242 " ^' •'••IINSTON MKMOIUAT- I.KiTl HK. 



Hunter to be in the direct line of ascent of man from the 

 ancestral stock from which the modern anthropoid apes 

 diverged. If the age of Piltdown man is to be referred 

 back to Giinz-Mindel inter-glacial time, he might be 300,000 

 to 400,000 years old. The Tasmanian aboriginal would be 

 newer than that. 



8. The fact may again be emphasised that whereas there 

 is little doubt that the earliest members of the human family 

 inhabited the tropics, and had black skins, and that the black 

 men slowly became white, as the result of living for thou- 

 sands of years in cool temperate climates (and so we should 

 expect that the Tasmanian aboriginal, if he had been in 

 occupation of Tasmania for a very long period, would have 

 shown some change in colour of his skin from black towards 

 wTiite), there is no evidence that the skin of the Tasmanian 

 aborigines was other than black, right up to the time of their 

 extinction in 1877. 



On the whole, then, the evidence is in favour of the Tas- 

 manian aboriginal having arrived in Tasmania between 

 about twenty thousand and one hundred thousand years ago. 

 As regards their original home, the opinion of the late A. 

 W. Howett, later supported by Professor Grifiith Taylor, is 

 that they came from Asia, being closely allied to the negrito 

 type of Semangs, who inhabit the highest ridges of the Malay 

 Peninsula. These peoples have the same strongly curling 

 hair, etc., as the Tasmanian aborigines. In the same region, 

 but at lower levels, are aborigines known as the Sakai. These 

 have many close affinities with the Australian aborigines. 



The opinion, however, of Professor Sir Baldwin Spencer 

 is that possibly A. W. Howitt's conclusions will now have to 

 be modified. Spencer states in a letter to the writer: "The 

 "Tasnianians are not now regarded as true Negritos. They 

 "are probably a remnant of a very ancient ulotrichous 

 "(woolly-haired) people, the ancestors alike of the Negritos, 

 "now isolated in the Andaman Islands. Malay Peninsula, 

 "(Semangs), anl Philippines (Aetas). and possibly al.'^'o of 

 "the Tasmanians, but even this is doubtful as the Negritos 

 "were brachycephalic (cephalic index, 80-85), whilst the 

 "Tasmanians were dolichocephalic or me.saticephalic (ceph- 

 "alic index, 75), and seem to represent a distinct offshoot of 

 "these very early ulotrichous people, who may also have 

 "spread beyond New Guinea to the Western Pacific." 



In regard to the Australian aboriginal and his origin, 

 Sir Baldwin states (also in a letter to the writer) : "The Aus- 

 "tralians of the present day seem to belong to a dolicho- 



