EPISODE: 17
By THAN HTUN (GEOSCIENCE MYANMAR)
DR Fritz Noetling, a German geologist and palaeontologist, was born in Mannheim, Germany on 17 July 1857. He was trained as a geologist at the University of Bonn and the University of Freiberg in Germany. After graduation, he worked as a geologist in Germany for some years. Then he joined the Geological Survey of India in 1903 and worked for six and half years. Fritz Noetling married a Tasmanian woman in 1899 in India and they came to live in Tasmania in 1906. On moving to Tasmania in 1906 he was employed mainly as a mining engineer.
When they came to Tasmania quickly became Australian citizens and naturalized British subjects. He was in the world society and he was in Tasmanian Club, Tasmanian Naturalist Club. He was a well-respected and well-known man around Harvard. He was a mining engineer with involving a lot of mining interest around the state. He was also a trustee in Museum. He was elected a member of the Tasmanian Field Naturalists’ Club and the Royal Society of Tasmania, where he served as office bearer between 1908 and 1914. Noetling resumed his collecting activities, assembling over 1,000 items: many of these are now in the Leipzig Ethnological Museum.
In August 1914, he attended his last Museum Trustee Meeting the night before War was declared. And then on he disappeared in the record until June 1915. When one of the members of a very well-known Tasmanian Club objected to him coming to the Club saying what this German doing coming to the Club. During the war as in Britain, soldiers rejected his presence which he writes. Fritz stopped coming to the German Club then in November 1915 he was arrested for making disloyal statements and possibly spies and the next day he was sent up to New South Whale the host of the German camp at Liverpool. After the war, Fritz repatriated back in Germany and stayed in Tasmania.
By the end of 1911, he had published over 20 papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, mainly on Aboriginal stone tool technology. His mining reports and papers on Tasmanian Aborigines attracted some criticism.
Collecting relating to Dr Fritz Noetling, a German palaeontologist and Acting German Consul in Tasmania, who was interned during 1915-1919. The collection consists of correspondence, diary entries, and news cuttings collated from the point of view of the military importance of the news during the war period. Noetling’s correspondence, diary entries, and notes regarding the news cuttings, taken mostly from Tasmania’s “The Mercury”, are written in German.
Noetling was active in a wide variety of organisations in Tasmania, including the Royal Society of Tasmania where he published articles on Aboriginal stone implements; as a Trustee of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery; as a member of the Tasmanian Club and the Field Naturalists Club; and as a Commissioner of Fisheries.
In February 1914, Noetling was appointed Acting German Consul in Tasmania, but the outbreak of WWI dramatically altered his life. Noetling was arrested on 26 November 1915 and interned the following day for transfer to New South Whale. His record notes that he was interned “for making disloyal statements and communicating information to Germany by means of correspondence. The correspondence which was interpreted by the Censor comprised voluminous letters written in German, many newspaper cuttings with comments thereon, and tables of figures regarding troops, etc., addressed to General Mackelstein of the German Army. ”Noetling was denaturalized in July 1919 and repatriated to Germany. He died in Baden-Baden in Germany in 1929.
Prehistory of Burma
Fritz Noetling was a geologist and mining engineer and enthusiastic collector of palaeontological and cultural materials. During working for the Geological Survey of India in the Punjab, Baluchistan, and Burma, he made extensive collections, many of which he sold to museums in Europe. Fritz contributed more than 40 research papers on geology, palaeontology, and prehistory including Yenangyaung in Burma around 1885. His paper “On the discovery of chipped flint flakes in the Pliocene of Burma” was criticized by Michael Aung-Thwin who was a specialist in the history of Burma and Professor of Asian Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Michael Aung-Thwin pointed out in his “Origin and Development of the Field of Prehistory in Burma” that “Limited interest in the field in the Western sense probably began with Dr Fritz Noetling of the Geological Survey of India. In 1894 and 1897 he published reports of an Upper Miocene or early Pliocene deposit in which were found what are now considered the first stone implements to be recorded from Burma. Subsequently, during the early 1900s, Noetling’s finds and conclusions triggered some interest in the subject among individuals such as R D Oldham (1895), R J C Swinhoe (1903), and E H Pascoe (1912).”
Fauna of the Miocene Beds of Burma.
Fritz Noetling described the fauna of the Miocene beds of Burma in Palaeontologia Indica, New Series, Volume I. Part 3 and Bibliographical Notices mentioned in1901 as follows:-
The author explains that the fossils here described, besides including those collected by himself from the Irrawadi series and other beds, comprise some collected by the late Mr Grimes and others by Messrs. Theobald and Fedden in Lower Burma some thirty years ago. He found that the want of any reliable literature on Burmese palaeontology was not relieved by any of the published works on Indian fossils. The corals and echinoids are too rare in Burma for Duncan and Sladen’s monographs on those of Western India to be of service, and Sowerby’s descriptions of Cutch fossils are not sufficiently distinct. In the memoir on the fossils of the Nummulitic group of Sind by d’ Archiae and Hamie, he found them to be “worse than useless,” the fossils of different formations being confused. The type of fossils requires to be revised and carefully compared with others of authenticated horizons.
Martin’s ‘Tertiarschichten auf Java,’ however, has been of great use to him; and following Stoliezka’s suggestion that the fauna of the Burmese Tertiary System should be compared with the living fauna of the Indian Ocean, F Noetling has been able, thanks to Major Alcock, to study the great collection in the Indian Museum with highly satisfactory results.
Thus, a new line of research has been opened out in the study of the Indian Tertiary System, affording some highly interesting “views regarding not only the origin of the recent fauna of the Indian Ocean but also of the relation the Miocene of India-Burma had with the older Tertiary System of Europe and the recent fauna of the Western Pacific. In fact, I think that one of the most important of my results”, says Mr Noetling, “is the proof of a migration of species from Europe in an eastern direction, which commenced with Eocene and probably lasted through the Miocene – a migration which still continued in an eastern direction during the Miocene period in India-Burma, though all direct communication between the Miocene Ocean of Europe and India was disconnected during the Miocene period.”
In subdividing the Tertiary System of Burma, the author finds that the Upper or Irrawaddy (Pliocene) Series contains the remains of land and freshwater (fluviatile) life, and is based on a conglomerate containing numerous fossil bones, such as those of Hippotherium and Acerotherium.
(It was on an exposed ledge of this conglomerate that Mr Noetling discovered, in association with a fossil tooth of Hippotherium antelopinum, the stone implements described in ‘Natural Science,’ vol.x.no. 62, p.234, 1897.)
The Lower or Arakan (Miocene) Series in its subdivisions comprehends: -
(1) The Upper or Pegu division (Miocene), no Nummulites;
(2) The Middle of Bassein division, with Nummulites (Eocene);
(3) The Lower or Chin division, without Nummulites (Eocene or Cretaceous?).
It is noted that the geology and fossils of the Pegu division have been best known and that those of the Bassein and Chin divisions have not been so closely collected and studied. The Pegu division comprises: - (1) The Yenengyoungian beds, marine, largely littoral, and partly estuarine; and (2) The Promean, of estuarine origin, with its petroliferous strata.
The description and correlation of the formations and their zones in Lower Burma and in Upper Burma are followed by tables of vertical and zonal distribution of the fossil molluscan fauna. Two hundred and eight species, including some varieties, besides indeterminate forms, are described on pages 101-378.
The relationships of wide territorial types, namely, (1) the Gallic, Pacific, and Mediterranean groups of Palaeogene species, and (2) the Identical, Subidentical, and Evolutionary Neogene species, are defined, and their proportions are stated.
The proofs are given of an Eastern migration of European species, assumed by the late H. M. Jenkins in 1864 to have proceeded in Miocene times, by F Noetling (in the work before us) having been in the Eocene period. This extensive subject is carefully and philosophically treated on pages 39-100, and elucidated with elaborate successional and statistical tables.
Noetling agrees with Martin that there is no evidence to warrant the adoption of “ Oligocene” for any part of the Indian Tertiary System resting on that regarded as Eocene, whether in Baluchistan, Western India, Burma, Java, Sumatra, or Borneo.
Articles and books
Noetling contributed a lot of articles and books to Myanmar geology, palaeontology, and archaeology during his tenure in the Geological Survey of India. Some of them are mentioned hereunder.
On the occurrence of chipped flints in the Upper Miocene of Burma (GSI), 1894.
The Development and sub-division of the Tertiary system in Burma (GSI), 1895.
On the discovery of chipped flint flakes in the Pliocene of Burma (Natural Science), 1897.
Note on the reported Namséka Ruby-mine in the Mainglon State (GSI, Vol. XXIV),1891.
Note on the Tourmaline (Schorl) Mines in the Mainglon State (GSI, Vol. XXIV), 1891.
Report on the Coal-fields in the Northern Shan States (GSI, Vol. XXIV, Part 2), 1891.
Note on a Salt spring near Bawgyo, Thipaw State (GSI, Vol. XXIV, Part 2), 1891.
The Miocene of Burma (book)
The occurrence of petroleum in Burma, and its technical exploitation (1897)
References:
1. Kegan Paul & Co 1901: Bibliographical Notes.
2. Tasmania History Research Association.
3. Aung-Thwin, M, 2001: Burmese History, Asian Perspectives 40 (I).
4. Noetling, F, 1901: Fauna of the Miocene Beds of Burma, Palaeontologia Indica, New Series. Vol. I. Part 3.
5. Australian War Memorial.
6. From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository.
