The Tragedy of the Tasmanians: How the People Was Destroyed, Preserving the Culture of the Neolithic Until the 19th Century

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Until relatively recently, a unique people lived on our planet - the Tasmanians. These were people who managed to live in complete isolation from other civilizations until the beginning of the nineteenth century; they seemed to be frozen in prehistoric reality - stone tools, primitive hunting, simple life century after century. But in 1803, the first settlers arrived on the island of Tasmania, and the days of the life of Tasmanian culture were numbered. After a few decades, it was all over.

Tasmania island

Tasmania is located 240 kilometers south of Australia, the island is separated from the mainland by the Bass Strait. This part of the land became an island about 10 thousand years ago, at the end of the last glacial era, before that Tasmania was part of Australia. The aborigines of Australia and Tasmania therefore have a number of similarities, primarily genetic. The division of the land by the sea led to the fact that the Tasmanians were cut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years, continuing to exist in the conditions of the Paleolithic and Early Neolithic.

The island was discovered in 1642 by the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman, who named the new land after Van Diemen, Governor General of the Dutch East Indies colonies. From 1855 the island was renamed Tasmania.

Before the arrival of British colonists in 1803, the contacts of Europeans with the aborigines were of a friendly and mutually beneficial nature - for example, the Tasmanians were brought dogs, which were not previously on the island and which turned out to be useful to the natives in hunting.

Destruction of Tasmanian aborigines

However, with the founding of permanent settlements in Tasmania, relations with the local population became tense - the Tasmanians were taken into slavery, driven from the lands that they planned to use, and often exterminated for entertainment.

In the twenties of the 19th century, the so-called Black War broke out in Tasmania - the local against the colonialists, in which the Tasmanians were absolutely helpless in front of the British firearms. Infections that got to the island along with new settlers also played a role in the population decline - due to the lack of immunity to viral diseases, including venereal diseases, Tasmanians were sick and dying.

As a result, by 1833, fewer than three hundred people remained on the island, all of whom were evicted to Flinders Island, northeast of Australia. Most of them later returned. Scientists say that from 1803 to 1833 the number of the indigenous population of Tasmania decreased from 5-10 thousand people to one and a half to three hundred. The last pure-blooded Tasmanian is considered to be Truganini, the daughter of the leader, who died in 1876, who received a nickname from the Europeans Lalla Rook. …

Tasmanians are currently of mixed ancestry and make up about 1 percent of the island's inhabitants.

Study of Tasmanian culture

The study of authentic Tasmanian culture is now based on the few memories preserved from travelers of previous centuries, as well as on archaeological finds. So far, little has been learned.

It is argued that the Tasmanians did not grind stone tools: they smashed the stone on the rock and collected the sharpest fragments to use for hunting, sharpening spears, cutting meat, even shaving hair. All types of tools were named with one word: "tronutta".

Interestingly, for unknown reasons, the Tasmanians did not eat fish, although they collected shellfish and hunted marine mammals. The natives led a semi-sedentary lifestyle - in the eastern part of the island they erected barriers from the wind, in the western part they built more solid cone-shaped huts, but changed their camp site depending on the season. Clothes were unfamiliar to the Tasmanians - even in the cold, and in the south of Tasmania it snows quite often in the cold season - they walked naked, only the elderly could keep warm by wrapping themselves in capes made of kangaroo skins.

The Tasmanian languages, including dialects of different tribes, belonged to the group of ancient Australian languages. Currently, several dictionaries of the Tasmanian language have been compiled, the last speaker of which died in 1905. It was a mixed Tasmanian Fanny Cochrane Smith, the "voice" of the only existing audio recording of a Tasmanian song.

The disappearance of the Tasmanians is not only a shameful spot in the history of human civilization, but also an irreparable loss for researchers, historians who now study Tasmanian culture almost on a par with prehistoric ones, despite the fact that it existed quite recently.

As for the Australian aborigines, although they escaped complete extermination, they also suffered from the arrival of the colonialists, and are still discriminated against.