Bororo

These fishermen are Bororo people whose home is on the Brazil-Bolivia border.

According to recent reports, they have done better than most indigenous

folk of that region in terms of cultural preservation.

 

New Guinea, 1919

A Royal Geographic Society photographer took this photo in Papua New Guinea in 1919.  

The story attached to it was unfairly used to brand these men and others as "cannibals" 

when human flesh consumption was limited to funerary rituals that weren't even always 

practiced.  It was decades before attempts were made to correct the exaggerations.

 

Anthropology Day, Part 1 - Mixed Types

Today we will look at a range of tribal types in a two part set.  We start with a photo made 

by Prince Roland Bonapart of France.  The prince was a well educated man who did valuable ethnographic work which was not considered exploitative by subsequent commentators.

 

Melville Islanders

These two men are from the Melville Islands just off the coast of Northern Australia.

 

German Chinese Concession - 1898

Germany tried to get in on the colonialism trend in the late 19th Century, and one place they ventured was a "concession" in coastal China.  That basically meant that they strongarmed their way in at gunpoint and forced the Chinese government to concede control of Tianjin to them.  The photo above is from a group showing ethnic men from various German colonies.

 

Panara

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This tall fellow is Sokriti, a Parana tribesman from the border of Brazil and Colombia.  

Exceptionally tall for the indigenous of that region, they continue exist as a distinct tribe, 

and they have regained some lands formerly lost to ranchers.  The photo is from 1973.

 

New Zealand

I don't have a date for this shot of a Maori tattoo session in New Zealand.

I can imagine someone asking, "Does this tattoo make my ass look big?"

 

Anthropology Day, Part 2 - Ainu Men

Part two of Anthropology Day focuses on men of the Ainu, an indigenous group from Japan's nothernmost island of Hokkaido.  Early Western ethnologists thought they were an isolated group of Caucasians because many of them have light skin, heavy beards, and light eyes.  Later, DNA tests showed them not to be Caucasian.   The man above is could have fooled me.

 

That beard!

This grumpy looking Ainu man has one prodigious beard!

 

Same guy?

I'm not sure, but I think these two photos may be of the same Ainu man.

 

Hunter

The Ainu modernized their approach to hunter-gathering 

in the late 19th Century by taking up firearms.

 

More light eyes

Our final Ainu man is another example of light eyes among this group.

 

Ainu Men

In the 1930s some anthropologists visited and photographed the Ainu people of far northern Japan.  Ainu are a very distinct ethnic group who do not resemble Japanes much at all.  The fellow above 

had a nice happy trail leading down to that wraparound cloth.  The man below has short hair and a fundoshi style loincloth, both likely borrowed from encroaching Japanese culture.

 

Anthropology Day, Part 1 - Comparative Studies

Our two part series today is on the theme of early day anthropological photographs.  In part one, we will look at some comparative studies that for the most part show at least a good try at a scientific effort.  Above we had an image from a set done in the 1880s by Napoleon's nephew, Prince Roland Bonaparte, showing Hottentots.  Prince Roland was recognized as a legitimate scientist who published papers that were considered quite erudite and even groundbreaking.

 

German

Not being a single country until 1871, the Germans got into the business of acquiring colonies late in the game.  By 1900 they were in what is now Namibia, Tanzania, Cameroon, Togoland, and the Southwest Pacific.  The image above came to me labeled "German Colonial" with no specific location.  Google Images Search was no help, but I'm guessing this one is Pacific.

 

Portman, 1890s

British colonial official M.V. Portman became somewhat notorious after he took hundreds of nude photos of Andaman Island indigenous people, mostly men in the 1890s.  The bulk of those photos were like those above and immediately below in that they had some legitimate scientific elements.  (The grid was an effective size standardization method used by others as well.)  The problem was that Portman also staged his subjects in fanciful romantic scenes that were in some cases sexually suggestive.  There were also rumors that the sex was more than just suggested.  The image at the bottom of this group of three was one of the more benign of that second type.

 

Sami

Not all of the anthropometric photos were made of non-Europeans.  This is Lars Nilsen Hotti, 

a Sami (Laplander) man who was photographed in 1880 by Paolo Mantegazza and Carlo Sommier.

 

South Africa, 1870

Captain J.E. Parish of the Royal Navy took these photo of a South African man in 1870.

I'm not exactly sure how the tape measure was used, but at least we know 

that some metric was involved and not just prurient interest.

 

Anthropology Day, Part 2 - Assorted

Part two of our anthropological series has an assortment of photos with varying 

degrees of scientific merit.  This one is by Bernard Dernburg who made a trip 

to German East Africa, now Tanzania, in the early 20th Century.

 

Papua New Guinea

J.P. de Vertenil photographed these Papua New Guinea men in 1919 and described them as cannibals.  The way some of them are looking back at him tends to suipport that assertion.