When we look an aboriginal in the face, the first impression it gives us is that of wildness and fierceness amounting often to repulsiveness. There are, of course, appreciable differences between different individuals, and often during a day’s journey one encounters features which might be classed as decidedly pleasing and almost European. We might even go so far as to say that in some faces, especially those of the old women, we might feel inclined to establish an analogy with classical or historical types of our own colour. Such descriptions, however, convey no more to the person who has never seen an aboriginal than a statement like one, often heard, to the effect that the features are of the “usual Australian type.”

In order to arrive at a little more exact description of the facial appearance, let us assume that the individual we are considering possesses all of the “Australian” features, and let us analyze each of them separately. At the same time, we must remember that probably no single individual exists in whom all of these characteristics are present.

To help us better understand the various points we are about to introduce, it will be advisable, whenever possible, to draw into the discussion the morphological peculiarities of the bony skeleton and skull, which immediately underlie the fleshy parts of the face and head.

There is no doubt the eyes of an aboriginal largely account for the wild appearance of his countenance, already alluded to. These organs are deeply sunken in their sockets, which lie beneath a projecting bony roof and bushy eyebrows. Nature in this way protects the eyes against the scorching rays of the southern sun by an effective screen, which lies above and before them like the peak of a cap. For that matter, we ourselves often instinctively endeavour to obtain a similar protection, when we stare into a glaring light, by holding a hand against the brows. Within the scope of this protection comes also, so far as the aboriginal is concerned, prevention, to a certain degree, of such accidental harm as might be caused by stakes or brushwood, during an exciting hunt through bush or forest land. The strong colour-contrast of the sclera against the swarthy skin, and the active, searching movements of the eyes, considerably help to intensify the sullen look.

In the fossil men of Gibraltar and Neanderthal, too, the eyes were overlain by very massive, bony ridges, but in those people the eyes stood further forward.

The supraorbital region is unquestionably one of the most prominent, and at the same time most striking, features of the Australian aboriginal’s face. The high degree of development of the bony prominence, combined with a sloping forehead, are primitive characteristics which he shares with no other living race. Yet it is possible for a cultured people, like for instance the Europeans, with high forehead, at times to show a strong superciliary development. As opposed to this, one not infrequently discovers an Australian with strong brow-ridges combined with a comparatively full and steep forehead. But usually the area occupied by these bony prominences can be differentiated, from the forehead above it, by a dividing line or zone of crowded foramina—the outlets of small blood-vessels. In the aboriginal, the effect is intensified, not alone on account of the usually receding forehead, but also because the root of his nose is appreciably depressed between the eyes; and consequently the glabella appears to project extraordinarily far outwards (Plate III).

It was Thomas Huxley who first drew attention to the analogy existing between the skull of the fossil Neanderthal man and that of the Australian aboriginal. To quote the words of that famous anthropologist, “a small additional amount of flattening and lengthening, with a corresponding increase in the superciliary ridge, would convert the Australian brain case into a form identical with that of the aberrant fossil.” Since those words were written, a number of other fossil skeletons of men have been found, the examination of which has confirmed Huxley’s observation upon the first Neanderthal skull.

The substance of the supraorbital prominence consists of massive bone. As in the fossil skulls, the sinuses lie behind this mass, not far from the inner surface. It appears that this colossal growth of bone takes place in early adult life; so far, no superciliary ridges have been observed in children’s skulls.

Originally this great thickness of bone in the supraorbital region of the Neanderthal calotte was regarded as a proliferation of bony tissue caused by disease. Then it was proclaimed to be a characteristic by which one might distinguish the skulls of fossil from those of all living races. The subsequent recognition of true supraorbital ridges or tori in the Australian completely disproved both these hypotheses.

The feature is, so far as our present knowledge goes, essentially masculine, and, as such, suggests a secondary origin comparable to the tremendous supraorbital developments of bone in the skull of the male gorilla. Professor D. J. Cunningham, who investigated this subject thoroughly from a comparative anatomical point of view, found “superciliary and supraorbital elements” even more or less developed in the lower types of apes. A supraorbital prominence is rarely observed in the female (Plate III, 2).

To return to the eye: the colour of the iris, in its normal condition, is practically without exception dark brown. The only exception to this rule, that has come under my personal observation, was a young, full-blooded gin of the Mulluk Mulluk tribe in the Daly River district, north Australia, whose iris was a deep bluish grey.

There is great variety in the shape of the cavities which hold the eye-balls of the Australian. The orbits are large, and their outer margins, as in the Neanderthal type, very nearly form a circle. According to Professor Klaatsch’s measurements, the ratio of the maximum vertical to the maximum horizontal diameter in the male Australian skull is as 39 millimeters is to 40. As a rule, the eye-cavities in children are slightly depressed horizontally, and occasionally this is also the case in the skulls of females.

The orbit’s upper edge is very strong; and what is known as the internal angular process of the frontal bone, in the inner wall of the cavity, is very prominent in the Australian. The last named characteristic is, however, also observed in the skulls of Veddahs and other primitive people, as well as in those of the anthropoids. But we must not forget, when dealing critically with a skull, that an internal angular process may not be so typical in the male as it is in the skulls of women and children.

The external angular processes are often well developed, the malar boundary being strong and broad, without the sharp edge usually noticed in European skulls.

The ethmoid bone in the inner wall of the orbit is, as in most of the primitive skulls, noticeably small.

The groove of the lachrymal bone, which intra vitam carries the tear duct connecting eye with nose, is usually very pronounced in the Australian.

In children’s skulls a supraorbital notch divides the upper margin of the orbital cavity into two almost equal parts, the outer of which has a well-defined edge.

In the nose and its aperture, we again recognize primitive characteristics of considerable importance in the Australian. We have already had occasion to notice how deeply the root of the external organ seems to be retracted under the great glabellar prominence of the forehead. A bridge in the true sense of the word seems wanting, the nose consisting of a flabby body at its point, above which lies a saddle-shaped depression sloping imperceptibly into the retracted root beneath the forehead. Not uncommonly one finds a number among the males of all tribes whose noses are curved and give one the impression of Jewish features; the type is rare among women (Plate VI, 2).

The breadth of the nose is very great, and consequently the nasal aperture in Australian skulls is of corresponding dimensions. The width of the aperture often actually exceeds thirty millimeters.

It must not be supposed that these features are quite peculiar to the Australian; they are also present in the fossil skulls of Europe. If then we regard the latter as the ancestral stock, from whom modern peoples have sprung, and, at the same time, recollect that diverse admixtures of strain might have taken place periodically, it would not be amiss to expect indications of such primitive nose developments in the higher types of man. That such do occur, we can every day verify for ourselves.

Apart from being a racial characteristic, the flat broad nose is cultivated by many of the tribes. Mothers artificially flatten the noses of their children when quite young by pressing upon them with their fingers, and often repeating the process. It is, therefore, often difficult to say whether a specially flat nose is natural or is the result of cosmetic culture. The wearing of a bone or stick through the septum would also tend to flatten and widen the organ to an abnormal extent (Plate VI).

The nasal aperture of a modern European skull almost invariably has sharp lateral margins, which unite at the base behind a prominent bony spine; for reasons which will become apparent below, we shall call this the inner boundary. In an anthropoid, like the gorilla, however, the cavity is bounded on its lower side by two ridges, which enclose a groove in front of the large aperture. Converging upwards, these ridges, on either side, unite to form the lateral margins below the nasal bones. In the monkeys there is no indication of a well-defined boundary at all, the lower surface of the cavity appearing more or less smooth, whilst the spine, so prominent in man, is barely recognizable.

In the Australian skull we often find an interesting transition stage connecting these extremes, the inner margin being present but associated with a pre-nasal groove at the base of the aperture. Indeed, the sharp lateral margin is often found to pass into a pre-nasal ridge which forms the anterior margin of the groove. Such a condition is of considerable interest, since it recalls a stage in our evolution, when the nose was closely connected with the mouth part; that is to say, that a portion now absorbed into the modern skull was originally the floor of the nose, and helped to build up the alveolar process of the upper jaw.

In fact, we are reminded of this condition when we look upon the living aboriginal; for his nose seems to ride upon the upper portion of his mouth, to which it seems rigidly attached, after the pattern of an animal’s snout. We see the same sort of thing in the European embryo during the first few months of gestation.

This “primitive snout” is made the more conspicuous in the Australian on account of the strong naso-labial folds in the skin, one of which, on either side, encloses the angle of the mouth in a semi-circular fashion. With us Europeans, the elevating processes which our nose has undergone have tended to reduce the depth of these folds, in the upper portions at any rate. This elevating process, by the way, has largely been in consequence of the recession our mandibular skeleton has suffered (Plate V).

The jaws of the Australian are, like those of most of the fossil skulls and of the Negroids, protubefent—a condition known as prognathism. In the Tasmanians, too, the strong development of the jaws, and of the teeth, has resulted in a general fullness of the same region (Plate III, 2).

In aboriginal infants, one often finds the bony process, upon which the teeth subsequently grow, to be directed forwards, almost in a straight line with the floor of the nose. This hereditary predisposition towards a horizontal development of the alveolar region reminds one forcibly of features belonging to the anthropoid apes.

Yet, generally speaking, it must be admitted, there is a great variation in prognathism among the Australians.

In order to compare the degree of facial prognathism of the skulls of different men, a method was devised by Fraipont: The glabella is connected with the lambda by an imaginary plane, and another plane erected at right angles to this at the glabella. The latter plane usually cuts the alveolar plane at about the first or second premolar, occasionally at the first molar. Still another plane is imagined, extending vertically from the most anterior point of the alveolar to the glabella-lambda plane. Then the rectangular distance between the two upright planes represents, after Fraipont’s method, the prognathism. The maximum prognathism of the Australian, determined by this means, is, according to Professor Klaatsch, twenty-five millimeters, and the minimum eight.

Let us now enquire into the possible origin of prognathism among the primitive races of mankind. We shall have to take note, in the first place, of the large occipital development of both the brain and the brain-box in the lower types of the human species. In order to antagonize the downward pull of this weight, the mandibular region has expanded and provides the balancing moment about a fulcrum on the spine. With this explanation fresh in our minds, we understand how the development of the frontal region of modern peoples would tend to modify the lower region of the face and establish the condition known as orthognathism.

Prognathism is usually associated with a receding chin. By elaborating the Fraipont method, Professor Klaatsch has added another vertical plane at the most anterior point of the cutting surface of the teeth. In primitive folks, like the Australians and the fossil Neanderthals, the chin lies behind this plane and is called a “negative chin”; in the Mongoloids (Malays, etc.) the chin practically lies against the plane and is called a “neutral chin”; and lastly, in the modern Europeans, the chin lies before the plane and is known as a “positive chin.”

In the Tasmanians, the chin was bluntly rounded, without much of the prominence so highly perfected in the modern peoples.

The mental foramen is usually situated at a point below and between the second bicuspid and first molar.

The Australian’s ear is large and longish, much the same in general appearance as the European’s; the Negroid’s ear is decidedly rounder. There is, however, no great racial variety in the human ear; man has, like the rodents, retained the primitive shape, whilst the monkeys have acquired more specialized forms.

The small process, known as the tragus, which partially covers the ear-hole, is mostly covered with bristly hairs in adult men.

The dependent portion, or lobulus, which carries the earrings of our European ladies and is often mutilated by the lower races, is not as a rule interfered with by the Australians. The custom of piercing the lobulus appears to be confined to the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. The hole is pierced with a small pointed bone, after which a short cylindrical wooden rod or bone is inserted, frequently removed and replaced again, until the edge of the hole has healed. In the course of time, a series of rods, of gradually increasing diameter, are forced into the perforation, until a large pendant loop is formed. Upon special occasions, short painted rods of wood, two inches or more in diameter, are inserted into the loop.

The cheek bone, or zygomatic arch, is usually horizontal; but it may curve upwards from the squamous bone, thence downwards anteriorly. The mastoid process is comparatively small, but it is often associated with an unusual thickness of the wall of the ear-passage.