Carl Sofus Lumholtz, född 1851 på Bårdseng i Fåberg, Lillehammer, och död 5 maj 1922, Saranac Lake, New York, var en norsk upptäcktsresande, etnograf och författare.
Lumholtz skaffade sig en akademisk grundutbildning i Christiania vid nuvarande Universitetet i Oslo med en teol. kand. 1876.
Han reste till Australien 1880, där han tillbringade 10 månader 1882-1883 med Herbert-Burdekin-stammen i Norra Queensland. Han skrev en bok "Among Cannibals: An Account of Four Years' Travels in Australia and of Camp Life with the Aborigines of Queensland", vilken först publicerades 1889, och som betraktas som den första etnografiska redogörelsen för Queensland Aborigines. Han har kritiserats för att han inte visade någon respekt för aboriginerna. Han tillbringade totalt 4 år i Queensland, bland annat till the Valley of Lagoons och the Herbert River area. Han samlade djur medan han levde med ursprungsbefolkningen.
Under en femårig vistelse i Mexiko på 1890-talet med den svenske botanisten Carl Vilhelm Hartman upptäckte han flera nya växt- och djurarter och studerade ursprungsbefolkningar som tepehuaner och särskilt tarahumaras, hos vilka han tillbringade nästan ett år.
Han bodde på Borneo åren 1913-1917 och dokumenterade djurlivet på ön och samlade värdefull information och kulturföremål från Dajak-folken. (Wikipedia, 2014-05-26)
I Carl Lumholtz expedition till norra Mexico, bla Chihuahua, deltog C.V. Hartman. I samband med detta har Lumholtz överlämnat ett föremål (1900.30.1, Etnografiska museet, Stockholm) till Hartman.
Carl Sofus Lumholtz (23 April 1851 – 5 May 1922) was a Norwegian explorer and ethnographer, best known for his meticulous field research and ethnographic publications on indigenous cultures of Australia and Mexico.Born in Fåberg, Norway, Lumholtz graduated in theology in 1876 from the Royal Frederick University, now the University of Oslo.
Lumholtz travelled to Australia in 1880, where he spent ten months from 1882-1883 amongst the indigenous inhabitants of the Herbert-Burdekin region in North Queensland. He wrote a book about his experience, Among Cannibals: An Account of Four Years' Travels in Australia and of Camp Life with the Aborigines of Queensland, first published in 1889, which is regarded as the finest ethnographic research of the period for the northern Queensland Aborigines. Other anthropologists like Edward Bonney disregarded him because of his lack of respect for the Australian native people.
Whereas previous authors had commented only upon the aesthetic physical appearances and material culture of the region's indigenous people, Lumholtz added a level of academic research that was unique for the period. His work recorded for the first time the social relationships, attitudes and the role of women in the society. He also gave a series of two lectures on Among Australian Natives for the Lowell Institute for their 1889–90 season.
He spent a total of four years in Queensland, his expeditions included visits to the Valley of Lagoons and the Herbert River area. He made collections of mammals while living with the local peoples, these specimens were used for the descriptions of four new species. One of these was named for the type locality, Pseudochirulus herbertensis (Herbert River Ringtail Possum), and another commemorates his name, Dendrolagus lumholtzii (Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroo).
Lumholtz later travelled to Mexico with the Swedish botanist C. V. Hartman He stayed for many years, conducting several expeditions from 1890 through to 1910 which were paid for by the American Museum of Natural History. His work, Unknown Mexico, was a 1902 two-volume set describing many of the indigenous peoples of northwestern Mexico, including the Cora, Tepehuán, Pima Bajo, and especially the Tarahumara, among whom he lived for more than a year. Lumholtz was one of the first to describe artifacts from the ancient shaft tomb and the Purépecha culture. He described archaeological sites, as well as the flora and fauna, of the northern Sierra Madre region called the gran Chichimeca. He gave a series of three lectures on "The Characteristics of Cave Dwellers of the Sierra Madre" for the Lowell Institute's 1893-94 season.
In 1905 Lumholtz was a founding member of the Explorers Club, an organization to promote exploration and scientific investigation in the field. He went on a brief expedition to India from 1914–1915, then to Borneo from 1915 to 1917, which was his last expedition.
In 1922 Lumholtz died of tuberculosis at Saranac Lake, New York, where he was seeking treatment at a sanatorium. He had published six books on his discoveries, as well as the autobiography My Life of Exploration (1921).
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