Arunta Theory of Evolution 169 



or plant of which he or she was a transformation." However, it is 

 not said that all the totemic clans of the Arunta were thus developed ; 

 no such tradition, for example, is told to explain the origin of the 

 important Witchetty Grub clan. The clans which are positively 

 known, or at least said, to have originated out of embryos in the way 

 described are the Plum Tree, the Grass Seed, the Large Lizard, the 

 Small Lizard, the Alexandra Parakeet, and the Small Rat clans. 

 When the Ungambikula had thus fashioned people of these totems, 

 they circumcised them all, except the Plum Tree men, by means 

 of a fire-stick. After that, having done the work of creation or 

 evolution, the Ungambikula turned themselves into little lizards 

 which bear a name meaning " snappers-up of flies 1 ." 



This Arunta tradition of the origin of man, as Messrs Spencer and 

 Gillen, who have recorded it, justly observe, " is of considerable 

 interest ; it is in the first place evidently a crude attempt to describe 

 the origin of human beings out of non-human creatures who were of 

 various forms ; some of them were representatives of animals, others 

 of plants, but in all cases they are to be regarded as intermediate 

 stages in the transition of an animal or plant ancestor into a human 

 individual who bore its name as that of his or her totem 2 ." In a sense 

 these speculations of the Arunta on their own origin may be said to 

 combine the theory of creation with the theory of evolution ; for 

 while they represent men as developed out of much simpler forms of 

 life, they at the same time assume that this development was effected 

 by the agency of two powerful beings, whom so far we may call 

 creators. It is well known that at a far higher stage of culture 

 a crude form of the evolutionary hypothesis was propounded by the 

 Greek philosopher Empedocles. He imagined that shapeless lumps of 

 earth and water, thrown up by the subterranean fires, developed into 

 monstrous animals, bulls with the heads of men, men with the heads 

 of bulls, and so forth ; till at last, these hybrid forms being gradually 

 eliminated, the various existing species of animals and men were 

 evolved 3 . The theory of the civilised Greek of Sicily may be set 

 beside the similar theory of the savage Arunta of Central Australia. 

 Both represent gropings of the human mind in the dark abyss of the 

 past ; both were in a measure grotesque anticipations of the modern 

 theory of evolution. 



In this essay I have made no attempt to illustrate all the many 



1 Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899), 

 pp. 388 sq.; compare id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1904), p. 150. 



2 Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 391 sq. 



3 E. Zeller, Die Philosophic der Griechen, i* (Leipsic, 1876), pp. 718 sq. ; H. Bitter et 

 L. Preller, Historia Philosophiae Graecae et Roman ae exfontium locis contexta 5 , pp. 102 sq. ; 

 H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker 2 , i. (Berliu, 1906), pp. 190 sqq. Compare 

 Lucretius, De rerum natura, v. 837 sqq. 



