ИСТИНА

My data from Russian archives and periodicals showcase how anthropological focus shifted from multispecies view on New Guinea to classic anthropological one-species in late 19th century. I will draw my data from diaries of early Russian anthropologist Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay. Maclay spent more than 30 months on the North-East coast (today Rai-coast) of New Guinea. Going there he considered himself as broad specialist in natural history, i.e. he intended and it was expected of him by Russian Academy of Science to deliver an exhaustive description of nature of region including sponges, corals, birds, animals and “Homo papua”. Since his second trip (1876-1877) he has concentrated on papuans. I will concentrate in my paper on dogs depiction in Maclay papers. For example in his notes he usually depicts soundscapes as multispecies (“women, children and dogs screamed and howled”) or one of the actors, a thief who has taken away a dissected skeleton of a bird – was a dog. So, in Miklouho-Maclay view the cultural space of New Guinea was multispecies and he depicts it so: including dogs, lizards, spiders. However in his later notes he has decided to deal only with humans.