DISCOVERY OF PIGMIES IN NEW GUINEA.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 884, 2 August 1910, Page 6

DISCOVERY OF PIGMIES IN NEW GUINEA.

"The expedition sent by the committee appointed by the British Omi- ' thologists' Union to explore the' great snow mountains "in Dutch New Guinea has now readied the field of. its inquiries; and news has just been received," says "The Times," "that.it has already made a discovery which should prove of remarkable interest to all naturalists and to anthropologists in particular. At an elevation of about 2000 ft. they have come across a tribe oF pigmy people, the average height of whom is about ift. 3iu., who no doubt belong /to that division of the human race known as the Negritos. Hitherto these people have only been known to inhabit tlireo widely-separated areas — viz., the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, the northern portion of the Malay Peninsula, where they are known as Semangs, and certain areas in the Philippine Islands, in particular the northern Island of Luzon.,. In all these districts the characteristics of this raco are astonishingly uniform, practically no adult over aft.tin height being met 'with; while the women rarely exceed 4ft: The main features of this marked typo of tlio human race, apart from their small size, is.the very dark colour of their 'skin (approaching, as one observer has remarked, tho colour of a newly-blackcued stove); the extremely broad nose, the breadth being about equal to the.. height, and 1 tho frizzly hair, which grows ' in isolated 'peppercorn' tufts all over the scalp."