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 ANTHROPOMETRY

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10), the difficult problem presented itself what degree of swimming fish were avoided as food. Meat and vegetable general culture these rude implements belonged to. On food, such as fern-root, was broiled over the fire, but mere inspection, their rudeness, their unsuitability for boiling in a vessel was unknown. The fire was produced being hafted, and the absence of shaping and edging by by the ordinary savage fire-drill. Ignorant of agriculture, the grindstone, mark their inferiority to the Neolithic with no dwellings but rough huts or breakwinds of sticks implements. Their immensely greater antiquity was and bark, without dogs or other domestic animals, these proved by their geological position and their association savages, until the coming of civilized man, roamed after food with a long extinct fauna, and they were not, like the within their tribal bounds. Logs and clumsy floats of Neoliths, recognizable as corresponding closely to the bark and grass enabled them to cross water under favourimplements used by modern tribes. There was at first a able circumstances. They had clothing of skins rudely tendency to consider the Palseoliths as the work of men stitched together with bark thread, and they were ruder than savages, if, indeed, their makers were to be decorated with simple necklaces of kangaroo teeth, shells, accounted human at all. Since then, however, the problem and berries. Among their simple arts, plaiting and has passed into a more manageable state. Stone imple- basket-work was one in which they approached the civilized ments, more or less approaching the European Palaeolithic level. The pictorial art of the Tasmanians was poor and type, were found in Africa from Egypt southwards, where childish, quite below that of the Palaeolithic men of in such parts as Somaliland and Cape Colony they lie about Europe. The Tasmanians spoke a fairly copious aggluon the ground, as though they had been the rough tools tinating language, well marked as to parts of speech, and weapons of the rude inhabitants of the land at no very syntax, and inflexion. Numeration was at a low level, distant period. The group in Fig. 11 in the Plate shows based on counting fingers on one hand only, so that the the usual Somaliland types. These facts tended to remove word for man (puggana) stood also for the numbei 5. the mystery from Palaeolithic man, though too little is The religion of the Tasmanians, when cleared from ideas known of the ruder ancient tribes of Africa to furnish apparently learnt from the whites, was a simple form of a definition of the state of culture which might have animism based on the shadow (warrawa) being the soul or co-existed with the use of Palaeolithic implements.. In- spirit. The strongest belief of the natives was in the power formation to this purpose, however, can now be furnished of the ghosts of the dead, so that they carried the bones of from a more outlying region. This is Tasmania, where, relatives to secure themselves from harm, and they fancied as in the adjacent continent of Australia, the survival of the forest swarming with malignant demons. They placed marsupial animals indicates long isolation from the rest of weapons near the grave for the dead friend s soul to use, the world. Here, till far on into the 19th century, the and drove out disease from the sick with the intruding Englishmen could watch the natives striking off flakes, of ghost which had caused it. Of greater special spiiits of stone, trimming them to convenient shape for grasping Nature we find something vaguely mentioned. The earliest them in the hand, and edging them by taking oft successive recorders of the native social life set down such features as chips on one face only. The group in Fig. 12 shows their previous experience of rude civilized life had .made ordinary Tasmanian forms, two of them being finer them judges of. They notice the self-denying aftection ol tools for scraping and grooving. (For further details the mothers, and the hard treatment of the wives by the reference may be made to H. Ling Roth, The r] asvianians, husbands, polygamy, and the shifting marriage unions. 2nd ed. 1899; R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, But when we meet with a casual remark as to the tendency 1878, vol. ii.; Papers and Proceedings of Royal Society of the Tasmanians to take wives from other tribes than own, it seems likely that they had some custom of of Tasmania ; and papers by the present writer in Journal their exogamy which the foreigners did not understand. Meagre of the Anthropological Institute.) The Tasmanians, when as is the information preserved of the arts, thoughts, and they came in contact with the European explorers and customs of these survivors from the lower Stone Age,, it settlers, were not the broken outcasts they afterwards became. They were a savage people, perhaps the lowest is of value as furnishing even a temporary and tentative in culture of any known, but leading a normal, self- means of working out the development of culture on a (e. b. r.) supporting, and not unhappy life, which had probably basis not of conjecture but of fact. changed little during untold ages. The accounts, imAnthropometry is a system of identifying and perfect as they are, which have been preserved of their classifying individuals by measurement, invented for arts, beliefs, and habits, thus present a picture of the police purposes about 1880 by M. Bertillon of the Service arts, beliefs, and habits of tribes whose place m the btone de la Surete or criminal department of the prefecture of Age was a grade lower than that of Palaeolithic man of police in Paris, and since adopted in some form by nearly the Quaternary period. every civilized government. The system rests upon two The Tasmanian stone implements, figured in the Plate, assumptions, which may be taken to have been proved. show their own use when it is noticed that the rude chip- The first is that the dimensions of certain bones and bony ping forms a good hand-grip above, and an effective edge structures remain practically constant in the individual for chopping, sawing, and cutting below. But the absence throughout adult life; and the second is that such of the long-shaped implements, so characteristic of. the dimensions vary so much in different persons that if Neolithic and Palaeolithic series, and serviceable as picks, several bones be measured very few individuals will be hatchets, and chisels, shows remarkable limitation in the found to have all the measurements absolutely the same. mind of these savages, who made a broad, hand-grasped knrte Taken together, these facts provide the basis for an exact their tool of all work to cut, saw, and chop with I heir method of identifying at any future time a person who weapons were the wooden club or waddy notche to t e has once been measured, and of distinguishing between grasp, and spears of sticks, often crooked but well balanced, that person and others. Such a method might obvious y with points sharpened by tool or fire, and sometimes be useful in any situation in which it is desirable to jagged. No spear-thrower or bow and arrow was known. establish identity or prevent personation, but. its most The Tasmanian savages were crafty warriors and kangaroo- important application is in dealing with crime, and hunters, and the women climbed the highest trees by especially with “ recidivists ” or old offenders who have notching, in quest of opossums. Shell-fish and crabs were been previously convicted, and who endeavour to escape taken, and seals knocked on the head with clubs, but recognition by giving false accounts of themselves, anc y neither fish-hook nor fishing-net was known, and indeed