Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
For all that I know, a dweller in Dunbuie might have compasses, like the Lough Crew cairn artist. If I have established the parallelism between Arunta churinga nanja and the disputed Clyde "pendants," which Dr. Munro denies, we are reduced to one of two theories.
Among the Kamilaroi and the Arunta of S. Australia the tribe was divided into classes or clans, sometimes four, sometimes eight, and a man of one particular clan was only marriageable with a woman of another particular clan say with or with , and so on. Customs with a similar tendency, but different in detail, seem to have prevailed among native tribes in Central Africa and N. America.
The custom of using magic stones was not at all incongruous with the early Pictish civilisation, which retained a form of the Family now long outworn by the civilisation of the Arunta. The sole objection is that a silentio, silence of archaeological records as to inscribed small stones. That is not a closer of discussion, nor is the silence absolute, as I shall show.
My next business is, if I can, to establish, what Dr. Munro denies, a parallelism between these disputed Clyde stones, and the larger or smaller inscribed stones of the Arunta and Kaitish, in Australia, and other small stones, decorated or plain, found in many ancient European sites. Their meaning we know not, but probably they were either reckoned ornamental, or magical, or both.
Thus, I have omitted to mention that sometimes the totems seem to have nothing to do at all with the social organization; as, for example, amongst the famous Arunta of central Australia, whom Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have so carefully described.
We may compare with these the Melanesian and Samoan supernatural beings who are incarnate in animal forms and are at the same time originators of civilization. These zoömorphic beings are not necessarily totems, as in Australia; outside of the Arunta it does not appear that totems as such are ever regarded as creators they are ancestors, but at that point their function appears to cease.
"In order to multiply Emus which are an important article of food, the men of the Emu totem in the Arunta tribe proceed as follows: They clear a small spot of level ground, and opening veins in their arms they let the blood stream out until the surface of the ground for a space of about three square yards is soaked with it.
Thus among the Warramunga the headman of the white cockatoo totem seeks to multiply white cockatoos by holding an effigy of the bird and mimicking its harsh cry. Among the Arunta the men of the witchetty grub totem perform ceremonies for multiplying the grub which the other members of the tribe use as food.
Among the best observers of the Arunta tribes, for instance, some hold that they have no conception of God, others that they are constantly thinking about God. The truth is that this idea of a god far away in the sky I do not say merely a First Cause who is 'without body parts or passions', but almost any being that we should naturally call a 'god' is an idea not easy for primitive man to grasp.
A transitional stage is presented by the Australian Arunta, in whose mythical system the authors of tribal institutions and the makers of heavenly bodies are the half-animal, half-human ancestors; this seems to be an attempt at a transformation of the old scheme of creation by animals unwilling to abandon the earlier conception, these tribes have satisfied themselves by the theory that the ancestors and creators, though animals in nature, must at the same time have been human.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking