They're actually quite fun to draw but I'd rather do so from photographs that from a close outdoor perspective. It would have been interesting to see the giant roos that used to roam Australia.
I liked the picture of those kangaroos, who looked like they were wearing kabuki/mime makeup. Early members of the KISS Army, perhaps?
There's long been ambiguity about whether the new human arrivals helped kill off the large marsupials (and some North American species as well.) One thing that biologist Jared Diamond has pointed out is that their absence put the Aborigines behind in terms of developing agriculture. Whether these big roos could have been used as livestock is in question, but some of the theriodonts probably could have.
The idea of taming a ten foot tall kangaroo to pull a plough is kind of amusing - one would have to guess the planting holes would be spread pretty far apart, never mind the divots. This whole assumption about agriculture being a requirement for civilization is a bit presumptuous of western intellectuals in my opinion. We certainly define it in ways that were completely unacceptable to the 10 million Native Americans who inhabited this continent for thousands of years before our arrival. They managed a land they saw as sacred and look what we've done.
Oh, I agree that it's presumptuous to lay out rules for who gets to be considered a civilization and who doesn't. Diamond's point, though, was that Europe's richness in animals and plants that could be domesticated gave some societies a leg up, up to and including empire-building. Just an interesting way of looking at why history turned out the way it did.
4 comments:
They're actually quite fun to draw but I'd rather do so from photographs that from a close outdoor perspective. It would have been interesting to see the giant roos that used to roam Australia.
I liked the picture of those kangaroos, who looked like they were wearing kabuki/mime makeup. Early members of the KISS Army, perhaps?
There's long been ambiguity about whether the new human arrivals helped kill off the large marsupials (and some North American species as well.) One thing that biologist Jared Diamond has pointed out is that their absence put the Aborigines behind in terms of developing agriculture. Whether these big roos could have been used as livestock is in question, but some of the theriodonts probably could have.
The idea of taming a ten foot tall kangaroo to pull a plough is kind of amusing - one would have to guess the planting holes would be spread pretty far apart, never mind the divots. This whole assumption about agriculture being a requirement for civilization is a bit presumptuous of western intellectuals in my opinion. We certainly define it in ways that were completely unacceptable to the 10 million Native Americans who inhabited this continent for thousands of years before our arrival. They managed a land they saw as sacred and look what we've done.
Oh, I agree that it's presumptuous to lay out rules for who gets to be considered a civilization and who doesn't. Diamond's point, though, was that Europe's richness in animals and plants that could be domesticated gave some societies a leg up, up to and including empire-building. Just an interesting way of looking at why history turned out the way it did.
Post a Comment