168 Primitive Theories of the Origin of Man 



met with under dry bark. To do this he divided the feet of the 

 lizards into fingers and toes, and, applying his forefinger to the middle 

 of their faces, created a nose ; likewise he gave them human eyes, 

 mouths and ears. He next set one of them upright, but it fell down 

 again because of its tail ; so he cut off its tail and the lizard then 

 walked on its hind legs. That is the origin of mankind 1 . 



The Arunta tribe of Central Australia similarly tell how in the be- 

 ginning mankind was developed out of various rudimentary forms of 

 animal life. They say that in those days two beings called Ungambi- 

 Taula, that is, " out of nothing," or " self-existing," dwelt in the western 

 sky. From their lofty abode they could see, far away to the east, 

 a number of inapertwa creatures, that is, rudimentary human beings 

 or incomplete men, whom it was their mission to make into real men 

 and women. For at that time there were no real men and women ; 

 the rudimentary creatures {inapertwa) were of various shapes and 

 dwelt in groups along the shore of the salt water which covered the 

 country. These embryos, as we may call them, had no distinct limbs 

 or organs of sight, hearing, and smell ; they did not eat food, and 

 they presented the appearance of human beings all doubled up into 

 a rounded mass, in which only the outline of the different parts 

 of the body could be vaguely perceived. Coming down from their 

 home in the western sky, armed with great stone knives, the Ungani- 

 "bikida took hold of the embryos, one after the other. First of all 

 they released the arms from the bodies, then making four clefts at 

 the end of each arm they fashioned hands and fingers ; afterwards 

 legs, feet, and toes were added in the same way. The figure could 

 now stand ; a nose was then moulded and the nostrils bored with the 

 fingers. A cut with the knife made the mouth, which was pulled 

 open several times to render it flexible. A slit on each side of the 

 face separated the upper and lower eye-lids, disclosing the eyes, 

 which already existed behind them ; and a few strokes more com- 

 pleted the body. Thus out of the rudimentary creatures were 

 formed men and women. These rudimentary creatures or embryos, 

 we are told, " were in reality stages in the transformation of various 

 animals and plants into human beings, and thus they were naturally, 

 when made into human beings, intimately associated with' the par- 

 ticular animal or plant, as the case may be, of which they were the 

 transformations — in other words, each individual of necessity belonged 

 to a totem, the name of which was of course that of the animal 



1 S. Gason, "The Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie tribe of Australian 

 Aborigines," Native Tribes of South Australia (Adelaide, 1879), p. 260. This writer 

 fell into the mistake of regarding the Mura-Mura (Blooramoora) as a Good-Spirit instead 

 of as one of the mythical but more or less human predecessors of the Dieri in the 

 country. See A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South- East Australia, pp. ±75sqq. 



