“Mummies”

Those New Guinea “Mummies”

A Scientist’s Comments

Letter to the Editor ly/TARVELS now come out of New Guinea as they used to go out of Africa, One expects the public to be interested, even excited; but fusty scientists are supposed to keep their heads and refrain from talking till they have got hold of the available facts. Having seen myself quoted however —before I have even spoken —first on the “new race” (as it is freely called) which Messrs. Hides and O’Malley reported from Papua, and now on the “mummies” discovered by Dr. Atcherley in the Mandated Territory, I feel that I am justified by self-defence in writing to the press.

When the “mummies” (I put them in inverted commas because I understand they are still sub judice ) were first re ported, the “Papuan Courier” asked me if I would give an opinion on them. I declined for the ample reason that I had none to give. But I see that your own correspondent at Wau —whoever he may be —reports in your last issue that I share

Dr. Fortune’s opinion that the mummified remains are contemporary with the pre sent natives of the district, and that we both emphatically disagree with the theory (allegedly put forward by Dr, Firth) that they may have some connec tion with the Egyptians.

My sole contribution to the literature of the subject has been a personal note to Dr. Fortune congratulating him on the tone of his brief report quoted in the “Papuan Courier” in August. This is a very different thing from expressing agreement with his views, and still more different from offering an opinion for pub lication in the press.

The fact is that I would hardly allow myself to form an opinion. For in the first place I have neither seen the “mum mies” nor read any adequate description of them; and in the second I am so completely ignorant of the subjects of mummies at large that I should not de pend on myself to recognise one outside a museum.

Whether the remains are or are not contemporary with the present day natives I have not the faintest idea; and whether they are or are not ultimately connected with the mummies of ancient Egypt I do not really care. If there was any point in his original report upon which I felt entirely at one with Dr. For tune it was where he said that the dis covery did not greatly interest him. It belongs to a branch of the wide tree of anthropology upon which neither I, nor, I believe, Dr. Fortune, would care to climb —much less to “swing.”

Those who are by qualification and op portunity able to investigate the New Guinea “mummies” may well ask, if they read your September issue, what right this anthopologist from Papua has to express an opinion. I have none, Mr.

Editor; and that is why I have expressed none.

Yours faithfully,

F. E. Williams.

Govt. Anthropologist, Port Moresby, 30/10/’35.