The Stone Age in Oceania—I. Australians: Uniformity of the Australian race—Language and manners and customs of the Australians—Extinct Tasmanians—II. Populations of the Asiatic or Malay Archipelago: Papuan and Negrito elements in the Archipelago—Indonesians and Malays of Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, etc.—III. Melanesians: Papuans of New Guinea—Melanesians properly so called of the Salomon and Admiralty Islands, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, etc.—IV. Polynesians: Polynesians properly so called of Samoa, Tahiti, and Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, etc.—Micronesians of the Caroline and Marianne Islands, etc.—Peopling of the Pacific Islands and of the Indian Ocean.
“OCEANIA” appears to me the term best adapted to designate comprehensively all the insular lands scattered in the immensity of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. These in their entirety are, from the ethnographic point of view, divided into a continent, Australia, which shelters a distinct race, the Australians, and into two groups of islands. The western group, that of the Asiatic Archipelago, formed especially of large islands, is peopled principally by Indonesians, pure and mixed. As to the eastern group, it falls into two regions: one region consisting of New Guinea (which, after Greenland, is the largest island of the world), together with the neighbouring archipelagoes peopled by the Melanesian race; and the other region formed of the innumerable islands, islets, rocks, and atolls situated farther east, and occupied by the Polynesian race. I shall describe separately the populations of these four regions, but I must say a few words in advance in regard to the prehistoric periods of Oceania.
With the exception of Sumatra, Java, and perhaps Borneo, still connected with Asia at the end of the tertiary period, the rest of Oceania formed an insular world apart, of ancient geological origin. Except the discovery of the Pithecanthropus in Java (see p. [360]), hardly any finds relating to quaternary man can be pointed to in this part of the world. The objects in chipped or polished flint noted here and there in Malaysia, Australia, or New Zealand, as having been found at a certain depth of earth, have no fixed date, and, seeing that all Oceania, except West Malaysia, was up to the end of the last century still in the “stone age,” and remains in that age yet at several places, it will be understood that these finds may hardly be dated back further than some tens or hundreds of years, and have no connection with geological periods.[544] As to the megalithic monuments,—the ruins of “Morai” and other erections in Oceania, of which the best known are those of Easter Island, but which exist also in the Marquesas, Tahiti, Pitcairn, and Caroline Islands,—a precise date can with no greater certitude be assigned to them.[545]
The long duration of the stone age in Oceania may be explained especially by the absence of metallic deposits in Polynesia, and by the relative difficulty of working the iron and copper ores of New Zealand and of the rest of Oceania.[546]
The contemporary stone age, together with the affinity of the Malay, Polynesian, and Melanesian languages (Von Gabelentz), are perhaps the most characteristic traits of Oceanic ethnography.
1. AUSTRALIA.—The Australians form a distinct ethnic group, even a race apart from the rest of mankind. Notwithstanding some local differences, they exhibit great unity, not only from the somatic point of view, but also from the point of view of manners, customs, and speech. Up to a certain point this unity may be explained by the fact that the nature and surface of the soil, as well as the climate, the fauna and flora, vary to a relatively slight degree throughout the whole extent of the continent.[547]
FIG. 145.—Ambit, Sundanese of Java (Preanger prov.),
30 years old; height, 1 m. 67; ceph. ind., 85.7; nas. ind., 88.6.
(Phot. Pr. Roland Bonaparte.)