Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/56

46 opinions of travelers that savages were able to distinguish colors perfectly. He also pointed out that the decorations of the early Egyptians and of other ancient races showed the existence of a well-developed sense long before the time of Homer.

The controversy was carried on for some years, especially in Germany. Magnus showed that the same defect of terminology for green and blue, which characterizes ancient writings, still exists among many primitive races at the present day, and argued that this wide-spread peculiarity must have had some definite cause, probably of a physiological nature. Nevertheless, the general trend of opinion was strongly against the views of Gladstone and Geiger, and the idea of the evolution of the color sense in man has been almost universally rejected.

As a member of the anthropological expedition which went out from Cambridge to Torres Strait and New Guinea in 1898, under the leadership of Prof. A. C. Haddon, I had an opportunity of re-investigating this question. In addition to a full examination of the color vision of two tribes of Papuans inhabiting one the eastern and the other the western islands of Torres Strait, I was able to make observations on natives of the Island of Kiwai, at the mouth of the Fly River, and on members of several Australian tribes. The languages of these people showed different stages in the evolution of color terminology, which correspond in a striking manner with the course of evolution deduced by Geiger from ancient writings. In an Australian tribe, from the district of Seven Rivers, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria, several natives only used three color epithets; red, purple and orange were called by the same name, 'ǒti'; white, yellow and green were called 'yǒpa,' while black, blue, indigo and violet were all called 'manara.' Other natives from an adjoining tribe used the names 'owang,' wapǒk' and 'unma' in the same sense; some natives applied other names to green and yellow, but those given appeared to be the only terms which were used with any definiteness and constancy.

The next stage in the evolution of a color vocabulary was found in Kiwai. In the language of this island there was a very definite name for red, 'dǒgó-dǒgó,' and a less definite name for yellow, 'agó-agó agó-agó.' Greens were called by most individuals, 'emasóro' and 'tigiro,' which were also used for white and black respectively, and may probably be translated 'light' and 'dark.' A few used a special word for green, 'poroporona.' Blue and violet were usually called 'wǐbu-wǐbuna,' the word for black, others calling these colors 'tǐgiro' or 'pǒropǒrona.' The brilliant blue of the sky received from these people the same name as the deepest black.