Caption: Easter Island
Isolated islands always bring some unexpected surprises, those isolated flora and fauna are so strange that you can't imagine it, and so do those human civilizations.
We are often interested in "lost civilizations", which we fantasize about as a paradise, which may not be the case. If the flora and fauna of the isolated island can be described as "unique", then the isolated civilization of the isolated island can only be described as "primitive".
The island of Tasmania in southern Australia once had a true "lost civilization" where people (Indigenous Tasmanians) were isolated for 8,000 years.
Photo note: The red part is the island of Tasmania
But they have taken a completely different path from the outside world, if the more and more advanced civilizations in the outside world are called "evolution", then they are "degenerate" in the true sense, and the current mainstream science also describes them as degeneration.
About 34,000 years ago, the earliest Homo sapiens came here with the most advanced Paleolithic technology of the time, but in the last 8,000 years, they abandoned almost all technology and returned to primitive society. When Europeans arrived here in the 19th century, they found that they lived a life twice as primitive as the most primitive society 30,000 years ago.
So the question is, what exactly did the indigenous people of Tasmania go through? Why did their civilization go backwards?
How does the Tasmanian Aborigines get here?
Tasmania is quite large, almost the size of two Taiwans, and although it is now only 200 kilometers from Australia (across a Bass Strait), it is difficult for primitive Homo sapiens to cross.
However, sea levels began to fall when the most recent ice age (about 40,000 years ago) arrived, and primitive Homo sapiens were also an adventurous species who crossed the Bass Strait from Australia to Tasmania.
Image note: Tasmania is a bit like an apple
Some studies show that Tasmania's earliest immigrants arrived here 34,000 years ago, when Tasmania was much wider than it is now, about 140,000 square kilometers, compared to just over 60,000 square kilometers today.
As a result of the connection to Australia, the Tasmanian Homo sapiens at that time had contact with Australia.
However, around 16,000 years ago, the ice began to recede, sea levels gradually rose by about 120 meters, and by 8,000 years ago, Tasmanian aborigines had begun to truly isolate themselves.
Photo note: Tasmanian devil - Tasmanian devil
How backward is it?
Now Tasmania, often referred to as the "End of the World", is a scenic tourist destination with more than 500,000 people living on the island, but none of them are truly Orthodox Tasmanian aborigines, and it can be said that this people has disappeared, and the last pure-blood Tasmanian died in 1905.
In the 19th century European colonists began to expand everywhere, they discovered the island, and brought disease and oppression that the Tasmanian natives could not bear, they were captured in concentration camps, and most of them died of starvation.
What europeans can hardly imagine, though, is that these people are really too backward.
The first thing that is certain is that Tasmanians are Homo sapiens like us.
Illustration: The Tasmanian community is made up of 4-5 families
But Tasmanians have almost no clothes, even in the cold winter months, it is a matter of wrapping animal skins and applying animal fat, knowing that they migrated during the Ice Age, it would be clothed.
Because they did not have to make clothes, they lost the "bone technology", and after the arrival of the Europeans, they found that they did not have hooks, harpoons, bone needles, etc. made of animal bones, which were the most basic tools of Homo sapiens.
In addition, 30,000 years ago, there were no widely hunted tools for Australian Homo sapiens, such as spear throwers, nets, boomerangs and so on.
In addition to these hunting tools, the "handle tools" techniques needed for tribal strife were also lost (those that tied stones and horns to sticks).
Be aware that these tools are tools used by older, extinct races, such as Neanderthals and Floris.
Floris had a much smaller brain capacity than Homo sapiens, but they had been using these tools 90,000 years ago, while Tasmanians, as Homo sapiens, did not.
In fact, they used these tools in the beginning, because the indigenous people of Australia have been using them, so it is certain that the Tasmanians later discarded themselves.
The last four pure Tasmanians
Why do Tasmanians "degenerate"?
According to the complexity of the tools people use, as well as the language expression and writing situation, the degree of primitiveness of a civilization can be determined.
Tasmanians only have the most basic, simple tools, so they are very primitive. The Tasmanians didn't give up using fire, it was just that they didn't know how to fish.
The first thing europeans found after they came here was that the density of fish in this place was too high, even the highest density of fish at that time.
However, the Tasmanians gave up these resources, most of them live by the sea, and only women dive for crustaceans to eat.
Extrapolating from the timing of the tool's abandonment, Tasmanians gave up fishing about 3800 years ago, and when Europeans gave them fish, they became terrified of this high-quality protein with a fishy smell.
In addition, one of their main foods is seals, which are often surrounded by schools of fish that go around the school to kill seals.
Because of this, some scholars have deduced that an important reason for the degradation of Tasmanians is a change in faith.
Illustration: The last Tasmanian speaker (left)
For example, at some point, some of their tribes of prestige suddenly found that eating fish would affect the development of the population, or that eating fish could bring misfortune, so they called on everyone not to eat fish.
Such a culture then spread throughout Tasmania, eventually leading to later generations of people stopping fishing.
Other skills and techniques are the same, at some point they suddenly feel that these things are not necessary, so they abandon them, of course, this does not affect their survival.
Personally, I think this is a more reasonable explanation. But there is also a mainstream explanation, which is the population base, which holds that there needs to be enough of a population base to maintain technology and skills.
Illustration: Indigenous women of Tasmania
When the Europeans arrived, it was said that there were only 4,000 people on the entire island, and such a population base certainly could not maintain advanced technology and skills.
You probably know that populations on islands can easily collapse into genetic diversity, because in a few generations they will all be inbreeding, but 4,000 people is enough.
Some scholars have calculated that as few as few as 98 healthy humans can sustain human populations.
However, Tasmania's population threshold is certainly more than 4,000 people, and the current permanent population is 500,000.
So I personally think that the cultural incentives mentioned earlier ultimately lead to a small population, and the smaller the population, the less it needs to use good technology and tools, which is a vicious circle.
Imagine that a certain cultural incentive leads to the backwardness of hunting technology and tools, which in turn leads to backward productivity, and there are naturally fewer people to feed and fewer people.
When the population is smaller, they do not need good technology and tools, so they gradually degenerate back.
At last
This degradation of Tasmania is known as the Tasmanian effect, and it is quite common, seeing similar shadows in many places and throughout history, and once closed they begin to degenerate.
But have you ever thought that the earth is also such an island?
Will we suddenly one day find that no matter how hard we try, it is impossible to fly out of the earth, and finally a "high priest of mankind" will stand up and advocate abandoning the use of all technological technologies and retaining some of the most useful, primitive, and most natural survival technologies.
This is not without reason, if we really can't get out of the earth, it is really not good whether technology is good or bad for us.
Finally, whether or not the Tasmanian effect works on earth scales, it does give us a bit of a tinge!