Evolution in Art: As Illustrated by the Life-histories of Designs

by Alfred C. Haddon

Of their weapons the stone-club is alone common to all the tribes. The use of the bow and arrow is confined to the Papuans, and is universally employed to the west and in the Papuan Gulf. Heavy, sword-like, wooden clubs and wooden spears are common among the Melanesians, and the sling is employed in the D’Entrecasteaux Islands.

Only the Melanesians make pottery.

The Papuans earlier adopted tobacco, and grew their own tobacco before the white man came, but they do not chew the betel to any great extent; quite the reverse is the case with the Melanesians.

I have now enumerated a sufficient body of evidence to demonstrate that two groups of people inhabit British New Guinea. We have now to see whether a further analysis is possible.

Our knowledge of the Western Papuans is too imperfect for any definite generalisations to be made at present, but I venture to present the following tentative suggestions:—

The most typical Papuans in the British Protectorate are probably the bush tribes from the Dutch boundary to the back of the Gulf of Papua. They are gradually being pushed inwards by the coast people. Macfarlane contrasts the high and broad skull of the latter with the “long, narrow skull, with its low forehead and prominent zygomatic bones,” of the former, whom he also states are “greatly inferior, both mentally and physically.” The observations of d’Albertis of a racial mixture in this region are supported by de Quatrefages and Hamy. The Torres Straits islanders are also a mixed people. I do not think we have sufficient evidence before us to decide what are the component races of these Western Papuans. I suspect that the Fly River is to a slight extent what may be termed a “culture route,” and that the natives of the higher reaches have indirect communication with those of the north coast of New Guinea; for example, the rattan armour collected by d’Albertis high up the river is similar to that obtained by Finsch from Angriffs Haven, near Humboldt Bay, and recalls the coir armour of Micronesia; it is probable that this was the route by which tobacco found its way to Torres Straits and the Gulf district, and thence to the south-east.

The Papuans also extend down the south-east peninsula and into the adjacent island groups. On the mainland they have been conquered in certain places by Melanesian immigrants, and a mixture of these two peoples has taken place to a variable extent. In the islands the amalgamation has been more complete.

The immigrant people are by the majority of writers spoken of as Polynesians. This identification is apparently based solely on the lighter colour of some of the former than that of the Papuans proper, and on numerous words common to them and the Polynesians.

The light colour of the skin and the occasional presence of curly or even straight hair among some of the people of British New Guinea certainly proves a racial mixture, although Comrie and Finsch do not lay much stress on these points. The latter (Samoafahrten, p. 234) writes:—“The natives of Bentley Bay, as at East Cape, are of a tolerably light skin colour and belong to what the ignorant would explain as a Malay mixture. But wrongly, for they are true Papuans, amongst whom the individual occurrence of curly, even of smooth hair, is of no consequence.” The craniology of the natives of the south-eastern peninsula and neighbouring islands has been studied by Comrie, Flower, Mikloucho-Maclay, de Quatrefages, Hamy, and Sergi, most of whom admit with Flower “a considerable mixture of races among the inhabitants of this region of the world.” As at present anthropography cannot speak with precision concerning the racial elements in this immigrant people, we must turn to other branches of anthropology, and we will see what light ethnography and linguistics can throw on this ethnological problem.

A comparison of Papuan and Melanesian customs and handicrafts will prove that there is little of real importance in common, say, between the Motu or the South Cape natives and the Samoans. I need only allude to the almost total absence of a system of cosmogony or of a pantheon with a definite mythology; associated with this lack of a theology is the absence of an organised priestcraft. The democratic Papuans and Melanesians have no hereditary chieftainship, and the power of tabu is much more limited than in Polynesia. Strangely enough, these so-called “Polynesians” in South-East New Guinea make pottery and do not drink kava. There is also a well-marked distinction between the weapons, implements, etc., and the decorative art of the New Guinea people and those of the Polynesians.