The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957)(about) |
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Saturday 14 April 1945
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WHY SCIENTISTS , STUDY OUR ABORIGINES
T3E Australian aborigines have
been called "the most interest- ing race at present on earth," and scientists from countries like Britain and America sometimes spend a good deal of time living among the surviv- ing tribes in central and northern Australia so as to make a careful study of their customs and ceremo- nies. Our aborigines have systems o£ customs and ceremonies which are enormously complicated and which throw light on the whole of human history, because similar customs can be seen in many other savage tribes throughout the world. Not only that, but they throw light on many customs and ceremonies which still
survive among (the peasant classes of European countries also.
By tracing all these customs around the world, scientists can at last be- come fairly sure about the original customs and beliefs of the prehistoric race from which all these races on the earth today have descended. The Australian aborigines have methods
by which their medicine men try to bring down ram m time of droueht and astonishingly similar methods' have been found to exist amone
many other native rates throughout
the world B
The study of these various customs of ,in_u2Ícl,ft tnr°ughout the worldT called "anthropology " it is interest S^ _* £bsfrvl tnat a iew years ago Sir Baldwin Spencer and F j g¡j. len made a long and careful study of the Arunta tribe in Central Aus traha and published two volump<¡
called The Arunta A StudfTi
Stone Age People Later an Ameri- can, after living for some time among the Murngin tribe in Arn- hem Land, published a book en- titled A Black Civilisation Those two titles in a sense illustrate the changing attitude to our aborigines at one time everyone seemed to re- gard them as a Stone Age people who would simply have to die out but now many people regard them as a people with a civilisation which ought to compel our respect
A nutive corroboree in North Queensland.