Head-hunters, black, white, and brown

by Alfred C. Haddon

The visual acuity of these people was found to be superior to that of normal Europeans, though not in any very marked degree. The visual powers of savages, which have excited the admiration of travellers, may be held to depend upon the faculty of observation. Starting with somewhat superior acuteness of vision, by long attention to minute details coupled with familiarity with their surroundings, they become able to recognise things in a manner that at first sight seems quite wonderful.

The commonest defect of eyesight among Europeans is myopia, or short-sightedness, but this was found to be almost completely absent amongst savages. The opposite condition, hypermetropia, which is apparently the normal condition of the European child, was very common among them.

The colour vision of the natives was investigated in several ways. A hundred and fifty natives of Torres Straits and Kiwai were tested by means of the usual wool test for colour-blindness without finding one case. The names used for colours by the natives of Murray Island, Mabuiag, and Kiwai were very fully investigated, and the derivation of such names in most cases established. The colour vocabularies of these islands showed the special feature which appears to characterise many primitive languages. There were definite names for red, less definite for yellow, and still less so for green, while a definite name for blue was either absent or borrowed from English.

The three languages mentioned, and some Australian languages investigated by Rivers, seemed to show different stages in the evolution of a colour vocabulary. Several North Queensland natives (from Seven Rivers and the Fitzroy River) appeared to be almost limited to words for red, white, and black; perhaps it would be better to call the latter light and dark. In all the islands there was a name for yellow, but in Kiwai, at the mouth of the Fly River, the name applied to green appeared to be inconstant and indefinite, while there was no word for blue, for which colour the same word was used as for black. In Torres Straits there are terms for green. In Murray Island the native word for blue was the same as that used for black, but the English word had been adopted and modified into bŭlu-bŭlu. The language of Mabuiag was more advanced; there was a word for blue (maludgamulnga, sea-colour), but it was often also used for green. In these four vocabularies four stages may be seen in the evolution of colour languages, exactly as deducted by Geiger, red being the most definitive, and the colours at the other end of the spectrum the least so. As Rivers has also pointed out, it was noteworthy, too, that the order of these people in respect to culture was the same as in regard to development of words for colours. Rivers found that though the people showed no confusion between red and green they did between blue and green. The investigation of these colour-names, he thought, showed that to them blue must be a duller and darker colour than it is to us, and indeed the experiments carried out with an apparatus known as Lovibond’s tintometer afforded evidence of a distinct quantitative deficiency in their perception of blue, though the results were far from proving blindness to blue.

Numerous observations were made by Rivers on writing and drawing, the former chiefly in the case of children. The most striking result was the ease and correctness with which mirror writing was performed. Mirror writing is that reversed form of writing that comes right when looked at in a looking-glass. In many cases native children, when asked to write with the left hand, spontaneously wrote mirror writing, and all were able to write in this fashion readily. In some cases children, when asked to write with the left hand, wrote upside down.

Experiments were made on the estimation of time. The method adopted was to give signals marking off a given interval; another signal was then given as the commencement of a second interval, which the native had to finish by a similar signal when he judged it to be equal to the previous given interval. Rivers found that this somewhat difficult procedure met with unexpected success, and intervals of ten seconds, twenty seconds, and one minute, were estimated with fairly consistent results.

The conditions for testing acuity of hearing were very unfavourable on Murray Island, owing to the noise of the sea and the rustle of the coconut palms. Myers found that few Murray Islanders surpassed a hyper-acute European in auditory acuity, while the majority could not hear as far. No great weight, however, could be attached to the observations, because all the men were divers, an occupation that certainly damaged the ears to some extent. To investigate their range of hearing a Galton’s whistle was used, and it was found they could hear very high notes. Twelve Murray Islanders were tested for their sense of rhythm; this was found to be remarkably accurate for 120 beats of the metronome to the minute, and somewhat less so for 60 beats.

Myers tested their sense of smell by means of a series of tubes containing solutions, of varying strength, of odorous substances like valerian and camphor, and the results, while not altogether satisfactory, tended to show that they had no marked superiority in this respect over the members of the expedition.

With regard to taste it was very difficult to get information, as the natives, naturally enough, did not like strange substances being put into their mouths. Sugar and salt were readily recognised, acid was compared to unripe fruit, bitter is most uncertain, and there is no distinctive name for it in the Murray Island vocabulary.

Numerous time reaction experiments were made by Myers. The time of the simple reaction is not sensibly longer, but probably in many cases even shorter, than would be that given by a corresponding class of Europeans. Myers points out that the experiments clearly showed the great difference of temperament among the individuals investigated. There was at one extreme the slow, steady-going man, who reacted with almost uniform speed on each occasion; at the other extreme was the nervous, high-strung individual, who was frequently reacting prematurely.