[“Primitive Man in Western Australia”, The West Australian, Monday 03 October 1910, page 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article26292566]

PRIMITIVE MAN IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

LECTURE BY MR. ALFRED R. BROWN.

THE SCIENCE OF ANTHROPOLOGY.

HOW IT VIEWS THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.

Mr. Alfred R. Brown, the distinguished ethnologist and the leader of the Cambridge Ethnological Exploring party which is about to undertake research work in Western Australia, lectured before a large audience at the Museum on Friday night on the subject:—“Primitive Man in Western Australia.” His Excellency the Governor presided.

By way of preface to his lecture, Mr. Brown said his purpose was to endeavour to show them why people in England thought that the Australian aborigines were so interesting as to justify the organisation of an expedition to study them on the spot. The study of anthropology was the latest of the sciences, and it was still the least developed of the sciences. Indeed, we might almost say that the one subject of which we knew least in the wide world, from a scientific point of view, was human nature, and after all that was not perhaps very surprising seeing that through force of habit we took ourselves more or less for granted. So, anthropology as a science—the science of the study of mankind—had been the very latest science to develop. It had only really begun in 1850 when the anthropological societies of England and France were founded. The science, however, had made great strides, and perhaps it would be of interest to explain briefly what the ideas of the anthropologist were regarding the aborigines of Australia. Science was merely a development of something with which we were familiar in every-day life. It was an attempt to interpret the present by means of a study of the past in the hope that we might be able to foretell a little of the future. We made such an interpretation practically every day of our lives. When, for instance, he realised that if he put his fingers to the candle flame they would be burnt he was foretelling the future by the knowledge he had gained from his experience of the past. Science was a systematisation of such knowledge. They were endeavouring to get more of such knowledge and to make it accurate. They studied the past history of forms of life in the endeavour to understand the processes they had gone through, and they hoped to be able to foretell what direction future developments would take. That was the whole object of the science of man. It was an attempt to study man as he had been in the past in the hope of being able to interpret man as he was at present and to foretell in time certain things about his future. The science of anthropology, of course, was young and so far it had not perhaps got very much to say for itself. Yet, remembering that it was only fifty years ago that scientists first began to turn their attention to man as a subject of scientific study, it was surprising what advances had been made. Why, it might be asked, did they not confine their study to Europe?

The Study of Mankind

could only proceed in the same way as every other study; they had to take the simpler forms first, hoping from an understanding of these forms to reach a knowledge of the more complex forms. The civilisation of the white races in Europe was extremely complex and it was perfectly hopeless to try to understand it with out an understanding of the simpler forms of life which were only found in savage races. The science being an attempt to read the present in the light of the past, the Australian aborigine became of interest to the anthropologist because he represented a stage through which mankind had passed not only in Australia but in Europe and other parts of the world. We could trace back our history in Europe for a few thousand years but there came a stage when further progress backward was impossible. We could go back as far as the beginning of the Grecian, the Roman, the Phoenician, and the Egyptian civilisations but there was no one to tell what man was like beyond that except the archaeologist. We could, of course, examine the remains of the man who preceded civilisation in Europe and find out some of his characteristics. We could by this means judge to some extent what they were like. In Europe there was an interesting race of men who existed a very long time ago; how long ago, it was impossible to say until the geologist gave us accurate information. At any rate it existed at the end of the last ice age when the whole of Northern Europe including the greater part of Scotland and England was covered with ice. In those days there existed a race of men not very dissimilar to that of the aborigine of the present day. They made flint implements some of which were almost exactly like those in use in the north-west of this State, and in the Northern Territory to-day. There were certain other interesting peculiarities which characterised him; his skull, for instance. Let them examine the fossil remains of the Neanderthal man found in the Neander Valley. In the light of other remains found elsewhere it became practically certain that a man of this type lived over a great part of Europe. His life was that of a hunter, the implements of the chase being of stone, and in many important respects he resembled the Australian aborigine of to-day. It was also practically certain that from these Neanderthal men we were descended, and as our ancestors they were interesting to us. The skull the audience saw on the lectern was that of a Neanderthal man. Its inspection revealed many interesting peculiarities. Mankind had evolved in many different ways, and one main line of evolution had been the steady change in certain of his physical characteristics, a steady, gradual change from the lower to the higher forms, and the science of anthropology endeavoured to distinguish these changes, and discover the causes which had produced them. They would notice a marked peculiarity which distinguished the skull of the Neanderthal man from that of any modern European. They had only to look at the forehead of their next door neighbour to see that it was not like that of the Neanderthal man. The man who lived in the valley of the Neander twenty thousand years ago had a very low forehead with strongly developed eyebrow ridges. A number of skulls of the Neanderthal race all possessed the same characteristics, and they could not therefore say that this was an exceptional skull. Interest chiefly lay in the skull, of course, be cause it contained the brain. The skull would not be of much importance to an an thropologist if it were merely a receptacle fo: some other organ which of itself was not of importance. The

Principal Line of Evolution

in man had been in the brain and not in bone, muscle, or size. The evolution had been a perfectly steady one. The brain of man as he had passed from the lower to the higher stages had developed in the frontal region, and the distinguishing point between the skull of primitive man, our ancestor, and ourselves was that we had got more brain in the frontal portion of the skull, in the forehead. It would be interesting to follow the progress of this development in the brain of man. But unfortunately, the links between the Neanderthal man and ourselves were not procurable; they were extinct. The nearest approach to the Neanderthal man that they knew in science was to be found in certain low races of mankind. Let them turn to a skull found in the Murchison in 1897. They would notice that it possessed exactly the same characteristics as that of the Neanderthal man, the forehead slanting backwards and strongly marked eyebrow ridges. Between these two skulls there seemed to be a strong family likeness, and yet they came from widely separated parts of the world. Here was an interesting point about the Australian aborigine which marked him off. He possessed a forehead of the same type as the Neanderthal men of Europe. He conformed to the type of our ancestors, the Neanderthal men, and this suggested that his brain probably possessed the same sort of characteristics as the Neanderthal man’s brain. This, of course, was arguing from analogy. We knew how the Neanderthal man made stone implements, and that was about all we did know. He lived with animals now extinct. Wandering down the Thames Valley in those days one was as likely as not to meet the cave bear, which was extinct like its contemporary, the Neanderthal man. The skull of another aborigine showed the same characteristics as the Murchison skull, but not so exaggerated. In addition to the low forehead and the prominent eyebrow ridges, the nasal bone went back an unusually long distance. This latter feature distinguished the Australian aborigine from all other races. In the examination of these physical appearances science was endeavouring to map out the past history of man. Mankind was scattered over the world in varying forms. In Europe we had the typical white races with their high brain development, and in Africa a black race, the negroes, with frizzy hair. We got a similar black race with similar hair in New Guinea and in Melanesia, and we got a little link in the Andaman Islands and the Malay Peninsula populated by a black people with frizzy hair. These groups, consisting of men with black skins and hair we could only describe as frizzy or woolly, were generally called the negro races. They were the African negro, the Oceanic negro (the Papuan and Melanesian). and the negrito of Asia (in the Andaman Islands and the Malay Peninsula). On the other hand we got a race of dark men whose hair was not that of the typical negro; and whose skull did not follow the skull form of the negro—the Australian aborigine who was so dark brown that we could almost call him black. It was a problem to fit the latter in among the races of mankind. It had been suggested, for instance, that they should be called Caucasian, and that they were more closely allied to the white than to the negro race. There had been other theories that they were negroes who had come to Australia and had become intermixed with Malays. It was not his intention to go into these theories that evening. He was always being asked, however,

Where the Australian Aborigine Came From.

This was a difficult question to answer. It was like asking where Australia came from. The Australian aborigine had been here a very long time, and what he was like when he got here it seemed impossible to say. They could not tell whether, when he arrived, he was exactly the same as he was now, or whether he had changed since he had been isolated. But the problem became more interesting when they put it in another form, and asked what was the relationship between the Australian aborigine and other types of mankind. The anthropologist would say that the Australian aborigine first of all formed a link between the ancestor of the white races and the negro. He came in between these two groups. The deep seated nasal bone was characteristic of the Australian and Tasmanian aborigine and distinguished him as a specialised type. Probably the Australian aborigine had been sparated from the rest of mankind for many thousands of years, and had, during that period, developed little idiosyncrasies which were called specialisations.

But, after all, it was the skulls which in an interesting subject interested him least. We could dig up skulls, but we could not dig up customs and beliefs, and it was accordingly the latter which were most in need of study. The subject matter of this study was disappearing every day. This was the difficulty of the anthropologist, and he could give them an instance of it from his own experience. The Andamanese Islanders were rapidly dying out. In 1858 there were 6,000 inhabitants in one island. When he went there a few years ao, there were only 600 and in another 50 years he expected there would not be 60. When he was there he was continually told:—“You must find old ‘so and so.’ He is the only man who can supply the information you want.” Consequently, he marched through a dense tropical forest for two days to the camp of this man and found him at death’s door. He spent three days at the bedside of this native, who, however, never rallied, and with his death there disappeared all the information concerning the customs and belief of his tribe. Exactly the same thing was happening in Australia. That was why the anthropologist, even if the Australian aborigines were less interesting than other races, sought to study them. We could not tell much about the customs and beliefs of primitive man in Europe because all we had left of him were certain relics of stone and bones and bits of wood. These did not tell us much about the ideas he possessed, though they told us something. The fact, for example, that he had a spearhead in one particular way and not in another was an interesting fact concerning his mental capacity. The further fact that he drew pictures in a peculiar way told us some thing about his brain. In Australia, on the other hand, we had mankind living in a condition in which they lived in Europe twenty thousand years ago, and possessing similar ideas. They had beliefs similar to those of our ancestors, and therefore it was to the aborigines of such places as Aus tralia that we turned when we wanted to know what our ancestors, the Neanderthal race, for instance, were like. A social or ganisation which was not like that with which we were familiar—one of the family, the village, the city, and the State—interested the anthropologist who endeavoured to ascertain what part of it belonged essentially to the history of human nature, and what was merely accidental. The Australian aborigines were organised in tribes which were divided into two halves, and every member of the tribe belonged to one or other of the halves. Over the greater portion of Australia the division was into “Eagle-hawks” and “Crows.” A man must be either “Eagle-hawk” or “Crow.” He could not be both. If he were a Crow he must not on any account marry a “Crow.” He must marry an “Eagle-hawk.” All “Crows” were brothers and sisters, and they must not kill a “Grow,” although they might kill an “Eagle-hawk.” This would give them a rough idea of the

Aboriginal Social Organisation.

This, of course, was not the invariable division, and in the south-west of the State we got the “Crow” and “White Cockatoo.” As we advanced the organisation became more complex, and the tribe became split up into four parts. An aborigine who belonged to one of those parts could divide all his acquaintances into four classes—(1) his brothers and sisters; (2) his father and fathers’ sisters; (3) his mothers and mothers’ brothers; (4) his wives and brothers-in-law. The aborigine stood in a perfectly definite relationship to everybody he met, and his life was regulated by certain laws which prescribed what he had to do when he met those people. There was only one of four classes the aborigine could possibly marry, and he would be guilty of a very grave misdemeanour indeed if he were to marry into the wrong class. There was a whole body of women whom he called mothers, and he did not distinguish one from the other in the way he treated them, although one was his actual mother. There was another body of women who were all his sisters, and a certain rule of conduct existed which he had to respect with regard to them. Again, one portion of the tribe, tha Eagle-hawk half or moiety, for example, was frequently divided into smaller parts, which were called clans. Each of these clans had its name. For instance, one man might belong to the “Kangaroo” clan an other to the “Emu,” and a third to the “Bandicoot,” and so forth. A “Kangaroo” man could kill or eat anything he liked with the exception of a kangaroo. That animal was sacred to him, so to speak. On the other hand, an Emu man night kill a kangaroo, but not an emu. The anthropologist was endeavouring to understand this strange institution. The system was not peculiar to Australia, and the name which had been given to it was totemism. Where a native had a sacred animal such as the kangaroo, they referred to the kangaroo as his totem. The name was taken from the language of the Ojibway tribe in North America, where it had exactly the same meaning as was given to it in Australia. The system of totemism was to be found in Melanesia, New Guinea, India, Africa, North America, and there were traces of it in Polynesia and South America. The only part of the inhabited globe where totemism was not found was Europe, and the north of Asia, but there were a number of scientists who held that there was sufficient ground for believing that early peoples in Europe, the ancient Greeks, and Romans, and Semites, had exactly the same institution of totemism. The evidence did not satisfy him that our Aryan ancestors did have totemism. There was no absolute proof, nor, he thought, was there any proof that the ancient Jews possessed it. There was a certain amount of probability, but apart from that we might say that wherever in the world we studied man wse found in existence, excepting in the parts he had mentioned, either totemism in its normal form or some changing form of totemism, some evidence that totemism had existed, and had changed into some other form of social organisation. What was the conclusion to be drawn from this? It was that

Totemism was a Stage in the Evolution of Society,

that it was a necessary stage, and that it was only by passing through the stage of totemism that man reached the higher planes of civilisation. This meant that where a man had reached a stage of civilisation which was higher than that of the Australian aborigine, he had passed through a social organisation which was similar to that to be found among Australian aborigines of to-day. This was assumption which had not been proved, but it was the logical conclusion that the scientist must draw from the evidence at his disposal. Totemism was, therefore, of considerable importance. It was not the earliest form of social organisation. The Australian aborigine was many thousand years behind us, but he was himself the result of a considerable development. Language, to mention one thing, was not built up in a day. The Australian aborigine was not half so far back in the history of mankind as the anthropologist would like to go.

They were studying the Australian aborigine so as to throw light, if possible, on the past history of mankind, and to interpret the present and foretell the future. It might seem a far cry from the Houses of Parliament to the hut of the Australian aborigine, and yet it was not a very far cry. We were at the present moment faced by many possible changes in society. Catastrophe was predicted by some people if a certain thing was done, and by other people if it were not done. The scientist had not yet been born who could tell what would happen if we made a particular change. We could only foretell the future if we had general laws. The object of anthropology in the domain of sociology was to endeavour to discover those laws which governed the social evolution of man. If, for instance, we could say that man had developed from any particular state of society through another given condition such as totemism, and so on through different stages of organisation by gradual steps with definite given causes at every period for every change, then it would be possible to foretell what would follow any given change in society. It was characteristic of human evolution that mankind had the power to interfere with this process of evolution. Man by the study of medicine and otherwise had put a check on the process of natural selection which carried off the unfit individuals. In social organisation, also, man continually interfered by means of acts of Parliament though this applied more to the higher than the lower stages of civilisation. The anthropologist hoped by the study of the lower forms of human life, of social organisations such as totemism, to discover what might be called the natural laws of these peoples and to apply these natural laws not only to the Australian aborigine, but to more developed societies, and to be able in the end to foretell what would be the result of a given change. One of the most interesting

Sociological Problems

was presented by Australia, a large continent populated mainly along the coast by people who lived mostly in the towns. How would this abnormal sociological structure develop? The science was too young to try to give the key, but a problem was offered which the sociologist some day would tackle and endeavour to answer. For the means of answering such questions one had to go back to the study of mankind in the earliest days, and as he had endeavoured to show while we could not get back to our own ancestors except by examining their skulls and their drawings and their stone implements we could get back to them to some extent by studying the habits and customs of the aborigines of Australia, who besides having a similar skull formation were in a condition of society in which our ancestors probably lived at some time. The science of the study of mankind was prob ably the most important of the sciences, as it was the latest born, and on the physical side, for instance, we could hope to know more from the work of the anthropologist of the physical structure of mankind. In the same way by studying the mind of man in its evolution from the lower forms we might be able to apply the knowledge gained in the sphere of education. With the study of the evolution of society and of morals and religions from their primitive to their developed forms, we might be able to affect our own actions very considerably. Owing to the generosity of Mr. Samuel McKay, who had placed the sum of £1,000 at the disposal of the expedition, they would be able to continue at work nine months or so longer than they had originally intended. Since his arrival he had been surprised and pleased at the interest which was shown on all sides in the aboriginals. Valuable research work had also been done. Mrs. Bates had rescued from oblivion a large number of interesting facts concerning the aborigines, for, as he had stated, the opportunities of obtaining information regarding his race were becoming less daily, and Mrs Bates had placed upon record the results of investigations among tribes which had since disappeared. The welcome which had been given to the expedition had been extremely pleasant, and if they were able to bring to light fresh facts relating to the aborigines he would be very pleased indeed with his visit to Western Australia. (Applause.)

Interesting emphasis was given to the points of the lecture by many lantern views depicting the physical characteristics for native races, the artistic efforts of primitive man, and other relics of prehistoric times. On the motion of Dr. Hackett, M.L.C., the lecturer was awarded a cordial vote of thanks.

AB notes:

Anthropology has come a long way!