An Alternate Australia

[LacheyS]

Imagine that Australia, due to the collapse of the continental plate in ancient times or whatever, actually did have an inland sea. It might look like the map below. How would this affect its history?

[DMA]

Oh, this one's quite a tough one as there's something like 40 000 years of human activity to cover.

The easiest part is probably dealing with the west & north. There I don't expect much change until the Europeans come. But I'll leave the modern era for a bit later. Anyway I'd expect that the Aboriginal settlement of the west & north to continue as per OTL more or less. Similar story for Queensland.

Elsewhere it could be a completely different story. Certainly Aboriginal settlement in South Australia would probably see a sea peoples develop. That in itself could mean that some local version of say the Greeks or Phoenicians could develop in a manner akin to the Mediterranean of the 1st or 2nd century BC.

Meanwhile, along the eastern land corridor, various Aboriginal tribes may settle down, due to much less yet more furtile land, & development some sort of nation-tribe type states again somewhat reflecting similar developments elsewhere. Having said all that, I wouldn't expect such civilisations to be European, in any sense, although there maybe some similarities.

Come the Europeans, though, & things could drastically change from the OTL. In fact European dominance of Australia, that basically being British dominance, may only include the eastern corridor meaning just Victoria & NSW. Queensland may also be included. But the rest of the continent could retain some form of autonomy if not outright independence - especially the South Australian Archipelago

[Tyr]

The main problem facing the aboriginees was a total lack of local domesticatable crops.
Butterflies could lead to some here but...I'm unsure.

[LacheyS]

Is it feasible, do you think, for the increased abundance of fertile land to mean that the indigenous Australians develop agriculture and a larger population than in OTL, even though there is less land total? There certainly are trees and plants in Australia that could have been turned into agricultural crops - also, there was trade with the north. I am thinking about this as a future project, but was wondering whether there could be cultural changes wrought by the geographical changes that might cause the beginning of a society that would be recognised in classical terms as a civilisation?

[arctic warrior]

Perhaps the inland sea would make the indignious Australians partly sea-faring, opening for rice to be picked up as a major crop from South East Asia and then form the basis for society? Then society would develop on a much different basis from OTL as part of the peoples would be sea-faring, part live in a agricultural evironment and part live as OTL. So there would be greater cultural diversity, with scope for development as different cultures interact. What this may lead to is open though...

[tinfoil]

Jared Diamond spent a fair bit of time talking about Australia and southeast asia in his classic 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. You may want to read it, as it addresses must of the pondering on this thread.

Basically, it takes a lot of domesticable aminals and plants, combined with lots of interaction between diverse cultures, to progress much beyond agrarian societies.

[Tom Veil]

Originally Posted by tinfoil

Jared Diamond spent a fair bit of time talking about Australia and southeast asia in his classic 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. You may want to read it, as it addresses must of the pondering on this thread.

Basically, it takes a lot of domesticable aminals and plants, combined with lots of interaction between diverse cultures, to progress much beyond agrarian societies.

Agreed. I would say that without moving Australia's location or changing things outside of Australia, the best that you could do for the Aborigines with this lake is to raise them up to the level that the Indonesians were at when the Europeans found them (early medieval tech). In other words, they could indeed survive the colonization period with their culture intact.

In a more cautious reading, though, the the Aborigines will only succeed in jumping up to American levels of sophistication -- which pretty much means getting wiped out by the British again.

[Wendell]

The states will likely look different.

[wkwillis]

By dating phytoliths we know that New Guinea developed agriculture independently and perhaps for the first time. Australia could do the same.
So if we have such a nice climate for Australia, perhaps that's where civilisation would arise, instead of in the Fertile Crescent?

[monkey]

Despite many atempts the only plant or animal in australia that has been sucessfuly domesticated is the macadamia nut. The most you can hope for with this scenario is stone age fishing vilages.

Stephen Wordsworth