Man, Past and Present by Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (best young adult book series .txt) 📖

frizzly, black, sometimes tinged with brown or red.

#Colour.# All: very deep shades of chocolate brown, often verging on black, a very constant character, lighter shades showing mixture.

#Skull.# Papuasian: extremely dolichocephalic (68-73) and high, but very variable in areas of mixture. (70-84); Tasmanian: dolichocephalic or mesaticephalic (75); Negrito: brachycephalic (80-85).

#Jaws.# Papuasian: moderately or not at all prognathous; Tasmanian and Negrito: generally prognathous. #Cheek-bones.# All: slightly prominent or even retreating. #Nose.# Papuasian: large, straight, generally aquiline in true Papuans; Tasmanian and Negrito: short, flat, broad, wide nostrils (platyrrhine) with large thick cartilage. #Eyes.# All: moderately large, round and black or very deep brown, with dirty yellowish cornea, generally deep-set with strong overhanging arches.

#Stature.# Papuasian and Tasmanian: above the average, but variable, with rather wide range from 1.62 m. to 1.77 or 1.82 m. (5 ft. 4 in. to 5 ft. 10 in. or 6 ft.); Negrito: undersized, but taller than African Negrillo, 1.37 m. to 1.52 m. (4. ft. 6 in. to 5 ft.).

#Temperament.# Papuasian: very excitable, voluble and laughter-loving, fairly intelligent and imaginative; Tasmanian: distinctly less excitable and intelligent, but also far less cruel, captives never tortured; Negrito: active, quick-witted or cunning within narrow limits, naturally kind and gentle.

#Speech.# Papuasian and Tasmanian: agglutinating with postfixes, many stock languages in West Papuasia, apparently one only in East Papuasia (Austronesian); Negrito: scarcely known except in Andamans, where agglutination both by class prefixes and by postfixes has acquired a phenomenal development.

#Religion.# Papuasian: reverence paid to ancestors, who may become beneficent or malevolent ghosts; general belief in mana or supernatural power; no priests or idols; Negrito: exceedingly primitive; belief in spirits, sometimes vague deities.

#Culture.# Papuasian: slightly developed; agriculture somewhat advanced (N. Guinea, N. Caledonia); considerable artistic taste and fancy shown in the wood-carving of houses, canoes, ceremonial objects, etc. All others: at the lowest hunting stage, without arts or industries, save the manufacture of weapons, ornaments, baskets, and rarely (Andamanese) pottery.

Main Divisions.

#Papuasian#: 1. Western Papuasians (true Papuans): nearly all the New Guinea natives; Aru and other insular groups thence westwards to Flores; Torres Straits and Louisiade Islands. 2. Eastern Papuasians: nearly all the natives of Melanesia from Bismarck Archipelago to New Caledonia, with most of Fiji, and part of New Guinea.

#Negritoes#: 1. Andamanese Islanders. 2. Semangs, in the Malay Peninsula. 3. Aetas, surviving in most of the Philippine Islands. 4. Pygmies in New Guinea.

* * * * *

PAPUASIANS.

From the data supplied in Ethnology, Chap. XI. a reconstruction may be attempted of the obscure ethnical relations in Australasia on the following broad lines.

The two main sections of the Ulotrichous division of mankind, now separated by the intervening waters of the Indian Ocean, are fundamentally one. To the Sudanese and Bantu sub-sections in Africa correspond, mutatis mutandis, the Papuan and Melanesian sub-sections in Oceania, the former being distinguished by great linguistic diversity, the latter by considerable linguistic uniformity, and both by a rather wide range of physical variety within certain well-marked limits. In Africa the physical varieties are due mainly to Semitic and Hamitic grafts on the Negro stock; in Oceania mainly to Mongoloid (Malay) and Caucasian (Indonesian) grafts on the Papuan stock. The Negrillo element in Africa has its counterpart in an analogous Negrito element in Oceania (Andamanese, Semangs, Aetas, etc.). In both regions the linguistic diversity apparently presents similar features--a large number of languages differing profoundly in their grammatical structure and vocabularies, but all belonging to the same agglutinative order of speech, and also more or less to the same phonetic system. In both regions the linguistic uniformity is generally confined to one or two geographical areas, Bantuland in Africa and Melanesia in Oceania. In Bantuland the linguistic system shows but faint if any resemblances to any other known tongues, whereas the Melanesian group is but one branch, though the most archaic, of the vast Austronesian Family, diffused over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The Papuan languages are entirely distinct from the Melanesian. They are in some respects similar to the Australian, but their exact positions are not yet proved[319]. Owing to their linguistic, geographical, and to some extent their physical and social differences, it is desirable to treat the Papuans and Melanesians as two distinct though closely related sub-groups, and to restrict the use of the terms PAPUAN and MELANESIAN accordingly, while both may be conveniently comprised under the general or collective term PAPUASIAN[320]. Here, therefore, by Papuans will be understood the true aborigines of New Guinea with its eastern Louisiade dependency[321], and in the west many of the Malaysian islands as far as Flores inclusive, where the black element and non-Malay speech predominate; by Melanesians, the natives of Melanesia as commonly understood, that is, the Admiralty Isles, New Britain, New Ireland and Duke of York; the Solomon Islands; Santa Cruz; the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Loyalty, and Fiji, where the black element and Austronesian speech prevail almost exclusively. PAPUASIA will thus comprise the insular world from Flores to New Caledonia.

Such appear to be the present limits of the Papuasian domain, which formerly may have included Micronesia also (the Marianne, Pelew, and Caroline groups), and some writers suggest that it possibly extended over the whole of Polynesia as far as Easter Island.

The variation in the inhabitants of New Guinea has often been recognised and is well described by C. G. Seligman who remarks[322] that the contrast between the relatively tall, dark-skinned, frizzly-haired inhabitants of Torres Straits, the Fly River and the neighbouring parts of New Guinea on the one hand, and the smaller lighter coloured peoples to the east, is so striking that the two peoples must be recognised as racially distinct. He restricts the name Papuan to the congeries of frizzly-haired and often mop-headed peoples whose skin colour is some shade of brownish black, and proposes the term Papuo-Melanesian for the generally smaller, lighter coloured, frizzly-haired races of the eastern peninsula and the islands beyond. Besides these conspicuous differences "The Papuan is generally taller and is more consistently dolichocephalic than the Papuo-Melanesian: he is always darker, his usual colour being a dark chocolate or sooty brown; his head is high and his face, is, as a rule, long with prominent brow-ridges, above which his rather flat forehead commonly slopes backwards. The Papuo-Melanesian head is usually less high and the brow ridges less prominent, while the forehead is commonly rounded and not retreating. The skin colour runs through the whole gamut of shades of cafe-au-lait, from a lightish yellow with only a tinge of brown, to a tolerably dark bronze colour. The lightest shades are everywhere uncommon, and in many localities appear to be limited to the female sex. The Papuan nose is longer and stouter and is often so arched as to present the outline known as 'Jewish.' The character of its bridge varies, typically the nostrils are broad and the tip of the nose is often hooked downwards. In the Papuo-Melanesian the nose is generally smaller: both races have frizzly hair, but while this is universal among Papuans, curly and even wavy hair is common among both [Eastern and Western] divisions of Papuo-Melanesians[323]."

The Melanesians are as variable as the natives of New Guinea; the hair may be curly, or even wavy, showing evidence of racial mixture, and the skin is chocolate or occasionally copper-coloured. The stature of the men ranges from 1.50 m. to 1.78 m. (4 ft. 11 in. to 5 ft. 10 in.), with an average between 1.56 m. and 1.6 m. (5 ft. 1-1/2 in. to 5 ft. 3 in.). The skull is usually dolichocephalic, but ranges from 67 to 85 and in certain parts brachycephaly is predominant; the nose shows great diversity. This type ranges with local variations from the Admiralty Islands and parts of New Guinea through the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides and other island groups to Fiji and New Caledonia.

The "Kanakas," as the natives of New Caledonia and the Loyalty group are wrongly[324] called by their present rulers, have been described by various French investigators. Among the best accounts of them is that of M. Augustin Bernard[325], based on the observations of de Rochas, Bourgard, Vieillard, Bertillon, Meinicke, and others. Apart from several sporadic Polynesian groups in the Loyalties[326], all are typical Melanesians, long-headed with very broad face at least in the middle, narrow boat-shaped skull (ceph. index 70)[327], large, massive lower jaw, often with two supplementary molars[328], colour a dark chocolate, often with a highly characteristic purple tinge; but de Rochas' statement that for a few days after birth infants are of a light reddish yellow hue lacks confirmation; hair less woolly but much longer than the Negro; beard also longish and frizzly, the peppercorn tufts with simulated bald spaces being an effect due to the assiduous use of the comb; very prominent superciliary arches and thick eyebrows, whence their somewhat furtive look; mean height 5 ft. 4 in.; speech Melanesian with three marked varieties, that of the south-eastern districts being considered the most rudimentary member of the whole Melanesian group[329].

From the state of their industries, in some respects the rudest, in others amongst the most advanced in Melanesia, it may be inferred that after their arrival the New Caledonians, like the Tasmanians, the Andamanese, and some other insular groups, remained for long ages almost completely secluded from the rest of the world. Owing to the poverty of the soil the struggle for food must always have been severe. Hence the most jealously guarded privileges of the chiefs were associated with questions of diet, while the paradise of the dead was a region where they had abundance of food and could gorge on yams.

The ethnological history of the whole of the Melanesian region is obscure, but as the result of recent investigations certain broad features may be recognised. The earliest inhabitants were probably a black, woolly-haired race, now represented by the pygmies of New Guinea, remnants of a formerly widely extended Negrito population also surviving in the Andaman Islands, the Malay Peninsula (Semang) and the Philippines (Aeta). A taller variety advanced into Tasmania and formed the Tasmanian group, now extinct, others spread over New Guinea and the western Pacific as "Papuans," and formed the basis of the Melanesian populations[330]. The Proto-Polynesians in their migrations from the East Indian Archipelago to Polynesia passed through this region and imposed their speech on the population and otherwise modified it. In later times other migrations have come from the west, and parts of Melanesia have also been directly influenced by movements from Polynesia. The result of these supposed influences has been to form the Melanesian peoples as they exist to-day[331]. G. Friederici[332] has accumulated a vast amount of evidence based chiefly on linguistics and material culture, to support the theory of Melanesian cultural streams from the west. He regards the Melanesians as having come from that part of Indonesia which extends from the Southern Islands of the Philippine group, through the Minahasa peninsula of Celebes, to the Moluccas in the neighbourhood of Buru and Ceram. From the Moluccan region they passed north of New Guinea to the region about Vitiaz and Dampier Straits, which Friederici regards as the gateway of Melanesia. Here they colonised the northern shores of New Britain, and part of the swarm settled along the eastern and south-eastern shores of New Guinea. Another stream passed to the Northern Louisiades, Southern Solomons, and Northern New Hebrides. The Philippine or sub-Philippine stream took a more northerly route, going by the Admiralty group to New Hanover, East New Ireland and the Solomons.

The first serious attempt to disentangle the complex character of Melanesian ethnography was made by F. Graebner in 1905[333], followed by G. Friederici, the references to whose work are given above. More recently W. H. R. Rivers[334] has attacked the cultural problem by means of the genealogical method and the results of his investigations are here briefly summarised. He has discovered several remarkable forms of marriage in Melanesia and has deduced others which have existed previously. He argues that the anomalous forms of marriage imply a former dual organisation (i.e. a division of