GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

300 • GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
a few decades of colonizing a continent whose inhabitants after more than
40,000 years were still nonliterate hunter-gatherers? It is especially striking
that Australia has some of the world's richest iron and aluminum
deposits, as well as rich reserves of copper, tin, lead, and zinc. Why, then,
were Native Australians still ignorant of metal tools and living in the Stone
Age?
It seems like a perfectly controlled experiment in the evolution of
human societies. The continent was the same; only the people were different.
Ergo, the explanation for the differences between Native Australian
and European-Australian societies must lie in the different people composing
them. The logic behind this racist conclusion appears compelling. We
shall see, however, that it contains a simple error.
As
THE FIRST step in examining this logic, let us examine the origins of
the peoples themselves. Australia and New Guinea were both occupied by
at least 40,000 years ago, at a time when they were both still joined as
Greater Australia. A glance at a map (Figure 15.1) suggests that the colonists
must have originated ultimately from the nearest continent, Southeast
Asia, by island hopping through the Indonesian Archipelago. This conclusion
is supported by genetic relationships between modern Australians,
New Guineans, and Asians, and by the survival today of a few populations
of somewhat similar physical appearance in the Philippines, Malay Peninsula,
and Andaman Islands off Myanmar.
Once the colonists had reached the shores of Greater Australia, they
spread quickly over the whole continent to occupy even its farthest reaches
and most inhospitable habitats. By 40,000 years ago, fossils and stone
tools attest to their presence in Australia's southwestern corner; by 35,000
years ago, in Australia's southeastern corner and Tasmania, the corner of
Australia most remote from the colonists' likely beachhead in western Australia
or New Guinea (the parts nearest Indonesia and Asia); and by
30,000 years ago, in the cold New Guinea highlands. All of those areas
could have been reached overland from a western beachhead. However,
the colonization of both the Bismarck and the Solomon Archipelagoes
northeast of New Guinea, by 35,000 years ago, required further overwater
crossings of dozens of miles. The occupation could have been even more
rapid than that apparent spread of dates from 40,000 to 30,000 years ago,