That is far out. I doubt that I would ever try pot again if that were my experience. The symptoms sound like a reaction to eating peyote or maybe exposure to some bad batch of LSD. Did your brother dabble in any hallucinogens back then? I imagine there could be some hallucinogens native to Australia that I have never heard of, like maybe the perspiration of a wallaby (not that I have a clue as to what a wallaby is, i’m guessing a mammal, maybe a sort of cross between a kangaroo and a dingo… I guess I should look it up.).
The small group of ppl who are allergic to pot, typically report different symptoms than vomiting and hallucinating. Oh, BTW, I recommend that no one ever try or use what is called “synthetic marijuana”. It is a “designed drug” and is not in any way marijuana, but it might very well be toxic, some versions more than others.
Yes, Wallaby are a smaller species of kangaroo and edible.
Not a lot of wallaby meat sold in supermarkets, have never seen it in fact. Kangaroo though is a different matter. Kangaroo meat is sold in some supermarkets as steak, also as sausages and even salami. I tried it, once. At a barbeque as satay, with a nice peanut curry sauce. I commented on the beautiful steak, and was told it was 'roo. It WAS delicious, and kangaroo is much leaner than beef, so is recommended by the Australian Heart Foundation. (truly)
I have never bought kangaroo to eat because I can’t bear the thought of eating such a beautiful, if stupid, animal* Same with horse meat. I’m obviously very spoiled.
The average kangaroo makes the average sheep seem intellectually gifted. Most Australian native animals are pretty thick. I guess no need to be smart if you have no natural predators. (the Dingo is not a native animal. he was introduced by the aborigines, around 50k years ago.)
Didn’t the roos need to be smart enuf to avoid crocodiles? Or maybe they are just reproductive enuf that it doesn’t matter?
So were dingos a pet or domesticated animal of the aborigines when they came? I don’t suppose there was a land bridge to Australia at that time, so the Aboriginies must have come by boat or raft, I guess.
I wouldn’t mind trying a kangaroo steak. Although Kangaroo was my High School mascot. I’m glad I didn’t know they are stupid.
Kangaroos have very strong survival instincts.Considering the time they’ve been around I’d say those instincts are pretty good. A large kangaroo (about 2 metres tall) can gut a dog, by standing on its hind legs and using its front paws.
Dingoes? Not sure. To describe them as ‘domesticated’ is perhaps a tad optimistic. A Dingo is a dog in the same way as a wolf, fox or coyote. They remain scavenger sand opportunistic predators. There have been cases where people who have [illegally] had dingoes as pets, and left them with children; dingo kills child.
I guess they came to Oz with the early aborigines. Nobody knows exactly how they got here, or even what they looked like. There was a land bridge between Australia and New Guinea which disappeared about 8000 years ago.Apparently there have been several land bridges, of various sizes between Asia and Australia over thousands of years. However, it is generally accepted that the first Australian would have had to have crossed some water. The inference I get is that those journeys would have been short, and never out of sight of land. Who knows? I’m judging a bit by the aborigine canoes I’ve seen; either from bark, for rivers, or dugouts, which are more substantial .
If you are interested, the is an excellent Australian film called “Ten Canoes”
I think the link may be in Dutch, but still worth watching a bit. It gives an interesting look at traditional life, as it is remembered today. Everything changed with white settlement, including some mythology.
I did some reading on the aborigines. Seems they were among the 1st wave of humans to leave Africa, as long as 70K years ago. Maybe before that they got a bit of Neanderthal nookie. They came thru Asia and maybe got a bit of Denisovian funtime along the way. And around 50K years ago, reached the land of Aus, divided into groups about the land mass, and all stayed put for those 50K years in Aus, and within their individual groups, such that different cultural groups evolved on the continent.
It seems strange that after reaching Australia, and splitting into different geographical locales, the groups so steadfastly stayed away from each other. Weird even.
Oh, I see. Wikipedia comes to the rescue. The aborigines have an astoundingly remarkable oral history spanning thousands or 10’s of thousands of yrs. It also serves as their law and religion. One aspect of their beliefs has to do with the intricate connection of the land to the individuals who occupy it. Thus their law/beliefs probably made a solid bond between the land where any particular group was and that group. Thus each geographic locale of each aborigine group would be virtually tied to that area, by belief and law, and not to any other aborigine group’s land area.
Australian Aboriginal culture has always been nomadic hunter gatherer.
That way of life does not support large groups. Instead, Aboriginal society was made up of extended family groups of around 20 people. They had very strict kinship relations which determined with whom an individual could mate; no one from his/her own group.
North American indigenous people were split into hundreds of small tribes, with an average size of 300 or less, with some exceptions. Same goes for many African tribes, as well as nomadic semitic tribes. Look at the Nilotic people, from first settlement for thousands of years.
It is our urbanised, post industrial way of life which is relatively unusual. Up until the industrial revolution and well after, civilisation was essentially agrarian. The vast majority of people lived in/near small settlements, such as hamlets and small villages. A person living away from the city would usually never travel more than 20 miles from his place of birth.
That all makes sense, except that we are talking about a ppl who had come all the way from Africa, across a large part of Asia and even intermingled a bit with Neanderthals and Denisovians along the way. Then when they got to their spots in Australia, they stayed put for 50K yrs. I suppose that the 20K yrs that may have passed from leaving Africa and getting to Australia were times of tremendous pressures to migrate.
" Then when they got to their spots in Australia, they stayed put for 50K yrs. "
Australia has approx. the same area as the continental United States
These were nomadic peoples. At the time of white settlement, aborigines lived in every part of Australia, from the coast, to the desserts to the Island of Tasmania. They had trade routes which stretched from Cape York (Queensland) to Cape Leeuwin (most southerly point on the continent, now in Western Australia.
I guess Australian scholars have been guilty of intellectual laziness. A long the lines of “Ah dingo, not indigenous. Of COURSE! He came with aborigines!”
I think it’s great that academia is looking beyond the bleedin’ obvious with studies of our extinct mega fauna. Many are thought to have become extinct by being hunted by the aborigines. However, that’s a working hypothesis , not a consensus. We also had a marsupial lion, and others.
The wiki article linked below is worth a glance.
“Australian megafauna comprises a number of large animal species in Australia, often defined as species with body mass estimates of greater than 45 kg (100 lb)[1] or equal to or greater than 130% of the body mass of their closest living relatives. Many of these species became extinct during the Pleistocene (16,100±100 – 50,000 years BC).[2]”
“The cause of the extinction is an active, contentious and factionalised field of research where politics and ideology often takes precedence over scientific evidence, especially when it comes to the possible implications regarding Aboriginal people (who appear to be responsible for the extinctions).[4] It is hypothesised that with the arrival of early Australian Aboriginals (around 70,000~65,000 years ago), hunting and the use of fire to manage their environment may have contributed to the extinction of the megafauna.[5] Increased aridity during peak glaciation (about 18,000 years ago) may have also contributed, but most of the megafauna were already extinct by this time.”
Research by surveys and data review are something, but we really need a LOT more hard science, rigorous methodological research on marijuana. Reclassification of marijuana from being a federally restricted Class 1 narcotic MUST BE done ASAP. This part of federal law should have been changed years ago, if not decades ago. It continues to interfere with hard scientific research being conducted.
I have no problem believing these kind of miracle cures if the mechanism by which they work their wonders is given. Just saying something cures cancer, lowers cholesterol, fights obesity (and apparently a thousand other things, according to social media), is a waste of time and makes me even more skeptical that it’s true.
Nothing would make me happier than having something to cure the most common diseases and disabling conditions our society suffers from. But I’ll wait until there’s a reason to believe it’s true before believing it.
Check the topic in this Alt Med section, titled “A double blind Study…”
It links to what seems to be a methodologically sound experiment on Cannabidiol (CBD) decreasing cravings and lowered physical indicators of stress in heroin users exposed to videos designed to elicit cravings.
Fred Moor: “I hope that in the near future medical marijuana will replace such drugs as Xanax, Adderal, Fentanyl and so on.”
It probably will and Big Pharma will patent it, corner the market, get Congress to make it illegal for people to grow it, and charge big bucks for their products.
So is alcohol and many over-the-counter and prescription drugs, with many more dangerous side effects than marijuana and all legal and available to anyone. Anybody can go to a bar or liquor store and get blotto on alcohol and then get in a car and drive. So why the hysteria over marijuana?
As far as I have read here Washington and Colorado haven’t made it easy for tourists to smoke weed. While pot tourists can legally obtain 1 ounce of dried marijuana, finding a legal place to smoke a joint is difficult. It is illegal to smoke in either states’ national parks, on the streets, in most hotel rooms, or anywhere in public.