The Express.
London, England, 1867-09-11 00:00:00

ANTHROPOLOGY.,

It is announced that as International Pre-Hiatorle and
Anthropological Coogreu will shortly be held in England,
time codpiece yet to be determined.

The sectional prooeedings yesterday were uniformly in-
teresting.

THE EARLY CONDITION OF MAN.

Sir Joiii—L73;;;;C, of the
Ethnological Society, read • lengthy roper on the above
subject in Section 8. The following is • brief abstract :
The late Archbishop Whitely held that we have no reason
to suppose that any community ever did or ever can
emerge unassisted from a state of otter barbarism into
anything that can be called civilization. Haring pointed
out the difficulty of producing evidence to satisfy Whaled,
of the utter primitive barbarism of • race, Sir
John went into evidence showing that civilised races
are descendants of races that have risen from barba-
rism. It was asked bow it came to pass that the
Australian had not advanced to the same stage as
the European. Sir John Lubbock answered—Piret,
because Australia possesses neither cereals nor animals
that can be domesticated with any advantage.
Secondly, if the Australian is degraded, he asked why
was not the European equally degraded ? Whately
quoted President Smith, that if a man had been left cast
out as orphan of nature he must have perished before he
learned to supply his urgent wants. The writer answered
that the same might be said of the goilla or the chim-
panzee, who were certainly not the degraded descendants
of civilised ancestors. Among the facts which seemed to
militate against Whitely 's view, Sir John mentioned the
following :—Whitely supposed mankind originally herds-
men and cultivators. The Australians, Tasmanians,
North and South Americans, and several other more or
less savage races, were entirely ignorant of cattle rearing
and cultivating the soil. He thought it extremely impro-
bable that such easy and advantageous ass once learned
should ever have been abandoned. Lost civilisation
would leave traces behind it. Sir John Lubbock enu-
merated wild cattle descended from imported cattle or
their remains. But no trace or • bone of either
oxen or sheep bad been found in the whole extent
of Australia or America, nor in Australia of the
horse. Cultivated cereals would survive perhaps in a
wild state and in modified forms. But other plants follow
in the train of man. The Modes here a melancholy
proverb that the Mamie, disappear before the white man,
tas the white man's rat destroys the native rat, the
rope= fly drives away the Maori fly, and the clover
kills the New Zealand fern. The fauna and flora of
Australia give us evidence of a former superior race. No
weapons or instruments of metal have ever been die-
covered in any country inhabited by savages ignorant of
metallurgy. Pottery afforded a still stronger argument,
and no fragment of pottery had ever been found in
Australia, New Zealand, or Polynesia. None of these
arta, or the use of a bow or spinning, was likely
to have been abandoned if once known. In the
seine way, Sir John referred to religion, of
which several savage tribes were wholly ignorant
Had it once existed among them, it would not hare
been lost. The second part of Sir John's argument was
that improvement bas taken place among savage
tribes. The inhabitants of the Andaman Islands
have introduced otitriwrs. The Wajijl migrate bare
learned to make brass. The Tahitians bad given up canni-
balism when visited by Cook. Some of the American tribes
oultiveted maize, which is a native plant—a clear evidence
of • stop in dramas. Substitutes for writing were found
amongst Tarim; tribes. If the Mexicans bad ever possessed
letters, would they have fallen back on picture writing?
The numerical systems of savages often mount no hi6er
than Ave. No Australian language goes beycaa fivesne