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Why did Australian Aborigines never invent the wheel or pants?Well a mere 6,500 years ago, give or take, no-one had a wheel[1] (not sure about pants). Humanity had agriculture (from around 12,000 years ago, in or around the Fertile Crescent[2]), cities (around 8,000 years ago) and trade between nations (or what passed for cities and nations) before someone finally invented firstly, fired pottery[3][4], and then, after another long period, the potter’s wheel[5] (presumably they got sick of looking at imperfectly round clay pots).You’d think someone would take the potter’s wheel and put it on an axle straight away, but no, it apparently took another 500 to 1,000 years before the light-bulb (also not yet invented) went on.And around 500 to 1,000 more years or so before another bright spark hitched up an already domesticated horse[6]. Or perhaps previous attempts were simply unsuccessful.Did the Ancient Egyptians (who eventually had wheels on their chariots, at least after they copied that idea from their feisty, invasive neighbours[7]) use wheels to build the pyramids? Nope, although they may have used logs, ramps and sleds[8]. Interestingly, they didn’t have roads (as we know them), either, but they had a handy river. They also had no suitable draught animals but did have pottery[9].Did the Olmec[10] or Maya[11] use wheels, other than on toys for their children? Not as far as we can tell[12]. You’d think they would scale the idea up, if they thought it would be useful. (They too had rivers and canoes but no roads, just narrow, often dangerous tracks. No draught animals. And yes, pottery.)As an aside, campfires are not hot enough to melt copper, however it has been hypothesised that a pottery kiln would do the job[13]. So one thing leads to another, as usual.Are you getting the picture?The wheel as a transport enabler was only invented quite late (apart from an isolated account in China, which I’ve glossed over), and only after a series of other factors fell into place… like…People with the time on their hands to play with clay. (You had to have clay, too, obviously.)Which also suggests a sedentary lifestyleAnd fires hot enough to successfully fire clay (again with the time to experiment, as well as a sedentary lifestyle and an agricultural surplus)Roads of some kind, which is predicated upon the ability to organise enough people to make those roads, and everything that entailsAnd draught animals, also domesticated (by earlier innovations, like agriculture[14]).They also had to see the need.It’s a lot of work, no matter how you look at it. If it’s stony, rocky, sandy land, or obstruction-littered jungle, you may as well just carry it yourself. If you have a network of rivers or creeks, why not use those instead?Ultimately it helps also to have neighbours, all close by, all competing for trade and territory. That drives innovation. And having the grain and animals to stimulate and support the whole agricultural revolution obviously helps.So why did the Australian Aboriginal peoples have no wheels?Did they have an alternative? Yes, they tended to live on the coast or along watercourses, especially on the east coast.Did they have domesticated horses, or anything similar? No.Did they have pottery, pottery kilns, or a potter’s wheel? No.Did they have a sedentary lifestyle? Well, maybe a seasonally sedentary one, when resources allowed it, but only in a few locations. More on that in a moment.Could they muster the resources to build roads? No, they didn’t have that sort of social organisation[15] (and the one they had/still have in part is the most successful in human history, if stability is any guide). Nor did they have the population density.Could they benefit from neighbours and their innovations? No.Well they were hardly close at hand to the Fertile Crescent or Mesoamerica[16], and they had no contact with China, apart from indirectly when the Macassans turned up[17]. And as far as we know they didn’t bring wheels, either. They did, however, bring pottery. But it was all too late. Matthew Flinders (and presumably his famous cat[18]) probably got a bit of a surprise to find 1,000 Macassans waiting for him in east Arnhem Land[19].They also had no suitable grains, although they reportedly improved soils and managed some ‘crops’:“When European settlement came to Australia late in the eighteenth century, it was the only continent without any agriculture and lacking indigenous crop plants. The Aboriginal hunters and gatherers knew well which plants could be gathered for food, fibre or medicine, and when and where. They also practised some agronomic management such as broadcasting millet seed, replanting yam tubers or burning off yam or macrozamia tops”.[20]What they had, they managed well:“The extensive grasslands, open woodlands and abundant wildlife exclaimed upon by Europeans for their pastoral opportunities has been described as The Biggest Estate on Earth. The fire-stick farming which had created this landscape was a complex, country-wide system of land management used by Aboriginal people in pre-settlement Australia.”[21]And Aboriginal land management was probably more extensive than many have previously accepted:“When explorer and surveyor Major Thomas Mitchell ventured into Australia’s inland in the early 1800s, he recorded in his journals his impressions of the landscape. Around him he noted expanses of bright yellow herbs, nine miles of grain-like grass, cut and stooped, and earthen clods that had been turned up, resembling ‘ground broken by the hoe’.Mitchell, like other early explorers, noted what many white Australians would later overlook: there was evidence everywhere on this vast continent that Aboriginal Australians managed the land.”[22]Bruce Pascoe’s book “Dark Emu and Aboriginal Agriculture”[23] expands upon this theme in more detail:“Pascoe explores agriculture and provides examples from many parts of Australia of Aboriginal people harvesting, grinding and cooking seeds such as nardoo[24] and panicum[25]. He reveals the bounteous ways fish, eels, abalone and other marine and riverine foods were harvested and the ways food was prepared and stored.” (Review by Richard Broome.)[26]And:“He also discusses observations of Aboriginal housing, pointing to many semipermanent settlements close to abundant seasonal food sources.” (Review by Richard Broome.)[27]So, whilst no wheels (or presumably pants) but a lot of applied agronomic principles, plus the world’s oldest (up to 8,000 years old) and longest continuous aqua cultural (eel farming) operation[28] alongside ‘stone houses’ in Victoria[29], fish traps along the Barwon/Darling River[30] and the coastline[31][32]as well.Perhaps semi-nomadic, maybe small surpluses rather than a “sedentary” population, where this was possible[33].It’s been said already by others, but I’ll say it again: wheels (and pants) are not exclusive or even primary indicators of success. After all, 50,000 years plus of stable society in an isolated and often inhospitable land - what we now call Australia - is “success” by any measure.You could also ask why it took the rest of humanity so long to catch up to Aboriginal innovations like the airfoil (as in the boomerang) and the woomera (in combination with the spear a weapon several times more powerful than a modern compound bow[34]).Like most primarily hunter-gatherer societies, Aboriginal society was based on minimal “possessions” and equitable sharing of available resources. The Australian Indigenous peoples’ lifestyles didn’t rest upon material possessions or power structures, unlike today’s Euro-centric model. They generally traveled light and left a small footprint, as we might say today.The exceptions may have been relatively small in number, possibly only at the Victorian eel fishing complex or at several other fishing trap locations; and without handily domesticated livestock to make use of, or the inspiration of the potter’s wheel, inventing the wheel may not have been as obvious as it may seem to us.Regarding the article linked-to[35] in the question, there’s an inference that insulative/metabolic cold adaptation is genetic, and that is semi-supported by some more recent studies[36]. But I’ve not seen conclusive or compelling evidence of that in this context, outside what has already been written[37]. Certainly nothing specific to Australian Aborigines since that 1958 paper. Actual genetically-linked mitochrondrial variance via haplogroups[38]is certainly possible, maybe even probable, but still inferred. I stand to be corrected, as always!And lastly, no pants but Tasmanian Aborigines probably made and used bone needles to sew possum skins together (to make a cloak) during the last glacial maximum[39]. It’s worth remembering that pants too came about quite late in human history[40], and mostly in colder parts. In many cases they were resisted (by the Ancient Greeks and Romans, for example, who preferred various alternatives) and are not universal. Surprisingly perhaps the kilt is probably quite modern, and derived from a cloak. [41]Footnotes[1] Wheel - Wikipedia[2] Fertile Crescent - Wikipedia[3] Pottery - Wikipedia[4] Pottery - Wikipedia[5] Potter's wheel - Wikipedia[6] Wheel - Wikipedia[7] Ancient Egyptian technology - Wikipedia[8] Was the wheel already invented when the Egyptians built the pyramids?[9] Ancient Egyptian pottery[10] Olmec - Wikipedia[11] Maya civilization - Wikipedia[12] Did Pre-Columbian Mesoamericans use wheels?[13] Smelting - Wikipedia[14] Agriculture - Wikipedia[15] Robert K. Russell's answer to How is human nature going to change? All I see is a sinusoidal waveform. The human race climbs to a high point, then declines to a low point, a never-ending sine wave polarized towards the rich. How do we break that cycle?[16] Mesoamerica - Wikipedia[17] Makassan contact with Australia - Wikipedia[18] Tales of Trim, the first cat to sail around Australia[19] https://darkemu.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/150119-agora-book-review.pdf[20] Crop adaptation in Australasia[21] Australian farming and agriculture – grazing and cropping | australia.gov.au[22] Rethinking Indigenous Australia's agricultural past[23] Bruce Pascoe; Dark Emu and Aboriginal agriculture[24] Nardoo, the desert fern[25] PlantNET - FloraOnline[26] https://darkemu.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/150119-agora-book-review.pdf[27] https://darkemu.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/150119-agora-book-review.pdf[28] The detective work behind the Budj Bim eel traps World Heritage bid[29] Aboriginal Village[30] Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps / Baiame's Ngunnhu[31] http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/264475/Historic-insights-into-NSW-Fisheries.pdf[32] Preserving the Oyster Harbour fish traps[33] Were Aboriginal Australians Nomadic: Fact or Fiction?[34] Extinction's group theory[35] Cold Hands and Warm Heart: It May Be in Your Genes - EO Smith[36] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23328940.2015.1135688[37] http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/scholander-per.pdf[38] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265343206_Relationship_between_mitochondrial_haplogroup_and_seasonal_changes_of_physiological_responses_to_cold[39] http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/sijpkes/aaresearch-2012/in-extremis-file/references/history-of-cothing-in-Tasmania.pdf[40] Trousers - Wikipedia[41] History of the kilt - Wikipedia