Is there an explanation as to why the Australian Aboriginals did not advance?
Although I am not well versed in Australian history, I would think that it is simply that technology is born out of necessity. The Aboriginees did not need certain technologies because they had a simple life, they did not have to compete with other nations and the development of certain technology would not be needed. However, and I am even less well versed in Australian minerology, it may also be a lack of certain metals in Australia. If the culture had no access to iron then they would have to use more primitive hunting and working tools. This would factor out a great deal of technological advance.
Jared Diamond – in Guns, Germs and Steel – makes a strong case that for a society to experience rapid technological growth it needs access to an easily harvested high-calorie, high-protein food source. Australian Aboriginals had no Wheat (Central Asia, later Europe), Maize (Central America) or Sorghum (West African empires), and no farmable meat animals. Without the biodiversity options to develop agriculture the Aboriginals were tied to a hunter / gatherer lifestyle which meant large amounts of their time needed to be dedicated to finding food (so they had no time to develop technology) and also prevented them from settling down in large villages or cities (so that even when technology developed, there was no advanced social network to distribute it). How advanced a society is depends heavily on the quality and availability of its food sources. Among Native Americans (and to some extent in West Africa) coastal societies tended to be more technologically advanced than inland ones. This
