The other northern tribes believe in reincarnation, but not in the haunted sacred stones, which they do not, north of the Worgaia, possess; nor do they derive totems from locality, but, as usual, by inheritance.
It thus appears that these Arunta sacred stones are an inseparable accident of the Arunta method of acquiring the totem.

How they and the faith in them cause that method is not obvious, but the two things--the haunted sacred stone, and the local source of totems--are inseparable--that is, the former never is found apart from the latter.
Now such stones, with the sense and usage attached to them, cannot well be primitive.

They are the result of the peculiar and strictly isolated Arunta custom and belief, which gives to each man and woman one of these stones, the property of himself or herself, since the mythical age, through all reincarnations.
One cannot see how such an unique custom and belief, associated with objects of art, can be reckoned primitive.

Yet, where such stones do not exist, the usage of acquiring totems by locality does not exist; even where the belief in reincarnation and in local centres haunted by totemic spirits is found in North Australia.

[For an hypothesis of the origin of the CHURINGA NANJA belief, see my SECRET OF THE TOTEM, chapter iv.] On these grounds it appears that the hereditary totem is the earlier, and that the Arunta usage is the result of the special and inseparable superstition about the sacred stones.