Having satisfied ourselves in regard to some of the principal somatic characteristics of the Australian aboriginal, we shall proceed to discuss briefly his likely origin. In the present absence of more material facts relating to his ancestry, and of a more thorough comparative knowledge of races in general, we are lamentably handicapped in this direction, and many of our conclusions are necessarily theoretical.

So far as possible, we shall take into consideration his present relationships to other living races and peoples, as well as his affinities with the ancient hunting peoples, who inhabited various parts of the world in bygone eras, and are now only known in a fossilized condition.

This introduces the geological element of time—hundreds of thousands, yea, millions perhaps, of years have passed since man left records of his being; definite traces have been found, embedded in the same deposits as contain the mammoth, on the one hand, and the Diprotodon, on the other.

The evidences of pre-historic and fossil men in the Old World are too numerous and well-known to need elucidation here; we shall confine our attention to Australian records.

Some years ago a specimen was submitted to me for identification which had been found in Pleistocene (or Pliocene?) gravels S.S.E. of the Tennant’s Creek district. It was so completely petrified and “stony” looking that the organic origin was doubted, but a thin section viewed under the microscope revealed the true structure of bone. After cleaning the fragment thoroughly, I recognized it as portion of a human skull, viz. the posterior half of the left parietal. The anterior fracture is vertical and at about the centre of the parietal eminence; the thin squamous edge is also broken away. The lambdoidal border is still quite characteristic and shows the complex nature of the parieto-occipital suture. Both the external and internal surfaces are rough and pitted through exposure, age, and mineral precipitations, but the temporal ridge is still discernible and can be traced posteriorly right up to the parieto-occipital suture. There is no indication of a parietal foramen. The bone is thick about the posterior inferior angle, but the groove of the lateral sinus has broken away. The specimen, when struck, has a clear metallic ring, like that of earthenware or porcelain. When treated with acid, the surfaces as well as the “bone-substance” effervesced briskly, proving that a thorough intermolecular substitution of organic matter by mineral was in progress. This calvarium, fragmentary though it is, is of considerable importance from a prehistory point of view, since it gives us another definite link in the somewhat meagre chain of evidence which has been established in connection with the geological antiquity of man in Australia.

The most important find of an extinct Australian type was made at Talgai, in south-eastern Queensland, as far back as 1884, in the shape of a fairly well preserved skull; but it was not until a few years ago that a description of it was published by Dr. S. A. Smith. Although no other bones were discovered in association with the skull, numerous remains of extinct creatures like the Diprotodon, the Nototherium, and horny reptiles have been unearthed not many miles remote from the site of the interesting discovery. Dr. Smith sums up his observations as follows: “This fossil human skull of a not yet adult Proto-Australian presents the general picture of a cranium similar in all respects to the cranium of the Australian of to-day, combined with a facial skeleton of undoubtedly Australian type, in the palate and teeth of which there are to be found, in conjunction with the most primitive characters found in modern skulls, certain characters more ape-like than have been observed in any living or extinct race, except that of Eoanthropus.”

Other less convincing discoveries have been recorded in the shape of human and dingo bones from the Wellington Caves, human remains and artefacts from beneath the basalts of Victoria, and the fossil footprints of an aboriginal in the upper Tertiary beds of Warrnambool.

It would seem, therefore, that sufficient facts have been forthcoming to prove that man was in existence at any rate in late Tertiary times; and since he was then perfectly developed, it would not seem unreasonable to assign to him a very much greater antiquity.

During these long ages, tectonic forces, and the ever active denuding agents of the atmosphere, in all their phases, have wrought considerable transfigurations in the surface of the globe. Some portions of the earth’s crust have been swallowed by the ocean, whilst others have been wrenched from the depths by upheaving processes. Thus the geography of our present world would be a terra incognita to the earliest progenitors of the human kind, who lived in the dim dawn of man’s ascending tendencies, while, on the other hand, we would require a new army of intrepid explorers to pave the way for civilization if we were suddenly placed back into the world as it stood in the beginning of primeval days.

Old land connections then existed between entities which now are parted by abysmal depths. Such evidence of once-existing continental links is afforded by what has been termed a “biological consanguinity” between organic creations on both sides of gaps now occupied by ocean water.

There is no novelty about all this. Our best scientists have long recognized that such connections have existed beyond all doubt. They become evident when one enquires into the present geographical distribution of botanical and zoological species, and when one correlates geological strata in different parts of the world, on the basis of palæontological evidence contained in them.

The same principles apply when we consider the probable original home of man, and the subsequent migrations and racial evolutions of the pristine hordes, which followed.

That once a chain of land linked together the shores of Australia, South Africa, and India seems certain. The continental masses, which in past eras supplied this link, zoologists have christened Lemuria, while geologists refer to the lost land as Gondwana. It is somewhere within the area once occupied by this submerged continent, perhaps not far remote from Australia, that we must look for the cradle of the species Homo. Although most of the evidence has been irretrievably lost to scientific investigation, much might yet be expected from any of the contiguous continents or islands in this region, upon which occur Tertiary or later sedimentary formations. The discovery of the oldest fossil, which appears to be human—the Pithecanthropus erectus—in Java, was by no means accidental. Professor Dubois, before leaving for that island to undertake a fossil-hunting expedition there, declared that in all probability he would discover the remains of a primitive creature related to man.

From some point, then, upon this ancient, vanished continent, perhaps no great distance north of our present Australia, we believe migrations of the earliest representatives of the human species took place. The directions in which these migrations took place would be governed according to the lie of the land as it was then determined by the impassable waters of the ocean. In all probability, the families or groups wandered in various directions, at first keeping more or less in contact and on friendly terms with each other, but as time, and eventually ages, wore on, these migratory groups, by selective culture, environment, climate, and, maybe, sundry other causes, became differentiated into peculiarly distinct strains, all of which we are nowadays able to reduce to three fundamental races.

One of these migrations was along a western course, which led the wandering groups into the region now represented by the continent of Africa. This established the Negroid element.

Another strain moved northwards and spread itself, like the rays of a rocket, across the land now known as Asia. Some of these “rays” reached what is now Lapland, while others found their way, via the region of modern Esquimaux Land, across to what we now call North America. This march evolved the Mongoloids.

Yet another body of primitive hunters, who interest us most, worked their way north-westwards, on a course between the former two, and took possession of any portions of the dry land of the globe, the present relics of which are India, south-western Asia, and Europe.

Then came the catastrophe! The exact period is not determined. It must have happened since the advent of the “human” type, but there the evidence fails. Upheavals or subsidences of land usually take an age to make themselves noticeable. It is scientifically established that the close of the Triassic period was characterized throughout the world by great tectonic changes. Beds of rock were faulted to lofty heights on one side, and to dizzy depths on the other. The height of the Blue Mountains plateau of New South Wales is evidence of such upheaval, whilst the broken coastline, with its “drowned” rivers and myriads of islands along the north-west of Australia, together with the coastal fringe of coral reefs along the north, are all evidences of comparatively recent subsidence en bloc.

By these processes Australia was gradually isolated from its former land-connections, but, being near to the original home of man, it is only natural to suppose that the land was peopled.

From that time on Australia remained, whether as an island continent or a group of associated islands does not concern us here, isolated from the rest of the world. The original inhabitants whiled away their time in comparative ease. They had nothing to fear. Their former companions who had, through their nomadic migrations, been so far removed from them, would, no doubt, have now posed as formidable rivals, if the barriers had not come between. Until the recent arrival of the European explorers and settlers, and the periodic visitations to the north coast by Malay bêche-de-mer fishers, this great Southern Land had remained the undisputed property of the comparatively sparse progeny of the first primitive possessors.

There were no ferocious animals to molest these early prehistoric Australians. Apart from a few dangerous, but usually non-aggressive, reptiles, the large animals were almost without exception of the ancient marsupial order, and, although perfectly harmless, offered excellent opportunity for the chase.

Thus it happened that the primitive hordes could roam at large in a congenial climate, and under peculiar conditions, which were everywhere much the same; and, in their subsequent wanderings, they met only with people of their own descent and inclinations. In consequence, they were spared many of the bloody brawls and conflicts, which the competitive waves of culture continually showered upon the other hordes that were struggling northwards under decidedly more adverse conditions of climate.

The great struggle for existence did not make itself felt so keenly to the ancient Australians because they were strictly insulated, and thus kept outside the sphere of exotic influence and interference; their only troubles amounted to an individual club-duel, or occasionally an inter-tribal warfare, which evoked more irate words than actual blood drawn by their sharply-pointed spears.

So the Australian has remained just what he was ages ago. And on that account the evolution of his pristine contemporaries, who were seized by the flood wave of culture, becomes the more comprehensible, when we measure the differences, but recognize the affinities, existing between the extremes. A line drawn across the map of the world indicating, so far as it is at this stage possible, the areas whose populations show, or before their extinction showed, the strongest affinities with him will represent roughly the direction of migration and incidentally of evolution of the Australoid strain.

This line of anthropological relationship connects the Australian (including the Proto-Australian) with the Veddahs and Dravidians of India, and with the fossil men of Europe, from whom the Caucasian element has sprung. In other words, the Australian aboriginal stands somewhere near the bottom rung of the great evolutional ladder we have ascended—he the bud, we the glorified flower of human culture.

In the living Australian then, we see the prototype of man as he appeared in Europe in the Stone Age. Australia has upon other occasions proved to be extraordinary in a scientific sense. The kangaroo is known only in the petrified condition in the Tertiary deposits in other parts of the world. The Zamia, which is still found living in Australia, is a conspicuous plant of the coal-measures in every other country. The ornamental mollusc, known as Trigonia, had been regarded as extinct until it was re-discovered in Australia. Most of the great river systems of central Australia have had their day; they have flourished in the past; yet, occasionally, after a prolific downpour, their dry courses swell temporarily to majestic streams. And, lastly, we see in the aboriginal yet another palæontological overlap—a living fossil man—the image of ourselves, as we appeared many ages before we learned to record the history of our progress, and of the world in general.

When one wades more deeply into the subject, only skimmed above, the following points suggest themselves to one: Our line of racial development was very early dissociated from the Mongoloid and Negroid lines; and geographically it ran between the latter two. There are considerable racial differences between the other races and the Australoids, the most highly specialized and cultured division of which is now represented by the modern Caucasian. The last-named deductions are entirely supported by the shallowness of the pigmentation in the aboriginal’s skin, and by the fair hair of children found among certain tribes of central Australia. In fact, the colour question, so far as the Australian aboriginal is concerned, is a relative conception, the difference in the amounts of pigment in his skin and in the “white” man’s being in all probability due to climatic influences extending over long periods of time. It is doubtful whether the primitive Australoid or the Proto-Australian possessed a skin so dark as that of the present-day Australian. We may now understand why it is that the quarter-blooded progeny derived from the union of a half-blooded aboriginal woman with a European father is always lighter in colour than its mother, and the octoroon lighter still. Unions further on the European side produce children practically white; and no case is on record where the colour in a later generation reverted to the darker again. The latter, we know, happens only too often when there is a taint of Negroid blood running in a family, even though the mixing of race took place generations back.

Apart from its great scientific significance, this matter is of considerable social and national interest to citizens of Australia, and we might well ask ourselves: “Are we justified in referring to the half-blooded aboriginal, with European parentage on one side, as a half-caste, or in even stigmatizing him as a bastard?”