Identifier: historyofmankind01ratz (find matches)
Title: The history of mankind
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Ratzel, Friedrich, 1844-1904 Butler, Arthur John, 1844-1910
Subjects: Ethnology Anthropology
Publisher: London, Macmillan and co., ltd. New York, The Macmillan co.
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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Message-sticks with picture-writing, from West Australi;one-third real size. (Berlin Museum.) them arc painted, mostly yellowish reda yard long ; on the slanting rock roof of another is painted on a black grounda white figure with yellow eyes and widely puffed-out, curly, red hair, withregular rows of white dots ; the body is not finished, but is clad in a sort ofclosely-fitting coat. On one of the walls near by may be seen four heads, oneabove another, with thick, blue, frizzed-out hair, and further up on the roof anelliptical figure, on which there is a red kangaroo on a golden-yellow groundstripped with red, and divided by a broad, white, transverse band, together withtwo arrow heads, one of which with two bullets is flying towards the animal, theother away from it ; hard by a man is depicted in rough outline dragging ared kangaroo. Several other, but inferior, pictures of animals and men are found
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PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHARACTER OF THE AUSTRALIANS 345 close by. Some of these paintings have, perhaps, a religious signification. Gestureand finger-language is highly developed ; Kempe says that the Central Australiantribes of the Macdonnell range can express almost anything by the position ormovement of the hands and fingers. The fundamental features of the Australian language, as Friedrich Müllerhas pointed out, are its polysyllabic formation, with syllables as a rule beginningwith a consonant and ending with a vowel or liquid. Its affinity with thelanguages of Oceania still awaits evidence, so far as concerns the direction ofindividual points of relation. The sounds /i,f, v, s, z are said to be wholly lacking.In inflection the suffix predominates. The numbers are singular, dual, plural.Besides the six usual cases of nouns, Taplin distinguishes in the South Australianlanguage special inflections for the various senses of the ablative—in pronounsalso a causative. The accent is usua

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