BV FUITZ >H)ETJJNC;, M.A., PH.D. 107 



tion of these specimens was not to be applied to profane 

 purposes. Tliis is merely a suggestion, which may be 

 accepted as a plausible explanation or not. 



However that may be, it is bey'bnd doubt that the Tas- 

 manians had already acquired a rudimentaiy knowledge of 

 grinding, but they applied it to one pmijose only, viz., to 

 the manufacture of the sacred stones, and never to any 

 other. 



This is one of the numerous strange facts which we 

 meet with in studying the Tasmanian race. In my opinion, 

 this points to one direction only. The Tasmanian race had 

 already reached their highest point of evolution ; it was 

 impossible for them to go further; they could not conceive 

 new ideas, or make new inventions, and had the race still 

 existed for another thousand years, at the end of that 

 period they would have exactly been where they were at 

 its beginning- It is unquestionable that the incapability 

 of the Tasmanian race to adaj^t themselves to new ideas or 

 surroundings accelerated its extinction. 



This view has now been proved by so many observa- 

 tions that we may take it as certain that the Tasmanian 

 aborigines represented a race of mental stagnation. They 

 may have been distantly related to the races now inhabit- 

 iiig the Australian continent, but it is absolutely incojiceiv- 

 able how, in the face of these facts, a recent writer (6) 

 could consider the Tasmanian aborigines as an insular tvpe 

 of the Australian aboi'igines. 



Let us consider the logical consequences of this theory. 

 Dr. Basedow admits that the Tasmanian aborigines came to 

 the island 'previous to its separation from the mainland, 

 and, as a necessarv corollary, previous to the arrival of the 

 dingo. 



If the Tasmanian aborigines were only an insular 

 branch of the Australian race, we must assume that at the 

 time of their migration to the south-eastern comer of Aus- 

 tralia, now represented by Tasmania, the whole of the 

 Australian race was in the arch?eolithic stage. There 

 is no getting away from rhis, because the Tasmanians repre- 

 sent that sta,ge, and never got beyond it. 



On the other hand, we find on the Australian contin- 



6) Basedow, Der Tasmanier Schaedel. ein Insulartvpus, Zeitsch. f. 

 Ethnologie, vol. 42, pt. III., 1910, page 175. 



