V.] THE OCEANIC NEGROES: NEGRITOES. 159 



European or Indian celts of the so-called Neolithic period 1 ." 

 But there is no reason to think that the archipelago was ever 

 occupied by a people different from its present inhabitants. 

 Hence we may suppose that their ancestors arrived in the Stone 

 Ages, but afterwards ceased to make stone implements, as less 

 handy for their purposes and more difficult to make than the 

 shell or bone-tipped darts, arrows, and nets with which they 

 capture game and fish "more readily than the most skilful 

 fisherman with hook and line 2 ." Similarly they would seem to 

 have long lost the art of making fire, having once obtained it from 

 a still active volcano in the neighbouring Barren Island 3 . 



Many wild statements regarding this primitive Negrito race, 

 due chiefly to the careless observations of passing navigators, but 

 still current in popular ethnographic works, have been dispelled by 

 Mr Man, who shows that they do not make holes in the sand to 

 burrow in like rabbits, that there are no so-called "oven-trees" where 

 pigs are roasted, no cannibalism, nor any bow-traps, boomerangs, 

 wameras (Australian throwing-sticks), or blow-pipes, useless with- 

 out poison, of which they make no use whatsoever. But they do 

 possess two kinds of boats, one a very rude outrigger of primitive 

 type, just as they have two or three kinds of dwellings, one also 

 very frail and primitive mere leafy shelters like those of the 

 Brazilian Puri, but usually erected only on temporary camping- 

 grounds. 



In temperament they resemble the Papuans and other dark 

 peoples, "being merry, talkative, petulant, inquisitive, and restless; 

 their speech is rapid, with a constant repetition of the same idea ; 

 a joke, if it does not take too practical a form, is heartily appre- 

 ciated, while all insults or injuries are promptly resented 4 ." A 

 pleasing characteristic is the attitude of the men towards their 

 wives, who, though necessarily doomed to much drudgery, are 

 treated as real helpmates on a footing of perfect equality. Despite 



1 E. H. Man, Jonr. Anthrop. Inst. 1881, p. 271. 

 - Ib. p. 279. 



3 Close to Barren is the extinct crater of Narcondam, i.e. Narak-andani 

 (Na>-a=He\\), from which the Andaman group may have taken its name 

 (Sir H. Yule, Marco Polo}. 



4 Ib. p. 284. 



