Abstract
II. LIKE all other human beings existing at present in the world, however low in the scale of civilization, the social life of the Andamanese is enveloped in a complex maze of unwritten law or Custom, the intricacies of which are most difficult for any stranger to unravel. The relations they may or may not marry, the food they are obliged or forbidden to partake of at particular epochs of life or seasons of the year, the words and names they may or may ait pronounce: all thitee, as well as their traditions, superstitions, and beliefs, their occupations, games, and amusements of which they seem to have had no lack, would take far too long to describe here; but, before leaving these interesting people, I may quote an observation of Mr. Man's, which, unless he has seen them with too couleur-de-rose eyesight, throws a very favourable light upon the primitive unsophisticated life of these poor little savages, now so ruthlessly broken into and destroyed by the exigencies of our ever-extending Empire.
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References
The scattered information upon this subject was first collected together by Hamy in his "Essai de co-ordination des Matériaux récemment recueill sur l'ethnologie des Négrilles ou Pygmées de l'Afrique équatoriale," Bull. Soc. d'Anthropologie de Paris, tome ii. (ser. iii.), 1879, p. 79.
"A Journey to Ashango-land," 1867, p. 35.
"Through the Dark Continent," vol. ii.
La Gazette Géograghique, 1887, p. 153, quoted by Quatrefages.
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The Pygmy Races of Men 1 . Nature 38, 66–69 (1888). https://doi.org/10.1038/038066a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/038066a0