NEW GUINEA RACE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 108, 9 May 1934, Page 8

NEW GUINEA RACE

REPORT OF LOST TRIBE SUPPOSED SEMETIC ORIGIN. ANTHROPOLOGISTS’ VIEWS. Some information regarding the reported discovery in the interior of NewGuinea of a hitherto unknown race, believed to be of Semetie origin, was given by Bishop Baddcley of Melanesia, when interviewed in Auckland by a New Zealand representative a few days ago. Ho said that the people in question numbered 200,000. Professor J. Macmillan Brown, exChancellor of the University of New Zealand, and an authority* on Pacific anthropology, when interviewed on the subject by the Christchurch Sun this week, expressed some surprise at Bishop Baddcley’s statement. Another anthropologist who was interviewed said there was nothing new in the reported discovery. “I must make it clear that I have never been in the interior of New Guinea,” Professor Macmillan Brown said, ‘ ‘ but 1 have been all round it, on the north side, and the south side, with the result that 1 know thoroughly tho characteristics of the natives on the coast. In my journeyings I saw no type that could be called Semetic. “On the south coast of Dutch New Guinea 1 saw a tribe of very tall, very hairy men, with beard and moustache, more like the natives of Australia than anything else, but not Semitic. Occasionally one secs an arched nose among tribes throughout the Pacific, but there is no trace of a tribe wholly with that characteristic. ” Matter for Further Research. “However,” said Professor Macmillan Brown, “whether there is anything in the report or not is for those in British New Guinea to find out. Perhaps those connected with the Bulolo goldfields might be able to throw some light on the subject, for aeroplanes fly into the interior of New Guinea. “I cannot comment fully on the report, for, as I said, I have not been in th'' interior. I think the late Mr. Elsdon Best had an idea that the Polynesians came from a Semitic country somewhere about Mesopotamia. J doubt, though, whether the Polynesians could have found their way against the trade winds to the cast, where they are established as the people. “Another point is that the Maoris and the Polynesians never made pottery. Right along the coast of Njjw Guinea, in the Malay Archipelago, in Melanesia and east of Fiji, one secs the natives making pottery. I once asked the late Dr. Ellis if he could explain how the Polynesians passed through these countries and yet never gained a knowledge of pottery-making. His only reply was that they had forgotten it. “No. It remains for the trained anthropologists to settle the question of the new race. The Lieutenant-Gover-nor of Papua. Sir Hubert Murray, a brother of Professor Gilbert Murray, occasionally communicates with me. He is keenly interested in anthropology, and no doubt he would be able to throw some light onthc matter.” “Nothing New in Discovery.” Another anthropologist said that there was nothing new in the reported discovery, for in another part of New Guinea a people with Semitic characteristics had boon found previously. “The latest supposedly Semitic people,” this authority said, “has been found in the far interior of mandated New Guinea, behind very high mountain ranges, and the isolation of such a people is easily understood when it is realised that the main mountain range of New Guinea runs up to such heights that in the hinterland of Papua and the mandated territory there are peaks as high as 14,000 ft., and the snow mountains of Dutch New Guinea rise to as high as J B,oooft. Also, the country is in many parts heavily jungled, and the rivers are swift-flow-ing through deep, boulder-strewn gorges, which make access extremely difficult. “The discovery of a Semitic-appear-ing people in the island of New Guinea —which, it should be remembered, is the largest island in the world, apart from the island continent of Australia —is not new. Some years ago a hitherto unknown tribe was found near Lake Murray, which lies inland near the north-western border of Papua in country never previously visited. “ This people, which had none of the admixture of Melanesian blood to be found in the people of the south-eastern par" of New Guinea, had facial characteristics very similar to those of the Jews, particularly in the size and shape of the nose. In several respects their culture was different from that of the coastal peoples.”