The mysterious island of Tasmania. Tasmanians. Media
This text was written by Stanislav Drobyshevsky specially for the portal ANTROPOGENEZ.RU.
Place of first publication: http: //antropogenez.ru/zveno-single/637/
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The racial status and origin history of the Tasmanian aborigines are the gray spots of anthropology. This is mainly due to the total destruction of the aborigines themselves in the middle of the 19th century by the British. To a lesser extent, by the destruction of paleoanthropological and craniological materials at the end of the 20th century.
Despite these complexities, little is known about the Tasmanians. V.R. Cabo gave an exhaustive and best-of-all review of all available material (Cabo, 1975). The craniology of the Tasmanians is detailed in several monumental works (Macintosh et Barker, 1965; Morant, 1927, 1939; Wunderly, 1939).
The Tasmanian skulls are characterized by a small volume, in fact, a record on a global scale (perhaps less only among the Andamans). The length of the skull is medium, the width and height are small; the skull is dolicho-, ortho- and metriocranial. The greatest width of the skull is usually high, although the lateral walls of the vault are almost or completely parallel when viewed from behind.
The forehead is medium wide, rather sloping, with a flattened cerebral part. The superciliary relief of the Tasmanians is strong, emphasized by a strong depression of the bridge. The sagittal ridge of the frontal bone is often pronounced, although weaker than in Australians, it rarely reaches the parietal bones, although the transverse profile of the fornix is still roof-like. The forehead is moderately sloping: stronger than that of Europeans, but less than that of Australians. The temporal lines are high, although not as close to the sagittal line as in the Australians. The occipital part of the skull is somewhat elongated back, but not as much as in the Australians; the occiput is medium wide, but slightly widened in comparison with the width of the entire skull. The occipital relief is rather weak, than the Tasmanians differ sharply from the Australians; the same can be said about other elements of the muscle relief on the skull. The surface of the bones is generally very smooth, and all possible edges are rounded. The temporal fossa is weakly expressed, flattened. The scales of the temporal bone are very elongated, low, with a straightened upper edge; parietal notch rather weakly expressed.
Typical skull of a Tasmanian woman.
Source: Morant G.M. Note on Dr. J. Wunderly "s survey of Tasmanian crania // Biometrika, 1939, V. 30, No. 3/4, p. 341.
The face is very low, but medium wide, eurienic, mesognathic, although alveolar prognathism can be pronounced. Feature Tasmanians - Sharp upper horizontal profiling. The zygomatic arches are thin, in contrast to the Australians. The eye sockets have smooth edges, rectangular in shape, with parallel upper and lower edges, absolutely very low and medium wide, relatively chameconch. The nose is very low, but wide, hyperhameric, as a result of which
the relative width of the nose of the Tasmanians is one of the greatest in the world, surpassing Australian values.
The nasal bones are concave and extremely short; the ratio of their width to length is a record in the world. The width of the nasal bones is less than that of the Australians; at the same time, the bones are often sharply narrowed towards the end, and their transverse profile is very convex. The nasal spine is often extremely poorly developed, possibly weaker than in all other groups of people, and the edges of the nasal opening (and the lateral ones too) are rounded and smoothed; as in all equatorials, supra-nasal fossae or gutters are often developed. The cheekbones are very small, than the Tasmanians are in stark contrast to the Australians. Unlike the Australians, the infraorbital space is small. The canine fossae are often deep, although less developed than those of the Australians. The mandibular notches are not very strong. The alveolar process of the upper jaw is very low, usually sharply directed forward. The palate is long and medium wide, leptostaphylline, shallow to moderate depth, never deep, unlike the voluminous in the Australians. The sagittal ridge is often developed on the palate. The alveolar arch usually has parallel rows of canine teeth and is straightened anteriorly. In the lower jaw, the height of the symphysis is usually higher than the height of the body in the back. The chin prominence is moderately developed, the ascending ramus of moderate proportions, without excessive widening.
The sizes of the teeth of Tasmanians are very large, close to the world record, although, apparently, smaller than those of the Australians. This is associated with the usually good development of third molars, which almost always come into contact with antagonists. Teeth have a complicated enamel structure.
Of the specific features, it is possible to note the absence of a groove above the supraorbital foramen, typical for other human races. In the lambdoid suture and asterion, there are almost always intercalated bones.
Even more unique is the relatively frequent occurrence of the fourth molar.
In general, the structure of the Tasmanian skull, although it has a certain specificity, is very similar to that of the Southeast Australians: so much so that many of the largest racialists considered it possible to combine them within the same type as local variants (Hrdlicka, 1928, pp. 81-90; Thorne, 1971, p. 317). Yet the differences between Tasmanians and Australians are greater than those between Australians (Morant, 1927). One of the most significant differences between Tasmanians and Australians is the difference in the latitudinal dimensions of the skull: in the former, the largest width of the skull is greater, and all other dimensions, including facial ones, are smaller (Morant, 1927). It is clear that here we have not just a change in size, but a change in shape, and a very significant one. The same feature is perceived to the eye as a good expression of the frontal and parietal tubercles and, accordingly, the pentagonoid of the skull when viewed from above in Tasmanians and the absence of tubercles in Australians when their vault is ovoid (Wunderly, 1939). At the same time, the width of the forehead relative to the width of the skull in Tasmanians is noticeably smaller than in Australians. In the facial skeleton, attention is drawn to the sharp difference in the upper horizontal profiling: it is very large in the Tasmanians and somewhat weakened in the Australians; the Tasmanians are mesognathic, and the Australians are prognathous.
Tasmania was probably inhabited by about 34 thousand years ago. (eg Jones, 1995), some evidence of which was found in the southwestern part of the island at Fraser Cave (Kiernan et al., 1983), Bluff Cave, and ORS7 (Cosgrove, 1989). The existence of the population on the islands of the Bass Strait can definitely be judged by the guns on Hunter Island - 23 thousand years ago. (Bowdler, 1984) and Flinders Island - 14 thousand years ago. (Sim, 1990), but apparently people have lived here before.
Most likely, people got to Tasmania by land, located on the site of the present Bass Strait during a time of low sea level during the next ice age, which fell on the interval of 37-29 thousand years ago. (Cosgrove et al., 1990). After the formation of the strait 12-13.5 thousand years ago. (Chappell et Thom, 1977; Jennings, 1971) people hardly crossed it many times, and perhaps did not cross it at all until the arrival of the Europeans.
At least according to archaeological evidence, no new or different cultural elements have emerged in Tasmania (Jones, 1977); rather, some of the old ones have disappeared.
Many hypotheses have been put forward regarding the ancestors of the Tasmanians. The main ones can be considered "Australian" and "Melanesian".
"Australian" appears to be more grounded geographically, archaeologically, ethnographically and linguistically (Kabo, 1975; Macintosh et Barker, 1965; Pardoe, 1991; Pietrusewsky, 1984). According to her, the Tasmanians descended from the aborigines of the southeast of Australia, from whom they differ very little, mainly in curly hair.
The "Melanesian" hypothesis is based mainly on the curly hair of the Tasmanians, atypical of the Australian aborigines. Of all the diverse melanesoid groups, New Caledonians are most often proposed as ancestors to Tasmanians (Howells, 1976 ; Huxley, 1870; Pulleine, 1929; Jones, 1935; Macintosh, 1949). However, from New Caledonia to Tasmania, the path is not short, and it remains completely unclear why it was necessary to undertake a sea voyage of more than two thousand kilometers, if it was possible to safely go to Tasmania on dry land or, in the worst case, cross the not so wide Bass Strait? In addition, fragmentary descriptions of living Tasmanians seem to indicate that there were wavy-haired individuals among them, and statistics inexorably record curly hair in all groups of Australians, and not in such a small percentage.
According to an intermediate version, the Tasmanians are close to the Barrines tribes living in the rain forests of Queensland (Birdsell, 1949, 1967; Tindale et Birdsell, 1941-3). It is assumed that both are descendants of the first wave of migration to the Australian mainland, preserved in the most inaccessible areas. On the one hand, these ancestors clearly had a relationship with the Melanesians, on the other hand, the difference between the Tasmanians and the southeastern Australians is recognized as exaggerated. The version is beautiful, but so far it does not have any special proofs, for there are no craniological data for the Barrines, and somatometric data for the Tasmanians; in both groups there are no genetic ones. The similarity comes down again to curly hair and subjective external similarity. The argument against was a major difference in height - pygmy for Barrines and quite average for Tasmanians; this sign, however, could obviously change over thousands of years in the course of adaptation to local environmental conditions.
It seems that reducing the Tasmanians' problem to the "Australian", "Melanesian" or "barrinoid" versions is an inappropriate simplification.
The difficulty, in fact, is that at the time of the settlement of Tasmania, there were simply no Australoids or Meanesoids in their modern form. We can only talk about common ancestors.
The solution to the problem could be the study of paleoDNA or the peculiarities of the genotype of the European-Tasmanian mestizo, in some number living in Australia and Tasmania, but there are no such works yet.
Paleoanthropology has little to offer to resolve the issue. Indeed, ancient finds have been made in only three places.
Male skull, presumably a Tasmanian-Australian mestizo.
Morant G.M. Note on Dr. J. Wunderly "s survey of Tasmanian crania // Biometrika, 1939, V. 30, No. 3/4, p. 346.
On King Island in the Bass Strait, in a coastal cave (which, however, in ancient times was located 20-25 km from the coast), a human skeleton was excavated in 1989 (Sim et Thorne, 1990; Thorne et Sim, 1994). The burial date is 14.27 thousand years ago. However, the bones were buried back almost immediately, so that they were not actually examined. Subsequent debate over whether the King Island person was male or female (Brown, 1994a, 1995; Sim et Thorne, 1995) makes little sense in the absence of any additional information. It has been noted that the King Island man is different from the Kouswompans, but is similar to Keylor, and is also within the Southeastern Australian Aboriginal variation, which is why he was classified as a "gracial" group. The vault is long, low, rounded; the relief of the skull, including the muscular one, is strong. In the literature, you can find the statement that the brow does not protrude forward, but from measurements it follows that the bridge of the nose is depressed by almost a centimeter, so the development of the brow was obviously significant. The extraordinary length of the frontal bone, combined with the very short parietal length, suggests that the skull was deformed; in the absence of published photographs, verification of this fact is problematic. The shape of the face is similar to that of the aborigines. Noteworthy is the combination of a very large upper face width with a moderate average; the height of the face is large. The face is noticeably flattened, but the cheekbones do not protrude forward. The absence of prognathism was noted. The interorbital width is extreme, the width of the nose is very large. The palate is enormous and very deep. The lower jaw, apparently, was large, at least that is exactly in relation to the ascending branch. The skeleton is described as gracile, with a relatively short femur having a large head size.
The above description is more in line with the appearance of Australians than modern Tasmanians, but the problem is that we do not know equally ancient Tasmanian skulls. Considering that during the life of a person, King Island Bass Strait was land, it can be assumed that he is a representative of the ancestors of the Tasmanians. Thus, the characteristics of the Tasmanians must have formed after fourteen thousand years ago.
In Tasmania itself, only a few paleoanthropological finds have been made. The oldest is the scales of the occipital bone from the Nanwun Cave in the Florentine River Valley, dating back more than 16 thousand years ago. (Jones et al., 1988). The bone has a rounded shape, small thickness and slight relief, that is, typical of the Tasmanians. It is similar in form to that of the Mango and Keilor people (Webb, 1988), but it would be too risky to speak of a close relationship on this basis.
A fragmentary skull was found on the small islet of New Yire, located off the northwestern coast of the much larger King Island in the Bass Strait (Murray et al., 1982). The find has an indefinite age - from the Late Pleistocene to the middle of the 19th century, but stratigraphically the most reliable date is from 12 to 6 thousand years ago. The skull is small in volume, very long, but very narrow and very low, with a very wide forehead and a wide occiput. The greatest width of the skull is high. The frontal bone is short, extremely sloping, with a slight superciliary relief. The depression of its longitudinal contour is most likely due to posthumous or intravital artificial deformity, which is thought to be responsible for the exaggerated length of the entire skull and excessive slope of the forehead. The parietal and occipital bones are smoothly rounded, the parietal tubercles are moderate, the occipital relief is weak. The nose was wide; there is a tray gutter. The alveolar process of the upper jaw is small, which indirectly indicates a small height of the face. The palate is wide and shallow. The chin protrusion is moderate; the height of the symphysis of the lower jaw is higher than its body in the posterior part. The teeth are large.
The morphological complex is most consistent with the features of the Tasmanians, differing in the shape of the frontal bone. If the skull is really ancient, it may represent the transition from the "proto-Australoid type" to the Tasmanian proper.
A skull from Mount Cameron West, or Preminggan, at the extreme northwestern tip of Tasmania, was found surrounded by the charred remains of a wigwam-type structure known from ethnography as typical of Tasmanian burial practices. The skull was dated to 4.26 thousand years ago. The skull is referred to as belonging to the "Tasmanian type" and at the same time being part of the variability of the Australian aborigines (Flood, 2004).
According to the good tradition of Australian science, the find was destroyed, so it is impossible to find out its real features.
Cremated remains were found at West Point Midden, 60 km west of the Rocky Cape (Jones, 1964a, b). The cremations have been dated between 1800 and 800 years ago. Due to their fragmentation, these fragments do not provide anything for solving the question of the origin of the Tasmanians.
Summing up, we have to state once again that the history of the formation of the Tasmanian race is covered with a thick fog of antiquity. Yet the efforts of archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists, ethnographers, geologists and other specialists have not been unsuccessful. It can be confidently asserted that Tasmania was inhabited about 34 thousand years ago, or even somewhat earlier. Most likely, people came here from the southeastern tip of Australia by land, during a period when vast land stretched on the site of the present Bass Strait. At this time, there was apparently no anthropological difference between the populations of Australia and Tasmania; this population can be called "proto-Australoid". After twelve thousand years ago, when the strait was formed, contact between Australians and islanders ceased. In conditions of isolation, the biological traits of the Tasmanians were transformed as usual.
Significantly, the Tasmanians have changed much more than the Australians compared to the original "proto-Australoids."
Most likely, this is explained, firstly, by adaptation to a new specific climate, and secondly, by the small number and isolation of the islanders in comparison with the mainland "superpopulation": under such conditions, genetic-automatic processes lead to rapid changes.
Tasmania is impossible not to notice even on a small-scale map. It looks like a medallion - a heart suspended on an invisible chain under the Australian mainland. Europeans learned about the existence of this island in 1642. Then it was not yet called Tasmania, but bore the name of Van Diemen Land, given to him in honor of the Dutch Governor-General of the East Indies, who sent Abel Tasman to discover new lands in the southern Indian and Pacific Oceans. At that time, sea voyages in these waters were extremely dangerous. Legend has it that Van Diemen sent Tasman to certain death in order to prevent the marriage of the sailor and his daughter Maria. However, the brave sailor managed not only not to die, but also to perpetuate his own name by discovering New Earth. And the name of the governor's daughter was preserved in the name of one of the northern capes of Tasmania.
Interestingly, during the voyage, the navigator bypassed, that is, he did not actually notice Australia and landed on the west coast of Tasmania. Abel Tasman, on behalf of Holland, took possession of the new land, but it was even less useful than (as they thought at the time) from Australia: cold climate, wilderness. gloomy rocks and no treasures. The locals did not react in any way to the silver or gold, which the sailors generously demonstrated to the natives. These strange, in the eyes of the savages, objects had no value. From which it followed that there was nothing of the kind here, and indeed could not be, and the local tribes were in a blissful primitive state, not having the slightest idea about property, and even more so about money.
After a short time, Abel Tasman moved on. Surprisingly, Tasman was lucky again. He owns the honor of discovering another land, which he, most likely, stumbled upon by accident, once again not noticing Australia! From the ship, he saw the western shores of the South Island of New Zealand. This land was still unknown to anyone. But the Dutchman did not engage in a detailed study of it: the indigenous Polynesian population of the island, the Maori, was openly hostile to the newcomers. Four crew members were killed. Tasman did not start a military campaign with a numerically superior enemy and went to Batavia, as Jakarta was then called, the Dutch starting point for exploring the southern lands. Having made stops on the way on the islands of Fiji and Ton ha, Abel Tasman safely reached a base in East India. 
Two years later, he made a second voyage along the northern coast of New Holland, but this time he was unable to find anything significant. It is interesting that thanks to the expedition of Abel Tasman in 1642, when a European navigator first visited the New Zealand South Island, this land is called New Zealand to this day. Tasman named it Staten Landt. It was this name that was transformed by Dutch cartographers into the Latin Nova Zee / andia in honor of one of the provinces of the Netherlands - Zealand (Zee / and). Later, the British navigator James Cook used English version of this name, New Zea / and, in her records, she became the official name of the country.
The island of Tasmania is located in the zone of action of incessant westerly winds of the Southern Hemisphere, the strength of which often reaches stormy ones. Once in the "good old days of wooden ships and iron men" the British christened these winds "brave Vesta", and the area of their distribution - between 39 degrees and 4 degrees south latitude - "roaring forties." Tasmania is located in these latitudes, so that for one third of the year winds of 7-9 magnitude dominate there, bringing torrential rains from the ocean. Their streams, mixing with the myriad splashes of the ocean surf, for many days, and sometimes weeks, veil the rocky shores of the island with impenetrable haze from the gaze of sailors. From time to time, the "brave Vesta" bring fog: a thick gray-greenish veil envelops the sea and the coast for many miles around. There are at least sixty such days when there is fog - the locals call it "pea soup" - at least sixty a year. The shores of Tasmania, incessantly surrounded by violent ramparts with debris of icebergs and fogs brought from the ocean, have long been the scourge of seafarers.
The island of Tasmania is separated from Australia by the Bass Strait. So it was named after the English captain George Bass who discovered it. But for some reason this name did not take root among the sailors, who still call it the Strait of Danger. Although it is 130 miles wide and 500-600 meters deep, sailors rank it as a ship cemetery. The danger lies in the numerous islands and rocks, underwater reefs and strong variable currents, not to mention fogs and stormy winds. The islands of King, Hunter, Trey-Hammok and Robbins stand in the way of ships sailing by the strait from west to east. The shores of these islands and the passages between them are dotted with underwater reefs and shipwrecks. Investigation of shipwrecks on King Island revealed. that on the coastal cliffs of the island, which is about 50 miles long and about 15 miles wide, more than fifty ships perished. In the course of this study, a number of valuable information was obtained about currents, straits, underwater reefs and shallows. These data were later used by hydrographers to compile detailed nautical charts of Tasmania.
But it turns out that it was not underwater rocks and strong currents that destroyed most of these ships. The marine chronicles of Tasmania indicate that pirates were most often the cause of their death. They appeared in the Bass Strait at the very end of the 18th century and began to plunder the whalers and sea beaver and elephant seal hunters who hunted here (they say that once these animals were found here in great numbers). Having "smoked" the hunters and whalers, they proceeded to robbing merchant ships. And since the pirates did not have well-armed ships and did not like boarding fights, they began to place false beacons on the islands of the Bass Strait. The deceived captains changed course, leading their ships to the sharp reefs. The robber islanders had only to transport the cargo of the deceased ship to the shore. 
The pirates Staleis Monroe and David Hope were particularly cruel towards the shipwrecked. in the middle of the 19th century they were called “the uncrowned kings of the Strait of Bass”. The first was the master of the eastern part of the strait and controlled the islands of Flinders, Cape Barren, Swan, Goose, Preservation and others. Monroe reigned in these waters for exactly thirty years. David Hope established his residence on Robbins Island, where he lived in robbery and violence until 1854. Both leaders wore a gold earring in their ears, kangaroo-skin caftans, and fur-seal hats. Each of the leaders had a huge wine cellar, where they kept the stocks of rum and gin they had captured.
The fake Monroe and Hope lighthouses in the Bass Strait area killed a huge number of ships. So, for example, the English corvette "Catarack" came to the false Hope lighthouse in August 1845. The ship crashed on reefs and sank, killing more than three hundred settlers from England. In the same way, on the King's reefs, the corvette Sigi of Melbourne perished in 1853, the barque Waterung and the schooner Braten in 1854. How many ships were killed off the coast of Tasmania? The Australian historian Harry O "May tried to answer this question. For ten years he carefully studied the archival files related to the accident of maritime transport in Australia and Tasmania. He was able to establish the names of 603 ships that died in the area of the island from 1797 to 1950. About two hundred ships in the O "May's list remained unnamed, although he knows the places of their wreckage. The Australian historian believes that since its discovery to the present day, more than a thousand ships have died around Tasmania, not counting fishing vessels. Several dozen ships out of the ill-fated thousand carried valuable cargo with them to the seabed, in particular gold. The American clipper Water Witch, which died on the reefs of King Island on August 13, 1855, is of particular interest to underwater gold prospectors. It is reliably known that at the time of its death there was gold bullion on board, which is currently estimated at more than $ 5 million.
The information about the lost ships published by O "May caused quite a stir among the adventurers of Tasmania and Australia. But it was not so easy to get to these underwater treasures! Sharp reefs, incessantly covered with surf or ocean swell, reliably guard the ships lying near the coast. -so, despite the dangers, scuba divers continue to search. The fauna and flora of Tasmania are very original - a large number of representatives are endemic - for example, the Tasmanian devil.) Even those who arrived from mainland Australia, Tasmania undergo additional environmental control, similar to the one Tasmania has 44% rainforest and 21% national parks. Such proportions are rare. Tasmania's rainforest is recognized as a natural heritage of mankind. It is one of the last areas of virgin temperate nature in the Southern Hemisphere. And maybe Tasmania, - this is one of the standards of wildlife on our planet. 
Trout-infested lakes, rivers and waterfalls, replenished with rain and melt water, feed the forests where euphoria tirucalli, eucalyptus regal and Hannah, myrtle trees, Cunningham's notofagus, black-wood acacia, sassafras, brilliant eucriphia, phyllocladus aspleniferous, dixacrydihidium antarctic and antarctic dixacrythia and dixacrydia. Environmentalists are constantly at war with miners, papermakers and hydropower builders. The bare desert of Queenstown, a mining town, is a dark reminder of the consequences of a thoughtless waste of natural resources. Once Tasmania, like Australia and New Zealand, together with Antarctica, South America, Africa and India, was part of the colossal southern continent of Gondwana, it was about 250 million years ago. The huge mainland occupied more than half of the globe, and a significant part of it was covered by the temperate rain forest. A significant part of this forest is preserved in the western part of Tasmania; in 1982, as a unique natural phenomenon, it was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The nature of Tasmania is exceptional, it has no analogues in the world. The heart of Tasmanian wilderness is the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park. Here you can see amazing mountain peaks, tropical forests, deep river valleys, picturesque gorges. And among all this splendor, reserved rivers meander. Almost a quarter of the territory of this island has not yet been influenced by humans. Impenetrable forests and jungles, strange forest animals, a huge number of rare species of birds, a wide variety of fish in mountain lakes and rivers have been preserved here. One of the legendary inhabitants of the forests of Tasmania is the Tasmanian devil. Recently, the number of this exotic wild animal has declined significantly. although he is not threatened at all. With its powerful jaws, this muscular, 6 to 8 kilogram carrion collector can eat a dead kangaroo whole, including its head. The cultural heritage of this region, which was the southernmost habitat of people on our planet, is also of colossal interest. There are more than 40 Aboriginal sacred sites that are still of exceptional importance to the modern Australian indigenous population. Archaeological finds from this region have made up priceless exhibits stored in many museums not only in Australia, but throughout the world.
How the British massacred the Tasmanians June 5th, 2013
... Are we dealing with intelligent monkeys or with very underdeveloped people?
Oldfield, 1865
The only reasonable and logical solution to the inferior race is to destroy it.
H. J. Wells, 1902
One of the most shameful pages in the history of British colonial expansion is the extermination of the native population of Fr. Tasmania.,
British settlers in Australia, and especially in Tasmania, systematically destroyed the indigenous population and undermined the foundations of their life for their own prosperity. The British "needed" all the lands of the natives with favorable climatic conditions. “Europeans can hope for prosperity as ... blacks will soon disappear ...
If the natives are shot in the same way that crows are shot in some countries, then the [native] population should be greatly reduced over time, "wrote Robert Knox in his" philosophical study on the influence of race. " Alan Moorehead described the fatal changes that befell Australia: “In Sydney, the savage tribes were killed. In Tasmania, they were massacred ... by settlers ... and convicts ... they were all hungry for land, and none of them was going to let the blacks prevent it.
However, those gentle and kind-hearted people whom Cook had visited half a century before were not as submissive as on the mainland. " After the farmers took the land from the indigenous people (primarily in Tasmania, where the climate was colder), the natives with spears in their hands tried to resist the aliens armed with firearms. In response, the British organized a real hunt for them. In Tasmania, such a hunt for people took place with the sanction of the British authorities: “The final extermination on a large scale could only be carried out with the help of justice and the armed forces ... The soldiers of the fortieth regiment drove the natives between two boulders, shot
all men, and then dragged women and children out of rock crevices to blow their brains out ”(ISSO). If the natives were "unfriendly [non-compliant]," the British concluded that the only way out of this situation was to destroy them. The natives were "incessantly hunted, hunted down like a fallow deer." Those who could be caught were taken away. In 1835 the last surviving local resident was taken out. Moreover, these measures were not secret, no one was ashamed of them, and the government supported this policy.
“So the hunt for people began, and over time it became more and more brutal. In 1830, Tasmania was put under martial law, and a chain of armed men was lined up across the island to try to drive the natives into a trap. The indigenous people managed to get through the cordon, but the will to live left the hearts of the savages, fear was stronger than despair ... ”Felix Maynard, doctor of a French whaling ship, recalled the systematic raids on the natives. "The Tasmanians were useless and [now] everyone is dead," Hammond believed.
* Hammond John Lawrence Le Breton (1872-1949) - historian and journalist.
The Europeans found the island quite densely populated. R. Pöh believes that about 6,000 natives could have existed in Tasmania by the products of hunting and gathering. The wars between the aborigines did not go beyond petty tribal strife. Apparently, there were no hunger strikes, at least the Europeans did not find the natives exhausted.
The first Europeans were greeted by the Tasmanians with the greatest friendliness. According to Cook, the Tasmanians of all the "savages" he had seen were the most good-natured and trusting people. "They did not have a fierce appearance, but seemed kind and cheerful without distrust of strangers."
When in 1803. the first English settlement was founded on the island, the Tasmanians also reacted to the colonists without any hostility. Only the violence and brutality of Europeans forced Tasmanians to change their attitude towards whites. In the sources we find numerous colorful examples of these violence and atrocities. “Someone named Carrots,” says H. Parker, “killed a native who wanted to take his wife away, cut off his head, hung it like a toy on the neck of the murdered man, and forced the woman to follow him.” The same author reports on the exploits of a seal dealer who “captured 15 native women and resettled them on the islets of the Bass Strait so that they would hunt seals for him. If by his arrival the women did not have time to prepare the required amount of skins, he would tie the culprits to the trees for 24-36 hours in a row as punishment, and from time to time he would beat them with rods. "
In the early 1820s, Tasmanians attempted organized armed resistance to European rapists and murderers. The so-called "black war" begins, which soon turned into a simple hunt by the British for the Tasmanians, completely defenseless against white firearms.
H. Hull directly says that “hunting for blacks was the favorite sport of the colonists. They chose a day and invited neighbors with their families to a picnic ... after dinner the gentlemen took guns and dogs and, accompanied by 2-3 servants from the exiles, went into the forest to look for Tasmanians. The hunters returned in triumph if they managed to shoot a woman or 1-2 men.
"One European colonist," says Ling Roth, "had a jar in which he kept the ears of the people he was able to kill as hunting trophies."
In the photo: the last indigenous people of Tasmania
“Many blacks with women and children gathered in a ravine near the city ... the men sat around a large fire while the women were busy preparing food for dinner. The natives were taken by surprise by a detachment of soldiers who, without warning, opened fire on them, and then rushed to finish off the wounded. One soldier stabbed a child crawling beside his murdered mother with a bayonet and threw him into the fire. This soldier himself talked about his "feat" to the traveler Hull, and when the latter expressed his indignation at his cruelty, he exclaimed with sincere surprise: "After all, it was only a child!"
In 1834 everything was finished. “On December 28,” says E. Reclus, “the last natives, pursued like wild animals, were driven to the tip of one elevated promontory, and this event was celebrated with triumph. The lucky hunter, Robinson, received an estate of 400 hectares and a significant amount of money as a reward from the government.
The prisoners were first transferred from one island to another, and then all the Tasmanians, including two hundred, were imprisoned in one swampy valley of about. Flinders. Within 10 years, 3/4 of the exiles died.
In 1869, on the shores of Oyster Bay, near Hobart, William Lanney, the last Tasmanian, died.
In 1860, only eleven Tasmanians remained. In 1876, the last Tasmanian woman, Truganini, dies, the island turns out, according to the English official documents, to be completely "cleared" of natives, except for an insignificant number of Europeanized mestizos of Anglo-Tasmanian origin.
“During the Holocaust, Charles Darwin visited Tasmania. He wrote: "I am afraid there is no doubt that the evil that is happening here and its consequences are the result of the shameless behavior of some of our fellow countrymen." That's putting it mildly. It was a monstrous, unforgivable crime ... The Aborigines had only two alternatives: either to resist and die, or to submit and become a parody of themselves, ”wrote Alan Moorhead. Polish traveler Count Strzelecki,
(* Strzelecki Edmund Paul (1796-1873) - Polish naturalist, geographer and geologist, explorer of America, Oceania and Australia) who arrived in Australia in the late 1830s, could not help expressing horror from what he saw: “Humiliated, depressed, confused ... emaciated and covered with dirty rags, they are [once] the natural masters of this land - [now] rather ghosts of the past than living people; they vegetate here in their melancholic existence, waiting for an even more melancholic end. " Strzheletskiy also mentioned "the examination of the corpse by one race by another - with the verdict:" She died, overtaken by God's retribution. " The extermination of the natives could be viewed as hunting, as a sport, because they did not seem to have a soul.
True, Christian missionaries opposed the notion of "no soul" among the "aborigines" and saved the lives of a large number of the last native inhabitants of Australia. However
less, the constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, which was in force in the post-war years, prescribed (article 127) "not to count the aborigines" when counting the population of individual states. Thus, the constitution rejected their involvement in the human race. After all, back in 1865, when faced with the indigenous people, Europeans were not sure whether they were dealing with "smart monkeys or with very underdeveloped people."
Caring for “these beastmen” is “a crime against our own blood,” Heinrich Himmler recalled in 1943, speaking of the Russians who should have been subordinated to the Nordic race of masters.
The British, who were doing "unheard-of colonization" in Australia (in the words of Adolf Hitler), did not need this kind of instruction. Thus, one report for 1885 reads:
“To calm the niggas down, they were given something amazing. The food [that was given to them] was half strychnine - and no one escaped their fate ... The owner of Long Lagoon used this trick to destroy over a hundred blacks. " "In the old days in New South Wales, it was useless to get those who invited blacks over and gave them poisoned meat to receive the punishment they deserve." Некий Винсент Лесина еще в 1901 г. заявил в австралийском парламенте: «Ниггер должен исчезнуть с пути развития белого человека» - так «гласит закон эволюции». “We didn’t realize that killing blacks was breaking the law ... because it used to be practiced everywhere,” was the main argument of the British, who killed twenty-eight “friendly” (ie, peaceful) natives in 1838. Prior to this massacre at Myell Creek, all acts of extermination of indigenous people in Australia went unpunished. Only in the second year of the reign of Queen Victoria, seven Englishmen (from the lower strata) were hanged as an exception for such a crime.
However, in Queensland (northern Australia) in late XIX in. An innocent fun was considered to drive a whole family of Niggners -Muja, wife and children - into the water to crocodiles ... During his stay in North Queensland in 1880-1884, Norwegez Karl Lumholz (* Lumholz Karl Sofus (1851-1922) - Norwegian traveler, naturalist and ethnographer, explorer of Australia, Mexico, Indonesia) heard such statements: "Blacks can only be shot - you cannot treat them differently." One of the colonists remarked that this is "a tough ... but ... necessary principle." He himself shot all the men he met in his pastures, “because they are cattle-killers, women - because they give birth to cattle-killers, and children - because they [will] be cattle-killers. They do not want to work and therefore are not good for anything but getting shot, ”the colonists complained to Lumholz.
... Are we dealing with intelligent monkeys or with very underdeveloped people?
Oldfield, 1865
The only reasonable and logical solution to the inferior race is to destroy it.
H. J. Wells, 1902
In the photo: the last indigenous people of Tasmania
One of the most shameful pages in the history of British colonial expansion is the extermination of the native population of Fr. Tasmania.,
British settlers in Australia, and especially in Tasmania, systematically destroyed the indigenous population and undermined the foundations of their life for their own prosperity. The British "needed" all the lands of the natives with favorable climatic conditions. “Europeans can hope for prosperity as ... blacks will soon disappear ...
If the natives are shot in the same way that crows are shot in some countries, then the [native] population should be greatly reduced over time, "wrote Robert Knox in his" philosophical study on the influence of race. " Alan Moorehead described the fatal changes that befell Australia: “In Sydney, the savage tribes were killed. In Tasmania, they were massacred ... by settlers ... and by convicts ... they were all hungry for land, and none of them was going to let the blacks prevent it.
However, those gentle and kind-hearted people whom Cook had visited half a century before were not as submissive as on the mainland. " After the farmers took the land from the indigenous people (primarily in Tasmania, where the climate was colder), the natives with spears in their hands tried to resist the aliens armed with firearms. In response, the British organized a real hunt for them. In Tasmania, such a hunt for people took place with the sanction of the British authorities: “The final extermination on a large scale could only be carried out with the help of justice and the armed forces ... The soldiers of the fortieth regiment drove the natives between two boulders, shot
all men, and then dragged women and children out of rock crevices to blow their brains out ”(ISSO). If the natives were "unfriendly [non-compliant]," the British concluded that the only way out of this situation was to destroy them. The natives were "incessantly hunted, hunted down like a fallow deer." Those who could be caught were taken away. In 1835 the last surviving local resident was taken out. Moreover, these measures were not secret, no one was ashamed of them, and the government supported this policy.
“So the hunt for people began, and over time it became more and more brutal. In 1830, Tasmania was put under martial law, and a chain of armed men was lined up across the island to try to drive the natives into a trap. The indigenous people managed to get through the cordon, but the will to live left the hearts of the savages, fear was stronger than despair ... ”Felix Maynard, doctor of a French whaling ship, recalled the systematic raids on the natives. "The Tasmanians were useless and [now] everyone is dead," Hammond believed.
* Hammond John Lawrence Le Breton (1872-1949) - historian and journalist.
The Europeans found the island quite densely populated. R. Pöh believes that about 6,000 natives could have existed in Tasmania by the products of hunting and gathering. The wars between the aborigines did not go beyond petty tribal strife. Apparently, there were no hunger strikes, at least the Europeans did not find the natives exhausted.
The first Europeans were greeted by the Tasmanians with the greatest friendliness. According to Cook, the Tasmanians of all the "savages" he had seen were the most good-natured and trusting people. "They did not have a fierce appearance, but seemed kind and cheerful without distrust of strangers."
When in 1803. the first English settlement was founded on the island, the Tasmanians also reacted to the colonists without any hostility. Only the violence and brutality of Europeans forced Tasmanians to change their attitude towards whites. In the sources we find numerous colorful examples of these violence and atrocities. “Someone named Carrots,” says H. Parker, “killed a native from whom he wanted to take his wife away, cut off his head, hung it like a toy around the neck of the murdered man, and forced the woman to follow him.” The same author reports on the exploits of a seal dealer who “captured 15 native women and resettled them on the islets of the Bass Strait so that they would hunt seals for him. If by his arrival the women did not have time to prepare the required amount of skins, he would tie the culprits to the trees for 24-36 hours in a row as punishment, and from time to time he would beat them with rods. "
In the early 1820s, Tasmanians attempted organized armed resistance to European rapists and murderers. The so-called "black war" begins, which soon turned into a simple hunt by the British for the Tasmanians, completely defenseless against white firearms.
H. Hull directly says that “hunting for blacks was the favorite sport of the colonists. They chose a day and invited neighbors with their families to a picnic ... after dinner the gentlemen took guns and dogs and, accompanied by 2-3 servants from the exiles, went into the forest to look for Tasmanians. The hunters returned in triumph if they managed to shoot a woman or 1-2 men.
"One European colonist," says Ling Roth, "had a jar in which he kept the ears of the people he was able to kill as hunting trophies."
“Many blacks with women and children gathered in a ravine near the city ... the men sat around a large fire while the women were busy preparing food for dinner. The natives were taken by surprise by a detachment of soldiers who, without warning, opened fire on them, and then rushed to finish off the wounded. One soldier stabbed a child crawling beside his murdered mother with a bayonet and threw him into the fire. This soldier himself talked about his "feat" to the traveler Hull, and when the latter expressed his indignation at his cruelty, he exclaimed with sincere surprise: "After all, it was only a child!"
In 1834 everything was finished. “On December 28,” says E. Reclus, “the last natives, pursued like wild animals, were driven to the tip of one elevated promontory, and this event was celebrated with triumph. The lucky hunter, Robinson, received an estate of 400 hectares and a significant amount of money as a reward from the government.
The prisoners were first transferred from one island to another, and then all the Tasmanians, including two hundred, were imprisoned in one swampy valley of about. Flinders. Within 10 years, 3/4 of the exiles died.
In 1860, only eleven Tasmanians remained. In 1876, the last Tasmanian woman, Truganini, dies, the island turns out, according to the English official documents, to be completely "cleared" of natives, except for an insignificant number of Europeanized mestizos of Anglo-Tasmanian origin.
“During the Holocaust, Charles Darwin visited Tasmania. He wrote: "I am afraid there is no doubt that the evil that is happening here and its consequences are the result of the shameless behavior of some of our fellow countrymen." That's putting it mildly. It was a monstrous, unforgivable crime ... The Aborigines had only two alternatives: either to resist and die, or to submit and become a parody of themselves, ”wrote Alan Moorhead. Polish traveler Count Strzelecki,
(* Strzelecki Edmund Paul (1796-1873) - Polish naturalist, geographer and geologist, explorer of America, Oceania and Australia) who arrived in Australia in the late 1830s, could not help expressing horror from what he saw: “Humiliated, depressed, confused ... emaciated and covered with dirty rags, they are [once] the natural masters of this land - [now] rather ghosts of the past than living people; they vegetate here in their melancholic existence, waiting for an even more melancholic end. " Strzheletskiy also mentioned "the examination of the corpse by one race by another - with the verdict:" She died, overtaken by God's retribution. " The extermination of the natives could be viewed as hunting, as a sport, because they did not seem to have a soul.
True, Christian missionaries opposed the notion of "no soul" among the "aborigines" and saved the lives of a large number of the last native inhabitants of Australia. However
less, the constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, which was in force in the post-war years, prescribed (article 127) "not to count the aborigines" when counting the population of individual states. Thus, the constitution rejected their involvement in the human race. After all, back in 1865, when faced with the indigenous people, Europeans were not sure whether they were dealing with "smart monkeys or with very underdeveloped people."
Caring for “these beastmen” is “a crime against our own blood,” Heinrich Himmler recalled in 1943, speaking of the Russians who should have been subordinated to the Nordic race of masters.
The British, who were doing "unheard-of colonization" in Australia (in the words of Adolf Hitler), did not need this kind of instruction. Thus, one report for 1885 reads:
“To calm the niggas down, they were given something amazing. The food [that was given to them] was half strychnine - and no one escaped their fate ... The owner of Long Lagoon used this trick to destroy over a hundred blacks. " "In the old days in New South Wales, it was useless to get those who invited blacks over and gave them poisoned meat to receive the punishment they deserve." Некий Винсент Лесина еще в 1901 г. заявил в австралийском парламенте: «Ниггер должен исчезнуть с пути развития белого человека» - так «гласит закон эволюции». “We didn’t realize that killing blacks was breaking the law ... because it used to be practiced everywhere,” was the main argument of the British, who killed twenty-eight “friendly” (ie, peaceful) natives in 1838. Prior to this massacre at Myell Creek, all acts of extermination of indigenous people in Australia went unpunished. Only in the second year of the reign of Queen Victoria, seven Englishmen (from the lower strata) were hanged as an exception for such a crime.
Nevertheless, in Queensland (northern Australia) at the end of the 19th century. An innocent fun was considered to drive a whole family of Niggners -Muja, wife and children - into the water to crocodiles ... During his stay in North Queensland in 1880-1884, Norwegez Karl Lumholz (* Lumholz Karl Sofus (1851-1922) - Norwegian traveler, naturalist and ethnographer, explorer of Australia, Mexico, Indonesia) heard such statements: "Blacks can only be shot - you cannot treat them differently." One of the colonists remarked that this is "a tough ... but ... necessary principle." He himself shot all the men he met in his pastures, “because they are cattle-killers, women - because they give birth to cattle-killers, and children - because they [will] be cattle-killers. They do not want to work and therefore are not good for anything but getting shot, ”the colonists complained to Lumholz.
The racial status and origin history of the Tasmanian aborigines are the gray spots of anthropology. This is mainly due to the total destruction of the aborigines themselves in the middle of the 19th century by the British. To a lesser extent, by the destruction of paleoanthropological and craniological materials at the end of the 20th century.
Despite these complexities, little is known about the Tasmanians. V.R. Cabo gave an exhaustive and best-of-all review of all available material (Cabo, 1975). The craniology of the Tasmanians is detailed in several monumental works (Macintosh et Barker, 1965; Morant, 1927, 1939; Wunderly, 1939).
The Tasmanian skulls are characterized by a small volume, in fact, a record on a global scale (perhaps less only among the Andamans). The length of the skull is medium, the width and height are small; the skull is dolicho-, ortho- and metriocranial. The greatest width of the skull is usually high, although the lateral walls of the vault are almost or completely parallel when viewed from behind.
The forehead is medium wide, rather sloping, with a flattened cerebral part. The superciliary relief of the Tasmanians is strong, emphasized by a strong depression of the bridge. Sagittal In relation to the body, from front to back. the frontal ridge is often pronounced, although weaker than in the Australians, it rarely reaches the parietal bones, although the transverse profile of the fornix is still roof-like. The forehead is moderately sloping: stronger than that of Europeans, but less than that of Australians. The temporal lines are high, although not as close to the sagittal line as in the Australians. The occipital part of the skull is somewhat elongated back, but not as much as in the Australians; the occiput is medium wide, but slightly widened in comparison with the width of the entire skull. The occipital relief is rather weak, than the Tasmanians differ sharply from the Australians; the same can be said about other elements of the muscle relief on the skull. The surface of the bones is generally very smooth, and all possible edges are rounded. The temporal fossa is weakly expressed, flattened. The scales of the temporal bone are very elongated, low, with a straightened upper edge; parietal notch rather weakly expressed.
Typical skull of a Tasmanian woman.
Source: Morant G.M. Note on Dr. J. Wunderly "s survey of Tasmanian crania // Biometrika, 1939, V. 30, No. 3/4, p. 341.
The face is very low, but medium wide, eurienic, mesognathic. The type of facial protrusion, intermediate between orthognathism and prognathism. , although alveolar prognathism One of the types of skull structure in which the facial region (in particular, the jaw) protrudes forward. can be pronounced. A characteristic feature of the Tasmanians is a sharp upper horizontal profiling. The zygomatic arches are thin, in contrast to the Australians. The eye sockets have smooth edges, rectangular in shape, with parallel upper and lower edges, absolutely very low and medium wide, relatively chameconch. The nose is very low, but wide, hyperhameric, as a result of which
the relative width of the nose of the Tasmanians is one of the greatest in the world, surpassing Australian values.
The nasal bones are concave and extremely short; the ratio of their width to length is a record in the world. The width of the nasal bones is less than that of the Australians; at the same time, the bones are often sharply narrowed towards the end, and their transverse profile is very convex. The nasal spine is often extremely poorly developed, possibly weaker than in all other groups of people, and the edges of the nasal opening (and the lateral ones too) are rounded and smoothed; as in all equatorials, supra-nasal fossae or gutters are often developed. The cheekbones are very small, than the Tasmanians are in stark contrast to the Australians. Unlike the Australians, the infraorbital space is small. The canine fossae are often deep, although less developed than those of the Australians. The mandibular notches are not very strong. The alveolar process of the upper jaw is very low, usually sharply directed forward. The palate is long and medium wide, leptostaphylline, shallow to moderate depth, never deep, unlike the voluminous in the Australians. The sagittal ridge is often developed on the palate. The alveolar arch usually has parallel rows of canine teeth and is straightened anteriorly. On the lower jaw, the height of the symphysis. Bones are connected by means of cartilage. The symphysis of the lower jaw (chin symphysis) connects the right and left halves of the jaw; fits the chin. usually higher than the height of the body at the back. The chin prominence is moderately developed, the ascending ramus of moderate proportions, without excessive widening.
The sizes of the teeth of Tasmanians are very large, close to the world record, although, apparently, smaller than those of the Australians. This is associated with the usually good development of third molars, which almost always come into contact with antagonists. Teeth have a complicated enamel structure.
Of the specific features, it is possible to note the absence of a groove above the supraorbital foramen, typical for other human races. In the lambdoid suture and asterion, there are almost always intercalated bones.
Even more unique is the relatively frequent occurrence of the fourth molar.
In general, the structure of the Tasmanian skull, although it has a certain specificity, is very similar to that of the Southeast Australians: so much so that many of the largest racialists considered it possible to combine them within the same type as local variants (Hrdlicka, 1928, pp. 81-90; Thorne, 1971, p. 317). Yet the differences between Tasmanians and Australians are greater than those between Australians (Morant, 1927). One of the most significant differences between Tasmanians and Australians is the difference in the latitudinal dimensions of the skull: in the former, the largest width of the skull is greater, and all other dimensions, including facial ones, are smaller (Morant, 1927). It is clear that here we have not just a change in size, but a change in shape, and a very significant one. The same feature is perceived to the eye as a good expression of the frontal and parietal tubercles and, accordingly, the pentagonoid of the skull when viewed from above in Tasmanians and the absence of tubercles in Australians when their vault is ovoid (Wunderly, 1939). At the same time, the width of the forehead relative to the width of the skull in Tasmanians is noticeably smaller than in Australians. In the facial skeleton, attention is drawn to the sharp difference in the upper horizontal profiling: it is very large in the Tasmanians and somewhat weakened in the Australians; the Tasmanians are mesognathic, and the Australians are prognathous.
