Races of man / by Sonia Cole.

  • Sonia Mary Cole
Date:
1965
Catalogue details
    51/150 page 46
    He was accompanied by two females: one of them shows typically Mongoloid features and her skull has even been compared with that of an Eskimo. The other woman was said to resemble the Melanesians. This is a good example of the pitfalls awaiting those who try to make rigid classifications. Types generally regarded as racially distinct clearly existed together within small groups in the past. Diversity seems to have been of very ancient origin and from such variable material the present populations became differentiated and diverged. Such early diversity is also illustrated by a skull from Niah Cave, Sarawak, dated by radio-carbon to about 40,000 years ago. This youth was rather lightly built and contrasts strongly with the rugged type represented by Solo Man, for instance. Solo Man from the Upper Pleistocene of Java is probably ancestral to the Wad- jak people of the same island, believed to be early post-Pleistocene in age. They were long-headed, with a huge palate and weak chin; they bear a striking resem blance to the Australian aborigines, though with a larger brain-case. A skull from Keilor near Melbourne is rather similar to, and roughly contemporary with, the Wadjak skeletons. It is important in showing that immigrants of the archaic White stock must have arrived in Australia at least by about 8,000 years ago. In Malaya, associated with the Mesolithic Hoabinhian culture were burials of pygmy people with slender limbs, long heads, high-vaulted cranium and forehead, massive jaws and large teeth. They are not considered to be Negritos because the latter are essentially round-headed. They are rather similar to the Wadjak people and to the Veddoids of Southern India and Ceylon, but are said to resemble the Melanesians of New Caledonia most closely. The Melanesians must have migrated from Asia via the Malay Peninsula and there is little doubt that the Hoabinhians were their ancestors. America In America, human remains associated with Stone Age cultures and extinct fossil animals have been reported from various parts of the continent, but in most cases the geological evidence for dating has been questioned. One difficulty is that it is not yet clear at what date some of the extinct mammals died out. A human skele ton from Tepexpan in Mexico has been dated to about 10,000 years b .c. and is one of the oldest certainly dated human remains from the New World. Tepexpan Man has been compared with the woman's skull from the Upper Cave at Choukoutien; both have the flat Mongoloid face, whereas many American Indians have typically prominent cheek-bones which probably reflect the archaic
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