Part 28 (1/2)
What does 'kangaroo' mean in Aboriginal?
It doesn't mean 'I don't know', despite the endless websites and trivia books that tell you otherwise, citing it as a hilarious early example of cultural misunderstanding.
The real story is much more interesting. In eighteenth-century Australia there were at least 700 Aboriginal tribes speaking as many as 250 different languages.
Kangaroo or or gangaru gangaru comes from the Guugu Ymithirr language of Botany Bay, where it means the large grey or black kangaroo, comes from the Guugu Ymithirr language of Botany Bay, where it means the large grey or black kangaroo, Macropus robustus Macropus robustus.
As the English settlers moved into the interior they used this word to refer to any old kangaroo or wallaby.
The Baagandji people lived 2,250 km (1,400 miles) from Botany Bay and didn't speak Guugu Ymithirr. They heard the English settlers using this unfamiliar word and took it to mean 'an animal that no one has ever heard of before'.
Since they had never seen them before, they (quite reasonably) used the word to describe the settlers' horses.
What is 'pom' short for?
a) Port of Melbourne b) Prisoners of Her Majesty c) Prisoner of Old Mother England d) Permit of Migration e) Pomegranates Most of these are easy to discount because they are acronyms. Folk etymologists seem to be drawn to acronymic explanations, which are almost never right.
Fondness for acronyms is a military habit, dating from the First World War (an early example is AWOL, or 'Absent Without Leave', though even this wasn't consistently p.r.o.nounced as a word at the time). Acronyms didn't get into general circulation until the Second World War.
There are almost no examples of words of acronymic origin before 1900. Indeed, the very word 'acronym' wasn't coined until 1943.
In the case of 'pom', most reliable authorities agree it is a shortening of 'pomegranate'.
In his 1923 Australian novel, Kangaroo Kangaroo, D. H. Lawrence wrote: ' ”Pommy”is supposed to be short for pomegranate. Pomegranate, p.r.o.nounced invariably pommygranate, is a near enough rhyme to immigrant, in a naturally rhyming country. Furthermore, immigrants are known in their first months, before their blood 'thins down', by their round and ruddy cheeks. So we are told.'
The term is first recorded in 1916, suggesting that it dates to the latter stages of the nineteenth century, and not to the original convict s.h.i.+ps.
Michael Quinion in Port Out, Starboard Home Port Out, Starboard Home (2000) also accepts 'pomegranate', citing H. J. Rumsey's 1920 introduction to a book called (2000) also accepts 'pomegranate', citing H. J. Rumsey's 1920 introduction to a book called The Pommie or New Chums in Australia The Pommie or New Chums in Australia, in which the word is sourced to children's rhyming slang of the 1870s.
The older term 'Jimmy Grant' used for 'immigrant' became 'Pommy Grant', which was irresistible as the fierce Australian sun turned their 'new chums'' skin 'pomegranate red'.
What's the biggest rock in the world?
It's not Ayers Rock.
Mount Augustus, or Burringurrah Burringurrah, in a remote part of Western Australia is the largest single rock in the world, more than two and a half times bigger than Uluru Uluru or Ayers Rock and one of the natural world's least known but most spectacular sites. or Ayers Rock and one of the natural world's least known but most spectacular sites.
It rises 858 metres (2,815 feet) out of the surrounding outback, and its ridge is more than 8 km (5 miles) long.
Not only is it bigger and higher than Uluru, its rock is much older. The grey sandstone that is visible is the remains of a sea floor laid down 1,000 million years ago. The bedrock beneath the sandstone is granite dated to 1,650 million years ago. The oldest sandstone at Uluru is only 400 million years old.
The rock is sacred to the Wadjari people, and is named after Burringurrah, a young boy who tried to escape his initiation. He was pursued and speared in the leg, and then beaten to death by women wielding clubs. The shape of the rock reflects his prostate body, lying on its stomach with its leg bent upward towards his chest and a stump of the spear protruding from it.
A final sting in the tail for Ayers Rock sn.o.bs: Mount Augustus is a monolith a single piece of rock. Uluru isn't. It's just the tip of a huge underground rock formation that also pokes out at Mount Conner (Attila) and Mount Olga (Kata Tjuta).
What were boomerangs used for?
Knocking down kangaroos? Think about it. Boomerangs are designed to come back. They are lightweight and fast. Even large ones are unlikely to give an 80-kg (180-lb) adult male kangaroo much more than a sore head, and if it did knock them down, you wouldn't need it to return.
In fact, they weren't clubs at all. They were used to imitate hawks in order to drive game birds into nets strung from trees a kind of wooden, banana-shaped bird dog.
Nor are they exclusive to the Aboriginal peoples. The oldest returning throwing stick was found in the Olazowa Cave in the Polish Carpathians and is more than 18,000 years old. Researchers tried it out, and it still worked.
This suggests there was already a long tradition of using them the physical properties have to be so exact to make a successful boomerang that it's unlikely to be a one-off.
The oldest Aboriginal boomerangs are 14,000 years old.
Various types of throwing woods were used in Ancient Egypt, from 1,340 BC BC. In Western Europe a returning throwing stick called a cateia cateia was used by the Goths to hunt birds from around was used by the Goths to hunt birds from around AD AD 100. 100.
In the seventh century, the Bishop of Seville described the cateia cateia: 'There is a kind of Gallic missile consisting of very flexible material, which does not fly very long when it is thrown, because of its heavy weight, but arrives there nevertheless. It only can be broken with a lot of power. But if it is thrown by a master, it returns to the one who threw it.'
Australian Aboriginals probably became adept with the boomerang because they never developed the bow and arrow. Most Aboriginal peoples used both boomerangs and nonreturning throwing sticks (known as 'kylies').
The first recorded use of the word 'bou-mar-rang' was in 1822. It comes from the language of the Turuwal people of the George's River near Sydney.
The Turuwal had other words for their hunting sticks, but used 'boomerang' to refer to a returning throwing stick. The Turuwal belong to part of the Dharuk language group. Many of the Aboriginal words used in English are from Dharuk languages, including wallaby, dingo, kookaburra and koala.
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What's wrong with this picture?
What's wrong with it is the size of the pot.
Producing a watertight metal pot large enough to hold a person requires industrial technology that was new, even to the West, in the nineteenth century. In reality, you were much more likely to be butchered and roasted in small joints, or else smoked and salted for snacking on later.
The word 'cannibal' comes from a misrecording of the name for the Central American Carib tribe by Columbus in 1495. He reported finding a recently abandoned 'Canib' feast of human limbs simmering in small cauldrons and roasting on spits.
Other explorers reported cannibalism in South America, Africa, Australia, New Guinea and throughout the Pacific. Captain Cook was in no doubt that the Maori ate enemies taken in battle. During his second voyage, his lieutenant, Charles Clerke, grilled a portion of head at the behest of a Maori warrior and records that he 'devour'd it most ravenously, and suck'd his fingers a dozen times over in raptures'. a dozen times over in raptures'.
William Arens's influential The Man-Eating Myth The Man-Eating Myth (1979) argued that these stories were racist lies invented to justify Western colonialism. It resulted in a period of 'cannibal denial' among anthropologists. (1979) argued that these stories were racist lies invented to justify Western colonialism. It resulted in a period of 'cannibal denial' among anthropologists.
However, more recent discoveries have led most historians and anthropologists to accept that cannibalism was practised by many tribal cultures, mostly for ritual purposes, sometimes for food.
The last society to admit to ritual cannibalism, the Fore tribe of New Guinea, stopped in the mid-1950s after an outbreak of kuru kuru, a brain disease contracted through eating human brain and spinal tissue.
There is also archaeological evidence. Collections of butchered human remains have even been found in France, Spain and Britain. Some of the British remains date from 30 BC BC to to AD AD 130, suggesting that the Romans' belief that the ancient Britons ate people was justified. 130, suggesting that the Romans' belief that the ancient Britons ate people was justified.
In October 2003, the inhabitants of a Fijian village announced that they would be making a formal apology to the family of the Rev. Thomas Baker, an English missionary killed and eaten by their ancestors in 1867. They'd even tried to eat his boots, but these proved too tough and were returned to the Methodist Church in 1993.