elbiotipo:
The British colonization of Australia and Tasmania in particular was probably one of the most brutal and yet less known crimes of the British Empire. The extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger is well known and widely regarded as tragic; it’s very interesting that ‘experts’ at the time regarded it as a basal mammal condemned to extinction, so they did not lift a finger to save it until it was too late, and why would they anyways? It was in the way of the British farmers, so it had to be destroyed.
But it was not the only one against towards such arguments were used. The native Tasmanians, hunter-gatherers and as such percieved as “lower” in the “evolutionary scale” (which, as a biologist, I can tell you is a non-sensical concept, there is no such thing as an evolutionary scale), were also considered “destined towards extinction”, and the British colonists did their best to accomplish that. sometimes quite literally hunted as the British colonial goverment offered bounties for them. I will spare the most gruesome details, but it was a concerted attempt to wipe out an entire people from the face of the Earth, and they very nearly did it. Few other empires in modern times can be claim to be as 'successful’ in genocide as the British.
As an added insult, as a last spit on the face, there was also this:
“To see the ladder of evolution from fish to humans, you didn’t have to visit the American Museum of Natural History; the same racism in a lab coat appeared on book covers, too. William King Gregory criticized his old mentor, Henry Fairfield Osborn, for "pithecophobia” — a fear of apes and monkeys in the human family tree. But Gregory (like many people) shared Osborn’s views of race. This dust jacket includes six stylized faces and one real one. The Tasmanian face, apparently not quite human in Gregory’s view, is from a 19th-century photograph of a woman who may have been the last remaining member of Tasmania’s native population. Her name was Trucanini, and at the time her picture was taken, she was one of just five survivors in what could be termed an internment camp, established by the British. All of her companions were so ill that they would soon die. Trucanini died in 1876.“
(from Strange Science: The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology)
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also. the bison
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