VincentRJ

3 hours ago, thaicurious said:

I did not say behavior has no effect on genetic expression--quite the opposite--just that I'd not anthropomorphize genetics, emphasizing (here, again) that karma is a matter of conscious intent. 

I'm not sure what you mean by anthropomorphizing genetics, and I'm not sure why you think there is anything significant in describing Karma as a matter of conscious intent, unless you mean that Karma is only about conscious intent and has nothing to do with subconscious impulses, which I don't think would be true.

If people are affected by the karma they inherited from previous lives, then those affects could include subconscious driving forces which we are not aware of. Most of what we do involves a conscious element, but is sometimes uncontrollable due to strong impulses, subconscious impulses, or spontaneous reactions that occur before we have time to think about it, such as suddenly jumping away from a snake we encounter, if we have a phobia about snakes.

59 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

 

It can be said that Wolfgang's father was a well talented musician, but not quite as talented as the son.

 

From the article you quoted :

 

The discovery of his children's talent is considered to have been a life-transforming event for Leopold. He once referred to his son as the "miracle which God let be born in Salzburg".^[4] Of Leopold's attitude, the Grove Dictionary says:

The recognition of this 'miracle' must have struck Leopold with the force of a divine revelation and he felt his responsibility to be not merely a father's and teacher's but a missionary's as well.^[4]

Most of Leopold's children died during or soon after birth. Only one son and one daughter survived from 7 births, so I would assume Leopold would be have been very grateful to have had the two that survived. I also assume that Leopold would not have been aware that children in the womb are influenced by the sound of music. Nor would he have been aware of the existence of genes, their role in the inheritance of the parent's characteristics and talents, and the perhaps great significance of teaching a subject to a child at a very early age. Even Charles Darwin, who lived years later, was not aware of the existence of genes.

I really don't think there's any need to imagine a mystical spirit in order to explain the birth of an unusual talent, but if you find it useful or inspiring or comforting to think so, or to speculate that such a spirit might exist, then no harm done. It's your choice.

Personally, I come to Buddhism from an agnostic or atheistic perspective. What impresses me most is the rationality and common sense of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism, rather than the airy-fairy speculative tales one finds in some of the scriptures. ????
 

40 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

The great composer W.A. Mozart could play and compose exceptionally complex music at the age of six, it's not impossible that he brought that ability from some higher level of consciousness, for sure it was not his parents which taught him.

Thanks for the compliment, but I don't think the above statement is right. The father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Refer the following Wikipedia article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Mozart

As I understand, a developing child in the womb is sensitive to sounds from outside the womb, and is influenced by his mother's reaction to those sounds.

Research has shown that a child who is exposed to classical music, whilst in the womb, will have a natural liking and interest in such music when he is born. When such an interest is later encouraged by the father, then it's not surprising if the child later shows great talent.

From the Wiki article: 
"Leopold discovered that his two children were musically gifted in about 1759, when he began with keyboard lessons for the seven-year-old Nannerl. The toddler Wolfgang immediately began imitating his sister, at first picking out thirds on the keyboard and then making rapid progress under Leopold's instruction."
 

1 hour ago, bristolboy said:

You're assumption is bizarrely clueless since why would  the NY Times, in your words a "pro alarmist newspaper"  impeach the honesty of Mann et alii.

I don't read either the NY Times or the Times of London. I'm Australian.
However, a newspaper's purpose is to report news, whether good or bad, and 'climategate' was a very newsworthy subject at the time. It's quite likely, and happens quite often, that after an article is published by a newspaper, the editors realize that it shouldn't have been published and that the content of the article could perhaps offend someone who might sue the paper for defamation, so they apologize. Michael Mann is famous for taking people to court for criticising him.

Now that I have a clue as to which newspaper you were referring to, I suspect that the NY Times might have avoided all reportage of Climategate, such is their bias.

Regarding the global nature of the MCA and LIA, the following research was conducted recently in Australia.
Global warming in the context of 2000 years of Australian alpine temperature and snow cover
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22766-z

"The warmth in the Australian alpine area corresponding to the MCA was followed by a cooling trend coeval with the LIA widely reported in temperature reconstructions for the Northern Hemisphere and seen in New Zealand palaeoclimate archives also before onset of very cold conditions through 1600 to 1700 . This period has been linked to increased southerly airflow, solar variability and volcanic forcing of climate. These 300 years of regional Southern Hemisphere cooling is coeval with evidence of widespread colder temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere, and supports a globally synchronous LIA cooling of climate."
 

3 hours ago, bristolboy said:

As anyone who actually followed and followed up on the so called "Climategate" scandal knows, the Times actually had to apologize for the dishonesty of its articles that alleged dishonesty on the part of climatologists.

 

I presume you are referring to the NY Times which is very obviously a 'pro alarmist' newspaper with regard to climate change. Attached are a few links which reveal this.

https://climatechangedispatch.com/nytimes-sets-new-record-for-nutty-climate-alarmism/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/11/climate_alarmism_at_the_new_yo.html
https://defyccc.com/ny-times-suspends-use-of-the-phrase-climate-change-denier/
https://principia-scientific.org/nytimes-climate-alarmism-is-good-because-scaremongering-fixed-y2k-bug/

[/quote]And as for what other climatologists conclude about the "hockey stick", by now there have been many other independent studies confirming that the hockey stick is real.[/quote]

I agree with Rick. You'd better inform the IPCC about this, because they stopped using the Mann Hockey Stick graph years ago. ????
The conversations in the hacked Climategate emails strongly imply that the existence of the Medieval Warm Period, and the following Little Ice Age, were seen as very problematic for some of the research scientists, because as soon as you reveal that there have been other warm periods in the past that could not have been caused by human emissions of CO2, you cause people to become skeptical and encourage them to wonder if the current warming might be mostly natural.

The Hockey Stick was designed to solve this problem, and maintain or increase the alarm. The justification was not so much that the MWP and LIA didn't exist, but that they were not global events and were confined mostly to Northern Europe.
Many studies since the publication of the Hockey Stick have implied that both the MWP and the LIA were very likely global events. Here's one study from China. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233596026_Key_points_on_temperature_change_of_the_past_2000_years_in_China 

"(1) The Little Ice Age (LIA) in China began in the early of the 14th century (1320s) and ended in the beginning of the 20th century (1910s), which was composed of four evident cold stages and three short warming stages. The cold period in the Wei, Jin and South-North dynasties (210s–560s) was the only one comparable with LIA for the past 2000 years. (2) The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) in China began in the 930s and ended in the 1310s, which was composed of two warm stages over 100 years and a cold stage less than 100 years."

But that's not conclusive. The problem that many people seem unable to appreciate is that climate does not change uniformly across the entire planet at the same time. Whilst one part of the world might see an increase in average temperatures, another part will see a reduction in average temperatures. Whilst one glacier in a particular location retreats, another glacier in another country advances. Whilst the Arctic loses ice over a certain period, the Antarctic gains ice over the same period, and so on.

Getting a precise average of the entire process is extremely difficult. There's always a degree of uncertainty.
 

6 hours ago, thaicurious said:

I'm not certain as to whether or how you are trying to weave in genetics to some overall theory of or replacement for karma unless you are using it as some proof of karma. By itself, genes seems more mechanical even if still a matter of cause and effect. 

Genes might appear to be mechanical because of the published diagrams showing their chemical construction, which look a bit like Meccano sets ???? . However, the reality is very complex with so many interacting factors, including our behaviour and the environment which affect the expression of those genes. These factors affecting the expression of the genes, change during the course of our life, and such changes are inherited by our children. 

This process seems a remarkable match to the Buddhist concepts of Karma and Rebirth, if one discounts the fairy-tale notion of a mystical spirit (representing the characteristics and tendencies of the deceased) leaving the body upon death, and hovering around, waiting to penetrate the womb of a pregnant lady. ????

Long before the modern methodology of science was developed, certain remarkably intelligent and imaginative individuals from the distant past thought of explanations for certain phenomena which, many centuries later, have been shown to be fundamentally or broadly correct, although not necessarily correct in the fine detail, which is quite understandable.

For example, we tend to think that the ancient Greek philosopher, Democritus, was the first person to propose the existence of the atom. However, this might not be true. There was an Indian philosopher by the name of Acharya Kanad who probably lived during the times of the Buddha, before Democritus was born, who not only proposed the existence of the atom, but also the existence of molecules composed of atoms.

"This theory occurred to him while Kanad was walking with food in his hand, breaking it into small pieces when he realised that he was unable to divide the food into any further parts, it was too small. From this moment, Kanad conceptualized the idea of a particle that could not be divided any further. He called that indivisible matter Parmanu (atom).
Kanad further held that atoms of same substance combined with each other to produce dvyanuka (biatomic molecules) and tryanuka (triatomic molecules). Kanad also put forward the idea that atoms could be combined in various ways to produce chemical changes in the presence of other factors such as heat."

That karma is about cause and effect does not mean all things cause and effect are karmic for the cause and effect of karma is a matter of conscious intent.

Cause and effect, sometimes referred to as 'dependent origination', is a fundamental Buddhist principle which applies to everything, including Karma. This is one reason why Buddhism can appeal to those with a scientific leaning or background.

However, that which is conscious is not clear cut, if you accept the existence of the unconscious or subconscious which contains repressed emotions and tendencies which motivate us to behave in certain ways without our realizing it.

Buddhist practices of meditation should help a person to understand and become aware of those hidden impulses in the subconscious.
 

55 minutes ago, thaicurious said:

Deja Vu, I've had this argument before. Last time with a friend's physics professor husband. I'm not sure, but I think I won that argument, or at least put a pause to it when it went quantum, theories I don't pretend to comprehend but enjoy playing with, that just maybe, before arising into this existence, I'd instructed myself to create the genes & epigenetics of this life that might incline me towards certain doings or thinkings or sayings. Now where's shrugging off personal responsibility or denying free will?

 

More practical, maybe there's a delay factor that we might take the time to consider what some might claim or even scientifically show we'd otherwise be inclined towards. For instance, my sweet tooth might be telling me to eat that ice cream cone while at the same time some killer gene might be telling me to stuff the cone into frustrating guy's face behind the ice cream counter who filled the waffle cone when I'd asked for a sugar cone, ruining my sweet tooth experience. Outside of maybe someone's psychopathy, which is worse than sad, I'm pretty sure I get to choose to not harm others even if they frustrate me and my genes, or me in my jeans which is more likely the case.

 

So, yeah, we have to take into account that our genes made us born with defective legs, but again, that's not karma. Karma is not even that you get sad if your brain inclined towards depression. You might be born manic depressive and so you might get more sad about defective legs than someone with defective legs but born without a leaning towards depression. So neither are your genes your karma.

 

And if it is not your doing, if you didn't make yourself sad about a born defect but that you have a genetically predisposed brain that tends towards depression, then that also is not your karma. But you still can make decisions on what to do with your sadness. If you actively try to make others sad because you are sad--outside of psychopathy or depending upon the degree--well, then that might be some karma making.

As far as I understand, Karma within the Buddhist tradition, relates only to characteristics and tendencies which are transmitted during the process of Rebirth, whereas the ancient Vedic concept of Reincarnation seems to be more associated with a personal identity or soul.

Characteristics and tendencies in modern science are associated with genes, and the new science of epigenetics is beginning to discover how our behaviour in this life modifies the expression of those genes, which we all inherit. It is the expression of those genes that is affected by our behaviour, not the actual coding sequence.

However this is a new science and there is a lot yet to learn. When the human genome was first 'cracked', it was only a very small percentage of  genes that were cracked, known as protein-encoding genes. The vast majority of the genetic material was initially described as 'junk DNA', because no-one could find a purpose for it.

The Buddhist concepts of Karma and Rebirth are imaginative explanations which would have made sense in those ancient times, in the absence of modern concepts of genetics, which now include epigenetics which seems particularly relevant to the processes of Karma. (In my humble opinion, of course ???? ).
 

24 minutes ago, thaicurious said:

Karma isn't what happens. Karma is what you do with what happens.

And what you do is influenced by your genes. There is nothing you can do, think, or say, which is not fundamentally related to your genes.

2 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Check the science!

Excellent advice! That's what I do, and that's why I'm very skeptical about the mantra which demonizes CO2.

10 years ago, or so, I used to accept that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 were a real threat to the climate, and that we should move to renewable energy as quickly as possible. I was puzzled why governments were not taking swifter action.

I recall listening to interviews of James Lovelock, James Hansen, Michael Mann, and other so-called authorities who made alarming statements about unprecedented rates of climate change, ocean acidification that would destroy the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, sea level rises that would destroy many coastal cities and submerge many islands, melting ice in the arctic which would cause the extinction of the polar bear, and so on, and so on.

When I began searching on the internet, and in Google Scholar, for more information on the issues mentioned in these interviews, such as ocean acidification, I began to realize how totally biased and non-educational such interviews were.
For example, if a scientist gives a talk on Ocean Acidification, and explains that CO2 dissolves in water to form Carbonic Acid which makes the oceans more acidic, wouldn't you think that person would also mention what the current pH of the oceans are, and how much the pH as changed since the industrial revolution?

In order to get this information, I had to do my own research. After checking a number of scientific papers, it became clear why the pH of the oceans was never mentioned when 'alarmist' scientists discussed this issue during interviews in the media. Such facts would have undermined the alarmist message.

Here is some of the information I discovered.
(1) The average pH of the surface of the oceans is estimated to be 8.1. A pH of 7 is neutral. Below 7 is acidic. Above 7 is alkaline, or basic.
(2) This average pH, only of the surface and which can only be approximate, is estimated to have fallen from 8.2 to 8.1 since the industrial revolution.
(3) The pH of the oceans has a natural variability according to the season of the year, the location of the ocean, and the depth of the ocean. This variability is greater than the predicted changes to the pH of the oceans during the next century, and sea life is well used to adapting to such changes.
(4) There is constant upwelling and downwelling in the oceans causing changes in temperature and alkalinity.
(5) There are possibly millions of volcanoes on the sea floor, some of which will be active at any given moment, producing heat and carbon dioxide. It's not known exactly how many submarine volcanoes there are. Estimates vary between 1 million and 10 million.

By the way, James Lovelock, as he got older and wiser, realised his mistake regarding predictions of catastrophic climate change due to man's CO2 emissions. This is now his current view.

The concept of Karma is best explained by the modern, scientific concept of 'Epigenetics'.

https://www.whatisepigenetics.com/fundamentals/

"Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression (active versus inactive genes) that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence — a change in phenotype without a change in genotype — which in turn affects how cells read the genes. Epigenetic change is a regular and natural occurrence but can also be influenced by several factors including age, the environment/lifestyle, and disease state."
 

I should also mention that sea level rise is often confused with land sinking. Certain islands that are experiencing alarming sea level rise, are actually experiencing land sinking. The city of Bangkok is an example of this. Bangkok is sinking at a greater rate than sea levels are rising. ThaiVisa produced a news article on this, some time ago.

There are sometimes both positives and negatives on both sides of a situation involving differences of opinion.

One can argue endlessly about the significance of the role of CO2 emissions in the current warming. The often quoted 97% consensus among scientists working in the various disciplines related to climate, that CO2 is the main driver of the current global warming which will eventually be very bad for us, is a political ploy which is necessary in order to motivate investment in alternative sources of energy.

Imagine what would happen if the media were to give more air to intelligent discussions highlighting the uncertainty surrounding the causes of changes in climate, because of the chaotic and very complex nature of weather and climate, the influence and interaction of so many different factors, and the long time scales involved before a continuous, global, trend can be identified.

Political action would be impossible in a democracy with such uncertainty, so let's assume that at least some progress towards more efficient renewables will continue, and let's consider the positives and negatives.

As the poor, undeveloped part of world, continues to develop economically, as China and India have been doing, there would come a time, eventually, when fossil fuel reserves would dwindle and become much more expensive as extraction costs rise. This could cause a truly catastrophic, world-wide economic collapse if the world became too reliant upon fossil fuels.

Creating a viable and reliable alternative to fossil fuels is actually very sensible, and even though I'm very skeptical about the claimed dangers of current CO2 emissions, I'm all in favour of developing alternative and additional sources of energy because I understand that reliable supplies of energy are a fundamental requirement for all economic development. The more energy, the better, and the cheaper the energy, the better, provided it is at least reasonably clean and doesn't cause excessive environmental damage and pollution.

The environmental pollution caused by coal-fired power plants can be very harmful to human health when old-fashioned and cheap power plants are used without adequate emission controls, as has happened in China and India in the interests of economic development.

However, modern coal-fired power plants, known as HELE (high energy low emissions) are much cleaner than the old technology and emit insignificant amounts of the real pollutants, such as Sulphur Dioxide, Heavy Metals, and Particulate Carbon. However, they still emit significant amounts of CO2, although in reduced quantities for the same amount of energy, because they burn the coal more efficiently.

Without the CO2 scare, coal would continue to be popular and all the old coal-fired power plants would gradually be replaced with modern Ultra-Supercritical power plants providing cheap and reliable energy with much lower emissions of the real pollutants that are a health concern. 

However, by promoting the false concept that CO2 is a pollutant, countries such as Australia are not replacing the old, inefficient power plants with the new technology, and electricity prices continue to rise, with frequent power outages when consumption is high due to heat waves, when everyone turns on their air-conditioning.

Nevertheless, if (or when) there is a major breakthrough in the development of battery storage, resulting in cheap, reliable and durable batteries that don't require that limited resource of Lithium (which also can cause environmental damage in its mining), the reliance upon fossil fuels as a back-up, when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, might not be necessary.

In 10, 20 or 30 years time, when it might become obvious we are heading into another Little Ice Age, and the media and politicians start admitting that the climate change alarmists got it wrong and that CO2 levels are not the driving force behind climate change, we can then start using fossil fuels again, together with our advanced solar power and battery storage, to produce massive amounts of cheap energy so that we can build the dams, long water pipes, desalination plants, and sturdy homes and infrastructure to protect ourselves from the extreme weather events which we then understand are not caused by increased CO2 levels.

Unfortunately, in the meantime, there will continue to be disasters from extreme weather events, and loss of life, because we aren't spending nearly enough money (energy) to address the problem, and instead are kidding ourselves that reducing CO2 emissions will fix the problem.

7 hours ago, Prissana Pescud said:

"The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman Was the first European to land on the shores of Tasmania in 1642 which was then called Van Diemans land"

You are full of it

Try to be more clear and precise. Are you disputing that the first Europeans to arrive in Tasmania were the Dutch in the 17th century? If so, provide your evidence instead of just a rude implication, of the nature of an ad hominem attack.

From the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Tasman

"Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first known European explorer to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) and New Zealand, and to sight the Fiji islands. 
 

On 24 November 1642 Abel Tasman reached and sighted the west coast of Tasmania, north of Macquarie Harbour. He named his discovery Van Diemen's Land after Antonio van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies." 

7 hours ago, Prissana Pescud said:

An extreme weather event is occurring in Tasmania Australia. It is summer and up to 40 raging unprecedented wild fires are burning now. In an area that hardly any wildfires occurred before 2000.

Really! You should check out the history of bushfires in Tasmania
The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to land on the shores of Tasmania in 1642, which was then named Van Diemen's Land. When the British later arrived, their initial impression was that the climate was ideal, similar to that in England. They referred to the island as the 'Antipodean England'. They saw green pastures and rolling hills as a result of the Aboriginal practices of regular burn-off to clear land and provide grazing pastures for the kangaroos.

Subsequent governments have been promoting the island to encourage settlement by claiming that Tasmania's climate is largely devoid of the excesses of drought, heat, floods and bushfires of mainland Australia. This view is inaccurate and part of the problem. Downplaying the potential risks posed by climatic variability contributes to a state of unpreparedness within the government and the wider population. This 'unpreparedness' will continue as a result of shifting the blame to CO2 emissions.

The following article provides some factual information on previous bushfires in Tasmania.
http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/B/Bushfires.htm

To quote: "Tasmania has faced a series of devastating fires from early settlement in 1803. The new settlers were not used to the summer conditions which caused fire to spread quickly.
The worst were in 1854, 1897–98, 1913–15, 1926–27, 1933–34, 1940–42, 1960–61 and 1967. "

The following Ph.D thesis gives a more detailed account. Very interesting reading for those who have more than half a brain. ????
https://eprints.utas.edu.au/12935/1/Evans_thesis.pdf

‘Antipodean England’? A History of Drought, Fire and Flood in Tasmania from European Settlement in 1803 to the 1960s."
 

What I find rather troubling is that the major countries that claim to be staunch Theravada Buddhist, such as Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, are basically a mess, with lots of practices and political events that are clearly and obviously totally 'non-Buddhist' in nature.

Perhaps one could claim that without the influence of Buddhism, such countries would in an even worse mess. I don't know.

1 hour ago, johng said:

Global warming ! ???

Absolutely! Global warming causes freezing temperatures in winter. The science is settled. ????

26 minutes ago, bkk6060 said:

Your post is all about what you want.

You are exactly the person they would like to get rid of.

Coming here with a "living on the cheap" mindset living in the countryside.

They do not really want or care about you being here.

Hope you can figure it out...

 

Your post doesn't make any sense. If they want to get rid of people like me, then they'll have either to raise the 800,000 Baht requirement by a huge amount, or increase the monthly 65,000 Baht requirement. In Australia, 800,000 Baht is a mere A$33,000, the cost of an average car. As a retiree I have much more than that in fixed term investment accounts in Australia.

In fact, the 800,000 Baht Bank deposit requirement, in place of proof of income, would theoretically allow a foreign retiree to live on next to nothing, like the poorest Thai farmer, or even a Buddhist monk. Now that's an interesting point. Could a foreign retiree be ordained as a Buddhist monk and live off no income at all, provided he had 800,000 Baht in a Thai bank? ????

I find most of the posts in this thread very confusing. As I understand, with this new rule which is being proposed, single retirees have two options. 
(1) Have a consistent amount in a Thai bank of at least 800,000 Baht, which one is required to show every 3 months, but no need to show any regular income.
(2) Or, show an income of 65,000 Baht per month, which amounts to 780,000 Baht a year, which is close enough to 800,000.

If I were a retiree in Thailand, I'd definitely prefer the first option. I'd place the 800,000 Baht in a fixed term deposit account with an interest rate of probably around 1.75% per year, which is not quite as good as Australian interest rates, but still earns around 14,000 Baht per year.
If I were to decide to retire in Thailand, and I'm still considering it, I would not want to spend even nearly 65,000 Baht per month on living expenses. Half that amount would be sufficient because I prefer to live in the countryside where the cost of essentials is much lower than in Bangkok and the people much friendlier.

I always remember the cost of a lovely meal I had in a bar/restaurant in Mae Hong Son a few years ago. I had a very tasty Green Curry Chicken with a bowl of rice and a Chan beer. The total cost was 80 Baht, and that was when the Australia dollar was worth 30 Baht. I was amazed that I could have a complete meal for less than the cost of a single cup of coffee in Australia.

The main obstacle affecting my decision to retire in Thailand is a health concern about pollution. The effects of annual 'burn off' are very noticeable in Mae Hong Son, and that's a much greater deterrent than issues relating to the frequency of showing an 800,000 Baht bank balance.

The Aborigines should be thankful that an advanced civilization brought modern technology to their country. The initial conflict, resulting in many Aborigine deaths because of the superior weapon technology of the British, is sad, and cannot be condoned, but I suspect it is true that any Aboriginal tribe would have done the same to another Aboriginal tribe, if it had had superior technology.

Power is a major factor in human activity. Look what's happening in Venezuela at present.

The Australian Aborigines have a lot to be proud of. However, there is not enough archaeological research being done in order to be certain of their history. The date of their first arrival is uncertain, but could be as far back as 80,000 years, according to modern dating systems applied to unearthed Aboriginal tools, bones and artefacts.

In those days, sea levels were so low, the Aboriginals did not need boats. They could just walk across the straits at low tide. They could also walk from the Australia continent to Tasmania, at low tide.
As sea levels gradually rose, the Aborigines in Tasmania became isolated, because they didn't have boats.

Their rock art and paintings are probably the oldest in the world.
https://www.ancient-code.com/australian-cave-paintings-may-be-the-oldest-on-the-planet/

"Cave paintings of indigenous Australians could be so old that it would take the number one spot as oldest cave paintings on the planet, surpassing by far the extraordinary paintings of the Cave of Altamira (Spain) and Chauvet (France)."

However, that's the positive. We should not ignore the negatives. The various Aboriginal tribes that occupied Australia, fought with each other, and killed whole families of women and children during such conflicts.

Here's a paper which documents this. Not for the faint-hearted.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2013/05/the-long-bloody-history-of-aboriginal-violence/

"It's politically correct nowadays to think of the Aboriginal peoples as a peace loving race who were living in harmony with the land prior to the European invasion. However, there is plenty of evidence to show that before European settlement, tribal warfare was endemic among the aboriginal peoples, and "payback" killings were a common cause of death. There was also a high incidence of violence against women and children, both domestic and inter-tribal in nature."

In view of this history, it does seem absurd to me that Aboriginals should complain so much about their current treatment by Australian governments. Sure, in the past, in the 18th and 19th centuries, there was violence against the Aborigines, just as the Aborigines have always exerted violence towards other Aboriginal tribes with different cultures and religious views.

However, we 'whities' have now transcended these violent practices. The Aborigines seem to be still harking back to all their primitive practices. They don't seem to be able to separate the 'good' from the 'bad'. They are given subsidies and education, but seem not to be interested in taking care of themselves and adjusting to modern society.