746 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
much impressed by the immense periods of time which seem to 
be essential as one of the elements of any solution of the problem. 
The level of culture of the Tasmanians has been termed by 
Dr. E. B. Tylor, “ Eolithic,’* and that of the Australians 
probably stands in the Neolithic if not as regards some tribes on 
the border between that and the Paleolithic age. 
The tribes of the Barcoo Delta were, when I knew them, still 
in their completely savage condition, and they used roughly 
chipped flints either held in the hand or fastened in handles with 
sinews and gum. This was, however, not from want of acquaint- 
ance with the Australian form of ground and polished hatchets, 
since they obtained such by barter from the hill tribes to the south, 
but because their country did not supply the material of which 
such hatchets were made. 
The social organisation of the Tasmanians, so far as it ‘can be 
made out from the unfortunately meagre accounts afforded by 
writers, appears to have been in some respects analogous to that 
of the Australians, but in so far of a character consonant with 
the Jower level of culture of the Tasmanians. + 
The organisation of the Australians, as seen in the socially most 
backward standing tribes—for instance, such as those of the Lake 
Eyre Basin—is that of a people but little advanced out of a 
regulated promiscuity, based upon the intermarriage of two 
totemic groups into which each tribe is divided. 
The relationships and kinships of these people are also based 
upon, and naturally arise out of, the totemic intermarrying div1- 
sions, defining the relations of individuals to each other, in 
accordance with the principle of group marriage and descent, 
which are existing facts in those tribes; while in those which 
are socially more advanced group marriage is recognisable only in 
traces, or as mere survivals of custom. 
Yet in these socially more advanced tribes, where there is 
individual marriage together with the recognition of descent 
through the father, the older system of reckoning relationships 
based upon group marriage still exists a living “evidence of a 
departed fact. f 
The level of culture of the Australians cannot be held to be 
lower than that of the ancestral stock from which they separated. 
Their language discloses nothing that can point to a former know- 
ledge of the arts higher than that of the present, in their naturally 
savage state; on the contrary, the terms of relationship show 
that the most advanced tribes were at one time in the status of 
those of Lake Eyre with group marriage and descent. 
Therefore it seems clear that the Australians have advanced 
from group marriage to individual marriage, from descent counted 
* LVII. ¢ XLV, p. 11, passim. { XVII, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, passim. 
