Page 601 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

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involved in this large-scale grave-robbing trade. These included anatomist Sir Richard Owen, an-
thropologist Sir Arthur Keith, and Charles Darwin himself. Darwin wrote asking for Tasmanian skulls
when only four full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigines were left alive, provided his request would not
"upset" their feelings. Museums were not only interested in bones, but in fresh skins as well. These
would provide interesting evolutionary displays when stuffed.

• Pickled Aboriginal brains were also in demand, to try to prove that they were inferior to those of
whites.

• There is no doubt from written evidence that many of the "fresh" specimens were obtained by sim-
ply going out and killing the Aboriginal people.

• Edward Ramsay, curator of the Australian Museum in Sydney for 20 years from 1874, was particu-
larly heavily involved. He published a museum booklet which appeared to include Aborigines under

the designation of "Australian animals." It also gave instructions not only on how to rob graves, but
also on how to plug up bullet wounds in freshly killed "specimens." Many freelance collectors worked
under his guidance. Four weeks after he had requested skulls of Bungee (Russell River) blacks, a keen
young science student sent him two, announcing that they, the last of their tribe, had just been shot. 4

• A German evolutionist, Amalie Dietrich came to Australia asking station owners for Aborigines to
be shot for specimens, particularly skin for stuffing and mounting for her museum employers. 5

Another study documenting this maltreatment and slaughter inflicted on the Aborigines is the book
Aborigines in White Australia: A Documentary History of the Attitudes Affecting Official Policy and the
Australian Aborigine 1697–1973 edited by Sharman Stone, Parliamentary Secretary to the Australian
Minister for Environment and Heritage. Apart from a few comments by the editor, this book consists
of such documents as parliamentary records, examination reports, letters to editors and anthropolog-
ical reports.

In the book, Stone constructs the following relationship between Darwin's theory and the slaughter of
the Aborigines:

In 1859 Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species popularized the notion of biological (and therefore so-
cial) evolution. Scholars began to discuss civilization
as a unilinear process with races able to ascend or de-

scend a graduated scale. The European was the
"fittest to survive." [The Aboriginal] was doomed to
die out according to a "natural law," like the dodo and
the dinosaur. This theory, supported by the facts at
hand continued to be quoted until well into the twen-
tieth century when it was noticed that the dark-
skinned race was multiplying. Until that time it could

be used to justify neglect and murder. 6

As the book's editor makes clear, some

European Darwinists portrayed the
deaths of Aborigines as proof that
Discriminatory prac-
tices against native this race was condemned to disap-
Australians still go on pear as a consequence of "natural
today. The photo above law." In the 20th century, however, it
shows a group protest- was realized that these alleged
ing against proofs were invalid. The Aborigines
their lands being taken
from them.

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