we found them. We found an old
forge, left there for more than a century, and left it as it was.
Sadly, not everybody did so in the
past: the OTL posts, every 80 paces or so, were cut down so the wire
could be retrieved, and now there are just stumps over the hills, a
scattering of broken porcelain insulators, and a faint camel pad that was established by
those who maintained the wire, and kept going ever after by the wild
donkeys. The ground is hard, and stones are sharp, so all of the
animals get from place to place along pads, faint paths that show up on
the distant hills, angling up and down the slopes, sliding over the
pl;ains, joining and splitting, showing the way forward. Time has
cleared the pads of stones that might hurt unshod feet, and in soft ground, the pads have compacted,
filled with dust and packed again, and offer a firmer footing that is
filled in. In places, pads have failed to fill, and have even been
enough to divert the waters in times of rain, but animals have
always made pads and always will. Even the kangaroos and euros
move along pads, leaving enough tektite-like droppings to show
ownership.
(My interest here is that it is my
contention, based on reliable evidence, that "explorers" followed such
pads, and in particular, what they called "native paths" -- I was
working on this trip, not just goofing off.)
Having met our camels, we learned
to saddle them. The saddle has two "seat" positions, but only one
set of stirrups, placed for the rear position -- a swag or other gear
generally goes on the front one. There is a saddle maker (no
name, sorry, Julia) who builds these with steel and leather, snug caps
that fit over the hump, secured by two girths and a neck strap. Hooshed
down, the camel's back is easy enough to reach, but when the girth
strap is slipped under, it picks up rocks and sand that need to be
cleared off. There is also the need to "deprickle" the camels,
removing twigs from trees rubbed against, burrs picked up while rolling
in the sand, before blankets are laid down. For all but the last camel,
there is an after-rope that holds in the neck rope of the camel behind
Once the saddle is fitted and
tested, saddle bags carrying water, food and equipment are
fitted. These bags are all laid out either side of a corridor
that the camels are led into, and each camel has four such bags. The
camels usually slept a little way off, tied up for the night after
having a feed, but they were allowed off, in hobbles, in the morning to
feed. When we brought them back into the corridor, they entered
in order and so were correctly lined up with their gear. Julia,
we carried everything, though Phil did have a sat phone and GPS
equipment that we knew enough about to use if a need arose. We
were free to roam in comparative safety.
In no time, you find yourself
stepping through the camel line, brushing past huge heads filled with
grinding teeth, where guts rumble as cud is drawn up to be worked over.
The massive feet are safely tucked under the camel in front, but the
camel behind is likely to itch its nose on you as you go by, or rest
its chin on you while exhaling cuddy breath in your ear. Each can carry
200 kilos or more and cross hundreds of kilometres without water other
than that generated from the food - if Eyre had camels rather than
horses, he would have lost far less time, because he was forever
back-tracking to get water for the horses. After Horrocks, there were
few camels until 1865, when Sir Thomas Elder brought in 125 and
established a camel stud, but by 1876, they were the standard animal,
transport and food in one package - Warburton notes that camel's foot
was a delicacy, but the man also enjoyed eating cockatoo, and
prescribed kite's gizzard for scurvy.
Sleeping gear was a sleeping bag
in a standard jackeroo's swag, which has enough padding for ground
cleared of gross rockery -- which made our meeting with a dingo
interesting -- the other paying customer was American, and had a degree
of fear about dingoes. When she called in the middle of the night
that there was a dingo, I assumed she was dreaming, but the dingo
wandered off and had a chew at the leather covering of an axe near
Phil's swag before being shooed, and then wandered round for a look at
me. Sadly, I failed to think clearly and use the camera, but I filled
many cards with digital images, still to be processed -- I took most at
4 megapixels and will need to sort and clean up before cropping.
Julia, the older camels have nose
pegs, Wally's being on the left, while Goobs and Pedy had them on the
right (I think -- it will be in the pictures). I am not sure why
Phil avoids it now -- I think he said it wasn't cruel, but it certainly
looks unpleasant.
Given the present upheavals, why
have I gone into such detail? Well, in part because I am still
unable to find the ground with my feet, but perhaps more because of
what I saw: and here comes the science.
We were on Kidman land the whole
time, but we crossed from stocked land where there is permanent water
(pumped up by windmills into troughs) into unstocked land. I have
enough training to be able to see the difference, but it is hard to
miss. Now if a pastoral company wanted to clear land, they would
need all sorts of permits, but putting in 60 km of polypipe and
troughs, and turning stock onto the land is officially acceptable --
yet this is exactly the same as clearance. I listened to the
matter being discussed on ABC radio in Coober Pedy just before I left,
and I think it may be the next big conservation battle. It deserves to
be, because the only benefit is to London shareholders.
Permanent water means more than
stock trampling the fragile ground. It means cats, foxes, brumbies,
more rabbits, more dingoes, more threats to the fragile wildlife of the
area. It is uncontrolled clearance that has the potential to smash ecosystems.
While we saw a scorpion or two and a redback, we saw no snakes, though
there were two perenties and a few smaller lizards around (feral cats
do for many of them). Most of the mound springs harbour species all of their
own -- in fact, there is one fig tree up past Alice Springs that is the
ONLY known habitat of one entire snail species. You cannot be
sure of keeping cattle out of those fragile areas, not if camels come through, though
camels on their own simply will not do the same harm.
You cannot justify experiments
that may result in the loss of a species.
However you look at it, extinction
is demeaning of life.
Eremia answered:
Hullo Peter, Thank-you so much for all the effort and knowledge that
you put into that last posting. It was just wonderful to read
about your camel journey..I did laugh in many places only because
your stories "warmed my
heart".I could smell, feel and visualize your experiences. I am going
away for 2 weeks..at Princess Margaret Hospital to get in Paediatrics
and Child Health for my Science Degree. I will talk with you in a
couple of weeks.
Paul
Williams responded:
Lovely story Peter.
I know this is scant information
and merely anecdotal:
When I was working in the
Kimberleys near Kununurra in 1978 I used to visit an old 'white fella'
on a large station approx. 80kms SW of Kununurra.
He liked to yarn about the past -
as old men often do. One story he told was of his mother who had run
one of the 'Ghan' camel caravans - this seemed very unusual to me (for
the time) I understand that a few white women married 'Afghanis' 'in
the earlies' - although the man I spoke with didn't look in the least
'Afghani' - (nor Pakistani nor Turkish nor Middle Eastern) and was
wondering if Peter or Julia had heard of a 'white woman' running a
camel train - I think sometime in the 1930's?
Sorry I don't have any more
information.
Peter Macinnis replied:
Not really an answer, but an observation or two:
Many of the railway workers on the original Ghan line had their own
camels, and women of the time used to manage them, moving camp as the
line progressed (even packing babies into panniers), so it wouldn't
surprise me. Women of European extraction did indeed marry
Afghans (who were from that part of the sub-continent where today's
Afghan refugees come from, but now we call them cheating, lying
Pakistanis). By all accounts they did fairly well out of marrying
somebody who didn't drink, provided the husbands followed the precepts
set out in the Koran, because most Muslims are, like most human beings,
decent people.
This, of course, is perverse and obnoxious, and it will eventually be
bombed out of them, but I digress.
The outback women were able to, had to, do far more than their urban
sisters, and it would not surprise me in the least to see one managing
a camel train.
So far, I have but two women who rate as explorers -- Jane Franklin
(marginal) and Emily Caroline Creaghe, though aviator Lores Bonney and
a lady called Sprigg (author of "Dune is a Four Letter Word") also
spring to
mind. I once had the privilege of wheeling the allegedly deaf,
blind and ga-ga Lores Bonney around for two hours, me in a penguin
suit, she in full command of her faculties, where she wanted to go, and
the directions the
conversation would take. I just wish I had a tape (a) to play to
her family and (b) to draw on now.
Eremia
posted:
Just quickly a site that a friend
sent me which may be of value to
you..http://camell.atlas.co.uk/hello1.html.
Sorry Paul can't help you with
your query about the woman running a camel train. I 'll see what I can
research while in Perth..if I get time. Take care
Julia.
John Winckle wrote:
>Some camels even drew carts, and
they flourished in an
> area where cattle and horses could not.
That understates it a bit.
There were giant camel wagons (11 foot high wheels) carrying loads of
twenty tons operating in north WA till put out of business by trucks
early last century.
The greatest load carried by a camel (for a 1000 pound bet) was one
ton. The camel only had to stand up with it, not walk.
Peter
Macinnis responded:
I have seen a few pictures of
these monsters. My suspicion is that a camel train could carry
more weight than a camel team could haul, camel for camel. While there
is an overhead weight in the saddles, it isn't that much, while those
BIG wagons were massively huge and limited to tracks, while camels are
all-terrain beasties. I have yet to find any illustrations
showing detail of the hauling-harness. Camels can certainly haul, as
evidenced by sections of the dog-proof fence taken out by pushing
camels.
Clearly there WAS an advantage in
the wagons (hauling boilers and other such large items, maybe) but I
have yet to establish what it was.
Paul Williams answered:
<snip>
According to this site, the camel harness was called a "spider" (no
good illustrations unfortunately):
"Not only were camels used as pack animals, they were also ridden or
harnessed to pull carts. They pulled traps and buggies; large teams
hauled drays with up to two tons of weight. When used as draught
animals a special harness called a spider was needed."
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/446.html
Podargus
commented:
I know nought about camels, that
said I do know something about bullocks and horses in this context.
Bullocks lean into the yoke, in
such a manner that they take the load on the back of the neck.
They also take up the strain, or lean into the strain, gradually.
In other words do not lurch. For this reason they were the animal
of choice for snigging logs or pulling wagons when the tracks were
rough.
Horses on the other hand take the
load on the shoulders, but are inclined to lurch at the load.
They are/were the animal of choice once the roads were smoother.
They are much faster then than bullocks.
I would be interested to learn
which part of the anatomy of a camel takes the load. I also
wonder how well a camel would pull (comparatively) given its pacing
gait. My understanding is that whilst 'pacing' is faster than 'trotting' in harness racing, it is not
good when the load is increased. It is also uncomfortable when
riding;-).
Peter Macinnis replied:
Thanks! That certainly gives me a good starting-point, though I
think I will need to burrow in many books to get what I need.
PS: I put this reply to one side while I did a few searches, which took
me into the land of the "camel spider" which is an arachnid of fearsome
reputation but rather less of a real threat. We had an American
on the trip I just did who was rather alarmed at the wildlife -- guess
whose swag got first visit from a friendly dingo in the bright
moonlight 9 days ago? We also had a scorpion one morning that was quite
impressive and a redback, but I think a camel spider would have just
about finished the victim off, if I were the sort of person to take
advantage of the gullible (which I am not).
After all, this person believed that dingoes can beat spotlighting by
walking in pairs, each with the outside eye closed, so when you shoot
between the eyes, the bullet goes between them . . . but camel spiders
are something else.
and to Podargus:
Try Googling "camel harness", and you will come to
http://camelphotos.com/WorldCamels.html
but as yet I have been unable to work it out.
In
http://camelphotos.com/GraphicsP7/camel_coach2.jpg
there appears to be a sort of horse collar, but there could also be
traces attached to the saddle -- this seems to be borne out by
http://camelphotos.com/GraphicsP7/india_camel.jpg
but what role does the single shaft play, and what are the lines going
forward to the end of the shaft?
The neck rope on a riding camel is normally loose -- the "saddle" in
the second picture seems only to have a single girth where I would
expect the main girth, and no after-girth. I am sure the neck
rope plays no part.
Googling "camel cart" I find
http://www.connectingthecontinent.com/ctcwebsite/blinman/blinmanphoto.asp?article_id=64
which appears to have a single camel between two shafts linked to a main
girth -- and see
http://community.webshots.com/photo/61903078/61903811HUQkEk
where two shafts are chained to a saddle structure over the hump.
It seems that a single girth in front of the hump is what you mainly
need, probably with some degree of padding to spread the load.
I still want to know what was carried on the multi-camel drays . . .
Podargus
answered:
P4 seems to be simply pulling from
the saddle via the shafts. The load is comparativeley light,
maybe 400kgs.
Yep, looks like a horse collar.
The shaft is to turn the front
wheels. Can't work out the forward lines., actualy it looks more like
bent timber or some such. With horses there is a device to hold
the two heads together so that one 'steers' both together.
With bullocks this is done via a
double yoke. Ie they have to work as one, like a three legged
race, something I am sure you excelled at in your youth ;-).
> The neck
rope on a riding camel is normally loose -- the "saddle" in the
> second picture seems only to have a single girth where I would
expect the
> main girth, and no after-girth. I am sure the neck rope
plays no part.
>
> Googling "camel cart" I find
>
http://www.connectingthecontinent.com/ctcwebsite/blinman/blinmanphoto.asp?article_id=64
> which appears to have a single camel between two shafts
linked to a main girth -- and see
This looks like a typical horse
setup, collar, backpad/strap or perhaps saddle to take the weight of
the shafts.
Your guess is as good or better
than mine. But the chain may be no more than holding the shafts
up.
> It seems
that a single girth in front of the hump is what you mainly need,
> probably with some degree of padding to spread the load.
Two of them seem to be using
something akin to horse harness, ie pulling from the shoulders via a
collar.
> I still
want to know what was carried on the multi-camel drays . . .
Whilst I cannot answer
specificaly, I would suggest anything too bulky for packs. I seem
to recall wool being carted by camel drays or wagons. An animal,
including humans can haul far more than they can carry, provided the
terain is at all suitable.
John Winckle wrote:
Mainly wool, and farm supplies on return trip. I am looking
for 'camels in Australia" my reference. Most animals
can pull a lot more than they can lift, even allowing for the weight of
the cart you are still better off. The author (and camel wagon
driver) made the interesting observation that all camel wagon drivers
were europeans as the Afgans even with generations of experience and
endless patience with camels 'lost it' completely when they tried to
harnass them.
and
The Book I used as a reference is,
Camels and the Outback, by
H.M.Barker Seal books
It is full of first hand observations of early 1900 outback life e.g.
cattle cannot be speared with aboriginal spears.
Paul
Williams, replying to Rchard Gillespie:
> > It is full of first hand
observations of early 1900 outback life.
> > e.g. cattle cannot be speared with aboriginal spears.
> There seems to be some confusion about the efficiency of aboriginal
> spears on large mammals in the archaeological literature. Some
claim
> that the stone technology required to kill big game (megafauna)
came
> late to Oz, about 6000 years ago. Which may well be true if
bifacial
> stone projectile points are the criterion, such as the famous
11,000
> year old Clovis points in America. On the other hand, there are
wooden
> spears in Europe from ca. 400,000 years ago that would be pretty
handy
> for bringing down reindeer and the odd mammoth. Given appropriate
> hunting strategies several tools would work to bring down cattle,
so
> maybe those referred to above had lost the art (like Tasmanian
fishing)
> or were just not very good at it.
>
400,000 year old spears - Germany:
http://www-geology.ucdavis.edu/~GEL115/spears.html
"The Schöningen spears are
not the first evidence of Palaeolithic wooden hunting weapons, even if
they are the most convincing. In 1948, a 125,000-year-old wooden spear
was found inside an elephant skeleton at Lehringen, also in Germany: in
1911, the tip of what might have been a spear was found at Clacton in
England, in deposits similar in age to those of Schöningen. At the
time, these finds were interpeted as weapons."
I think that there is little doubt
that early humans could have killed anything they wanted to.
The more recent re-interpretation
of finds such as 'heavy spears' as merely 'digging sticks' does not gel
for me.
Humans are generally brilliant at
planning.
Observation would have been keen.
Hunger is a great catalyst.
Arguably:
If we _made up_ a
scenario of humans having to hunt dinosaurs, even T-Rex wouldn't have
been safe. Fire was
the weapon which would have undoubtedly made a potent difference.
Simplistically:
In Australia (as has been
previously mentioned) man appears as the climate was changing from a
much wetter period. It appears to be quite logical that as rivers
turned to waterholes, existing mega-fauna would have been concentrated
in groups around these. That man would follow appears most likely.
Animals - even large ones - restricted to these more and more
isolated water sources would have been easier to kill.
Planning via observation would
have produced suitable strategies.
Best to stop now...
Peter Macinnis commented:
Why do we assume they always went after the full-grown megafauna, and
not the juicy young animals? (joeys?)
This would effectively wipe out any population in a short period of
time -- ask any grazier who has a problem with dingoes/wild dogs . . .
and:
>I don't think everyone does assume
that, although there is much made of
>the macho male bringing home the Diprotodon as a bribe for sexual
>pleasures. Not that there are any actual Diprotodon kill sites
known...
But I think they do -- every time they say "Oh those animals were too
big for mere humans," they are thinking of the adults.
>Recent genetic analysis of Moa has
shown that the biggest birds were
>female, so knocking them off would certainly hasten extinction too.
In my systematic pursuit of the explorers, I am now working over David
Carnegie (1890s, WA goldfields), who records that the only part of an
emu worth carrying home is the legs -- just imagine somebody trying to
bring
home a whole Diprotodon as a bribe for sexual pleasures, and being
totally knocked out from hauling it.
Not good adaptive behaviour, that -- better to haul home a haunch of
Diprotodon joey and have some get up and go that hasn't got up and went.
David
Maddern wrote:
Seems to me that a large bank of
plant alkaloids would have been available to plains hunters
(IMHO) It is rather simplistic to look at a fossil spear and to
decide on its firepower by its shape.
Paul Williams posted:
> But I think they do -- every time
they say "Oh those animals were too big
> for mere humans," they are thinking of the adults.
This is definitely the spurious argument put forward by some. Why
struggle with the strongest when the weakest can be separated out from
a possible family group or herd? Humans would still have been
capable, at need, to kill the largest animals though.
The other spurious argument being of course the stated 'balanced
relationship' between Aboriginal people and ecosystems precluding
extinction. (??!) When the fact that early human invaders were
'strangers in a strange
land' is ponted out the true 'political correct' reason is often
admitted. (This, I believe, is partly a self protective attitude to
keep modern aborigines onside - permission to search native title lands
being important - there is also the desire to focus on destructive
attitudes in the here and now - it almost certainly took some time but
modern aborigines did live in some sort of harmony with the land - this
is an attitude which many attempt to foster today)
More evidence for North American elephantoidae extinction by predation
rather than climate:
"...And because of this wonderful analysis done by a man called Dan
Fisher of the tusks of extinct elephants (in North America) we actually
know about causality there. And what this ingenious man did was section
the trunks of mastodonts and mammoths and read their life history. And
he could tell whether they were well fed or being malnourished, or how
often they reproduced, because there're bands in the tusks of these
elephantoideas that you can read like tree rings. And what he found was
that animals that died about 12,800 years ago were very well fed, there
was no stress from climate at all, but they were reproducing furiously.
They were giving birth every four to five years. So there's something
killing young elephants in the environment that seems to be pointing the
finger at predator rather than at climate."
- Tim Flannery.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s356397.htm
Unfortunately there is a dearth of evidence for man caused megafauna
extinction in Australia. There is also no compelling evidence
that climate change/vegetation loss was solely responsible.
My best bet would be that climate change wittled down numbers and early
humans pushed the giant herbivores over the brink (with a little help
from the last surviving native predators no doubt.)
Cheers
Paul [Who had just got hold of Tim Flannery's book "
The Eternal Frontier" ("An
Ecological History of North America and it's Peoples")]
Podargus
wrote:
A pair of animals only need to
produce two offspring in their lifetime to keep numbers steady.
So what happens in nature is that for a variety of reasons most
offspring do not survive. Even if the 'invading' humans were only
killing the young offspring this may be enough to change the balance.
Juveniles do not stay juvenile of course so there would probably have
been some killing of adults. More so if the breeding of the mega
fauna was on a seasonal
basis. Humans have such a varied diet that they will not quickly
reach an equilibrium with the mega fauna, in much the same way that
cats and foxes do now. In other words they can just plug away at
a prey species, but are not necessarily dependant on it.
> The other
spurious argument being of course the stated 'balanced
> relationship' between Aboriginal people and ecosystems precluding
> extinction. (??!)
> When the fact that early human invaders were 'strangers in a
strange
> land' is ponted out the true 'political correct' reason is often
> admitted.
One would have to assume that when
they entered a new environment they indeed would not have had a
'balanced relationship'. There is a parallel in modern times
where they are decimating some 'protected' fauna by using modern fire
arms and outboard motors.
Paul Williams posted:
Rats, pigs and humans come to mind as brilliant 'generalists' (nice
grouping this).
Humans having the extra advantage of tool using 'cultural evolution' -
perhaps a million times quicker than (generally incredibly slow)
genetic evolution.
I believe that Roberts and Flannery may be at least partially correct
in their 'Blitzkrieg' theory of rapid extermination - but maybe not the
500 - 1000 years they posit.
Because we virtually extinguish species daily, this may seem like an
inordinate amount of time.
In geological and paleaontological time-frames 1000 years is a mere
eyeblink.
What Flannery in particular has done is focus interest on this subject.
It may take a long time (if ever) to settle the questions raised.
This paper which appeared in Science (no link unfortunately) fostered
much debate.
"Roberts, R. G., Flannery, T. F., Ayliffe, L. K. et al. (2001).
New ages for the last Australian
megafauna: Continent-wide extinction about 46,000 years ago.
Science 292, 1888-92."
- Resulting in this criticism appearing in "Australasian Science":
Mystery of Megafaunal Extinctions Remains; Wroe, et al:
http://www.bio.usyd.edu.au/staff/swroe/MegafaunaAustSci2.pdf
And;
Robert's response to Wroe et al's criticism:
http://control.com.au/229features3.htm
A reasonable summary of arguments for a topic virtually impossible to
summarise concisely:
http://control.com.au/228features1.htm
(The 62,000 years previously claimed for Mungo Man has now been
discredited - 40,000 years is the agreed age now)
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s788032.htm
One last comment:
It appears that most of our extinct Megafauna were browsers of shrubs
and trees. Many plants are specialised in reproduction in that
they need specific animal vectors (agents) for ferlilisation and to
propagate their seeds
(i.e; specific stomach acids/digestive pathways - and a dose of
fertiliser via defecation) It may be that the inter-dependence of
entire ecosystems depended on only a few specific animal vectors and
when these vectors disappeared, the rest (plants, herbivores,
carnivores) went in quick succession.
Richard
Gillespie answered:
There is indeed a strongly
polarised debate about this, with Flannery (and me) on one side &
Wroe, Field, et al on the other. I'm no longer a strict blitzkrieger in
the sense Paul Martin introduced the term many moons ago, beleiving
that direct hunting of the megafauna was probably just the 'coup de
disgrace' in an abundance of collateral damage by the first
Australians. Could still have been rapid though.
The chronologies of both the
extinction and first arrival of people is still a bit rudimentary.
Roberts & Flannery et al made a good start on the megafauna
chronology (in a field clouded by many dozens of bodgy dates), coming
up with extinction about 46,000 years ago.
I have a recently published review
of this & the archaeology in Radiocarbon 44, 455-472 (2002). Sorry
no weblink just yet, the abstract reads in part:
"The oldest occupation horizons in
four different regions reliably dated by defendable multi-method
results are in the range 42-48,000 calendar years ago, overlapping with
similarly well-dated undisturbed sites containing the youngest extinct
megafauna."
Currently the dating is fairly
adjacent, but does not say one caused t'other.
John Winckle, returning to spears:
The story was about a campfire conversation on the edge of the western
desert about aborigines living traditional lives who they knew first
hand. One of the drivers laid a bet of 100 pounds (when the weekly wage
was in shillings) that no aborigine could put a spear through a cows
skin. The argument was that there was two kinds of spear, one was
sharp, elegant and fragile, which was a status symbol and was never
used. The other was a hunting spear, more robust blunter and practical,
would kill a kangaroo but never penetrate a cow hide.
Peter
Macinnis replied:
Kill a kangaroo but never
penetrate a cow hide? Standard bush lore is that 22 slugs bounce
off a roo if there is any angle in it, that roo hide is far tougher
than boring old cows. That's what I hear others saying, anyhow.
That hearsay aside, the evidence
is apparently somewhat against you. Here is David Carnegie,
writing in 1897:
"In the Kimberley District the
spears are of superior manufacture and much more deadly. The heads are
made of quartz, or glass, or insulators from the telegraph line.
Before the advent of the white man quartz only was used, and from it
most delicately shaped spear-heads were made, the stone being either
chipped or pressed. I fancy the former method is the one employed - so
I have been told, though I never saw any spear-heads in process of
manufacture.
"Since the white man has settled a
portion of Kimberley, glass bottles have come into great request
amongst the natives, and most deadly weapons are made - spears that, I
am told, will penetrate right through a cattle-beast, and which are
themselves unimpaired unless they strike on a bone. When first the
telegraph line from Derby to Hall's Creek and thence to Wyndham was
constructed, constant damage used to be done to it by the natives who
climbed the poles and smashed the insulators for spear-head making. So
great a nuisance did this become that the Warden actually recommended
the Government to place heaps of broken bottles at the foot of each
pole, hoping by this means to save the insulators by supplying the
natives with glass!"
Note: " right through a
cattle-beast"!!
Peter Macinnis, replying to Tamara Kelly:
>Isn't roo leather a lot softer than
cow leather? It seems to be a lot
>thinner to me when I was handling it but a couple of weeks ago.
You may well be right -- all I know is that roo shooters used to say
you can get rabbits with a .22, but you need a .303 for a roo. I
am merely quoying bush lore. And we all know how reliable that is
:-)
Podargus
responded:
The softer bit is more to do with
the processing keeping in mind the end purpose. However the hide
from cattle and therefore the resulting leather is much thicker.
It can be 'split' to produce a thin product and/or supple. I have
the remains of a side of 'harness' leather here that is about 6mm thick.
> You may
well be right -- all I know is that roo shooters used to say you
> can get rabbits with a .22, but you need a .303 for a roo. I
am merely
> quoying bush lore. And we all know how reliable that is :-)
Are you talking about commercial
shooters or thatPodargus blight, 'sporting shooters'? Well most
in my experiance are a blight.
It is close to forty years since I
have shot a kangaroo. I assume that in this time they have not
evolved a tougher/thicker or some other armour plating. We
regularly shot roos in those days for dog meat. The only
professional shooter I knew, used
a 22 exclusively. At the time of which I speak shooting was
mostly for skins, competent shooters would invariably shoot for the
head, and hit it, to avoid skin damage.
Gerald Cairnes wrote:
Roo hide in my experience is very tough BUT honestly I can't see a 22
slug bouncing off unless at an acute angle AND close to the end of the
trajectory. I am ashamed to admit that at one time I have shot
kangaroos, though we did eat them and I have never seen evidence of
22's bouncing off them. I don't have any data on the tensile strength
of live roo hide nor do I suspect does anyone else so this sounds a wee
bit like a non urban legend.
Looking at a couple of Aboriginal spears we have had for many years,
they appear to have hardened points and are very sharp, I would guess
they would easily penetrate the hide of a beast given enough velocity
and again this raises the question of distance from the target and the
stage of the trajectory when the target is struck.
I used to own a 22/303 sporting rifle and did demonstrations to impress
safety on newbies by punching holes through high tensile steel plough
discs at 200 metres and that was using copper jacketed soft nosed
projectiles. In this case the projectile penetrated the discs and oddly
appeared disintegrate on the opposite side where there was circular
area around the hole covered in very tightly applied lead. From this I
concluded that a
pressure wave was released as the projectile punched through
disintegrating it in a radial fashion more or less at right angles to
the line of flight. I know a 22/303 is infinitely more powerful than a
standard long rifle 22
but the illustration is worth considering.
and:
I have put cattle down with a standard long rifle 22 through skull at
distances of around 10 metres, no problem they go in without any
difficulty but it is possible for variations to occur because of bone
density. I am not advocating the use of 22's for this purpose.
Peter
Macinnis replied:
In regard to bullet-proof
animals: see
http://www.blueridgecountry.com/elephant/elephant.html
I do not vouch for this, but I
think it would be wise to have a pre-prepared phrase such as "only in
America" dangling near your lips, ready for instant release.
Robin posted:
After several long conversations with various Americans about kangaroo
culling, I ended up directing them to this website.
http://www.kangaroo-industry.asn.au/
I won't say that it is without bias, but it does have some useful
information about roo hide.
Matt Welsby is one of Australia's better known stock whip makers and
uses kangaroo hide. His website gives information about roo hide as
well as detailed instructions on how to make a stockwhip.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~welmat/whips.htm
On 14/9/2003, Ray posted:
Rob, that is why I used the bracketed statement 'as a general term of
genus', and actually, dispersal of species into captivity often turns
out to be healthy for the gene pool, since dispersal generates
geographically and temporally isolated groups.
It is no accident, for example, that Arab states import Australian
camels to strengthen the inbred gene pool of their own camels.
