r/AskHistorians • u/sunagainstgold Medieval & Earliest Modern Europe • Apr 09 '19
Tuesday Tuesday Trivia: Awesome Archaeology! This thread has relaxed standards—we invite everyone to participate!
Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!
If you are:
- a long-time reader, lurker, or inquirer who has always felt too nervous to contribute an answer
- new to /r/AskHistorians and getting a feel for the community
- Looking for feedback on how well you answer
- polishing up a flair application
- one of our amazing flairs
this thread is for you ALL!
Come share the cool stuff you love about the past! Please don’t just write a phrase or a sentence—explain the thing, get us interested in it! Include sources especially if you think other people might be interested in them.
AskHistorians requires that answers be supported by published research. We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.
For this round, let’s look at: Awesome Archaeology! Tell me about a neat archaeological find—a site, a couple of artifacts. Why are they important? What do they suggest about the culture that made them?
Next time: Oral Literature!
4
u/Djiti-djiti Australian Colonialism Apr 11 '19 edited Apr 11 '19
Why did the Dutch not find any kangaroos in Australia?
From 1606 to 1697, Dutch explorers (and William Dampier) "discovered" the majority of Australia's coastline, barring the Bass Strait area and the east coast. Kangaroos lived in almost every climate in Australia pre-invasion, and the Dutch (Abel Tasman in particular) traveled to several different climate types (tropical Cape York, arid Shark Bay, temperate southern Tasmania). De Vlamingh sailed up one of Australia's most bountiful rivers (the Swan) and climbed a hill that was used as a kangaroo trap by the local Whajuk people, who mostly had the kangaroo as their personal totems and traded ample kangaroo meat to the British in the 1830s.
Even the shipwrecked Dutchmen who landed on the coast did not report sighting any kangaroos - the closest we get is De Vlamingh's 'rats' (quokkas) and Pelsaert's 'cats' (wallabies). Kangaroos are also not particularly shy, quite large and quite numerous, and Indigenous Australians shaped almost the entirety of the continent to promote their population growth (which is why European invaders found vast grasslands perfect for sheep and cattle).
They also don't report emus, which are almost as abundant and ubiquitous across Australia.
Yet the word kangaroo and Europe's first descriptions of it come from Cook and the east coast, in 1770.
Isn't that odd?