STRANGE CUSTOMS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21578, 24 August 1933, Page 10

STRANGE CUSTOMS

NEW GUINEA TRIBE Many of tho strange customs" of tho natives of tho Wiwiak Mountains,, in New Guinea, wore described in Sydney recently by Dr. Margaret Mead, of the American Museum of Natural History, Now York, in a lecture to members of tho Anthropological Society of New South Walos. She described how growth —both of children and of food—had bccomo a central factor in their lives, dominating their tabus and other beliefs.

The natives lived in a mountainous district, Dr. Moad said, where food was Boarco. They practised infanticide, and had rigorous rules for the conduct of their women. Particularly rigorous were their food tabus. A man was forbidden to eat his. own kill—tho hunter who ato tho animal he had killed was looked upon as a criminal. Similarly, tho meagre produce of tho gardens was shared among the community. The families worked small garden patches in conjunction with other families, but they had several of these patches, and though their method working mado for companionship, it also compelled them to walk four or five miles from one garden to the other.

The available firewood • had long ago been cleared' from near tho small villages in which they lived, and the women had to go several miles to fetch fuel. Contrary to what one would expect in the tropics, they lived in a cold, misty, bone-racking climate, where often at 3 a.m. they would arise, bocause it was too cold to sleep, and huddle around their fires until daybreak.