Mummies In New

Guinea Cave

Dr. J. R. Atcherley’s Find Near Salamaua

DURING the month Australian newspapers have given prominence to a discovery by Dr. J. R. Atcherley, of Mel bourne, of mummies in a cave at Mapos, 30 miles inland from Salamaua, New Guinea.

Dr. Atcherley is not the first to report this discovery; the find was referred to by Mr. Hall Best about the middle of last year, and was reported, with description of mummified native remains, in the Pacific Islands Monthly of July, 1934.

“I was on a prospecting expedition for New Morobe Gold Options when we dis covered the cave,” said Dr. Atcherley, on his return to Australia by the Montoro on July 2. “It was about 40ft. from the ground, and was a tortuous winding laby rinth.

“Inside we found a shelved mausoleum, on which were hundreds of mummies, all sitting with their chins on their hands and their elbows on their knees. It appeared to me that they had been preserved by the dripping of limewater from the cave stalactites. Local scientists believe, however, that there was pre-mummification—that the bodies were preserved be fore burial in the cavern.”

Dr. Atcherley added that the mummies’ features were negroid, although apparent pigmentation was lighter than that of present day New Guinea natives. This colouration, however, might have been induced by the action of limewater. It would be impossible to give the exact ages of the mummies, he concluded; the gene ral opinion was that their ages varied from between 1000 to 2000 years.

Melbourne Professor Sceptical

Commenting on the discovery of human remains in New Guinea, Professor Wood Jones, of the Chair of Anatomy, Mel bourne University, said that he was not satisfied, from the chat he had had with Dr. Atcherley and from the photographs he had seen, that they were mummies.

“If they are,” the professor said, “it would be the first time that mummies have been found in New Guinea, and it would lead one to assume that the natives there had lived in a culture higher than hitherto believed possible.

“I understand that Dr. Atcherley will seek official authority to send one of the bodies to the National Museum in Mel bourne for examination. After it arrives, and is proved to have been mummified, a new and important theory about the cul ture of the early New Guinea natives may be evolved.”

Mr. C. E. Tait, director of Messrs. W.

S. Tait and Co. Ltd., Islands merchants, of Sydney, returned to Australia recently by the Laperouse, after a business visit to New Caledonia. He said that N.C. chrome and nickel mines were working at full pressure in consequence of the ru mour of an impending war between Italy and Abyssinia.

Mr. H. E. Annear, mining engineer, of Melbourne, sailed from Sydney at the end of June for Suva, Fiji, to inspect several leases on behalf of Victoria Develop ment, N.L.