0:05

My name is Jessie Adams Stein and I'm

0:07

here in my capacity as the Program

0:10

Director for History Now 2024

0:12

, and I represent both the History Council

0:14

of New South Wales and the Australian Centre for

0:16

Public History at UTS . Thank

0:18

you so much for coming along to the first

0:21

session of History Now 2024

0:23

, new Earth Histories . Before

0:25

we begin , I'd like to start by acknowledging

0:28

the land upon which we meet here

0:31

. At the top of the hill on Gadigal Country , looking

0:33

out to Warren Sydney Cove and

0:36

Wogan-Migulia Farm Cove , we

0:38

are , of course , not far from one of the

0:40

key sites of colonial invasion . I'd

0:43

like to acknowledge the Gadigal as the traditional

0:45

custodians of the land

0:47

upon which we are standing and pay

0:50

my respects to elders past and present , and

0:52

acknowledge that we are on stolen land . Today

0:56

we will be hearing a lot about time and about

0:58

how we come to know the earth , and

1:00

I think it's important that we start by acknowledging the

1:02

incredible value of indigenous knowledge about

1:04

the past and about country , and

1:07

I'm sure we'll hear more about that soon

1:09

. I just wanted to say a little bit about

1:11

what History Now is as a program

1:14

. So it's actually a long running talk

1:16

series . It's been going for quite a while in many

1:18

different iterations and it's gone

1:20

through many different hands as well , so

1:23

it gets passed long . Often

1:25

it's in person , of course , during the COVID

1:27

years it's been online , and

1:30

so 2024 History Now

1:32

is being coordinated by me in

1:34

my multiple hats capacity , both at the

1:37

History Council of New South Wales and

1:39

as a member of the Australian Centre

1:41

for Public History at UTS , and

1:43

we also have venue support , of course

1:45

, from the State Library of New South Wales

1:47

, who have been very accommodating . I'd

2:00

like to introduce you to the chair of tonight's

2:02

event , the fantastic Dr Francis

2:05

Flanagan . Francis is one of those

2:07

public intellectuals whose expertise

2:09

sort of overflows beyond conventional boundaries

2:11

, so it makes it hard to describe , but she's a

2:13

lecturer at UTS Law , she's

2:15

an environmental labour expert , industrial

2:18

relations expert and an historian

2:20

as well . So thank you , francis , for agreeing

2:23

to chair today's event , and Francis will introduce

2:25

the speakers . Thanks .

2:32

Thank you so much , jessie . Well

2:35

, it is my immense pleasure to chair

2:37

tonight's discussion of New Earth

2:39

, histories , geocosmologies and the

2:41

making of the modern world . Now

2:43

there's a physical manifestation of this book that

2:45

I think you can look at on the table

2:47

there . This is a book

2:49

that offers a profound rethinking

2:52

of the question of how we come to know

2:54

the earth . The

2:56

questions that it asks are of a scope

2:58

and a scale that are simply dazzling

3:01

. It asks how

3:03

different ideas about the sacred

3:05

, the animate and the earthly changed the

3:07

modern environmental sciences , how

3:10

different world traditions understood human

3:12

and geological origins , how

3:14

the inclusion of multiple cosmologies

3:16

changed the meaning of the Anthropocene

3:18

and the global climate crisis . And

3:21

the context for answering these questions are

3:23

also enormous , encompassing Chinese

3:25

, pacific , islamic , south and Southeast

3:27

Asian conceptions of the earth's origin

3:30

and its make up . It

3:32

uses diverse methods , too , from cultural history

3:34

to ethnography , geography and indigenous

3:37

studies . This is a deeply

3:39

imaginative , extremely complex

3:41

and also unsettling book . Nothing

3:44

and no one is comfortably either

3:46

local or cosmopolitan , or secular

3:49

or sacred . In this text , we're constantly

3:51

reminded that earth knowledge is

3:53

always and has always emerged

3:55

from very historically specific

3:57

situations , so

4:00

it will be a book of interest to all of you , especially

4:02

if you are like me and you've become convinced

4:04

of the urgency of keeping it in

4:06

the ground , as the saying goes , when it comes

4:08

to fossil fuels , this book reminds us that

4:10

our conception of what the ground is

4:13

and what it is , and what our agency is

4:15

in relation to it , is

4:18

deeply historically contingent . Okay

4:21

, so let me now introduce our speakers . To

4:23

begin with , professor Alison Bashford , science

4:26

Professor in History and Director

4:28

of the Laureate Centre for Earth and Population

4:31

at UNSW . She

4:33

is the editor , along with Emily Kern and

4:35

Adam Bobet , of New Earth Histories , and

4:38

her work connects the history of science , global

4:40

history and environmental history into new assessments

4:43

of the modern world from the 18th to

4:45

the 20th century . She is the author of

4:47

many , many publications , which

4:50

I will not list , but most

4:53

recently the prize-winning and intimate history of evolution

4:56

the story of the Huxley family . Now

4:59

second speaker is Dr Jared Hall , an

5:01

environmental historian of settler colonial landscapes

5:04

, nature writing and geology . He

5:06

is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the New

5:08

Earth Histories Research Program at UNSW

5:10

and his work on earthquake geology

5:12

, wilderness photography , early environmentalism

5:14

and logistics of the natural history

5:17

trade has been widely published . He's

5:19

also the author of the award-winning book

5:21

Visions of Nature how Landscape

5:23

Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism , a

5:25

physical copy of which is also available on the

5:27

table to have a look at too . So

5:30

our speakers will speak for 20 minutes and then

5:32

we will have some questions . 20 minutes each , I

5:34

should say . Thank you very much .

5:53

Thank you , jesse . I wish you had written the

5:55

introduction to the book . Actually there is a

5:57

really nice and generous summary

6:00

. This microphone is okay , yep

6:03

, great . So thank you . Thank

6:06

you History Council and UTS and

6:08

the State Library , and

6:11

thank you for the

6:13

invitation to talk about New Earth Histories

6:16

, which is has this manifestation

6:18

as a book which came out late last year

6:21

, which was a pleasure

6:23

to edit with Emily

6:26

Kern and Adam Abett , who were then postdocs

6:28

, who now have scattered to other parts of the , to

6:30

other continents and

6:33

it , but it continues . New Earth Histories

6:35

continues as a research program

6:37

that Jared Hoare and I run

6:39

together at University of

6:41

New South Wales and really

6:44

, as you were talking , jesse , I was

6:46

trying to think back through how

6:48

I became a historian of Geosciences

6:51

, because my own background

6:53

as a historian of science generally

6:55

for many , many years and for

6:57

many projects , including the Huxley book and

7:00

Interest and Interment History of Evolution

7:02

, was much more about the

7:04

bio world , biological

7:06

history of biological sciences , histories

7:08

of eugenics . I've done history of

7:11

reproduction , history

7:13

of history of biological

7:15

sciences , history of evolutionary

7:17

sciences , which is what the Huxley book really is

7:19

about , and so really for two decades

7:21

now that that world

7:24

of biological sciences and its past

7:26

has been my focus and at some point

7:28

I don't really I'm scratching my head

7:30

trying to think what made me cross over

7:32

to that other scientific side

7:34

to start thinking about geological

7:37

sciences and start to think about the people

7:39

in the past for whom inorganic

7:42

rocks were core

7:45

business . And I think I got there probably

7:48

as a world historian . So

7:50

you know many of you here

7:52

will understand that in the last 10

7:55

years or more , the scale

7:57

that modern historians have worked

8:01

on has become larger and larger

8:03

and there's been a what's a while

8:05

ago , people to call the planet return

8:07

in lots of humanities scholarship

8:09

, but also in in

8:12

for historians , where we started

8:15

to have to think about the whole

8:17

globe , how we think about that historically

8:19

, how we think about the planet historically . And

8:22

it still stuns me that I I

8:24

can still remember historians

8:27

starting to talk about the planet as

8:30

something , as a whole thing that we can historicize

8:33

as historians , not as scientists for

8:35

the first time , and it seemed revolutionary , but now

8:37

it's an ordinary , if not essential

8:39

thing to discuss . So

8:42

it's maybe via that route that I started

8:44

to think about earth sciences

8:46

. But

8:48

then the thing that caught me and what

8:50

is really still

8:52

at the core of this project for me , conceptually

8:56

and historically , is how

8:58

, for all of our colleagues

9:00

and maybe some of you here who

9:02

work with apparently

9:05

inorganic rocks

9:07

, strata , minerals

9:09

in the earth , when we look

9:11

back historically not very long ago , not

9:14

very many generations ago , geologists

9:17

were the precisely the scholars

9:19

who were most likely to

9:21

be theologians , who

9:23

were most likely to think about the

9:26

age of the earth and how that is to be

9:28

aligned with biblical scholarship . They

9:30

were the people . Geologists were more likely

9:32

than the life scientists or even the evolutionary

9:35

theorists , or possibly them , to

9:37

be thinking about how

9:40

rocks told the time

9:42

of the earth and how that didn't

9:44

, didn't align with Genesis

9:47

, how the Christian

9:49

story needed

9:51

to be rethought by evidence that rocks

9:54

themselves , so

9:57

to say , and stratigraphies of the earth

9:59

were revealing . And so I became

10:01

really fascinated with how this

10:04

whole linking as we've got in our subtitle

10:06

here of geology on the one hand and

10:08

cosmology on the other , the beginning

10:11

of the earth , the

10:13

many people still now , but obviously

10:15

for much of human existence , a

10:18

kind of a divine birth

10:20

, so to say , of the earth , sat

10:22

right up close to and

10:24

with geology , in the sense that

10:27

I think it's clarified

10:29

most in the number of leading

10:33

geologists in the 18th and 19th century

10:35

, who were themselves theologists

10:38

as well , and these

10:41

two things just sat really closely . And so I

10:43

think that's for me . There's something

10:45

even in the very limited

10:47

and very particular history of

10:50

European science geology

10:53

and cosmology . You don't have to scratch

10:55

very far back in time or below the surface

10:58

to find these two things twinned

11:00

. And it was always interesting to me that

11:02

you know it was

11:04

historically the scientists who were most

11:07

interested in the

11:09

apparently inanimate , for

11:12

whom big scriptural

11:14

, biblical cosmological stories

11:16

were also core business

11:19

. And so for me I

11:21

think that made me wonder

11:23

, as

11:25

all historians of science do now

11:27

, how particular that story

11:29

is , how European or North

11:31

American or even perhaps Northern

11:33

Hemispheric that story is

11:35

, and how stratigraphies

11:39

of the earth or the lithosphere of the earth

11:42

, or rocks of the earth , particular

11:44

minerals , particular gemstones

11:46

, even to bring the scale right down , also

11:49

had cosmologies attached

11:51

to them . And so the purpose of

11:54

the ongoing program in

11:56

this particular book was really to

11:58

start looking in other directions , in

12:00

other kinds of traditions for

12:03

geological and

12:05

cosmological stories . And

12:08

I learned things , like you

12:10

know , on the larger scale . I learned through

12:12

this project that , although

12:16

as someone who comes

12:18

out of a tradition of the history

12:20

of classic

12:23

European geological sciences

12:25

in this instance

12:27

, where we know that Western

12:29

science has the capacity

12:31

to imagine itself as the universal

12:34

story , and that's , you

12:37

know , a very familiar claim

12:39

to make and a very familiar claim

12:41

to criticize , now that

12:44

it imagines itself as universal and the only

12:46

truth . What I learned in this project was

12:48

the number of other locations and

12:50

places and ways of knowing the

12:52

earth that also claimed a kind

12:55

of universal status , and

12:57

so there's a really fantastic . The

12:59

first chapter in the book is by Sumathi Ramaswamy

13:01

, who's a really great historian

13:04

of how the

13:06

earth came to be imagined as a

13:08

globe shape and what other

13:10

traditions of universalizing

13:14

understanding of the earth were displaced in order

13:16

for that to become normal . I learned

13:18

from the chapter that Catherine Dit

13:21

, who's a historian of Neu-en

13:23

, really 18th century Vietnam

13:26

. I learned from her these

13:28

completely different ways in which the

13:32

earth , let's

13:34

say the globe , was understood

13:36

to belong to a universe

13:38

. In that 18th century Vietnamese

13:40

tradition it was the analogy

13:42

of an egg shell , and so there's a soft

13:44

earth at the center and

13:47

nine layers , if I remember correctly

13:49

. Some of you here may know nine layers

13:51

of increasingly hard matter

13:54

until you get to the egg shell

13:56

outside of the universe . That's

13:58

a universalizing idea , and so

14:00

really the book was partly about what other traditions

14:03

, what other ways in

14:05

which , what other ways

14:07

has the

14:10

globe , earth and a kind of a universe

14:12

been imagined ? So

14:15

that's the large book

14:18

project . But let

14:20

me talk to you for a little bit about a spin-off

14:23

project that may give you another

14:25

sense . It's an example really

14:27

of how we might think about

14:29

classic geological histories , but

14:31

how they have cosmological

14:34

or spiritual , one might say

14:36

, or certainly cultural histories

14:39

behind

14:42

and around them that are exciting to

14:44

lay on top of the

14:46

scientific histories . So one other

14:48

project , and this is an example of how , once

14:51

I've started to think , what are the new ways

14:53

in which we can think of , let's

14:55

say , the history of geology , all

14:58

kinds of things open up . And one of the things that's

15:00

opened up for me and a team and

15:03

Jared is also involved in this project is

15:05

a history of Gondwana

15:08

, and you will all know Gondwana land as

15:10

the once

15:13

linked , continentally linked Southern

15:16

Hemisphere that

15:18

broke up , started to break up about 200

15:21

million years ago to

15:23

form , as you see there , broadly

15:25

South America , africa , india

15:27

or South Asia , antarctica

15:29

and Australia

15:31

, and parts of which of course geologists

15:33

here will know , are still

15:36

on the sea floor

15:38

and I started to

15:40

think about what

15:42

are the other ? What is

15:44

the geological history , what are the history

15:46

of ideas that gave

15:49

rise to this thesis about Gondwana

15:51

land , which prefaced

15:54

the idea of wandering

15:57

continents , and then , very , quite

15:59

late in the , quite recently , the idea of

16:01

plate tectonics , and I think Jared

16:03

may talk more about this . Behind

16:06

all that was quite

16:08

recent I mean 1870s

16:10

, 1880s

16:13

speculation

16:15

initially about these

16:17

continents in Southern Hemisphere of the

16:19

Earth being connected

16:21

, and that speculation

16:24

had a tiny start . This

16:26

is little glossopterous fossil

16:29

leaf , quite common actually , so

16:31

my colleagues here in the Israeli Museum tell

16:33

me still being unearthed quite

16:35

constantly . And Scottish geologists

16:38

in India that will become

16:40

important started to

16:42

pick up this fossil

16:44

leaf . They knew

16:46

from its pattern that it was already

16:48

called a glossopterous fossil

16:51

and they would say to one another

16:53

to condense this story oh , I've

16:55

seen this somewhere else and

16:58

they're together in central India . I've

17:00

seen this somewhere else , I've seen this in New South

17:02

Wales , I've seen this in

17:04

Southern Africa . And it's from

17:06

this evidence , this fossil evidence that

17:09

was scattered across they

17:11

knew quite quickly was scattered across various

17:14

continents that the thesis

17:17

of a linked Gondwana land emerged

17:20

. And then , as geological

17:22

scientists went to other , to

17:25

other continents . The

17:27

glossopterous fossil leaf continued

17:30

to reveal

17:32

linked continents . So

17:35

in a way there is a really fascinating

17:37

, just plain history of geology

17:39

about Gondwana

17:41

land how the idea emerged

17:43

, who thought of it , where they thought of it

17:45

and how it led eventually I'm

17:48

very late actually to plate

17:51

tectonics , that we now understand the whole earth

17:53

to be formed around . One

17:55

of the reasons why to

17:58

kind of put the new on that

18:00

old Earth history , one of the reasons

18:02

why this took my fancy

18:04

as a historian , was that

18:06

, as everybody in this room I'm sure understands

18:09

, gondwana land and Gondwana

18:11

has a very

18:13

particular Australian resonance

18:15

. It is the case , I think you'd agree

18:17

, that most people on the street would have

18:19

some sense that Gondwana

18:21

land was an ancient continent , that Australian

18:24

was part of it . They may not layer

18:26

beyond that Many people would , but

18:29

it's a very familiar Australian

18:31

idea and when I started speaking

18:33

to my colleague historians

18:35

in other continents , they were

18:38

puzzled that it

18:40

has a particular Australian purchase

18:42

and that made me think why

18:44

is that the case ? But just to demonstrate

18:47

, it's an Australian purchase . So why

18:49

would this huge super

18:51

mega-continent that once was the

18:53

entire southern part of the Earth become

18:56

so especially resonant to

18:58

us here in this continent , but

19:00

just to demonstrate its resonance there

19:02

is at the moment when you look

19:04

up . Why would you ? Let me just tell you ABN

19:07

, which I do probably once a week , because I'm

19:09

obsessed with the use of Gondwana

19:12

as a term . There are hundreds and

19:14

hundreds of companies in

19:16

Australia that use the word Gondwana

19:18

in their title , and so

19:20

it's got a . If it could have been copyrighted

19:23

and patented , it would have been , and

19:26

they range from everything to

19:28

this kind of

19:31

indigenous connection . Gondwana

19:33

Dreaming Tours the choirs

19:36

, of course , is probably one of the most well-known

19:38

use of the term . There

19:41

is not one , but quite a lot of indigenous

19:44

art galleries that

19:46

are called Gondwana Art Galleries

19:49

. There are also

19:51

, at the other end of the ABN list

19:53

, a

19:55

resource extraction , mineral extraction companies

19:57

called Gondwana Resources

20:00

. That's just one example . Or

20:02

the Gondwana Coal Company . It

20:05

goes on and on and on . There's Gondwana Botanical

20:07

Gardens , there's Gondwana Day Spars , there's

20:09

Gondwana the folk group

20:12

from the 80s . Some of you may

20:14

remember . Maybe they still exist , I don't know , I

20:16

probably should . So I became really

20:18

interested in what's the cultural

20:21

history that made Gondwana so particular

20:23

to Australia , and

20:26

in research that we've done , it is clear

20:28

that in fact , most Australians will

20:31

understand Gondwana as having some special

20:33

purchase to hear . But not only

20:35

that . They will say it's

20:38

. They will say something like oh , it's an

20:40

indigenous word , I'm not quite sure where

20:42

, from across the continent , but it's an indigenous

20:45

word . And if you all think

20:47

that too , right now you

20:49

are in the majority . Most people

20:52

have that understanding

20:54

of Gondwana . However , the

20:57

term Gondwana land doesn't come from

20:59

here at all . It comes

21:01

from Gondwana , which

21:05

is a central province , was a central

21:07

province formerly known in

21:10

Mughal India and in

21:12

early British India , and

21:15

Gondwana is

21:17

in the across

21:20

the centre of India . It's where

21:22

the Scottish geologists were . They

21:24

found this fossil leaf

21:26

. They were in a place called Gondwana . They called

21:28

it Gondwana land . So this thing

21:30

that Australians have so embraced

21:32

and are ironically nationalised in

21:35

fact has an Indian origin

21:38

. But not only that , of

21:42

course . There is no state in India

21:44

any longer called Gondwana , but

21:46

there are Gond people registered

21:49

in Indian terms as a

21:51

tribal group , and

21:55

Gond people understand

21:58

their homeland as Gondwana

22:00

. They've been generally forced

22:02

off their homeland . There's a big resource

22:05

. This is where these earth

22:07

histories start to fold into one another . There's a big

22:09

resource history here first clearing

22:11

for trees . Then guess what ? That

22:13

fossil leaf turned into Coal

22:16

, fossil fuses , a lot of mining , so

22:18

there's a lot of displaced Gond people

22:20

and essentially , in

22:22

our terms , a land

22:24

reclaiming politics

22:27

. And here's an amazing

22:29

humans of Gondwana , facebook

22:31

. Not only that , and this is where

22:33

the project , this is where I think Gondwana is

22:36

a nice second project for me anyway

22:38

, because the

22:40

standard old earth history , the history

22:42

of geology , doesn't catch any

22:44

of this and it doesn't catch what

22:47

Gondwana land now

22:49

means or came to mean for the Gond

22:51

people . So for me

22:53

, the kind of most

22:57

exciting thing about thinking about

22:59

something like an ancient mega-continent

23:01

in its modern iterations

23:04

and as a cosmology , we

23:07

can see in these posters

23:09

. These are posters from the 1970s

23:11

, jared , would that be ? That's what

23:13

I think , the 1970s

23:16

gond political posters

23:19

arguing for the

23:21

restatement of a state called

23:24

Gondwana , which is their home

23:26

territory . So it's a land reclaiming

23:29

politics and there are several

23:31

gond politicians in the Indian parliament

23:33

. But for me and for us today , what

23:35

I hope is interesting is

23:38

the mobilization by gond

23:40

people themselves of this

23:42

phenomenon . Gondwana land , the southern hemisphere

23:45

of the earth , and you can see it

23:47

depicted here , obviously , but

23:50

also , really interestingly , here

23:52

, where LaRaysia , the

23:54

northern hemisphere , is distinct from Gondwana

23:56

land and this

23:58

project , mark

24:00

II project in New Earth histories . We

24:02

have anthropologists and historians

24:06

and geophysicists as well , all

24:08

involved . And one

24:11

of our colleagues , who's the anthropologist , does a lot

24:13

of work with gond people and she

24:15

told us at a meeting all

24:17

up to a year ago now . She presented work

24:19

where she said that gond people

24:22

themselves understand

24:24

themselves as the original

24:27

people of Gondwana land . And

24:31

so one of our colleagues said oh , so

24:34

gond people are like the first nations of Gondwana

24:36

land . And

24:38

so for me there was such

24:41

a fascinating folding of this 200

24:43

million year ago history with

24:45

not just 1880s

24:47

Scottish geologists , which is

24:50

interesting enough in itself , but classic geological

24:52

sciences , but actually

24:54

this cosmology for gond people

24:57

in India , after

24:59

whom Gondwana land is named , who

25:01

have , let's say , appropriated

25:04

, taken on the idea of

25:06

a southern hemisphere continent and

25:08

imagined themselves as the original

25:11

people of that . And

25:13

I did say to my Uriya anthropologist

25:15

colleague hang on , are you saying

25:17

to me that that means gond people

25:19

understand themselves as original

25:23

people vis-a-vis other indigenous

25:25

people across the

25:27

southern hemisphere ? And she said yes

25:30

, that is the case . So there's

25:32

all these really interesting origin

25:34

stories that are often

25:36

deep or not even that deep , in

25:38

fact not even deep at all inside

25:40

histories of geology , and that's

25:43

the kind of way in which I hope

25:45

New Earth histories

25:47

can take a well-known

25:49

story , actually of something like Gondwana

25:51

land , a

25:54

phenomenon that's obviously

25:56

well-known , deeply researched , and

25:58

think through its other meanings

26:00

. It has a completely different politics

26:03

, but also cosmology

26:05

, to the gond people . And last

26:07

story , one of my favorite . Oh

26:11

, before I get to my favorite story

26:13

, should I stop ? Ok

26:17

, two minutes is easy . So

26:19

before we think , oh , it's the gond

26:21

people who have a

26:25

particular cosmological

26:27

relationship to this thing called gondwana

26:29

land , let's think again . Here

26:32

we have Ernst Heckel , the

26:34

key German

26:37

Darwinist in the late

26:39

19th century . So you don't get anybody

26:42

more card-carrying as

26:44

a scientist in the 19th

26:46

century and he's

26:48

starting to think , as they all did what

26:52

is the dispersal of humankind

26:54

and where

26:56

did Ernst Heckel put

26:58

the origin of humanity

27:01

? Right here

27:03

in the bottom

27:05

, underneath South Asia

27:07

, in the Indian Ocean , and

27:09

in fact he calls it Lemuria . And

27:14

Lemuria is actually

27:16

a mythic , sunken

27:18

continent , mythic , it's

27:21

like Atlantis . But

27:23

I became really it's not

27:25

just so to say the gond people who are imagining

27:27

these things . I

27:30

don't know this , but I suspect

27:32

that those political posters

27:35

are partly derived from

27:37

these ideas

27:40

absolutely

27:42

at the core of Western science

27:44

, at the core of Darwinism in the 19th

27:47

century that also understand

27:49

this as a kind of a human origin

27:51

point . And

27:55

so , on

27:57

the one hand , this is where I get once . This

27:59

is the kind of opening

28:01

I suppose is one way of putting it as

28:04

someone who's trained

28:07

in classic

28:09

history of sciences , which is what

28:11

did scientists think in the past ? But

28:14

once I've started to think

28:16

about what are new Earth histories

28:18

, what are new ways of thinking , that in

28:21

fact the folding and refolding

28:23

of all these much larger and bigger stories

28:25

, especially in Earth sciences , come

28:28

together , and it's the Gondwana land project

28:30

at the moment . That

28:34

is case number one , I suppose , for a large

28:37

project folding out of the

28:39

New Earth histories

28:43

project . 30

28:45

seconds , for my favorite part of this story

28:47

, which we're still researching

28:49

, is that not

28:52

only did there's

28:55

another Lemuria story

28:57

to tell , not only did Ernst Heckel , darwinist

28:59

in Germany , imagine an origin for

29:01

humans which in fact on the sea calls

29:03

paradise interestingly , that's the point

29:05

as well in the Indian Ocean

29:08

but our colleague

29:10

also tells us that in the

29:12

mountains of former Gondwana there

29:16

are re-workings

29:19

of pilgrimagees that

29:22

completely take the Gondwana

29:25

land story to heart

29:27

and have now manifested

29:29

since the 1970s , 80s and 90s

29:32

as pilgrimages of thousands

29:34

and thousands of people and she showed

29:36

us wonderful slides of this up

29:38

through the mountains in Gondwana

29:41

, including to the

29:43

place where the Glasopteris fossil

29:46

leaf was first discovered by

29:48

the Scottish geologists . And

29:50

so there's a sacralizing of

29:52

that geological

29:55

story of Scottish geologists picking

29:57

up the fossil leaf and

29:59

starting to piece Gondwana land together

30:02

has been folded into this curious

30:04

, wonderful sacralizing

30:08

of that particular

30:10

history . So I think I should

30:12

leave it there , but I hope that gives

30:14

you something of a taste of

30:16

what our ambitions are to

30:19

rethink really wonderful old-earth

30:21

histories into new-earth histories

30:24

. Thank you , thank

30:26

you .

30:48

Hello everyone and thank you for coming along

30:50

tonight to hear more about New Earth Histories . The

30:54

next 20 minutes I'm planning to give you a

30:56

brief insight at

30:58

building off Allyson's presentation

31:01

, a brief insight into the book I'm currently working

31:03

on , tentatively titled Earth

31:05

Science from the Geological South surveying

31:08

a revolution in planetary history . So

31:10

thank you for being the test audience

31:12

for this . So

31:15

in this book I'm developing an account of

31:17

one of the major shifts that defined

31:19

20th century Earth science by

31:22

focusing on a series of specific materials

31:25

and sites outside of the highly

31:27

storied geologies of the United

31:29

Kingdom and North America . Placing

31:32

things like coal from West Bengal

31:34

, which we just heard a little bit about , or

31:36

from the Hunter Valley , or diamonds from the

31:38

Kimberley or from Brazil , or oil

31:41

from the Somali Peninsula , at

31:43

the centre of this history , I think

31:45

can help us explain how geologists went

31:47

from understanding the Earth as relatively

31:49

stable , unchanging unit

31:51

in the 1830s

31:53

to accepting it in the 1960s

31:56

that the Earth was so dynamic that the very

31:58

continental shapes that define our world

32:00

are contingent and temporary , albeit

32:03

in deep planetary history . So

32:06

more on this soon , but first I wanted to reflect a

32:08

little on the fact that this work

32:10

has been totally conceived of and partially

32:12

written at this stage anyway , within

32:15

the frames of reference provided by New Earth

32:17

Histories , and it forms a part

32:19

of , and has developed with the support of , an Australian

32:21

Research Council Discovery Grant called

32:23

Empty Podenean Geology , of which Allison

32:25

and Alessandro Antonello from Flinders University

32:28

are the chief investigators . So

32:31

these two things together New Earth Histories

32:34

and what we call the Gondwan Land Project

32:36

, have defined the outlines of this project

32:38

, and at the core of it all is a

32:40

provocation to approach the history of geoscience

32:43

, as we've heard , as a product of a

32:45

whole range of different ways of thinking about

32:47

the Earth . In

32:50

the New Earth Histories book , allison , emily

32:52

and Adam make the important argument that

32:54

the geological and environmental sciences emerge

32:56

from cosmopolitan exchanges and

32:58

colonial encounters , and this

33:00

created new ways of knowing the

33:02

Earth and its history which carry the signatures

33:05

, importantly , of diverse origins

33:07

. What a

33:09

powerful conceptual apparatus , I

33:11

figure . So applied to the history of

33:13

what is perhaps one of the master sciences

33:16

of the 20th century plate

33:18

tectonics . Simply

33:20

put , plate tectonics is the label for a

33:22

theory that describes the geography of the Earth

33:24

, how the geography of the Earth is

33:26

defined by the long run consequences

33:29

of large slabs of crust being

33:31

pushed over the mantle by Mino-Ocean ridges

33:33

when new crust is generated . After

33:36

its acceptance in the 1960s , it elegantly

33:39

solved a whole range of geological mysteries

33:41

that have persisted within older models

33:44

of the Earth , which emphasise the fixity

33:46

of continents and oceans . Now

33:50

, within the history and philosophy of science

33:52

, plate tectonics is one of the most frequently

33:54

cited instances of Thomas Kuhn's

33:56

model of a scientific revolution . Trained

33:59

geologist and historian of science

34:01

Naomi Uresci described it in nature as

34:04

an idea that simply clicked , the

34:06

product of a long process of convergence

34:08

between evidence and theory . Perhaps

34:12

we can get into the details of all this

34:14

later in discussion , but for now I think

34:16

it's enough to say that scholars interested in the history

34:18

of this moment have overwhelmingly

34:20

focused on one part of this convergence , and

34:23

that is the theory . Of

34:25

course , this work is fundamental , and it does contextualise

34:28

the key geophysical triggers of

34:30

revision . Marie Tharp's discovery

34:32

and mapping of Mino-Ocean ridges in the 1950s

34:35

has rightfully been a pride of place , and

34:38

Frederick Weyne and Drummond Matthews' diagnosis

34:40

of alternating magnetic polarity

34:42

in ocean bedrock is also very

34:44

prominent . However

34:46

, this literature tends to marginalise the

34:48

problem of older or more established evidence

34:51

of a dynamic Earth , which I've become

34:53

much more interested in as a result

34:55

. So

34:57

I want to begin to open up this problem by

34:59

showing you this photograph . So on your screen

35:01

here is an image of two people meeting

35:04

in Hungary in 1907 . On

35:07

the left is Bailey Willis , who at this stage was

35:09

working for the United States Geological

35:11

Survey as a consulting surveyor

35:14

and as an earthquake geologist . Willis

35:16

went on to conduct field work in an incredible

35:18

array of different sites across the globe

35:21

and developed

35:23

very important theories of energy transfer

35:25

within the crust and within the interior

35:27

of the Earth . Although he remained

35:29

an opponent of ideas like continental

35:32

drift , passing away in 1949 , he

35:34

was nevertheless one of the first scientists to

35:37

substantiate the idea of an energetic , a

35:39

gentile planet . On

35:42

the right , seated across , is Edward Seuss , an

35:44

Austrian geologist who may as well

35:47

have been from a different age entirely

35:49

. Seuss was born in 1831 and spent

35:51

his career assembling

35:53

correspondence from a worldwide network of

35:55

geologists and savants to compose his

35:58

monumental account of universal geology

36:00

, das Anlitzter Erder , or the face

36:02

of the Earth . It was in the course

36:04

of this work that he coined the geological

36:07

term Godwana land , using the name for

36:09

a stratigraphic sequence in West Bengal

36:11

to describe a connected southern

36:14

hemisphere supercontinent . Now

36:17

, seuss' vision of the face of the Earth

36:19

might seem quite similar to the kind of

36:21

thinking the defined Willis' era

36:24

and its inheritors in the world of plate

36:26

tectonics , and Seuss' often

36:28

referred to as an early visionary . However

36:31

, there are some major differences . Probably

36:34

the most important one is that Seuss'

36:36

work was in the mode of old geology

36:38

. He had radical ideas about mountain

36:40

chains , land bridges and raised plateau

36:42

, but they were made sense of using the trick

36:44

of old geology unlimited time

36:47

In

36:50

this geology in many ways respected uniformitarianism

36:53

. Like Charles Lyle and other leading

36:55

19th century geologists , he argued that the face

36:57

of the Earth had changed many times over . He

37:00

accepted that geophysical constraints , such as

37:02

very slow rates of change and the relative

37:05

position of the five continents , were

37:08

stable . Now I want to suggest that people

37:10

like Willis and his understanding

37:12

of a dynamic Earth then must

37:15

have come from a different tradition , and

37:18

the key purpose of the book is to show that one important

37:21

thread of this tradition that sustained

37:23

different views of a dynamic planet around

37:25

the turn of , around the middle of the 20th century

37:27

. It runs firmly through a series

37:30

of colonial sites that I'm referring

37:32

to as a geological south

37:34

. So

37:37

between the 1830s and 1960s

37:40

I'm aiming to show how colonial surveyors in

37:42

India , australia , southern and Eastern

37:44

Africa and South America found

37:46

evidence of dramatic geological changes

37:48

in coal seams , diamond mines , river

37:51

sediments , stone quarries and oil fields

37:53

. These finds challenged

37:55

the conventional understandings

37:57

of old geology , gradually

38:00

forcing reassessments of important junctures

38:02

in planetary history . Over

38:05

a more than a hemisphere , from the Himalaya to

38:07

the High Belt and from the Andes to the Australian Outback

38:09

, surveys were made to account the

38:11

geophysical facts that contradicted

38:13

orthodoxy . What

38:16

did it mean , for instance , that coal seams in West

38:19

Bengal and in New South Wales were more recent

38:21

than the great carboniferous seams of Yorkshire

38:23

and Pennsylvania ? What exactly

38:25

were the giant cone-shaped structures that punctured

38:28

the crust of the diamond fields around Kimberley in

38:30

the Northern Cape ? What could

38:32

the millions of micro fossils retrieved

38:34

from oil wells around the Red Sea

38:36

tell geologists about the paleogeography

38:39

of North Africa , the Middle East and South

38:41

Asia ? And by engaging

38:43

with questions like these , by formulating them

38:46

and by thinking about

38:48

and with the resources that inspired them

38:50

, colonial surveyors and geologists

38:52

became some of the most forceful advocates

38:54

of a dynamic earth , well before

38:56

the 1950s

38:59

. Now , to try and contextualise sorry

39:02

the emergence of this thinking , the book adopts the

39:04

perspective of figures working within a range

39:06

of colonial sites . These

39:09

include the coal frontiers of India and Australia

39:11

from the 1840s , the diamond-bearing

39:13

locales of South Africa and Brazil , the

39:16

huge river basins of the Rio de la Plata

39:18

and Amazon , and the fault systems

39:20

of the Great Rift Valley . Now

39:23

these are the sites I'm trying to capture when I use

39:25

the phrase geological south , defined

39:28

by a unique set of geopolitical

39:30

investments and information economies . Some

39:33

of these sites were or became colonies between the

39:35

1830s or 1960s

39:38

, and others were independent nations , in part defined

39:40

by their colonial legacies . I'm

39:43

interested in making a case here that the historical

39:45

conditions of this geological south are

39:47

an essential part of assessing the development

39:49

of modern earth science . This

39:53

story , I argue , is ultimately about

39:56

the study of resources and a series of

39:58

separate but comparable struggles over their location

40:00

, description , extraction and

40:02

value , and I want

40:04

to go through a few of these now . So

40:07

, as we've heard , this process of engagement

40:10

with resources and thinking about the dynamic

40:12

earth began during the 1830s

40:14

, during the colonial mapping of coal seams

40:16

in India , australia and Southern Africa

40:18

. Here surveyors closely

40:21

engaged with Permian deposits and the materials

40:23

surrounding them . Those

40:26

Scottish geologists , thomas Oldham , henry

40:28

Medleycott and William Blandford , mapped

40:30

the whole sequence of shales , coal , sandstones

40:33

and glacial debris in

40:35

West Bengal , in Gondwana

40:37

, in the 1860s

40:39

. Oldham predicted that this formation had equivalence

40:42

in Southern Africa and in the 1870s

40:44

. Medleycott's naming of this series triggered reappraisals

40:47

of similar Permian coal basins in New South Wales

40:49

, those in the Hunter that were linked

40:51

to those in India by the distinctive glossopterous

40:54

fossil leaf . As

40:59

I also mentioned , this study of the

41:01

Gondwana Coals can fit within a fairly conventional

41:03

history of old geology , a fairly conventional

41:05

history of economic geology too . But

41:08

I'm more interested in how this study of

41:10

the Gondwana Coals was part of a drastic

41:12

, repeated and extensive

41:14

thinking about environmental change

41:16

. Geologists in the United Kingdom

41:19

had confronted one part of this problem already

41:21

, but the existence of coal from the

41:23

Permian period in these colonial

41:25

sites , not from the Carboniferous , meant

41:28

that the planet had experienced multiple and separate

41:30

coal ages . Metropolitan

41:33

geologists had also never had to reckon with

41:35

the geographical extent that she distanced

41:38

between West Bengal , the Hunter Valley and Vereniging

41:40

in South Africa , of the stratigraphic

41:43

continuities that marked a mass

41:45

extinction in the strata . Here

41:48

, I think , is where my environmental

41:50

history background comes in and

41:52

why I've become interested in these geologists

41:54

. The shift of perspective is to recognise

41:57

these colonial geologists as environmental

41:59

thinkers working on a planetary scale , well

42:02

before figures like Willis and Modern Earth Science more

42:04

generally adopted this position . Each

42:08

successive subject , then , that I fold into

42:10

this history of modern earth . Science advances

42:12

and reinforces this argument

42:15

about colonial geologists and their interlocutors

42:17

. How am I going for time

42:19

, francis Great ? So

42:23

from the 1870s , for

42:25

instance , in the

42:27

middle part of the map , the

42:30

pattern established by these colonial geologists studying

42:32

coal and shale was replicated in other

42:34

fields of economic geology . In

42:37

this case , it was among , amidst a diamond

42:39

rush in the Kimberley in South Africa's

42:41

Northern Cape , which focused worldwide

42:43

attention on the origin and distribution of

42:45

these precious minerals , an

42:48

Australian geologist trained in Victoria

42:50

, edward Dunne , was one of the first

42:52

to assess the area , focusing

42:54

on both coal reserves and on the

42:56

intrusive geology that generated

42:58

diamonds . These formations

43:01

were named then Kimberlite pipes , and

43:03

these two soon became relevant to the understanding

43:05

of continental comparison and connection

43:07

. By the 1920s

43:10

, after nearly three decades working on the diamond fields

43:12

and for debirs , the great geologist

43:14

of continental drift , alexander Dottoy

43:17

sought to compare and link the diamond geology

43:19

of Southern Africa with much older

43:21

sources of diamonds in Brazil and

43:23

in India . Diamond

43:26

geology , however , differed from coal geology

43:28

in important ways . The rocks

43:30

where diamonds are found are igneous and intrusive

43:33

rather than sedimentary , and therefore the

43:35

theories generated through the close engagement

43:37

with these sites triggered new thinking about

43:39

the interior of the planet , its

43:41

massive energy flows and the consequences

43:43

of this . On the surface Again

43:46

, these studies stitched sites within

43:48

the book's geological south together , both

43:51

through the way they focused and textured thinking

43:53

about the planet and via the increased

43:55

circulation of scientists and knowledge about

43:57

the earth . I'm

44:02

sorry , there's a coal seam . We'll come back to that . New

44:04

places within the geological south were drawn

44:06

into this established pattern of resource geology

44:08

in the 1920s , when the search for another

44:11

hydrocarbon oil focused

44:13

scientific attention on ocean basins and

44:15

other marginal zones . One

44:17

of the figures swept up in this search was

44:19

the Cambridge hydrogeologists and for a minifera

44:21

expert , william McFadden . So

44:24

it was around this time that geologists realized that

44:27

these fossil for a minifera , which are

44:29

tiny , ancient single-celled

44:31

marine organisms fossilized in

44:33

sedimentary rocks , could be used to

44:35

indicate the likely presence or absence

44:37

of oil . The

44:39

skills of McFadden in this moment , who

44:42

was a specialist in water , rock and life

44:44

, were

44:46

in high demand then , in a set of

44:48

British possessions and interests in the Middle East

44:51

, he worked for British Petroleum

44:53

, the Anglo-Egyptian oil fields one of a

44:55

map of which is on the screen

44:57

, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and the

45:00

Somaliland Petroleum Company . In

45:03

Somaliland , in particular , he drilled

45:05

wells for water , for oil

45:07

and conducted agricultural surveys . And

45:09

throughout all of this he sent thousands of rock

45:11

samples back to Cambridge , which are now

45:14

held in the Sedrick Museum of Earth Sciences

45:16

. And

45:18

although the oil never really flowed in Somalia

45:20

, mcfadden's research there led

45:22

instead into debates about the shape and the distribution

45:25

of the continents and seafloors . Hundreds

45:27

of millions of years ago , because

45:29

his micro-fossils provided an index

45:31

of ocean floor ecology , geologists

45:34

began to use them to argue that India

45:36

and East Africa were once much closer

45:38

together . Part of the northern edge of

45:40

Gondwana land Now

45:43

. Histories such as these , I think , can illuminate exactly

45:46

how the colonial search for resources contributed

45:48

to the development of modern ideas about the Earth's

45:50

deep history . Coal surveyors

45:53

challenged established timelines of coal formation

45:55

and planetary climate . Geologists

45:57

and engineers in diamond fuels traced out

45:59

a new kind of vertical force . Consultants

46:02

and scientists working on oil prospecting created

46:05

an index of the ancient Earth . Now

46:09

my expectation here is that this research

46:11

can establish that it was no accident

46:14

that many of these significant studies were

46:16

situated in colonial worlds . Not

46:19

only were geologists such as Blanford

46:21

, datoi and McFadden

46:23

highly mobile and occasionally

46:25

transient , but they were always working

46:27

in marginal sites where physical conditions were

46:29

in flux due to the operation of extractive

46:32

projects . By starting

46:34

with these sites and the minerals and materials that formed

46:36

the basis of colonial economies , I

46:39

think we can effectively draw new connections between

46:41

, for instance , the particular colonial histories

46:43

of West Bengal , bahanta Valley , the

46:45

Kimberley and Somalia and

46:49

the new environmental orders past , present and

46:51

future that modern Earth science enabled

46:53

and articulated . And

46:55

I think that this work can demonstrate how a sequence

46:57

of geological engagements with commodities

46:59

, resources and materials between the 1830s

47:02

and the 1960s created , in fact

47:04

, the only scene on which the grand drama

47:06

of modern Earth science could be played out , and

47:09

this will place a connected colonial world right

47:12

at the centre of this history , providing

47:14

new ground for thinking about the geopolitics

47:16

of a dynamic planet and

47:18

the deep histories that have become animate in

47:20

the Anthropocene .

47:21

Thank you , thank

47:25

you

47:37

so much again , alison and Jared and

47:39

Francis . I really appreciate all

47:42

of you coming and joining in and presenting

47:44

so beautifully . I just

47:46

wonder we'll so close off this

47:48

event and I'll just pull up some slides

47:51

because they have logos and important things like that

47:53

Very

47:56

quickly . But there's some fun stuff coming

47:58

up because I'm going to tell you about what's happening with

48:03

the next History Now event . So first of all I

48:06

do want to acknowledge the

48:08

History Council of New South Wales team , catherine

48:10

Shirley , amanda Wells and Laura Sale

48:12

, as well as our Executive

48:15

Committee . I also want to acknowledge the State

48:17

Library of New South Wales for providing the

48:19

venue and the event support

48:21

and the Australian Centre for Public History

48:23

. Thank you to Anna Clark , tamsin Peach

48:25

and Freya Newman . Also

48:27

the History Council . I've always acknowledged

48:30

our cultural partners , which you can see

48:32

acknowledged here . But I will mention the

48:34

New South Wales Government via Create

48:36

New South Wales . And finally

48:39

, I want to give you a sneak peek to the

48:41

next three History Now sessions coming

48:43

up On the 3rd of April Histories

48:46

of Capitalism Now with Hanna Forsythe

48:48

, sophie Loy Wilson and Mike Beggs

48:50

as Chair . Same place here , 5pm

48:53

on the 3rd of April , and the registration

48:56

for that will be up pretty soon on the State Library

48:58

website . Oh , it could just come

49:00

. But yeah , the

49:02

first of May , may Day , special

49:05

Aboriginal Political Histories with Heidi

49:07

Norman , john Maynard and Linda June Coe

49:09

, and on the 5th of June

49:11

, histories of Mental Health with Catherine Colvone

49:14

and Jamie Dunck . So

49:16

that's the next three . There's more beyond

49:18

that , but that's probably enough for now . I

49:21

hope to see you again at those

49:23

events and , yeah

49:25

, thank you for being such a wonderful audience . I'll

49:28

say that's enough . Bye , bye .