>>17975532 (OP)
>Why wasn't Australia colonized by one of the Asian countries?
I'm under the vague impression it was a mixture of two things:
1. The overwhelming majority of Australia was, at the time, a red barren rock with minimal places to land ashore or really do anything constructive with. It's probably better up north, but I do know that massive portions of the western side of the continent, and south, are basically inhospitable.
2. Colonization is actually really, really, difficult, and expensive. China only colonized so much of East Asia and South East Asia because it was a mixture of familiar environment and a number of semi-developed *people already living there they could conquer/assimilate.
>>17975576
*Aborigines are people, they're just some of theee "not good at thinking like us" people you'll ever encounter. I'm not gonna say they're stupid in the same way I wouldn't Homo Erectus was stupid.
Australian Abo's are perfectly adapted to and possess an encyclopedic knowledge of their environment. There is no question in their skill to: eat bug, dig up a root, kill marsupial, hunt with dog, and hide naked in the 50 Celsius outback without any tools or equipment for 6 months. They are a perfectly exceptional hominid that completely dominated their environment.
They also supposedly have the largest amount of non-human genetic material (I've heard as high as 40% neanderthal & denisovan mixture).
