Review of Walkabout (1971) by Serge C — 01 Nov 2010

As I remember reading in many science books (by Richard Dawkins and other):

"Three-metre tall kangaroos, huge wombat-like browsers and killer birds once roamed Australia. Within a few millennia these all disappeared - shortly after our relatives crossed there from Asia. Similar extinctions occurred in the Western Hemisphere with similar timing. Over three-quarters of large mammals disappeared after humans entered North and South America. "Contrary to the sentimental image of a life in harmony with nature", Kingdon says, humans exploited fully whatever resources they encountered.".

So, while the movie implies that Western colonists deprived Aboriginals their livelihood. The fact remains that Australian Aboriginals caused quite a bit of ecosystem disruption themselves ! Which ended up biting them in the long term (hence such a low population).

Also from wikipedia:

"The historical record tends to favour distinct and widespread evidence of cannibalism in indigenous communities. That the practice was observed by anthropologists from the time of European settlement and well into the 20th century has been noted by a number of writers, including W.E. Roth in his monumental study "The Queensland Aborigines". In Arnhem Land in northern Australia, a study of warfare among the Indigenous Australian Murngin people in the late 19th century found that over a 20-year period no less than 200 out of 800 men, or 25% of all adult males, had been killed in intertribal warfare.".

So the life among aboriginals might had been "Nasty, brutish and short" after all. Before Westernization finding a boy and girl of fertile age and different "tribe" meant most likely than not, killing the boy and raping the girl.

So, not to disparage Australian Aboriginals, to be intellectually honest we need to admit that humans, like Chimps and most other apes, are generally quite violent in the state of nature. And civilization did moderate our violent instincts on one hand, while on the other hand gave us tools to kill much easier than with a spear and club. So pushing a button to kill thousands from thousands of feet above, doesn't require a murderous rage anymore. And of course we are not evolutionary adept to imagine what it means to kill more than are in a typical tribe (which rarely exceed low hundreds).