The extinction of the Australian pygmies

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/

From the 1940s until the 1960s, it was fairly widely known there were pygmies in Australia. They lived in North Queensland and had come in from the wild of the tropical rainforests to live on missions in the region.
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What do y’all make of this?

Windschuttle is a conservative historian.

The extinction of rigour: a comment on ‘The extinction of the Australian Pygmies’ by Keith Windschuttle and Tim Gillin
Michael Westaway and Peter Hiscock

“Windschuttle and Gillin have engaged in a fanciful and ultimately superficial discussion of Australia’s past. Instead of developing a solid understanding of the evidence and analytical techniques that archaeologists and biological anthropologists have employed to describe the history of human occupation in Australia they have concentrated on interpretations that are decades out of date and have resorted to the bizarre conspiracy theory that ‘the fact that the Australian pygmies have been so thoroughly expunged from public memory suggests an indecent concurrence between scholarly and political interests,.20 The reason that pygmies are not discussed in models of human colonisation of Australia is that a separate group of pygmies never existed here. This is not a political statement but a scientific one, based on the absence of any biological data available for a pygmy population living in Australia, the skeletal evidence for population continuity throughout Australian prehistory and the archaeological evidence for cultural adjustment to climatic change rather than cultural replacements. It is essential in science that testable hypotheses stand the rigour of peer review. The trihybrid model does not correspond with the available data and therefore has been replaced by those models that convincingly address and accurately incorporate the archaeological and biological data.”

http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/164.pdf

“One of the primary criteria for obtaining pygmy status in the modern world is short stature.”

This guy knows his stuff.

Sounds like a tall story. If there was genuinely a distinct race of pygmies in Oz it ought to be easy enough to track down their descendants who would show the same traits.

Bubblecar said:

Sounds like a tall story. If there was genuinely a distinct race of pygmies in Oz it ought to be easy enough to track down their descendants who would show the same traits.

Unless they have no extant descendants or largely interbred with the genpop, as Windschuttle suggests.

The Westaway and Hiscock paper does appear to be a good rebuttal.

>Unless they have no extant descendants or largely interbred with the genpop, as Windschuttle suggests.

OK, I thought the suggestion was that they were still out there somewhere fairly recently, and were genetically very distinct.

Anecdote alert.

I worked for a few months with a Djubagai man, who taught me a bit of his language. Later, I recounted tales of our fun and mischief to a Wangan Jagalingou woman who said “Oh, he’d be one of the short rainforest mob”. And yes, he was short and from Kuranda.

Bubblecar said:

>Unless they have no extant descendants or largely interbred with the genpop, as Windschuttle suggests.

OK, I thought the suggestion was that they were still out there somewhere fairly recently, and were genetically very distinct.

His suggestion IS indeed that they were out there fairly recently, mid-20th century.

WRT the genetic component, Windschuttle is not a scientist.

Michael V said:

Anecdote alert.

I worked for a few months with a Djubagai man, who taught me a bit of his language. Later, I recounted tales of our fun and mischief to a Wangan Jagalingou woman who said “Oh, he’d be one of the short rainforest mob”. And yes, he was short and from Kuranda.

She knew that because he spoke Djubagai.

He’s one of Howard’s anti-black-armband revisionists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Windschuttle

>Windschuttle is not a scientist.

Apparently he’s not much of a historian either. Former Quadrant editor Robert Manne is not at all impressed:

http://www.themonthly.com.au/nation-reviewed-robert-manne-comment-keith-windschuttle-2256

In fairness, he also doesn’t know anything about anthropology or archaelogy.

dv said:

In fairness, he also doesn’t know anything about anthropology or archaelogy.

Let’s face it, he’s a troll.

Windschuttle looking smug after a hard day’s trolling:

Bubblecar said:

Windschuttle looking smug after a hard day’s trolling:

.
.
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oh, a hate thread

dv said:

In fairness, he also doesn’t know anything about anthropology or archaelogy.

It appears he may know as much as windshuttle.

His area is politics.

Maybe people living in that region were routinely malnourished and suffered from stunted growth. But with the transition to a regular diet back up my a modern supply chain they now grow to an unremarkable height.

Wouldn’t it also be easy to tell the stature of long-deceased peoples by looking at their remains?

fresnel_chick said:

Wouldn’t it also be easy to tell the stature of long-deceased peoples by looking at their remains?

Too simple to be taken seriously.

PermeateFree said:

fresnel_chick said:

Wouldn’t it also be easy to tell the stature of long-deceased peoples by looking at their remains?

Too simple to be taken seriously.

Although Windschuttle appears to have over (or rather, under) stated the height issue, the fact that there were until recently short people living in the NQ rainforests doesn’t appear to be disputed.

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

fresnel_chick said:

Wouldn’t it also be easy to tell the stature of long-deceased peoples by looking at their remains?

Too simple to be taken seriously.

Although Windschuttle appears to have over (or rather, under) stated the height issue, the fact that there were until recently short people living in the NQ rainforests doesn’t appear to be disputed.

Short maybe, but pigmy not. Cornish miners were also short.

PermeateFree said:

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

Too simple to be taken seriously.

Although Windschuttle appears to have over (or rather, under) stated the height issue, the fact that there were until recently short people living in the NQ rainforests doesn’t appear to be disputed.

Short maybe, but pigmy not. Cornish miners were also short.

Yes.

PermeateFree said:

dv said:

PermeateFree said:

Too simple to be taken seriously.

Although Windschuttle appears to have over (or rather, under) stated the height issue, the fact that there were until recently short people living in the NQ rainforests doesn’t appear to be disputed.

Short maybe, but pigmy not. Cornish miners were also short.

I’m of short stature, but I’m sure as heck not a pygmy either…
I’m 160cm (5’ 3”).