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The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia

Amazon.com Price:  $26.53 (as of 02/05/2019 03:44 PST- Details)

Description

Reveals the complex, country-wide systems of land management used by Aboriginal people in presettlement Australia
 
Across Australia, early Europeans commented over and over again that the land seemed like a park, with extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands, and abundant wildlife. Bill Gammage has discovered this was once because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than the general public have ever realized. For more than a decade, he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management the use of fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural drift of water to verify plentiful wildlife and plant foods all through the year. Aboriginal people spent far less effort and time than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and this book reveals how. Once Aboriginal people were no longer ready to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires Australians now experience. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, this book rewrites the history of the continent, with huge implications for today.

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