V.] THE OCEANIC NEGROES: PAPUASIANS. 131 



contiguous enough to have been reached by the early Papuasian 

 wanderers from Malaysia. 



The theory of the comparatively recent occupation of the 

 insular world by the dark races must now be abandoned. A 

 prolonged study, remarks Dr E. T. Hamy, conveys the impression 

 that the Melanesians [Papuasians] are a very old ethnic group, 

 here and there modified on the spot by crossings with populations 

 always on the move (Malays, Bugis, &c.). Everywhere the priority 

 of the Melanesians is manifest ; their origins are lost in the depths 

 of an unfathomable past 1 , and this vast antiquity is attested also 

 by the multitude of languages often unintelligible outside a narrow 

 district, and by the highly differentiated usages of the insular groups. 



Yet there are indications that before their dispersion from the 

 Malaysian cradleland eastwards, the Papuasians had 

 reached a stage of culture high enough to at least cvTituTe^ 6 

 build canoes and houses, these terms (waka, ruvia] 

 having an immense range in endless dialectic form from the 

 Malay Peninsula through the Eastern Archipelago to the Loyalty 

 group at the southern extremity of Melanesia. They do not occur 

 amongst the peoples of non-Malay speech in New Guinea, and 

 these aborigines, the true Papuans, stand in some respects almost 

 on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Miklukho-Maclay found 

 the natives of the north-west coast near Astrolabe Bay at the 

 lowest stage of culture, with no knowledge of the metals, all their 

 implements being of stone, wood, or bones. They could not even 

 kindle a fire, which when extinguished in a hut had to be brought 

 from the nearest hearth, and if in all the huts then from the 

 nearest friendly village. Their grandfathers remembered a time 

 when they had no fire, and ate their food quite raw. The dead 

 were not buried if a fire could be kept up for two or three weeks 

 to dry the body, which was placed near it in a sitting posture, 

 covered with coco-palm leaves and guarded by the wife". 



1 " Leurs origines se perdent dans les profoncleurs d'un insondable passe " 

 (Les Races negres, in L? Anthropologie, 1897, p. 257 sq.) See also W. Volz, 

 Beitrdge zitr Anthrop. der Siidsee, in Archiv f. Anthrop. Nov. 1894, where it 

 is contended that the Melanesians formerly occupied all the Pacific Ocean, 

 having reached it from Malaysia in pre- Malay times. 



2 Nature, Dec. 7, 1882, p. 137. 



9 -2 



