BluePeriod-Picasso

Did you cook up the tofu?

Australia and New Zealand were discovered within close proximity, and contact between different human groups was made.

NZ was first peopled only a little over 1000 years ago and there is currently no evidence to suggest Aboriginal people traversed the Tasman Sea (a significant distance in a canoe) to New Zealand. Aboriginal people in the northern regions of Australia made regular contact with Macassans (in modern day Indonesia) as can be evidenced by traded goods, oral history, language exchange, rock art evidence etc etc.

The customs of indigenous Australians varied, 200+ languages, 500 odd mobs. They had different lives to each other let alone compared to the Maori.

Based on your language and POV, I'll assume you're white and I'd recommend you don't use the term 'mob' when referring to Aboriginal groups. This is a colloquial term that some Aboriginal people use to refer to their family groups.

FYI 'mob' is not the same as language group/sub-group anyway.

Not to denigrate indigenous Australians, because other historic humans have behaved similarly,

I'll assume these other 'historic humans' are also from so-called hunter-gatherer cultures around the world.

but the archaeological record doesn't exactly show a great deal of advancement in technology or innovation of invention for quite a large period,

The Australia archaeological record is biased towards the survivability of lithic artefacts (stone tools) as opposed to other materials. Evidence for farming, hut structures, aquaculture etc. rarely survive. The sea levels rose during the last glacial termination through to the Holocene epoch and whole archaeological sites around the Australian coast are submerged so we really don't have a full picture of technological development across Aboriginal groups.

I suppose if you're fixated on a Eurocentric worldview, which I believe you are, you'd be inclined to believe the three age system as a basis for technological innovation (the stone age --> bronze age --> iron age) There is no one model of 'advancement'. Technological innovation does not arise by chance or even by the brilliance of humans, but by necessity. The proliferation of the wheel, for instance, makes sense in regions with domesticated animals to pull it and in large societies with surplus grain to transport, but the need clearly did not arise for Aboriginal people.

This would suggest no major change in culture.

Culture is not static. And you already said that there are 500+ diverse Aboriginal groups dispersed across Australia so which is it??

And culture was recorded on arrival, even in footage eventually, even from lived experience... It doesn't exactly paint the best life for females in certain mobs.

Culture was recorded for tens of thousands of years before European invasion through oral history. Early European accounts and ethnographies are certainly valuable information, however these accounts are often ethnocentric, Christian and formulated with preconceived notions of barbarianism and savagery.

Unfortunately, the knowledge and following customs of many indigenous Australians regarding procreation and inbreeding, meant that females were traded between mobs.

Unlike every empire that ever existed and the basis of all European royal families...

Polygamy was also a feature in different mobs.

What does this have to do with anything? Can society only be egalitarian and 'civilised' if it's man + wife?

We need not go further.

You need not go further.

source: an Australian archaeologist bored in lockdown.

Yes. How dare they specialise only in European Paleolithic industries and not provide an intercontinental competitive analysis on tens of thousands of years of rock art. So lazy.

You need to look up what 'prehistory' actually is.