Australia. The Aborigines, divided into opposing tribes, are among the most advanced societies in the world. For several thousand years, they have had vessels capable of navigating the high seas and reaching destinations beyond the horizon. They possess various types of stone tools, composite weapons such as stone axes with wooden handles, and paint on rock faces. All this occurred 28,000 years before the end of the last ice age (Würz), when the rest of the planet would begin the same development. When they first came into contact with the Europeans in 1642, 40,000 years later, they were judged by them to be the simplest and most backward culture in the world. Several factors worked against the Aborigines, including the lack of large, domesticated animals (mostly exterminated by the Aborigines themselves), the lack of high-yielding crops for agriculture, and their limited territory with no easy East-West communication for exchange with other cultures.
