1-30 



Überzeugung, daß Victoria seit nicht länger als 1000 4^ 50 

 Prozent Jahren bevölkert sei, Hand in Hand mit dieser seiner 

 Überzeugung geht dann natürlich die obige, daß jene Fährten 

 von Warnambool nicht dem Menschen angehören. Ich glaube, 

 den betreffenden Teil des Briefes^), welchen ich seiner Liebens- 

 würdigkeit verdanke, hier nicht vorenthalten zu sollen. 



Laloy^) berichtet indessen, daß Etheridge in einer der 

 Wellingtonhöhlen in Neu-Süd-Wales zwei menschliche Molaren, 

 sitzend in einer Knochenbreccie, gefunden hat, welche auch Reste 

 von JDiprotoäon und Tliylacoleo enthielt. Die Gleichzeitigkeit 

 des australischen Menschen mit diesen ausgestorbenen quartären 

 Tierformen würde nun freilich für ein relativ hohes Alter auch 

 des Menschen sprechen — vorausgesetzt, daß eben jene Mit- 

 teilung von Etheridge richtig sein sollte. 



WiLSER^), welcher auf der Naturforscherversammlung zu 

 Cassel die von Herrn Alsberg ausgestellten Gipsabgüsse dieser 

 Fußspuren und Gesäßeindrücke von Warnambool gesehen hat, 



^) „After consideration of the evidence my Impression is that man has 

 been an extremely short time in Victoria, say 1000 years, 4= 50 per cent. 

 All Our human records are in most superficial deposits. No country 

 in the world has had its gravels searched as ours have been. You 

 can find Stretches of these gravels for hundreds of acres, turned up, 

 and the underlying surface exposed. The work was done by men, very 

 keen observers, many of whom took great interest in the aborigines. 

 But except on the surface layer, no reliable human implements have 

 ever been found. In our sand dunes we find old camping grounds upon 

 the hardened dune surface, but it is only in the top surface that abor- 

 iginal remains occur. Old dune surfaces, in places where the aborigin- 

 es would first have camped, and which probably were not formed 500 

 years ago, are quite harren of human remains. The slight distance 

 which the aborigines penetrated into our forests also suggests their 

 conparatively recent arrival. If they had been in the country for a 

 prolonged period we should probably have had specialized hill tribes." 



„Many of our volcanic rocks are very recent date; we have craters 

 in excellent preservation. There are stories, said to be evidence of 

 the aborigines having seen the eruptions; these all break down on 

 examination and none of them refer to the most recent of our volcanoes. 

 None of the names of those mountains have any reference to fire or 

 smoke, the names indicate that the mountains were in their present 

 conditions Avhen natives first saw them. Considering the extravagant 

 untidiness with which the aborigines scattered flint chips around their 

 camps it seems to me inconceivable that we should not find abundance 

 of these chips in our lower dunes, and our gravels, if man had been 

 alive during their deposition. I have seen myself no traces of worked 

 stones or other traces of man in the Warrnambool sandstones, which 

 are a scries of dune Hniestones." 



2) I/antiquite de Thomme cn Australie. L'Antropolocic. Paris 1902. 

 S. 415. 



^) Die Germanen, Eisenach, Thüringische Vcrlagsanstalt S. 22. 

 Aum. 25. 



