PALAEOLITHIC RACES AND THEIR 

 MODERN REPRESENTATIVES 



By W. J. SOLLAS, D.Sc, F.R.S. 



Professor of Geology, University of Oxford 



III 



Early Pleistocene Man and the Tasmanians 



To commence a chapter on pleistocene man by an account 

 of a recent race might well seem a wilful anachronism ; the 

 Tasmanians, however, though recent, were at the same time a 

 palaeolithic or perhaps even eolithic race ; and they thus afford 

 us an opportunity of interpreting the past by the present — a 

 saving procedure in a subject where fantasy is only too likely 

 to play a leading part. We will therefore first direct our 

 attention to the habits and mode of life of this isolated people, 

 the most unprogressive in the world, which at the close of the 

 nineteenth century was still living in the dawn of the palaeolithic 

 epoch. 



As regards clothing, the Tasmanians dispensed with it. 

 They habitually went about in a state of nakedness, except in 

 winter, when the skins of kangaroos were sometimes worn. 

 To protect themselves from rain they daubed themselves over 

 with a mixture of grease and ochre. Yet they were not without 

 their refinements : the women adorned themselves with chaplets 

 of flowers or bright berries, and with fillets of wallaby or 

 kangaroo skin, worn sometimes under the knee, sometimes 

 around the wrist or ankle ; the young men were also careful 

 of their personal appearance — a fully dressed young man wore 

 a necklace of spiral shells land a number of kangaroos' teeth 

 fastened in his woolly hair. 



They paid great attention to their hair ; it was cut a lock 

 at a time with the aid of two stones, one placed underneath as 

 a chopping-block, the other being used as a chopper. A sort of 

 pomatum made of fat and ochre was used as a dressing. 



The Tasmanians had no houses, nor any fixed abode ; they 



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