When aborigines are taken from their wild outdoor life, and kept under European conditions, more or less confined, their skin becomes unquestionably lighter; this is particularly noticed in their faces.
These phenomena indicate to us the method Nature adopts in protecting our skin, and with it our system, against scorching rays of the sun; and we also realize why it is that the coloured man can endure the disadvantages of a tropical climate so much better than we.
The same phenomena might also be made responsible for the wonderful absence of pigment in the skin of modern white peoples of European origin. There is no doubt, the great Ice Age and the living in caves and shelters (and huts) were the essential factors which ultimately established the “white” skin in man. In this hypothesis, we naturally assume that our Diluvial or earlier Tertiary ancestor had a moderately dark-coloured skin, which protected him against the tropical sun, which Geology has taught us, shone over Europe at the beginning or middle of that great period.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HAIR
The lanugo—Hairiness of body—Female beards—The hair of the scalp and how it is worn—Its colour—Aboriginal blondes—Albinism—Erythrism—Fair hair a likely “throw-back” to prototype—Influences of climate and geological antiquity—Other instances of fair-haired aborigines—Grey hair—Baldness—The beard and methods of dressing it.
Let us proceed with a discussion of the aboriginal’s hair. As in the youthful individuals of most races of man, including the European, the Australian is born with a rudimentary, short body-hair, known as the lanugo. This growth covers practically all surfaces of the child’s figure, but is thickest on the back.
The colour of this infantile coating of hair is not, as one might have expected, black, but fair, and casts a pretty golden sheen over the sombre skin. In later adult life this growth of hair becomes stronger, and darkens to complete blackness. In ripe old age, the hairs turn grey.
Many of the old men have a remarkable hairiness of the body, amounting almost to a hypertrichosis. In these cases the hairs are up to an inch long, and cover especially thickly the back, the chest, the thighs, and buttocks ([Plate VII], 1). Amongst the women quite pretentious beards are of rather frequent occurrence ([Plate III], 2).
With regard to the hair which covers the scalp, we find that, in the majority of cases, it is wavy. It is by no means uncommon, however, to find the Australian’s hair distinctly frizzy; straight hair is least frequently observed. The male aboriginal generally wears his hair in long loose curls; often these are matted together artificially with grease and red ochre into long, pendant, sausage-like masses. In the central region of Australia, the men pull out the hair growing on the upper portion of the forehead, each hair being removed separately. A hair-string band is worn over the cleared portion of the forehead, and this, at the same time, keeps back the locks of hair. Very often, in the central as well as in the northern districts, the hair thus tied back is worked up with a pad of emu feathers into a chignon, which is tied round and round with human hair-string ([Plate IX]). The women are frequently asked to cut their hair short, and to deliver the clippings to their husbands, who work them up into coils of string, out of which they subsequently fashion hair belts and a variety of other articles in daily use. Occasionally one sees an aboriginal whose hair stands about his head after the type of a Struwwelpeter, or it may hang from the scalp like a mop. The last-named types were more plentiful on the north coast than in central Australia, but a number of cases were recorded among the Aluridja and Wongapitcha.