218 



Where successive waves of migration occur the inferior 

 races are driven by the invaders, either up into mountain 

 recesses or to the extremities of the land. The latter fate may 

 have happened to the first occupiers of the Australian soil, 

 while the geological incident of the submergence of the land, 

 at the strait, and the conversion of the Tasmanian peninsula 

 into an island, gave the remnants of this people the chance 

 of survival. The absence of any evidences that the dingo 

 found its way to Tasmania, leads to the inference that the 

 separation of Tasmania from the mainland occurred at a date 

 prior to the arrival of this animal on the southern coasts of 

 Victoria. 



It is generally admitted that the Tasmanian natives 

 represented one of the most primitive and generalized types 

 of mankind. Their low development, as evidenced in the 

 manufacture of their weapons and tools, indicates an isolation 

 that must date back to a high antiquity. If they had a 

 Negrito-Papuan-Melanesian origin, as appears likely from 

 their racial characteristics/ 5 ) they must have migrated from 

 their ancestral home before the introduction of the bow and 

 arrow among these peoples, as it seems very improbable that 

 a people who once possessed this useful weapon could ever 

 lose all knowledge of such a simple and effective contrivance. 



In the event of the Tasmanian natives having reached 

 their island home by way of Australia they must have left 

 some evidences of their occupation of the mainland, if not in 

 other ways, at least by their stone implements, which are 

 practically imperishable. The question that arises is : Can 

 there be a possible connection between these unique imple- 

 ments of the central tableland of Australia and the Tasmanian 

 people? In pursuing this enquiry, the only basis for com- 

 parison that we possess is in relation to their respective 

 artefacts in stone, the methods adopted in their manufacture, 

 the range of differentiation in their types, and the consequent 

 stage of culture indicated by the same. 



(c) TASMANIAN STONE IMPLEMENTS. 



The class of stone mainly utilized by the late Tasmanians, 

 in the manufacture of their implements, was obtained, 

 principally, from the shales of the Permo-carboniferous coal 

 measures, that had been indurated and more or less meta- 

 morphosed into a cherty rock by the intrusive igneous dykes 



(5) Mr. Churchward holds the view that the Pygmies of 

 Central Africa are the nearest living representatives of Primitive 

 Man. He says, "It was in Africa that the little Pigmy was first 

 evolved from the Pithecanthropus erectus, or an anthropoid ape" 

 [I., p. 12], He also regards the "extinct Tasmanians as highly- 

 developed Pygmies" [Joe. cit., p. 19]. 



