THE PROBLEM OF ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AUSTRALIA 9 
AUSTRALIANS AND T'ASMANIANS 
Wood Jones (1935 b) summarized the most generally accepted 
current opinions on racial affinities of Australian aborigines. He 
said that the Australian belongs to the Dravidian race; he is not 
a black man nor does he have fuzzy hair; he is a member of the 
straight- or wavy-haired, brown-skinned race that has no near 
kinship with the true negro. The physical characters, blood group- 
ings and culture of Australians all point to them as being the 
advance guard of the great pre-Dravidian migration that, starting 
probably in the Mediterranean region, spread across India into 
Ceylon and then to the Malayan region. With the Veddas of 
Ceylon and with other scattered remnants of this migration the 
Australian native has very real affinities." 
Wood Jones (1935 a) also gave a summary of what is known 
of the extinct Tasmanians. He said that in colour the Tasmanian 
was so dark a shade of brown that casual observers described him 
as black. The scalp hair was black and grew as crisp, frizzy little 
curls, but unlike the true peppercorn hair of the African negro, 
the hair of the Tasmanian grew to a considerable length. ‘The 
average height of the men was five feet five and a quarter inches, 
more than an inch less than that of the average male Australian. 
The Tasmanian, according to him, was a primitive Negroid.’ 
Meston (1936) pointed out that Tasmanians had the dark skin, 
flat nose and wide nostrils adapted to hot climates, but disadvan- 
tageous in cool-temperate regions such as Tasmania; David (1924) 
als» noted this point. The inference is that the race evolved under 
tropical conditions and migrated to Tasmania at a fairly late 
stare of its evolutionary history.’ 
Some investigators, however, have expressed other views con- 
cerning the racial affinities of Australians and Tasmanians. 
Turner (1908) held that Australians and Tasmanians belong 
to distinct races, but a proportion of natives in southern and 
western Australia have skulls that point to possible intermixture 
and racial affinity with Tasmanians; he inferred that the Tas- 
manians were direct descendants from a primitive Negrito stock 
and had become specialized in many ways as a result of long 
isolation. Klaatsch (1908) considered that Australian aborigines 
are a relic of the oldest type of mankind. Keith (1910) concluded 
1. For blood grouping see Cleland, Cleland and Johnston, Tebbutt, Tebbutt and McConnel, 
Lee, Birdsell and Boyd, Phillips, and F. J. Fenner (1939); for descriptions of skulls, Berry 
and Robertson, Biichner, Burkitt, Burkitt and Hunter, Fenner, Hrdlicka, Howells, Klaatsch, 
Morant, Robertson, Shellshear, Wagner, and Wood Jones; for teeth and palate, Campbell. 
2. For descriptions of Tasmanian skulls see Berry and Robertson, Buchner, Crowther and 
Lord, Hrdli¢ka, Morant, Ramsay Smith, Turner, Wagner, Wood Jones, and Wunderly; teeth 
anit palate, Campbell (in Wood Jones, 1924). 
3. See also Davies (1932). 
