File:The history of mankind (1896) (14783805213).jpg

Identifier: historyofmankind01ratz (find matches)
Title: The history of mankind
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Ratzel, Friedrich, 1844-1904 Butler, Arthur John, 1844-1910
Subjects: Ethnology Anthropology
Publisher: London, Macmillan and co., ltd. New York, The Macmillan co.
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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: The Australiansvary as curiously as their soil. Stuart and Leichhardt are astonished by thepeculiar and capricious differences ; and the discrepancies among the descriptionsof later observers who have been able to study the Australians at their leisure,though under the influence of Europeans, are no less strongly marked. We need 34o THE HISTORY OF MANKIND only recall here Wilhelmis study of the Port Lincoln tribes, and Earls remark,A circle of 500 miles round Port Essington would enclose an equal number oftribes, varying from deep black to the reddish yellow of the Polynesians. This isenough to justify the assumption of a wide internal difference among the Australiantribes. Undoubtedly, darker and lighter, woolly-haired and straight-haired aremixed up together, but where must we look for their origin ? Must we, withTopinard, speak of Negro and Polynesian, some Malay, and numerous originallyAsiatic elements ? To the Australian aborigines the scattered and wandering inhabitants of the
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Native of New South Wales. (From a photograph. small islands which surround the continent also geographically belong. TheMelville islanders, for instance, are genuine Australians, indicated ethnographicallyas such by their inferior spears and clubs, their miserable huts and bark canoes.The Prince of Wales Islands in Torres Straits deserve mention, since their popula-tion, the Kowrarcgas, form the extreme northern outposts of the New Hollanders,and are in immediate contact with the Papuas of Torres Straits. With their passionfor wandering, the Papuas from New Guinea frequently visit these islands; so that PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTER OF THE AUSTRALLANS 341 they have a visible ethnographic bearing in that direction. New Guinea, with itsPapuan population, has always provided the most obvious source for the dark races,and similarly the introduction of the straight-haired race seems in view of theirPolynesian elements as well as the neighbourhood of the Malays and their inter-course with

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