Frederic Slater (–10 March 1947) was an Australian journalist, poet, researcher and "authority on aboriginal folk lore". In the 1930s, Slater was founder and president of the short-lived Australian Archaeological and Education Research Society, also known as the Australian Archaeological Society. He married Katherine Elizabeth Plowman, who survived him and was executor of his will. They had one son, Ederic Charles James Sutherland Slater, born in January 1923.

Aboriginal studies

Slater studied Aboriginal place names and archaeological sites and provided information on Aboriginal languages including, for example, the meaning of

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

and

Queanbeyan Queanbeyan ( ) is a city in the south-eastern region of New South Wales, Australia, located adjacent to the Australian Capital Territory in the Southern Tablelands region. Located on the Queanbeyan River, the city is the council seat of the ...

Egypt theory

His best known contribution, which has been described as

pseudoarchaeology Pseudoarchaeology—also known as alternative archaeology, fringe archaeology, fantastic archaeology, cult archaeology, and spooky archaeology—is the interpretation of the past from outside the archaeological science community, which rejects ...

, is the claim that

Aboriginal Australians Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands ...

came from Egypt, based on carvings at Devil's Rock,

Wollombi Wollombi ( ) is a small village in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia. It is within the Cessnock City Council LGA, situated southwest of Cessnock and north of Sydney. To the south is the village of Laguna, to the east, the villa ...

, in the

Royal National Park The Royal National Park is a protected national park that is located in Sutherland Shire in the Australian state of New South Wales, just south of Sydney. The national park is about south of the Sydney central business district near the local ...

Brunswick Heads Brunswick Heads is a small town on the north coast of New South Wales, Australia in Byron Shire. At the , the town had a population of 1,737 people. History Originally inhabited by people of the Bundjalung people, Bundjalung nation, the Bru ...

, and other locations. In 1939, he called the mound south of Brunswick Heads an ancient Aboriginal place of worship before European colonisation. In an address at Sydney, to the

Anthropological Society of New South Wales The Anthropological Society of New South Wales was formed in 1928, by William Walford Thorpe, ethnologist of the Australian Museum, Clifton Cappie Towle and three others. It published ''The Australian Journal of Anthropology'' (originally title ...

, he claimed the carvings were especially significant ''...totems, symbols and ideographs, which show that the ancestors of original Australians migrated from Egypt in the late paleolithic and the neolithic ages''. Slater's observations and theories have been supported in recent years by other pseudoarchaeologists such as Steven Strong.Gojak, D. 2017, 'the Resurrection of Frederick Slater: Tales of a Pseudo-archaeologist in the 1930s and 2010s, in ''Defining the Fringe of Contemporary Australian Archaeology, Pyramidiots, Paranoia and the Paradormal'', ed Darran Jordan & Rocco Bosco, Cambridge Scholars, 2017 Slater also published in ''

Mankind Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...

'', the journal of the

Australian Anthropological Society The Australian Anthropological Society (AAS) is the professional association representing anthropologists in Australia. History The Australian Anthropological Society is a recently formed organization, founded in 1973 "to promote the advancement ...

Published works

Slater, F. 1937, ''Interpretation of the Drawings of Barragurra and Yango''
ANZUS, Auckland 1937.
Slater, F., 'Geographical nomenclature: Larmer's native names of points at Port Jackson'
''

'', Volume 1, Issue 9, pages 213–218, May 1934, (or June 1934) Australian Anthropological Society.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Slater, Frederic Australian archaeologists Pseudoarchaeologists 1947 deaths