508 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 



negatively, social attitudes, very simple and frequent, on grounds entirely fanciful 

 and not a bit rational. This functional method of social sanctioning might be 

 called totemism. 



One of the collective situations that seem most frequently to need sanction 

 is the permanence of a social grouping whatever its origins and whatever its 

 special field may be (for instance, blood— or Active relationship extending over 

 generations, hereditary castes, &c). The occasionally emblematic, as well as the 

 occasionally traditional character of the totem would simply appear to be conse- 

 quences of the original sanction, the symbol being a means of social attestation 

 and the hereditary transmission a means of social continuity. Totemic tales would 

 be post facto explanations elaborated according to a well-known social process. 



The totemic function would in primitive society be naturally mingled with 

 the manifestations of several other functions, as is the case for every function 

 in the complex of organised social life : so it would come to appear as interwoven 

 with, for instance, the regulation of marriages, or with tabus, &c. 



Totemism, as so interpreted, would spontaneously tend to disappear in every 

 society that would allow more practical and surer administrative devices to be 

 applied in order to perform the same function as totemism performed in primi- 

 tive society. 



The following Paper was then read : — 



The Tribes of the Mimika District of Dutch New Guinea, the Tribes of the 

 Sea Coast, and the Tapiro Pygmies. By Captain C. G. Rawling. 



MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4. 

 The following Papers and Reports were read : — 



1. Notes on the Stature, &c, of our Ancestors in East Yorkshire. 

 By the late J. R. Mortimer. 



During the author's excavations of over three hundred burial-mounds and 

 cemeteries in East Yorkshire during the past half-century, he gathered together 

 a fine series of crania and other bones belonging to the Neolithic, Bronze, 

 Early Iron, Romano-British, and Anglo-Saxon periods. Of the Neolithic and 

 Bronze periods remains of 893 bodies were obtained, but as 322 of these had 

 been cremated, 571 only were available for detailed measurements. Of these, 

 35 were long-headed and had an average stature of 66 inches, 29 had short skulls 

 and averaged 643 inches in height, and 40 had skulls of an intermediate form and 

 averaged 644 inches in height. The greatest stature in this series measures 

 72-8 inches, and the lowest 56"4 inches. 



During the Early Iron Age the inhabitants possessed more unifonnly long 

 skulls, but were physically much inferior to their predecessors. Of 59 skeletons, 

 42 had long heads and an average stature of 62'5 inches, 2 had short heads 

 with a computed height of 61-9 inches, while 14 were intermediate in type and 

 averaged 63'2 inches. The skeletons of the Romano -British period were not so 

 plentiful, but much resembled those of the Early Iron Age, from which they 

 probably descended. 



Of the 61 Anglo-Saxon skeletons measured, 31 had long heads, with an aver- 

 age stature of 657 inches ; seven had short heads with an average stature of 

 64 inches, and 23 had skulls of an intermediate type, and had an average stature 

 of 63-6 inches. 



Taking the Anglo-Saxon skeletons in their entirety we find that they average 

 3-4 inches in height greater than their predecessors of the Early Iron Age, 

 though they more nearly resemble the people of the Stone and Bronze periods. 

 From the evidence given it is clear that the first inhabitants of this district 



