4 June

The marble-columned ruins of ancient Rome are instantly recognisable. They copied them entirely from the ancient Greeks, whom they idolised for their culture and learning, after invading them. It was Romans trying to be Greeks. It’s a very common human behaviour, to idolise and imitate ‘golden ages’, even within individual lives. Exactly the same thing happened here, when we invaded the continent in 1788. Much of modern Australian life has its origins in the Aboriginal culture we found here. We just can’t see it, because we’re ignorant and prejudiced. For example the famous Australian accent, and dry sense of humour? Classic Aboriginal Australian culture. Germaine Greer did a brilliant and ignored essay about this, about the idea of reconciliation. And argued we go about it backwards. We assume we have a superior culture, and reconciliation is ‘recognition’ of a more primitive culture . Greer argued that much of what we take as our own invention in Australian culture, we actually flogged from the Aborigines. That matches exactly how cultures have always behaved, throughout history. Far and away the most extraordinary culture in human history is one we’ve been mining for its genius for nearly 300 years, without realising.