The archaeologist who first described the Tasmanian regress, Rhys Jones, called it a case of the ‘slow strangulation of the mind’, which perhaps understandably enraged some of his academic colleagues. There was nothing wrong with individual Tasmanian brains; there was something wrong with their collective brains. Isolation – self-sufficiency – caused the shrivelling of their technology. Earlier I wrote that division of labour was made possible by technology. But it is more interesting than that. Technology was made possible by division of labour: market exchange calls forth innovation.
