October 6, 1 904] 



NA TURE 



56: 



Dr. Myers's paper on the variability of ancient and 

 modern peoples elaborated the last-named point in com- 

 parison with data from elsewhere. .Ancient and modern 

 peoples do flot seriously differ in variability, provided the 

 external conditions are similar, while favourable conditions 

 tend to homogeneity, i.e. regression towards the mean ; and 

 vice versa. ■ ■ 



.Mr. Duckworth discussed the methods of graphical 

 representation of the various racial human types employed 

 by Keane, Flinders Petrie, Thomson, and Strentz, and pro- 

 posed the simile of a protoplasmic origin modified into 

 processes representing the various morphological types. 



Prof. A. .Macalister exhibited a series of Amorite crania 

 from excavations at Gezer, in Palestine. The people of 

 the first two strata practised cremation, and so destroyed 

 their skulls, but the third and fourth strata show burials 

 in contracted posture, accompanied by food vessels. 



Lingxtistics. 

 On the morning of .August 22 Sir Richard Temple, Bart., 

 explained a plan for a uniform scientific record of the 

 languages of savages, which starts from the sentence as 

 unit-expression of a complete meaning, and classifies words 

 according to their function in the sentence. The forms 

 assumed by words grow out of these functions, and are 

 determined by sundry functional affixes. The sentence con- 

 sidered as the elementary component of a language indicates 

 the outlines of a classification of languages, and the con- 

 ditions under which languages and linguistic groups 

 develop. The plan has been successfully applied to several 

 savage tongues, as well as to Latin, English, and 

 Hungarian, and claims consideration as leading to rapid 

 and accurate analysis and acquisition of language. 



General Ethnology. 



Mr. A. W. Howitt read on Monday a paper on group- 

 marriage in .Australian tribes. .Among the tribes round 

 Lake Eyre, two forms of marriage occur. One follows 

 upon betrothal of children by their mothers, and the other 

 is the subsequent marriage of the woman to a younger 

 brother of her husband. On ceremonial occasions this 

 latter .form of marriage is extended in the tribe by the 

 allotment to each other of men and women who are already 

 allotted to each other under one or other of the two 

 marriages. This group-marriage also occurs in other 

 tribes in south-east Australia, either in the form which it 

 has in the Lake Eyre tribes or as a survival of custom. 

 It is shown by the svstem of relationship in the .Australian 

 tribes to have been at one time common to all. In the 

 Lake Eyre tribes there is female descent with group- 

 marriage. In other tribes in which group-marriage is 

 merely a survival, or is merely indicated by the terminology 

 of relationship, there has been more or less an approach 

 to a form of individual marriage accompanied by a change 

 from female to male descent. Changes such as these are 

 attended also 'by alteration of the social organisation of the 

 tribes. In one direction there has been a segmentation of 

 the tribe from a division of two intermarrying exogamous 

 moieties of the tribal community to four such divisions, and 

 finally into eight, with a change also in the line of descent. 

 In the other direction there has been a partial or complete 

 loss of this division of the community into four and eight 

 segments. The tribe has become organised on a geo- 

 graphical basis into a number of local groups, and these 

 localities have become e.xogamous and intermarrying. In 

 these changes in the organisation of the tribes the line of 

 descent has passed from the female to the male line. In 

 the Lake Eyre tribes a group of totems is attached to each 

 exogamous moletv. These remain in existence in the 

 segmentation into four and eight groups. In those tribes 

 where the organisation of the tribe has become local, the 

 totem groups have either become more or less extinct or 

 have changed in extreme cases into magial names without 

 influence in marriage. 



Mr. R. S. Lepper offered a discussion of the passing of 

 the matriarchate as observed in southern India, but devoted 

 the time allotted to him to an exhibit of photographs of 

 more or less matriarchal peoples. 



On Wednesday M. E. Demolins submitted, under the 

 title " Classification .Sociale," an elaborate analysis of types 

 of human society, based upon that of Le Play, but designed 



NO. 1823, VOL. 70] 



to supersede it by, a system based upon modern ethnological 

 data. .All human societies are either communistic, relying 

 for social progress on the community rather than on the 

 individual, or particularist, with the reverse tendency. The 

 former dominates the east, and explains its immobility ; the 

 latter the west, and causes its progress. The communistic 

 societies pass through the three stages of stability, in- 

 stability, and chaos. Inthe third, communism is seen break- 

 ing down, as in ancient Greece and Italy, or in eastern 

 Europe now. The particularist societies are in turn rudi- 

 mentary, chaotic {ebranlee), and advanced ; to the last, as 

 illustrated in Greater Britain and the United States, belong 

 the social types of the future. Within these main types 

 social growth is conditioned by geographical considerations, 

 which determine the dominant forms of human industry and 

 the institutions which result. The paper, which was well 

 illustrated by printed diagrams, gave rise to a lively dis- 

 cussion. 



Dr. W. H. R. Rivers described the funeral ceremonies of 

 the Todas. Among points not previously noted are : — 

 (i) the laying of a cloth on the body by those who have 

 married into the clan ; (2) a purification-rite, in which a man 

 in woman's ornaments touches the remains with a bow 

 and arrow ; (3) the Toda beliefs as to the incidents of the 

 journey to the other world. 



Mr. E. S. Hartland exhibited a votive offering from 

 Korea, representing a tiger in roughly cast iron. The 

 Korean mountains are infested by tigers, which were 

 formerly worshipped, and every pass has its votive shrine ; 

 probably, therefore, this votive tiger belongs to some tiger- 

 cult. 



.Mr. E. P. Martin's paper on the Fulahs of Nigeria, and 

 Prof. Ridgeway's anthropological view of the origin of 

 tragedy, were taken as read. 



Sgean .1 rchaeology. 



The morning session of .August 23 was devoted to the 

 results of recent exploration in Crete, and the section 

 adjourned to the New Theatre to secure accommodation for 

 the more numerous audience. 



The proceedings opened with a brief address from Dr. 

 P. Kabbadias, Inspector-General of .Antiquities in Athens, 

 who discussed the reasons 'for the great rarity of Neolithic 

 remains in Greek lands, and described the recent operations 

 of the Greek Archaeological Society in Thessaly. Dr. 

 Kabbadias's appearance was received with the utmost 

 cordiality, and ex,preSsion . was given by Sir John Evans, 

 Sir Richard Jebb, and by two successive directors of the 

 British School of Archaj'ology in Athens to the general 

 appreciation 'Of his services to the cause of Greek antiquities 

 and to the foreign students of all nationalities in .Athens. 



The report of the Cretan Exploration Committee sum- 

 marised the course of the British excavations of 1904, and 

 left the way clear for discussion of the results. 



Dr. Arthur Evans, F.R.S., explained his preliminary 

 scheme for the classification and approximate chronology 

 of the periods of Minoan culture in Crete, from the close 

 of the Neolithic to the early Iron age. To the period as 

 a whole it is proposed definitely to attach the name Minoan, 

 as indicating the probable duration of successive dynasties 

 of priest-kings, the tradition of which has taken abiding 

 form in the name of Minos. It is proposed to divide this 

 .Minoan era into three main periods, early, middle, and late, 

 each with a first, second, and third subperiod. The use 

 of the word Mycenaean should be confined to objects of the 

 late and subsidiary outgrowth {Late Minoan III.), when 

 the fine motives of the " la«t Palace Period " at Knossos 

 (now Late Minoan IL) are already in the state of decadence 

 observable at Tell-el-Amarna- (about 1400 B.C.), and even 

 in earlier objects associated with cartouches of .Amen- 

 hotep III. and his Queen, in -Egypt, Rhodes, Mycenje, and 

 elsewhere. The less decadent forerunners of this style, in 

 the new-found cemeterv at Knossos, are still later than 

 the art of the "last Palace Period." The third late 

 Minoan period may thus be roughly dated between 1500 B.C. 

 and 1 1 00 B.C. 



Late Minoan IL, which precedes it, is best illustrated, in 

 the latest palace at Knossos. by the fine " Palace style," 

 with its strong architectonic elements, and marked corre- 

 spondence, in its latest stage, with the art of the Kefts 



