Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/92

 80 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 22, 1920

OCEANIA

Vorldufiger Bericht uber Forschungen im Innern von Deutsch-Neu-Guinea in den Jahren 1913-1915. R. THURNWALD. (Zeitschrift fur Eth- nologic, 1917, pp. 147-179.)

With his collections and notes scattered in half a dozen places Dr. Thurnwald labored under considerable difficulties in trying to present to his colleagues a preliminary report of his activities in New Guinea. Nevertheless his lecture contains a number of highly interesting descrip- tive data, to which it is desirable to. call the attention of American stu- dents. It is a matter for congratulation that his researches on the social organization of the Banaro are already accessible to us in English guise (Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, vol. in, no. 4, October-December, 1916.)

Dr. Thurnwald's travels embraced both the lower and upper reaches of the Augusta river. Somatically he found a very large number of pygmies even of individuals falling below 140 cm. but these invariably occurred in the same communities with natives of medium stature. Another remarkable trait is the wide diffusion of albinism, which, to be sure, is of the " moderate" type. Neuhauss's characterization of the hair as blonde is rejected, since it is really only brown. Culturally Thurnwald distinguishes an Eastern and a Western zone, the former being far more highly developed along industrial and artistic lines; a steppe area is also recognized. Correlated with the cultural there is a linguistic difference, though throughout Papuan languages occur. Economically the natives depend on yams, sago, bananas, breadfruit, sugar-cane, and in the mountainous districts on taro as well. Pigs and dogs are universally domesticated. The author devotes special attention to the house types. Pile-dwellings occur everywhere except in the steppes, where the roofs extend to the ground. However, the character of the pile-houses varies enormously, as illustrated by a number of photo- graphs. The eastern house is on the whole characterized by an elevation of from one to two meters and rests on a few substantial forked posts. In the west the piles rise to the height of eight, twelve, and even fifteen meters but are very rarely forked, and accordingly the entire structure is lacking in stability. Here dwellings are communal and there is no dis- tinct council house. About the sources of the Augusta river the posts do not exceed half a meter in height and the structure has a square groundplan, the whole resembling a cube with a prismatic gable roof.

Thurnwald examines the supposed correlation of pile-dwellings and the "bow-culture." His data from the western zone support the theory

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