PRIMEVAL MAM TO-DAY

Evening Star, Issue 20252, 13 August 1929, Page 7

PRIMEVAL MAM TO-DAY

!H PRIMITIVE NEW GUINEA In Australia and Now Guinea the aboriginal peoples live asdid our early ancestors in Great Britain in the days of the cave men and the men of tho river drifts. The earliest forms of mankind ate the natural products of the forests, killed animals for meat, and used their skins to clothe themselves. Nowadays wo can only read about the prehistoric men aud women of Europe, 'but in New Guinea and in Australia wo may still see primeval man in the flesh and watch him- at work and at play. Tho Australian aborigines are invariably wandering hunters, always on the move, with no fixed habitations (states Dr Brooke Nicholls, in the Melbourne ’Argus’). They shelter from the cold winds and the rain beneath mia-niias, bark “lean-fibs,” gather roots aud yams, and grind desert seeds to make Hour. They hunt the wild animals of the great sandy plains and forest country,, digging bandicoots, rats 7 dingoes, ui(l snakes out of their burrows. They half-cook them in the fire before consuming them, and the large proportions of ash., and grit mixed with the. food soon wear their teeth to gum level. When they have “eaten out” one patch of country they move on to a new camp. All such aboriginal people are adopt trackers, and the earliest form of education is in hunting. I have seen native boys and girls constantly practising«tho drawing of animal tracks in the sand. A'-wonderful knowledge of animal life is gained by sketching tho footprints of the emu, kangaroo, bandicoot, and tho train of the womma, a large carpet snake, a special delicacy of the aborigines in Central Australia. It is no uncommon sight to see a child playing about the camp, holding in its hand a portion of tho white flesh of the womma nibbling at it from time to time as a city-child would a biscuit. Young children of all aboriginal races appreciate animal life. In Australia, dingo puppies, rats, ■ rabbits, and bandicoots, frogs, and young birds are their pets and playthings, and they are carried from place to place as the tribe shifts to new hunting grounds. The primitive Papuans are tho most ancient of all the peoples bordering the Pacific ocean, a distinction once shared by tho extinct Tasmanian, race. The primordial Papuan stock has been modified down tho ages by the absorption of invading migrations of Australoid and Melanesian races, who for centuries dominated tho Malay Archipelago, and grafted their new stone culture upon the more primitive inhabitants. In a hot, humid climate like that of Now Guinea man’s ability to oppose tho encroachment of the jungle and establish permanent habitations depended, largely upon his knowledge of the ' use of file halted stone axe and fire. The part played by tho growth of - vegetation and forests in subjugating and exterminating early primitive man has only recently been realised. It has always been conjectured that the New Guinea pile villages were adopted as precautionary measures against head-hunting neighbours, but it may be that the sites of such dwellings in the first, place were chosen because the primitive Papuan Jacked the means of lighting the forest. When man first learnt to clear land, to fell trees, and to direct streams, to use a digging stick nr some such inplemcnt with’ which ho tilled tho soil and grew food, tiicre came a great change—one of tho greatest in man’s history. Tho larger production of food created an increased population, and with it the establishment of villages of fixed habitations. Huts were built, palisades or fences wore erected around the tilled fields to protect them from the raids of animals or other native tribes, and so came the dawn of civilisation. In tropical New Guinea, whore, with the powerful hot sun and heavy rains, plants grew rapidly and luxuriantly, life became easier and tiicre was

leisure time to practice the arts. The principal weapon of tho Papuans is the bow and arrow. Boys were shown how to fashion a, bow from a piece of wood or from the mid-rib of the nipa palm. Reeds were collected from the mosquito-in-fested swamps and morasses of the Mekeo Plain for arrows. These were tipped with hollow pieces of tho leg and arm bones- of a small wallaby, a chipped flake, or the long, sharp toe of tho cassowary. Many of those arrows are beautifully ornamented. The string of the how was manufactured from a single fine strip of bamboo. By hollowing out a log with fire and stretching a goanna skin over one end the natives made a drum, the badge of manhood. Owing to the absence of all .mammals, snakes, and largo lizards in Now Zealand, the Maoris never-evolved a drum. The hoys also helped the elder men in the building of canoes and the weaving and sewing of the largo mat sails.

Heavy stone clubs in the shape of discs, stars, and pineapples arc deadly skull-crashing weapons. Those are chipped out of solid pieces of stone with small hammer stones. Once used in head-hunting days against neighbouring tribes, thev are now chiefly employed for the killing oi pigs in tho villages in contact with white civilisation. Spears arc not much in use. among the mountain people. They rely mainly on the how and arrow and' large nets, into winch .the game, wild pigs, wallabies, and cassowaries are driven. Many pigeons and birds of paradise are caught by means of a native bird lime made' from the sticky juice of a tree resembling our Moretoii Bay fig. Bird lime is also obtained from the exudation of a parasitic vine. Girls are taught by their mothers to hoe in the gardens, to pound corn or seeds, and to carry babies on their backs in net bags slung from the head. A girl aged twelve years will carrv a .‘lOl b load of sweet potatoes or bananas for-maov miles. The girls soon learn to strip fibre from the leaves of the panclanus and cocoariut palms, the largo green leaf of tho banana and the long native grasses, to make string carrying hags, fishing nets, grass petticoats, armlets, and waist girdles. From the stripped bark of certain trees they beat out with a wooden beater, serrated on the working surface, a rough type of tnppa cloth.. When the required thickness is obtained the cloth is hung out to dry beforebeing painted. The painting material is gathered from various sources. Red is always extra teed from tho juice of harks and fruits. Black from potblack, obtained by burning rosins ami catching the smoko on a piece of broken pot. Brown is a mixture of red and black. Yellow is obtained from the

tumeric plant. The brush is made from a fibrous uandanus cone, and the designs represent geometrical patterns, flowers, birds, animals, and other natural objects. In Nmv Guinea is a material culture of the higher order, ranking second only to that of the Maoris. The first

I thing that strikes the eye is Hm dress, jor, perhaps, one should call it the undress of the men and women. Outside Port Moresby and the clnef mission centres the ordinal - " dress of the men is reduced to a thin waist girdle,, in many cases no thicker than a shoe lace, to which is attached a per meal hand passing between the legs, borne of those bands are elaborately e’eco/ated 1 with, ‘tho - coloured', figures nr a 'small lizard or gecko. The women ■.■ car pet- | ticoats of grass or palm leaf. These are

made of long, line fibres, reaching to just above the knees of married women, and half that length in the cast- ot unmarried girls. The baby’s dress is not more than two or three inches in length. For special ceremonial occasions, such as tho departure of flic lakatois, or trading canoes and initiation dances, the. fibres are usually stained in light or dark ochmms shades. For every-day wear Hie skirts are made of broad, Hat pieces of pandnmis leaf, first dried and bleached in tho son. Often the women put on two or three ram is or petticoats, the coloured ones over the bleached ones. Both men and women wear necklaces of palm and other seeds, and various shells or parts of shells 4 strung together. The most valuable, however, is a necklace of dogs’ and crocodiles' teeth, neatly perforated for stringing. Large, crescent-shaped ornaments or breast-plates of mother-of-pearl are considered valuable, but not as precious as the wide iuimlot ot white shells, which are cut out, in the solid from large trochas o.r top-shells.