I would appreciate the courtesy, if you’re technically responding to me, of writing at least partly for me. I shouldn’t have to imagine what you mean.
You were. But as I have pointed out, that’s not relevant. I’m sure you have imagined some kind of scenario in your head, but you haven’t managed to communicate it clearly. I’m not sure you have even tried.
You have a way of making people very tired of conversing with you.
I agree with @John_Harshman that your reason for bringing this up is unclear. As someone who just spent some time in Tasmania earlier this year and has spent time in Indonesia, the relevance of the narrowness of the gaps is dwarfed by the difference in weather. The north coast of Tasmania is 41 degrees south. The northernmost tip of Australia is only 10 degrees south of the equator.
Consistent with a big difference in the ease of crossing those gaps, we also know that dingoes didn’t make it to Tasmania with migrating humans as they did to the mainland. The name “Tasmanian Devil” is not historically accurate, as they used to be present in mainland Australia until they were outcompeted by dingoes occupying the same ecological niche.
The first step in the argument ought to be, I think, to demonstrate that Victorian Aborigines used sea-going boats. (When I went looking for an answer on this point the best I got was that dugout canoes were introduced into Northern Australia quite recently, replacing bark canoes.) Then you can proceed to the question as to whether they could survive being blown across the Bass Strait by a storm.
Are you under the impression that I think there would be some kind of regular trade route between Australia and Tasmania? I discuss the gap in connection with one-off acts of providence where a member or two of the Adam lineage is driven to the shore of Tasmania by a storm. It’s a one-way trip.
I hope this clears things up for you and @John_Harshman.
Victorian aborigines? Victorian era?
Aborigines have been in Australia for more than 40,000 years, yes?
Are you suggesting that Aborigines don’t know how to use boats at all? When a storm grabs a boat, a canoe or a raft, you are not likely to be going where you originally wanted to go, right?
Victorian as in the Australian state of Victoria, which is the bit opposite Tasmania. My understanding is that the Tasmanians didn’t have boats. My expectation is that the Victorians would have kept them, but I don’t know that they did, and if they did whether they used them on the open sea, rather than just rivers and lagoons.
Anthropologists think that the Tasmanians were isolated for thousands of years. They presumably have a reason for this, such as there not being boats capable of crossing the Bass Strait available.
What’s the point of restricting the discussion to the Australian state of Victoria? You don’t think they came from the same aborigines that are in other parts of Australia?
Are you going to tell me that there were no aborigines who knew how to make a boat to go down a river? Rivers don’t go out to the sea? Storms don’t occur on the ocean?
You and others spend more time trying to explain away providence (as some sort of impossibility) than Joshua does in allowing for Providence. You are a Christian, right?
I am not a Christian.
The further away the less chance of them surviving a storm and fetching up on the coast of Tasmania.
So… you are not a Christian… and yet here you are refuting a Christian-centered scenario with an objection that says no way could there have been a storm that drove an Australian to Tasmania… for 2000 years?
And yet placental rats got to Australia 3 million years ago… without any boats at all.
Pardon me if I think your objection isn’t very relevant.
It doesn’t. In order to be driven to the shore of Tasmania, one must have a boat, which nobody in southern Australia appears to have had until quite recently.
How good is the evidence for proving that negative, say, 4,000 years ago?
What kind of boats? Australia has some rather large lakes. Are you saying aborigines lived for thousands of years without canoes, rafts, skiffs?
The reference to the aborigines of Victoria seems almost intentionally selective. Why? Are there ancient boats in other parts of Australia?
And if we have to go to the polynesians to find the nearest historical boats… well …there you are! People who practically LIVE on boats. We are talking about one-off “accidents”… not invasions.
Apparently at least some of them did.
Other parts are not relevant. You may have noticed that Australia is a big place.
No you aren’t. There is good evidence of contact by boat on the north coast, but nowhere else. Again, it’s a big place. The Vikings visited North America. Were any of them blown off course to Mexico?
No, trade routes are irrelevant to my point.
And the feasibility of that is dependent on weather.
I know. I don’t see how that makes differences in weather irrelevant. Can you explain?
Yes. But is there any water in them?
The Bass Strait is not known for its placid seas:
You seem to have confused asking you to make a case with a refutation.
PS: I suspect rats are rather more readily transported on rafts of vegetation.
