THE PROBLEM OF ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AUSTRALIA 11 
that the Australian type extends throughout Australia, but there 
is some variation, probably due to migration of Melanesian people 
from the north, so that Australian skulls fall into six sub-types 
found respectively in Northern Australia, Queensland, West 
Australia, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. The 
similarity of Tasmanian and Australian skulls is striking, the 
Tasmanians being closer to the West Australian sub-group than 
to any of the others. Possibly an original Tasmanoid population 
in Australia was driven west and south by later incomers. 
It is generally agreed that mankind and all other placental 
mammals originated outside the Australian region. 
The ancestors of both Australian and Tasmanian aborigines 
no doubt reached Australia by way of that avenue of migration 
along which many races of mankind have passed towards the 
Pacific—the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, and New Guinea. 
Some Australoid and Negrito tribes are found among the races 
inhabiting Malaya and New Guinea. The fact that an Australoid 
skull of some geological antiquity has been found in New Guinea 
(F. J. Fenner, 1941), and that ancient Australoid skulls (Wadjak 
man) have been described from Java by Dubois (1920), lends 
strong support to the theory that the forefathers of the Australian 
race migrated along this route in the distant past. Dubois’s claim 
that Wadjak man is of Pleistocene age has not been substantiated 
(von Koenigswald, 1937).* 
Huxley, Wood Jones, Pulleine and others hold that the 
Tasmanians voyaged from New Caledonia; Howitt, Haddon, 
Wunderly, Meston and others consider that they migrated from 
the mainland of Australia across a land-bridge or by eanoe. 
Howitt (1898) pictured both Tasmanians and Australians as 
arriving in Australia by way of a land-bridge formerly connecting 
Asia and Australia, which was broken at Wallace’s line by a 
narrow stretch of sea that might be crossed in vessels no better 
than modern Australian bark canoes, the Tasmanians arriving 
first and occupying Tasmania while it still formed part of the 
mainland. Tindale and Birdsell (1942) claim that small tribes 
with Tasmanian affinities survive in the Atherton rain jungle, 
North Queensland; possibly, however, these tribes may have 
originated by infiltration of people from New Guinea or adjacent 
islands. The Keilor skull, which combines Tasmanian with 
Australian characteristics, supports the theory that Tasmanians 
once occupied the Australian mainland. 
During Pleistocene glacial phases sea level fell, and Tasmania 
was connected or almost connected by land with Victoria; in 
4. See also Fromaget (1940 a, b) and Mijsberg (1940). 
