Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

all. After a death they perform certain dances and rites through a shaman in connection with the recently departed ghost, yaka. They also propitiate powerful yaku, male and female, by sacrifices and ceremonial dances[962].

The Sakai or Senoi are jungle folk, some of whom have mixed with Semang and other peoples. Their skin is of a medium brown colour. Their hair is long, mainly wavy or loosely curly, and black with a reddish tinge. The average stature may be taken to be from 1.5 m. to 1.55 m. (59 to 61 inches), the head index varies from about 77 to 81. The face is fairly broad, with prominent cheek-bones and brow ridges; the low broad nose has spreading alae and short concave ridge; the lips are thick but not everted. They are largely nomadic, and their agriculture is of the most primitive description, their usual implement being the digging stick. Their houses are built on the ground and as a rule are rectangular in plan though occasionally conical, and huts are sometimes built in trees as refuges from wild beasts. A scanty garment of bark cloth was formerly worn, and, like the Semang, they make fringed girdles from a black thread-like fungus. Their distinctive weapon is the blow-pipe which they have brought to great perfection, and their food consists in jungle produce, including many poisonous roots and tubers which they have learnt how to treat, so as to render them innocuous. They do not make canoes and rarely use rafts. In the marriage ceremony the man has to chase the girl round a mound of earth and catch her before she has encircled it a third time. The marriage tie is strictly observed. Each village has a petty chief, whose influence is purely personal. Individual property does not exist, only family property. Cultivation is also communal. The inhabitants of the upper heaven consist of Tuhan or Peng, the "god" of the Sakai and a giantess named "Granny Long-breasts" who washes sin-blackened human souls in hot water; the good souls ultimately go to a cloud-land. There are numerous demons and whenever the Sakai have done wrong Tuhan gives the demons leave to attack them, and there is no contending against his decree. He is not prayed to, as his will is unalterable[963].

The Toala of the south-west peninsula of the Celebes are at base, according to the Sarasins[964], a Pre-Dravidian people, though some mixture with other races has taken place. The hair is very wavy and even curly, the skin darkish brown, the head low brachycephalic (index 82) and the stature 1.575 m. (5 ft. 2 in.). The face is somewhat short with very broad nose and thick lips. Possibly the Ulu Ayar of west Borneo who are related to the Land Dayaks may be partly of Pre-Dravidian origin and other traces of this race will probably be found in the East India Archipelago[965].

Australia resembles South Africa in the arid conditions characterising the interior, the eastern range of mountains precipitating the warm moisture-laden winds from the Pacific. As a result of the restricted rainfall there is no river system of importance except that of the Murray and its tributary the Darling. In the north and north-east, owing to heavier rainfall, there are numerous water-courses, but they do not open up the interior of the country. The lack of uniformity in the water supply has a far-reaching effect on all living beings. The arid conditions, the irregularity and short duration of the rainfall oblige the natives to be continually migrating, and prevent these unsettled bands from ever attaining any size, indeed they are sometimes hard pressed to obtain enough food to keep alive.

It may be assumed that the backwardness of the culture of the Australians is due partly to the low state of culture of their ancestors when they arrived in the country, and partly to the peculiar character of the country as well as of its flora and fauna, since Australia has never been stocked with wild animals dangerous to human life, or with any suitable for domestication. The relative isolation from other peoples has had a retarding effect and the Australian has developed largely along his own lines without the impetus given by competition with other peoples. Records of simple migration are rare. There have been no waves of aggression, and intertribal feuds are not very serious affairs. The Australians have never influenced any other peoples and they are doomed gradually to disappear.

Baldwin Spencer says "In the matter of personal appearance while conforming generally to what is known as the Australian type, there is considerable variation. The man varies from, approximately, a maximum of 6 ft. 3 in. to a minimum of 5 ft. 2 in.... As a general rule, few of them are taller than 5 ft. 8 in. The women vary between 5 ft. 9 in. and 4 ft. 9 in. Their average height is not more than 5 ft. 2 in. The brow ridges are strongly marked, especially in the man, and the forehead slopes back. The nose is broad with the root deep set. In colour the native is dark chocolate brown, not black. The hair ... may be almost straight, decidedly wavy--its usual feature--or almost, but never really, frizzly.... The beard also may be well developed or almost absent[966]." The skull is dolichocephalic with an average cranial index of 72, prognathous and platyrrhine.

There has been much speculation with regard to the origin of the present Australian race. According to Baldwin Spencer "There can be no doubt but that in past times the whole of the continent, including Tasmania, was occupied by one race. This original, and probably Negritto[967] population, at an early period; was widely spread over Malayasia and Australia including Tasmania, which at that time was not shut off by Bass Strait. The Tasmanians had no boats capable of crossing the latter and [it is assumed that their ancestors] must have gone over on land[968]."

Subsequently when the land sank a remnant of the old ulotrichous population "was thus left stranded in Tasmania, where Homo tasmanianussurvived until he came in contact with Europeans and was exterminated." He had frizzly hair. "His weapons and implements were of the most primitive kind; long pointed unbarbed spears, no spear thrower, no boomerang, simple throwing stick and only the crudest form of chipped stone axes, knives and scrapers that were never hafted. Unfortunately of his organisation, customs, and beliefs we know but little in detail[969]."

It is now generally held that at a later date an immigration of a people in a somewhat higher stage of culture took place; these are regarded by some as belonging to the Dravidian, and by others, and with more probability, to the Pre-Dravidian race. J. Mathew[970] suggests that "the two races are represented by the two primary classes, or phratries, of Australian society, which were generally designated by names indicating a contrast of colour, such as eaglehawk and crow. The crow, black cockatoo, etc., would represent the Tasmanian element; the eaglehawk, white cockatoo, etc., the so-called Dravidian." Baldwin Spencer does not think that the moiety names lend any serious support to the theory of the mixture of two races differing in colour. He goes on to say "Mr Mathew also postulates a comparatively recent slight infusion of Malay blood in the northern half of Australia. There is, however, practically no evidence of Malay infusion. One of the most striking features of the Malay is his long, lank hair, and yet it is just in these north parts that the most frizzly hair is met with[971]."

As concerns linguistics S. H. Ray says "There is no evidence of an African, Andaman, Papuan, or Malay connection with the Australian languages. There are reasons for regarding the Australian as in a similar morphological stage to the Dravidian, but there is no genealogical relationship proved[972]." No connection has yet been proved between the Australian languages and the Austronesian or Oceanic branch of the Austric family of languages, first systematically described by W. Schmidt[973]. The study of Australian languages is particularly difficult owing to the very few serviceable grammars and dictionaries, and the large number of very incomplete vocabularies scattered about in inaccessible works and journals. The main conclusion to which Schmidt has arrived[974] is that the Australian languages are not, as had been supposed, a mainly uniform group. Though over the greater part of Australia languages possess strong common elements, North Australia has languages showing no similarities in vocabulary and very few in grammar with that larger group or with each other. The area of the North Australian languages is included in a line from south of Roebuck Bay in the west to Cape Flattery in the east, with a southward bend to include Arunta (Aranda), interrupted by a branch of southern languages running up north down Flinders and Leichhardt rivers[975]. The area contains two or three linguistic groups, best distinguished by their terminations which consist respectively of vowels and consonants, the oldest group; vowels alone, the latest group; and vowels and liquids, probably representing a transition between the two.

In South Australia, though differences occur, the languages possess common features both in grammar and vocabulary, having similar personal pronouns, and certain words for parts of the body in common. Linguistic differences are associated with differences in social grouping, the area of purely vowel endings coinciding with the area of the 2-class system and matrilinear descent, while the area of liquid endings is partly coterminous with the 4-class system and (often) patrilinear succession.

Schmidt endeavours to trace the connection between the distribution of languages with that of types of social groupings, more particularly in connection with the culture zones which Graebner[976] has traced throughout the Pacific area, representing successive waves of migration. The first immigration, corresponding with Graebner's Ur-period, is represented by languages with postposed genitive, the earliest stratum being pure only in Tasmania; remnants of the first stratum and a second stratum occur in Victoria, and remnants of the second stratum to the north and north-east. According to Schmidt this cultural stratum is characterised by absence of group or marriage totemism, and presence of sex patrons ("sex-totemism"). The second immigration is represented by languages with preposition of the genitive, initial r and l, vowel and explosive endings, and is found fairly pure only in the extreme north-west and north, and in places in the north-east. The great multiplicity of languages belonging to this stratum may be attributed to the predominance of the strictly local type of totem-groups. These are the languages of Graebner's "totem-culture." The third immigration is represented by languages with preposition of the genitive, no initial r and l, and purely vowel terminations. These are the languages of the south central group of tribes with a 2-class system and matrilinear descent. This uniform group has the largest area and has influenced the whole mass of Australian languages, only North Australia and Tasmania remaining immune. Their sociological structure with no localisation of totems and classes contributed to their power of expansion. The fourth immigration is represented by languages of an intermediate type, with vowel and liquid endings but no initial r and l. These are the tribes with 4-class and 8-class systems, universal father-right (proving the strong influence of older totemic ideas), curious fertility rites, conception ideas and migration myths.

It will be seen that Schmidt's conclusions confute the evolutionary theory developed by Frazer, Hartland, Howitt, Spencer and Gillen, Durkheim and (in part) Andrew Lang, that Australia was essentially homogeneous in fundamental ideas which have developed differently on account of geographic and climatic variation. Schmidt's view is that Australia was entered successively by a number of entirely different tribes, so that the variation now met with is due to radical diversities and to the numerous intermixtures arising from migrations and stratifications of peoples. The linguistic data dispose of the idea that the oldest tribes with mother-right, 2-class system, traces of group-marriage, and lack of moral and religious ideas live in the centre, and that from thence advancement radiated towards the coast bringing