128-731: The Anmatyerr (also spelt Anmatyerre , Anmatjera , Anmatjirra , Amatjere and other variations) are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory , who speak one of the Upper Arrernte languages . Anmatyerr is divided into Eastern and Western dialects, both dialects of Upper Arrernte. In 1974 the traditional lands of the Anmatyerr people in N.B. Tindale's Aboriginal Tribes of Australia were described as covering an area of 11,200 square miles (29,000 km). He specifies its central features as encompassing
256-593: A Holocene hunter-gatherer sample ("Leang Panninge") from South Sulawesi , which shares high amounts of genetic drift with Aboriginal Australians and Papuans. This suggests that a population split from the common ancestor of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans. The sample also shows genetic affinity with East Asians and the Andamanese people of South Asia. The authors note that this hunter-gatherer sample can be modelled with ~50% Papuan-related ancestry and either with ~50% East Asian or Andamanese Onge ancestry, highlighting
384-438: A book is made up of two covers and the pages between them. Each of these components is itself constituted of smaller parts, like molecules , atoms , and elementary particles . Mereology studies the relation between parts and wholes. One position in mereology says that every collection of entities forms a whole. According to another view, this is only the case for collections that fulfill certain requirements, for instance, that
512-433: A bundle that includes the properties yellow, sour, and round. According to traditional bundle theory, the bundled properties are universals, meaning that the same property may belong to several different bundles. According to trope bundle theory, properties are particular entities that belong to a single bundle. Some ontologies focus not on distinct objects but on interrelatedness. According to relationalism, all of reality
640-574: A comprehensive inventory of reality in which every entity belongs to exactly one category. Some philosophers, like Aristotle , say that entities belonging to different categories exist in distinct ways. Others, like John Duns Scotus , insist that there are no differences in the mode of being, meaning that everything exists in the same way . A related dispute is whether some entities have a higher degree of being than others, an idea already found in Plato 's work. The more common view in contemporary philosophy
768-504: A different sense, for example, as abstract or fictional objects. Scientific realists say that the scientific description of the world is an accurate representation of reality. It is of particular relevance in regard to things that cannot be directly observed by humans but are assumed to exist by scientific theories, like electrons, forces, and laws of nature. Scientific anti-realism says that scientific theories are not descriptions of reality but instruments to predict observations and
896-611: A gene flow from India to Australia: firstly, signs of South Asian components in Aboriginal Australian genomes, reported on the basis of genome-wide SNP data; and secondly, the existence of a Y chromosome (male) lineage, designated haplogroup C∗, with the most recent common ancestor about 5,000 years ago. The first type of evidence comes from a 2013 study by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology using large-scale genotyping data from
1024-412: A major subfield of applied ontology, studies social kinds, like money , gender , society , and language . It aims to determine the nature and essential features of these concepts while also examining their mode of existence. According to a common view, social kinds are useful constructions to describe the complexities of social life. This means that they are not pure fictions but, at the same time, lack
1152-751: A person as Indigenous. (Torres Strait Islanders are ethnically and culturally distinct, despite extensive cultural exchange with some of the Aboriginal groups, and the Torres Strait Islands are mostly part of Queensland but have a separate governmental status .) Some Aboriginal people object to being labelled Indigenous , as an artificial and denialist term, because some non-Aboriginal people have referred to themselves as indigenous because they were born in Australia. Australian Indigenous people have beliefs unique to each mob ( tribe ) and have
1280-542: A person thinks about the Loch Ness Monster then the Loch Ness Monster is the intentional object of this thought . People can think about existing and non-existing objects. This makes it difficult to assess the ontological status of intentional objects . Ontological dependence is a relation between entities. An entity depends ontologically on another entity if the first entity cannot exist without
1408-598: A pool of Aboriginal Australians, New Guineans, island Southeast Asians, and Indians. It found that the New Guinea and Mamanwa (Philippines area) groups diverged from the Aboriginal about 36,000 years ago (there is supporting evidence that these populations are descended from migrants taking an early "southern route" out of Africa, before other groups in the area). Also the Indian and Australian populations mixed long before European contact, with this gene flow occurring during
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#17328016025251536-448: A preliminary discipline that provides a complete inventory of reality while metaphysics examines the features and structure of the entities in this inventory. Another conception says that metaphysics is about real being while ontology examines possible being or the concept of being. It is not universally accepted that there is a clear boundary between metaphysics and ontology. Some philosophers use both terms as synonyms. The etymology of
1664-615: A profound spiritual connection. Over the millennia, Aboriginal people developed complex trade networks, inter-cultural relationships, law and religions. Contemporary Aboriginal beliefs are a complex mixture, varying by region and individual across the continent. They are shaped by traditional beliefs, the disruption of colonisation, religions brought to the continent by Europeans, and contemporary issues. Traditional cultural beliefs are passed down and shared through dancing , stories , songlines , and art that collectively weave an ontology of modern daily life and ancient creation known as
1792-463: A property while being east of is a relation, as in " Kathmandu is a city" and "Kathmandu is east of New Delhi ". Relations are often divided into internal and external relations . Internal relations depend only on the properties of the objects they connect, like the relation of resemblance . External relations express characteristics that go beyond what the connected objects are like, such as spatial relations. Substances play an important role in
1920-524: A real part of objects. Relational ontologies are common in certain forms of nominalism that reject the existence of universal properties. Hierarchical ontologies state that the world is organized into levels. Entities on all levels are real but low-level entities are more fundamental than high-level entities. This means that they can exist without high-level entities while high-level entities cannot exist without low-level entities. One hierarchical ontology says that elementary particles are more fundamental than
2048-495: A single group. Aboriginal identity has changed over time and place, with family lineage, self-identification, and community acceptance all of varying importance. In the 2021 census , Indigenous Australians comprised 3.8% of Australia's population. Most Aboriginal people today speak English and live in cities. Some may use Aboriginal phrases and words in Australian Aboriginal English (which also has
2176-402: A slightly different sense, monism contrasts with pluralism as a view not about the number of basic types but the number of entities. In this sense, monism is the controversial position that only a single all-encompassing entity exists in all of reality. Pluralism is more commonly accepted and says that several distinct entities exist. The historically influential substance-attribute ontology
2304-410: A specific ontological theory within this discipline. It can also mean an inventory or a conceptual scheme of a particular domain, such as the ontology of genes . In this context, an inventory is a comprehensive list of elements. A conceptual scheme is a framework of the key concepts and their relationships. Ontology is closely related to metaphysics but the exact relation of these two disciplines
2432-411: A spirit creates the earth then tells the humans to treat the animals and the earth in a way which is respectful to land. In Northern Territory this is commonly said to be a huge snake or snakes that weaved its way through the earth and sky making the mountains and oceans. But in other places the spirits who created the world are known as wandjina rain and water spirits. Major ancestral spirits include
2560-470: A strong connection to the land. Contemporary Indigenous Australian beliefs are a complex mixture, varying by region and individual across the continent. They are shaped by traditional beliefs, the disruption of colonisation, religions brought to the continent by Europeans, and contemporary issues. Traditional cultural beliefs are passed down and shared by dancing , stories , songlines and art —especially Papunya Tula (dot painting)—collectively telling
2688-427: A tangible influence of Aboriginal languages in the phonology and grammatical structure ). Many but not all also speak the various traditional languages of their clans and peoples. Aboriginal people, along with Torres Strait Islander people, have a number of severe health and economic deprivations in comparison with the wider Australian community. DNA studies have confirmed that "Aboriginal Australians are one of
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#17328016025252816-468: A theory of reality but as a game governed by rules of string manipulation. Modal realism is the theory that in addition to the actual world, there are countless possible worlds as real and concrete as the actual world. The primary difference is that the actual world is inhabited by us while other possible worlds are inhabited by our counterparts . Modal anti-realists reject this view and argue that possible worlds do not have concrete reality but exist in
2944-502: A tree, a car, and a planet. They have causal powers and can affect each other, like when a car hits a tree and both are deformed in the process. Abstract objects, by contrast, are outside space and time, such as the number 7 and the set of integers . They lack causal powers and do not undergo changes. The existence and nature of abstract objects remain subjects of philosophical debate. Concrete objects encountered in everyday life are complex entities composed of various parts. For example,
3072-509: A view referred to as moral nihilism . Monocategorical theories say that there is only one fundamental category, meaning that every single entity belongs to the same universal class. For example, some forms of nominalism state that only concrete particulars exist while some forms of bundle theory state that only properties exist. Polycategorical theories, by contrast, hold that there is more than one basic category, meaning that entities are divided into two or more fundamental classes. They take
3200-558: Is a comprehensive framework for the standardized representation of gene-related information across species and databases. Formal ontology is the study of objects in general while focusing on their abstract structures and features. It divides objects into different categories based on the forms they exemplify. Formal ontologists often rely on the tools of formal logic to express their findings in an abstract and general manner. Formal ontology contrasts with material ontology, which distinguishes between different areas of objects and examines
3328-404: Is a polycategorical theory. It says that reality is at its most fundamental level made up of unanalyzable substances that are characterized by universals, such as the properties an individual substance has or relations that exist between substances. The closely related to substratum theory says that each concrete object is made up of properties and a substratum. The difference is that the substratum
3456-412: Is a related method in phenomenological ontology that aims to identify the essential features of different types of objects. Phenomenologists start by imagining an example of the investigated type. They proceed by varying the imagined features to determine which ones cannot be changed, meaning they are essential. The transcendental method begins with a simple observation that a certain entity exists. In
3584-773: Is an increase in allele sharing between the Denisovan and Aboriginal Australian genomes, compared to other Eurasians or Africans. Examining DNA from a finger bone excavated in Siberia , researchers concluded that the Denisovans migrated from Siberia to tropical parts of Asia and that they interbred with modern humans in Southeast Asia 44,000 years BP, before Australia separated from New Guinea approximately 11,700 years BP. They contributed DNA to Aboriginal Australians and to present-day New Guineans and an indigenous tribe in
3712-477: Is based on the Aboriginal peoples' geographical isolation, with little or no interaction with outside cultures before some contact with Makassan fishermen and Dutch explorers up to 500 years ago. The Rasmussen study also found evidence that Aboriginal peoples carry some genes associated with the Denisovans (a species of human related to but distinct from Neanderthals ) of Asia; the study suggests that there
3840-574: Is between analytic and speculative ontology. Analytic ontology examines the types and categories of being to determine what kinds of things could exist and what features they would have. Speculative ontology aims to determine which entities actually exist, for example, whether there are numbers or whether time is an illusion. Metaontology studies the underlying concepts, assumptions, and methods of ontology. Unlike other forms of ontology, it does not ask "what exists" but "what does it mean for something to exist" and "how can people determine what exists". It
3968-706: Is closely related to fundamental ontology , an approach developed by philosopher Martin Heidegger that seeks to uncover the meaning of being. The term realism is used for various theories that affirm that some kind of phenomenon is real or has mind-independent existence. Ontological realism is the view that there are objective facts about what exists and what the nature and categories of being are. Ontological realists do not make claims about what those facts are, for example, whether elementary particles exist. They merely state that there are mind-independent facts that determine which ontological theories are true. This idea
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4096-479: Is controversial whether a more substantial analysis of the concept or meaning of being is possible. One proposal understands being as a property possessed by every entity. Critics argue that a thing without being cannot have properties. This means that properties presuppose being and cannot explain it. Another suggestion is that all beings share a set of essential features. According to the Eleatic principle , "power
4224-436: Is denied by ontological anti-realists, also called ontological deflationists, who say that there are no substantive facts one way or the other. According to philosopher Rudolf Carnap , for example, ontological statements are relative to language and depend on the ontological framework of the speaker. This means that there are no framework-independent ontological facts since different frameworks provide different views while there
4352-507: Is disputed. A traditionally influential characterization asserts that ontology is a subdiscipline of metaphysics. According to this view, metaphysics is the study of various aspects of fundamental reality, whereas ontology restricts itself to the most general features of reality. This view sees ontology as general metaphysics, which is to be distinguished from special metaphysics focused on more specific subject matters, like God , mind , and value . A different conception understands ontology as
4480-399: Is essential if an entity must have it; it is accidental if the entity can exist without it. For instance, having three sides is an essential property of a triangle, whereas being red is an accidental property. Relations are ways how two or more entities stand to one another. Unlike properties, they apply to several entities and characterize them as a group. For example, being a city is
4608-603: Is material. This means that mental phenomena, such as beliefs, emotions, and consciousness, either do not exist or exist as aspects of matter, like brain states. Idealists take the converse perspective, arguing that everything is mental. They may understand physical phenomena, like rocks, trees, and planets, as ideas or perceptions of conscious minds. Neutral monism occupies a middle ground by saying that both mind and matter are derivative phenomena. Dualists state that mind and matter exist as independent principles, either as distinct substances or different types of properties . In
4736-456: Is necessary that three plus two equals five". Possibility and necessity contrast with actuality, which describes what is the case, as in " Doha is the capital of Qatar ". Ontologists often use the concept of possible worlds to analyze possibility and necessity. A possible world is a complete and consistent way how things could have been. For example, Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in the actual world but there are possible worlds in which he
4864-480: Is no evidence for South Asian gene flow to Australia .... Despite Sahul being a single connected landmass until [8,000 years ago], different groups across Australia are nearly equally related to Papuans, and vice versa, and the two appear to have separated genetically already [about 30,000 years ago]." Aboriginal Australians possess inherited abilities to adapt to a wide range of environmental temperatures in various ways. A study in 1958 comparing cold adaptation in
4992-455: Is no objectively right or wrong framework. In a more narrow sense, realism refers to the existence of certain types of entities. Realists about universals say that universals have mind-independent existence. According to Platonic realists , universals exist not only independent of the mind but also independent of particular objects that exemplify them. This means that the universal red could exist by itself even if there were no red objects in
5120-445: Is no single standard method; the diverse approaches are studied by metaontology . Conceptual analysis is a method to understand ontological concepts and clarify their meaning. It proceeds by analyzing their component parts and the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a concept applies to an entity. This information can help ontologists decide whether a certain type of entity, such as numbers, exists. Eidetic variation
5248-412: Is not characterized by properties: it is a featureless or bare particular that merely supports the properties. Various alternative ontological theories have been proposed that deny the role of substances as the foundational building blocks of reality. Stuff ontologies say that the world is not populated by distinct entities but by continuous stuff that fills space. This stuff may take various forms and
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5376-402: Is often conceived as infinitely divisible. According to process ontology , processes or events are the fundamental entities. This view usually emphasizes that nothing in reality is static, meaning that being is dynamic and characterized by constant change. Bundle theories state that there are no regular objects but only bundles of co-present properties. For example, a lemon may be understood as
5504-453: Is only in the last two hundred years that they have been defined and started to self-identify as a single group, socio-politically. While some preferred the term Aborigine to Aboriginal in the past, as the latter was seen to have more directly discriminatory legal origins, use of the term Aborigine has declined in recent decades, as many consider the term an offensive and racist hangover from Australia's colonial era. The definition of
5632-599: Is partly on Alyawarre land, partly on land of the Anmatyerre. As a specialist in Arandic culture and language T. G. H Strehlow also worked with Anmatyerr people throughout his career, recording much of their ceremonial traditions. Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of
5760-460: Is present but not the others. According to perdurantists, change means that an earlier part exhibits different qualities than a later part. When a tree loses its leaves, for instance, there is an earlier temporal part with leaves and a later temporal part without leaves. Differential ontology is a poststructuralist approach interested in the relation between the concepts of identity and difference . It says that traditional ontology sees identity as
5888-508: Is relational at its most fundamental level. Ontic structural realism agrees with this basic idea and focuses on how these relations form complex structures. Some structural realists state that there is nothing but relations, meaning that individual objects do not exist. Others say that individual objects exist but depend on the structures in which they participate. Fact ontologies present a different approach by focusing on how entities belonging to different categories come together to constitute
6016-444: Is that a thing either exists or not with no intermediary states or degrees. The relation between being and non-being is a frequent topic in ontology. Influential issues include the status of nonexistent objects and why there is something rather than nothing . A central distinction in ontology is between particular and universal entities. Particulars, also called individuals , are unique, non-repeatable entities, like Socrates ,
6144-502: Is that the desert people are able to have a higher body temperature without accelerating the activity of the whole of the body, which can be especially detrimental in childhood diseases. This helps protect people to survive the side-effects of infection. Aboriginal people have lived for tens of thousands of years on the continent of Australia , through its various changes in landmass. The area within Australia 's borders today includes
6272-417: Is the mark of being", meaning that only entities with causal influence truly exist. A controversial proposal by philosopher George Berkeley suggests that all existence is mental. He expressed this immaterialism in his slogan "to be is to be perceived". Depending on the context, the term being is sometimes used with a more limited meaning to refer only to certain aspects of reality. In one sense, being
6400-521: Is the relation between a ground and the facts it explains. An ontological commitment of a person or a theory is an entity that exists according to them. For instance, a person who believes in God has an ontological commitment to God . Ontological commitments can be used to analyze which ontologies people explicitly defend or implicitly assume. They play a central role in contemporary metaphysics when trying to decide between competing theories. For example,
6528-571: Is unchanging and permanent, in contrast to becoming, which implies change. Another contrast is between being, as what truly exists, and phenomena , as what appears to exist. In some contexts, being expresses the fact that something is while essence expresses its qualities or what it is like. Ontologists often divide being into fundamental classes or highest kinds, called categories of being . Proposed categories include substance, property , relation , state of affairs , and event . They can be used to provide systems of categories, which offer
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#17328016025256656-533: The CC BY 4.0 license. Ontology Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality . As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it. To articulate the basic structure of being, ontology examines what all things have in common. It also investigates how they can be grouped into basic types, such as
6784-490: The CSIRO stressed the importance of taking a demand-driven approach to services in desert settlements, and concluded that "if top-down solutions continue to be imposed without appreciating the fundamental drivers of settlement in desert regions, then those solutions will continue to be partial, and ineffective in the long term." [REDACTED] This article incorporates text by Anders Bergström et al. available under
6912-590: The Initial Upper Paleolithic . They are most closely related to other Oceanians , such as Melanesians . The Aboriginal Australians also show affinity to other Australasian populations, such as Negritos , as well as to East Asian peoples . Phylogenetic data suggests that an early initial eastern lineage (ENA) trifurcated somewhere in South Asia , and gave rise to Australasians (Oceanians), Ancient Ancestral South Indian (AASI), Andamanese and
7040-712: The Kimberley region in what is now Western Australia about 60,000 years ago. They migrated across the continent within 6,000 years. A 2018 study using archaeobotany dated evidence of continuous human habitation at Karnatukul (Serpent's Glen) in the Carnarvon Range in the Little Sandy Desert in WA from around 50,000 years ago. Genetic studies have revealed that Aboriginal Australians largely descended from an Eastern Eurasian population wave during
7168-615: The Northern Territory to study their genetic makeup (which is not representative of all Aboriginal peoples in Australia). The study concluded that the Warlpiri are descended from ancient Asians whose DNA is still somewhat present in Southeastern Asian groups, although greatly diminished. The Warlpiri DNA lacks certain information found in modern Asian genomes, and carries information not found in other genomes. This reinforces
7296-459: The Pleistocene epoch and lived over large sections of the Australian continental shelf when the sea levels were lower. At that time, Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea were part of the same landmass, known as Sahul . As sea levels rose, the people on the Australian mainland and nearby islands became increasingly isolated, some on Tasmania and some of the smaller offshore islands when
7424-456: The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument defends mathematical Platonism , asserting that numbers exist because the best scientific theories are ontologically committed to numbers. Possibility and necessity are further topics in ontology. Possibility describes what can be the case, as in "it is possible that extraterrestrial life exists". Necessity describes what must be the case, as in "it
7552-627: The Rainbow Serpent , Baiame , Dirawong and Bunjil . Similarly, the Arrernte people of central Australia believed that humanity originated from great superhuman ancestors who brought the sun, wind and rain as a result of breaking through the surface of the Earth when waking from their slumber. Taken as a whole, Aboriginal Australians, along with Torres Strait Islander people, have a number of health and economic deprivations in comparison with
7680-624: The Taj Mahal , and Mars . Universals are general, repeatable entities, like the color green , the form circularity , and the virtue courage . Universals express aspects or features shared by particulars. For example, Mount Everest and Mount Fuji are particulars characterized by the universal mountain . Universals can take the form of properties or relations. Properties describe the characteristics of things. They are features or qualities possessed by an entity. Properties are often divided into essential and accidental properties . A property
7808-618: The Torres Strait Islands . Humans first migrated to Australia at least 65,000 years ago, and over time formed as many as 500 language-based groups . In the past, Aboriginal people lived over large sections of the continental shelf . They were isolated on many of the smaller offshore islands and Tasmania when the land was inundated at the start of the Holocene inter-glacial period , about 11,700 years ago. Despite this, Aboriginal people maintained extensive networks within
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#17328016025257936-642: The Vaisheshika school, distinguishes between six categories: substance , quality, motion, universal, individuator, and inherence. Immanuel Kant 's transcendental idealism includes a system of twelve categories, which Kant saw as pure concepts of understanding. They are subdivided into four classes: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. In more recent philosophy, theories of categories were developed by C. S. Peirce , Edmund Husserl , Samuel Alexander , Roderick Chisholm , and E. J. Lowe . The dispute between constituent and relational ontologies concerns
8064-502: The ancient period with speculations about the nature of being and the source of the universe, including ancient Indian , Chinese , and Greek philosophy . In the modern period, philosophers conceived ontology as a distinct academic discipline and coined its name. Ontology is the study of being. It is the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of existence , the features all entities have in common, and how they are divided into basic categories of being . It aims to discover
8192-585: The categories of particulars and universals . Particulars are unique, non-repeatable entities, like the person Socrates . Universals are general, repeatable entities, like the color green . Another contrast is between concrete objects existing in space and time, like a tree, and abstract objects existing outside space and time, like the number 7. Systems of categories aim to provide a comprehensive inventory of reality, employing categories such as substance , property , relation , state of affairs , and event . Ontologists disagree about which entities exist on
8320-402: The history of philosophy , various ontological theories based on several fundamental categories have been proposed. One of the first theories of categories was suggested by Aristotle , whose system includes ten categories: substance, quantity , quality , relation, place, date, posture, state, action, and passion. An early influential system of categories in Indian philosophy, first proposed in
8448-404: The social sciences . Applied ontology is of particular relevance to information and computer science , which develop conceptual frameworks of limited domains . These frameworks are used to store information in a structured way, such as a college database tracking academic activities. Ontology is relevant to the fields of logic , theology , and anthropology . The origins of ontology lie in
8576-778: The 1970s and 1980s, when Aboriginal people moved to tiny remote settlements on traditional land, brought health benefits, but funding them proved expensive, training and employment opportunities were not provided in many cases, and support from governments dwindled in the 2000s, particularly in the era of the Howard government . Indigenous communities in remote Australia are often small, isolated towns with basic facilities, on traditionally owned land . These communities have between 20 and 300 inhabitants and are often closed to outsiders for cultural reasons. The long-term viability and resilience of Aboriginal communities in desert areas has been discussed by scholars and policy-makers. A 2007 report by
8704-677: The 19th century. Scholars believe that most Aboriginal Australians originated from Southeast Asia. If this is the case, Aboriginal Australians were among the first in the world to have completed sea voyages. A 2017 paper in Nature evaluated artefacts in Kakadu . Its authors concluded "Human occupation began around 65,000 years ago." A 2021 study by researchers at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage has mapped
8832-496: The Dreaming . Studies of Aboriginal groups' genetic makeup are ongoing, but evidence suggests that they have genetic inheritance from ancient Asian but not more modern peoples. They share some similarities with Papuans , but have been isolated from Southeast Asia for a very long time. They have a broadly shared, complex genetic history, but only in the last 200 years were they defined by others as, and started to self-identify as,
8960-620: The East/Southeast Asian lineage, including ancestors of the Native Americans . Papuans may have received approximately 2% of their geneflow from an earlier group (xOOA) as well, next to additional archaic admixture in the Sahul region. Aboriginal people are genetically most similar to the indigenous populations of Papua New Guinea , and more distantly related to groups from East Indonesia. They are more distinct from
9088-571: The Forster Range, Mount Leichhardt ( Arnka ), Coniston , Stuart Bluff Range to the east of West Bluff; the Hann and Reynolds Ranges ( Arwerlt Atwaty ); the Burt Plain north of Rembrandt Rocks and Connor Well. Their eastern frontier went as far as Woodgreen . To the northeast, their borders lay around central Mount Stuart ( Amakweng ) and Harper Springs. Anmatyerr communities located within
9216-881: The Holocene ( c. 4,200 years ago). The researchers had two theories for this: either some Indians had contact with people in Indonesia who eventually transferred those Indian genes to Aboriginal Australians, or a group of Indians migrated from India to Australia and intermingled with the locals directly. However, a 2016 study in Current Biology by Anders Bergström et al. excluded the Y chromosome as providing evidence for recent gene flow from India into Australia. The study authors sequenced 13 Aboriginal Australian Y chromosomes using recent advances in gene sequencing technology. They investigated their divergence times from Y chromosomes in other continents, including comparing
9344-859: The Northern, Southern and Central cultural areas. The Northern and Southern areas, having richer natural marine and woodland resources, were more densely populated than the Central area. There are various other names from Australian Aboriginal languages commonly used to identify groups based on geography , known as demonyms , including: Other group names are based on the language group or specific dialect spoken . These also coincide with geographical regions of varying sizes. A few examples are: However, these lists are neither exhaustive nor definitive, and there are overlaps. Different approaches have been taken by non-Aboriginal scholars in trying to understand and define Aboriginal culture and societies, some focusing on
9472-771: The Philippines known as Mamanwa . This study confirms Aboriginal Australians as one of the oldest living populations in the world. They are possibly the oldest outside Africa, and they may have the oldest continuous culture on the planet. A 2016 study at the University of Cambridge suggests that it was about 50,000 years ago that these peoples reached Sahul (the supercontinent consisting of present-day Australia and its islands and New Guinea ). The sea levels rose and isolated Australia about 10,000 years ago, but Aboriginal Australians and Papuans diverged from each other genetically earlier, about 37,000 years BP, possibly because
9600-566: The Rings , and people, like the Monkey King in the novel Journey to the West . Some philosophers say that fictional objects are abstract objects and exist outside space and time. Others understand them as artifacts that are created as the works of fiction are written. Intentional objects are entities that exist within mental states , like perceptions , beliefs , and desires . For example, if
9728-422: The analysis of concepts and experience , the use of intuitions and thought experiments , and the integration of findings from natural science . Formal ontology is the branch of ontology investigating the most abstract features of objects. Applied ontology employs ontological theories and principles to study entities belonging to a specific area. For example, social ontology examines basic concepts used in
9856-444: The ancient people expanded and differentiated into distinct groups, each with its own language and culture. More than 400 distinct Australian Aboriginal peoples have been identified, distinguished by names designating their ancestral languages, dialects, or distinctive speech patterns. According to noted anthropologist , archaeologist and sociologist Harry Lourandos , historically, these groups lived in three main cultural areas,
9984-730: The continent and certain groups maintained relationships with Torres Strait Islanders and the Makassar people of modern-day Indonesia. Aboriginal Australians have a wide variety of cultural practices and beliefs that some scientists believe make up the oldest continuous cultures in the world, although this is disputed. At the time of European colonisation of Australia, the Aboriginal people consisted of complex cultural societies with more than 250 languages and varying degrees of technology and settlements. Languages (or dialects) and language-associated groups of people are connected with stretches of territory known as "Country", with which they have
10112-519: The deep split between Leang Panninge and Aboriginal/Papuans. Mallick et al. 2016 and Mark Lipson et al. 2017 study found the bifurcation of Eastern Eurasians and Western Eurasians dates to least 45,000 years ago, with indigenous Australians nested inside the Eastern Eurasian clade. Two genetic studies by Larena et al. 2021 found that Philippines Negrito people split from the common ancestor of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans before
10240-497: The desert-dwelling Pitjantjatjara people compared with a group of European people showed that the cooling adaptation of the Aboriginal group differed from that of the white people, and that they were able to sleep more soundly through a cold desert night. A 2014 Cambridge University study found that a beneficial mutation in two genes which regulate thyroxine , a hormone involved in regulating body metabolism , helps to regulate body temperature in response to fever. The effect of this
10368-499: The entities in the collection touch one another. The problem of material constitution asks whether or in what sense a whole should be considered a new object in addition to the collection of parts composing it. Abstract objects are closely related to fictional and intentional objects . Fictional objects are entities invented in works of fiction . They can be things, like the One Ring in J. R. R. Tolkien 's book series The Lord of
10496-430: The features characteristic of a specific area. Examples are ideal spatial beings in the area of geometry and living beings in the area of biology. Descriptive ontology aims to articulate the conceptual scheme underlying how people ordinarily think about the world. Prescriptive ontology departs from common conceptions of the structure of reality and seeks to formulate a new and better conceptualization. Another contrast
10624-555: The following step, it studies the ontological repercussions of this observation by examining how it is possible or which conditions are required for this entity to exist. Another approach is based on intuitions in the form of non-inferential impressions about the correctness of general principles. These principles can be used as the foundation on which an ontological system is built and expanded using deductive reasoning . A further intuition-based method relies on thought experiments to evoke new intuitions. This happens by imagining
10752-409: The form of systems of categories, which list the highest genera of being to provide a comprehensive inventory of everything. The closely related discussion between monism and dualism is about the most fundamental types that make up reality. According to monism, there is only one kind of thing or substance on the most basic level. Materialism is an influential monist view; it says that everything
10880-400: The foundational building blocks of the world and characterize reality as a whole in its most general aspects. In this regard, ontology contrasts with individual sciences like biology and astronomy , which restrict themselves to a limited domain of entities, such as living entities and celestial phenomena. In some contexts, the term ontology refers not to the general study of being but to
11008-714: The haplogroup C chromosomes. They found a divergence time of about 54,100 years between the Sahul C chromosome and its closest relative C5, as well as about 54,300 years between haplogroups K*/M and their closest haplogroups R and Q. The deep divergence time of 50,000-plus years with the South Asian chromosome and "the fact that the Aboriginal Australian Cs share a more recent common ancestor with Papuan Cs" excludes any recent genetic contact. The 2016 study's authors concluded that, although this does not disprove
11136-427: The history of ontology as the particular entities that underlie and support properties and relations. They are often considered the fundamental building blocks of reality that can exist on their own, while entities like properties and relations cannot exist without substances. Substances persist through changes as they acquire or lose properties. For example, when a tomato ripens, it loses the property green and acquires
11264-401: The idea of ancient Aboriginal isolation. Genetic data extracted in 2011 by Morten Rasmussen et al., who took a DNA sample from an early-20th-century lock of an Aboriginal person's hair, found that the Aboriginal ancestors probably migrated through South Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia , into Australia, where they stayed. As a result, outside of Africa, the Aboriginal peoples have occupied
11392-653: The increased suicide rate, many researchers have suggested that the inclusion of more cultural aspects into suicide prevention programs would help to combat mental health issues within the community. Past studies have found that many indigenous leaders and community members, do in fact, want more culturally-aware health care programs. Similarly, culturally-relative programs targeting indigenous youth have actively challenged suicide ideation among younger indigenous populations, with many social and emotional wellbeing programs using cultural information to provide coping mechanisms and improving mental health. The outstation movement of
11520-511: The indigenous populations of Borneo and Malaysia , sharing drift with them than compared to the groups from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. This indicates that populations in Australia were isolated for a long time from the rest of Southeast Asia. They remained untouched by migrations and population expansions into that area, which can be explained by the Wallace line . In a 2001 study, blood samples were collected from some Warlpiri people in
11648-588: The internal structure of concrete particular objects. Constituent ontologies say that objects have an internal structure with properties as their component parts. Bundle theories are an example of this position: they state that objects are bundles of properties. This view is rejected by relational ontologies, which say that objects have no internal structure, meaning that properties do not inhere in them but are externally related to them. According to one analogy, objects are like pin-cushions and properties are pins that can be stuck to objects and removed again without becoming
11776-572: The islands of Tasmania , K'gari (previously Fraser Island) , Hinchinbrook Island , the Tiwi Islands , Kangaroo Island and Groote Eylandt . Indigenous people of the Torres Strait Islands, however, are not Aboriginal. In the 2021 census , people who self-identified on the census form as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin totalled 812,728 out of a total of 25,422,788 Australians, equating to 3.2% of Australia's population and an increase of 163,557 people, or 25.2%, since
11904-400: The land was inundated at the start of the Holocene , the inter-glacial period that started about 11,700 years ago. Scholars of this ancient history believe that it would have been difficult for Aboriginal people to have originated purely from mainland Asia. Not enough people would have migrated to Australia and surrounding islands to fulfill the beginning of the size of the population seen in
12032-406: The last 10,000 years it may have occurred—newer analytical techniques have the potential to address such questions. Bergstrom's 2018 doctoral thesis looking at the population of Sahul suggests that other than relatively recent admixture, the populations of the region appear to have been genetically independent from the rest of the world since their divergence about 50,000 years ago. He writes "There
12160-524: The latter two diverged from each other, but after their common ancestor diverged from the ancestor of East Asian peoples . The dingo reached Australia about 4,000 years ago. Near that time, there were changes in language (with the Pama-Nyungan language family spreading over most of the mainland), and in stone tool technology. Smaller tools were used. Human contact has thus been inferred, and genetic data of two kinds have been proposed to support
12288-603: The level at which it exists. The ontological theories of endurantism and perdurantism aim to explain how material objects persist through time. Endurantism is the view that material objects are three-dimensional entities that travel through time while being fully present in each moment. They remain the same even when they gain or lose properties as they change. Perdurantism is the view that material objects are four-dimensional entities that extend not just through space but also through time. This means that they are composed of temporal parts and, at any moment, only one part of them
12416-496: The likely migration routes of the peoples as they moved across the Australian continent to its southern reaches and what is now Tasmania , then part of the mainland. The modelling is based on data from archaeologists , anthropologists , ecologists , geneticists , climatologists , geomorphologists , and hydrologists . It is intended to compare this data with the oral histories of Aboriginal peoples, including Dreaming stories, Australian rock art , and linguistic features of
12544-418: The macroscopic objects they compose, like chairs and tables. Other hierarchical theories assert that substances are more fundamental than their properties and that nature is more fundamental than culture. Flat ontologies, by contrast, deny that any entity has a privileged status, meaning that all entities exist on the same level. For them, the main question is only whether something exists rather than identifying
12672-423: The many Aboriginal languages which reveal how the peoples developed separately. The routes, dubbed "superhighways" by the authors, are similar to current highways and stock routes in Australia. Lynette Russell of Monash University believes that the new model is a starting point for collaboration with Aboriginal people to help reveal their history. The new models suggest that the first people may have landed in
12800-403: The micro-level (tribe, clan, etc.), and others on shared languages and cultural practices spread over large regions defined by ecological factors. Anthropologists have encountered many difficulties in trying to define what constitutes an Aboriginal people/community/group/tribe, let alone naming them. Knowledge of pre-colonial Aboriginal cultures and societal groupings is still largely dependent on
12928-420: The more basic term by first characterizing things in terms of their essential features and then elaborating differences based on this conception. Differential ontologists, by contrast, privilege difference and say that the identity of a thing is a secondary determination that depends on how this thing differs from other things. Object-oriented ontology belongs to the school of speculative realism and examines
13056-672: The most basic level. Platonic realism asserts that universals have objective existence. Conceptualism says that universals only exist in the mind while nominalism denies their existence. There are similar disputes about mathematical objects , unobservable objects assumed by scientific theories, and moral facts . Materialism says that, fundamentally, there is only matter while dualism asserts that mind and matter are independent principles. According to some ontologists, there are no objective answers to ontological questions but only perspectives shaped by different linguistic practices. Ontology uses diverse methods of inquiry . They include
13184-406: The nature and role of objects. It sees objects as the fundamental building blocks of reality. As a flat ontology, it denies that some entities have a more fundamental form of existence than others. It uses this idea to argue that objects exist independently of human thought and perception. Methods of ontology are ways of conducting ontological inquiry and deciding between competing theories. There
13312-422: The objective or mind-independent reality of natural phenomena like elementary particles, lions, and stars. In the fields of computer science , information science , and knowledge representation , applied ontology is interested in the development of formal frameworks to encode and store information about a limited domain of entities in a structured way. A related application in genetics is Gene Ontology , which
13440-411: The observers' interpretations, which were filtered through colonial ways of viewing societies. Some Aboriginal peoples identify as one of several saltwater, freshwater, rainforest or desert peoples . The term Aboriginal Australians includes many distinct peoples who have developed across Australia for over 50,000 years. These peoples have a broadly shared, though complex, genetic history, but it
13568-638: The oldest living populations in the world, certainly the oldest outside of Africa." Their ancestors left the African continent 75,000 years ago. They may have the oldest continuous culture on earth. In Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory , oral histories comprising complex narratives have been passed down by Yolngu people through hundreds of generations. The Aboriginal rock art , dated by modern techniques, shows that their culture has continued from ancient times. The ancestors of present-day Aboriginal Australian people migrated from Southeast Asia by sea during
13696-480: The original 250–400 Aboriginal languages (more than 250 languages and about 800 dialectal varieties on the continent) are endangered or extinct, although some efforts are being made at language revival for some. As of 2016, only 13 traditional Indigenous languages were still being acquired by children, and about another 100 spoken by older generations only. Dispersing across the Australian continent over time,
13824-420: The other studies had utilised complete Y chromosome sequencing, which has the highest precision. For example, use of a ten Y STRs method has been shown to massively underestimate divergence times. Gene flow across the island-dotted 150-kilometre-wide (93 mi) Torres Strait, is both geographically plausible and demonstrated by the data, although at this point it could not be determined from this study when within
13952-399: The outcomes of experiments. Moral realists claim that there exist mind-independent moral facts. According to them, there are objective principles that determine which behavior is morally right. Moral anti-realists either claim that moral principles are subjective and differ between persons and cultures, a position known as moral relativism , or outright deny the existence of moral facts,
14080-440: The presence of any Holocene gene flow or non-genetic influences from South Asia at that time, and the appearance of the dingo does provide strong evidence for external contacts, the evidence overall is consistent with a complete lack of gene flow, and points to indigenous origins for the technological and linguistic changes. They attributed the disparity between their results and previous findings to improvements in technology; none of
14208-414: The previous census in 2016. Reasons for the increase were broadly as follows: Most Aboriginal people speak English, with Aboriginal phrases and words being added to create Australian Aboriginal English (which also has a tangible influence of Aboriginal languages in the phonology and grammatical structure ). Some Aboriginal people, especially those living in remote areas, are multi-lingual. Many of
14336-406: The property red . States of affairs are complex particular entities that have several other entities as their components. The state of affairs "Socrates is wise" has two components: the individual Socrates and the property wise . States of affairs that correspond to reality are called facts . Facts are truthmakers of statements, meaning that whether a statement is true or false depends on
14464-438: The region include Nturiya (Old Ti Tree Station), Ti-Tree Pmara Jutunta (6 Mile), Willowra , Laramba ( Napperby Station ) and Alyuen. What is today known as the Anmatyerre region has significant overlap with Warlpiri , Arrernte and Alyawarr language communities. Many people come from two or three different language groups. The Utopia community, 250 km (160 mi) northeast of Alice Springs , and set up in 1927,
14592-487: The remaining land bridge was impassable. This isolation makes the Aboriginal people the world's oldest culture. The study also found evidence of an unknown hominin group, distantly related to Denisovans, with whom the Aboriginal and Papuan ancestors must have interbred, leaving a trace of about 4% in most Aboriginal Australians' genome. There is, however, increased genetic diversity among Aboriginal Australians based on geographical distribution. Carlhoff et al. 2021 analysed
14720-426: The same features, such as perfect identical twins. This is also called exact similarity and indiscernibility . Numerical identity, by contrast, means that there is only a single entity. For example, if Fatima is the mother of Leila and Hugo then Leila's mother is numerically identical to Hugo's mother. Another distinction is between synchronic and diachronic identity. Synchronic identity relates an entity to itself at
14848-406: The same territory continuously longer than any other human populations. These findings suggest that modern Aboriginal Australians are the direct descendants of the eastern wave, who left Africa up to 75,000 years ago. This finding is compatible with earlier archaeological finds of human remains near Lake Mungo that date to approximately 40,000 years ago. The idea of the "oldest continuous culture"
14976-441: The same time. Diachronic identity relates an entity to itself at different times, as in "the woman who bore Leila three years ago is the same woman who bore Hugo this year". There are different and sometimes overlapping ways to divide ontology into branches. Pure ontology focuses on the most abstract topics associated with the concept and nature of being. It is not restricted to a specific domain of entities and studies existence and
15104-407: The second entity. For instance, the surface of an apple cannot exist without the apple. An entity is ontologically independent if it does not depend on anything else, meaning that it is fundamental and can exist on its own. Ontological dependence plays a central role in ontology and its attempt to describe reality on its most fundamental level. It is closely related to metaphysical grounding , which
15232-589: The story of creation known as The Dreamtime . Additionally, traditional healers were also custodians of important Dreaming stories as well as their medical roles (for example the Ngangkari in the Western desert ). Some core structures and themes are shared across the continent with details and additional elements varying between language and cultural groups. For example, in The Dreamtime of most regions,
15360-420: The structure of reality as a whole. Pure ontology contrasts with applied ontology , also called domain ontology. Applied ontology examines the application of ontological theories and principles to specific disciplines and domains, often in the field of science. It considers ontological problems in regard to specific entities such as matter , mind , numbers , God , and cultural artifacts. Social ontology ,
15488-409: The term Aboriginal has changed over time and place, with the importance of family lineage, self-identification and community acceptance all being of varying importance. The term Indigenous Australians refers to Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and the term is conventionally only used when both groups are included in the topic being addressed, or by self-identification by
15616-482: The underlying facts. Events are particular entities that occur in time, like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first moon landing . They usually involve some kind of change, like the lawn becoming dry. In some cases, no change occurs, like the lawn staying wet. Complex events, also called processes , are composed of a sequence of events. Concrete objects are entities that exist in space and time, such as
15744-517: The wider Australian community. Due to the aforementioned disadvantage, Aboriginal Australian communities experience a higher rate of suicide, as compared to non-indigenous communities. These issues stem from a variety of different causes unique to indigenous communities, such as historical trauma, socioeconomic disadvantage, and decreased access to education and health care. Also, this problem largely affects indigenous youth, as many indigenous youth may feel disconnected from their culture. To combat
15872-556: The word ontology traces back to the ancient Greek terms ὄντως ( ontos , meaning ' being ' ) and λογία ( logia , meaning ' study of ' ), literally, ' the study of being ' . The ancient Greeks did not use the term ontology , which was coined by philosophers in the 17th century. Being, or existence , is the main topic of ontology. It is one of the most general and fundamental concepts, encompassing all of reality and every entity within it. In its broadest sense, being only contrasts with non-being or nothingness. It
16000-808: The world is entirely composed of particular objects. Mathematical realism , a closely related view in the philosophy of mathematics , says that mathematical facts exist independently of human language, thought, and practices and are discovered rather than invented. According to mathematical Platonism, this is the case because of the existence of mathematical objects , like numbers and sets. Mathematical Platonists say that mathematical objects are as real as physical objects, like atoms and stars, even though they are not accessible to empirical observation . Influential forms of mathematical anti-realism include conventionalism, which says that mathematical theories are trivially true simply by how mathematical terms are defined, and game formalism , which understands mathematics not as
16128-452: The world. Aristotelian realism, also called moderate realism , rejects this idea and says that universals only exist as long as there are objects that exemplify them. Conceptualism , by contrast, is a form of anti-realism, stating that universals only exist in the mind as concepts that people use to understand and categorize the world. Nominalists defend a strong form of anti-realism by saying that universals have no existence. This means that
16256-439: The world. Facts, also known as states of affairs, are complex entities; for example, the fact that the Earth is a planet consists of the particular object the Earth and the property being a planet . Fact ontologies state that facts are the fundamental constituents of reality, meaning that objects, properties, and relations cannot exist on their own and only form part of reality to the extent that they participate in facts. In
16384-420: Was born at a different date. Using this idea, possible world semantics says that a sentence is possibly true if it is true in at least one possible world. A sentence is necessarily true if it is true in all possible worlds. In ontology, identity means that two things are the same. Philosophers distinguish between qualitative and numerical identity. Two entities are qualitatively identical if they have exactly
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