PRIMITIVE MAN IN POLYNESIA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 225, 20 September 1905, Page 9

PRIMITIVE MAN IN POLYNESIA.

- I RECAPITULATION - AND CONCLU- ! * sion. j I (By PROFESSOR 3T. XACMILLA2i BROWN.) (All Rights Reserved.) No. yx'x'Vr I I This migration could not have taken place without some pressure from.behind. In those early ages it could not well have been human compulsion so far north as J this, for the waste and uninviting spaces j of the world could not have been filled j any more than, they are now. The only j conceivable pressure was that which { in primeval times .ihepherded man northwards and southwards, and produced the highly migratory and adventurous division of mankind, the Caucasian race; and this was change of climate, the shifting of the boundary of the sub-Arctic zone farther south. So far north as the abutment of this broken land-bridge on the Asiatic continent, the ice-plough must have obliterated all temperate and sub-tropical vegetation and driven animals and their hunters, men. onwards to the south to find subsistence. And this will partly explain the comparative • absence of affinity between the Asiatic j plant-world and the Polynesian. The submersion of the piers of the land-bridge | > and the change -Tom a volcanic or allu- j ■ vial soil to a coralline were doubtless | causes that worked in the same direc- i tion. [ ; When the ice-sheet began to recede, I 1 then sank slowly the bridge, pier after ; [ pier, till all ingress into the region be-1 came impossible "without stout ocean- j ' going canoes. And in Polynesia there- j ■ after lived this Robinson Crusoe of a j race. ''cribb"d. cabin'd and confined" with- ■ in their islets, keeping alive their early . palaeolithic culture for tens of thousands . of years, uninfluenced by what happened in the rest of the world, unforced by i alien pressure or competition, unaided. . by the new arts other people might be driven in the struggle for existence to . , find out. Not since there were formed i the three great divisions of mankind has there been such long and complete isolation, unless we count that of Australia. NEW MIGRATIONS FROM THE NORTH BEGAN IN NEOLITHIC : TIMES; BUT THESE WERE ONLY MASCULINE. ' At last, when oceanic navigation began to extend its range beyond the narrower seas, and great canoes began to be ' hollowed out of gigantic trees, the solitude was broken. Down along the line i of the coral islets that buoyed the piers 1 of the submerged bridge neolithic man i ventured: canoe followed canoe from ial land to island; but only the masculine [ heart had courage to break into those • spaces of the unknown, and canoe after canoe failed to return with its men to their old homes. Like the sailors of Ulysses, they preferred to settle in some lotus-islet of the tropics. Had the land been continuous enough, or the islands large enough, to breed a strong united warlike raee_. these immigrants would have been driven off or absorbed with • ease. But the islets were small, and , could support but a scanty and feeble population; and with their paleolithic , weapons the men would be no match for these neolithic 3ailors. The newcomers , would be masters and aristocrats, enslaving the men and taking the women over with, their households. The masculine arts would be reformed according to the ! ideas of the new-comers; but the women would be left to follow their old ways , in the household. For thousands of years must this process of masculine infiltration into Polynesia have gone on in neolithic times till, all the islands being full, the new viking strain would venture away to the J south and the east, some into New Zealand, some into Rapa the small, some into Easter Island, and some doufctless as far as the American coasts. We have to explain the extensive stratification that is manifest in the culture. We can see that it is not development, there are so many irreconcilable elements and stages in the strata. THERE ARE STRATA ON STRATA OF CULTURE. It is not merely the combination of sannibalism with chivalrous generosity to an enemy, of coarse license and polygamy with the romance of love and devotion to woman and strict chastity in married life, of human sacrifice with gentleness to slaves in the same tribe and individual. The burial customs are many and contradictory. In the constitution of society, the patriarchal system and the village communal, the socialistic and the feudal, the oligarchic and the monarchic stand side by side. Whilst in religion there are combined in. the same tribe and locality household worship and a powerful priesthood, openair rites and a sacred building, imagelessness and fetishism, sorcery and a highly-developed philosophic attitude to the gods and the powers of Nature. It would not be impossible to assign many of these inconsistent customs to the migrations from the North and others to those from the South of Asia; but. as some of them might well belon" to both, it would be a task of some I difficulty to analyse and classify them.' For, as the language seems to indicate even before it laft Indonesia, two inflective or Aryan languages have gone to the making of it, and after it reached the islands it encountered a language of most primitive phonology that had Aryan words or elements. Even in the mythology, it would be difficult to apportion its various elements to the Northern and the Southern routes; though the sun-myths and son-worship point to the cold North, this tendency | belongs to all Aryan mythologies of the temperate and sub-tropical zones. It is

the legends of the spirit -world that most definitely point to the Northera route; some of their heroes and aristocratic spirits ascend into the circles of heaven, as amongst Aryan peoples of the South; but most go to the under-world, Po, or Twilight and darkness. Atk| there are some portions of the mythology that are classifiable; the culture heroes have more affinity to the Northern Aryans; the cosmogony clearly comes from the region of the Vedic religion. ES" THE ARTS THE OLDEST ARE THE WOMEN'S. THOSE SACRED TO THE MEN ARE NEWER. In the sphere of the arts the task is easier. For there we hav e two powerful solvents to help us in distinguishing the older and Northern migrations from the last and Southern. One is thac whatsoever is done by women is the older; the other is that whatsoever is confined to men, or sacred, came in with, the conquering aristocracy. By help of these we can see that all household arts, I inclusive of a large section of the textile i art and steam-cooking, are ancient, and ■ belong to the Northern route, whilst • rnook of the net-making and some of the dyeing came in with the last-comers. Canoe-building and tbL maritime art j belonged to the aristocracy; but in New I Zealand they took from the peoples of i the Northern migrations the art of i making the huge single dug-out and the i art of canoe-carving, both of which undoubtedly belonged to the North Pacific In fact, we have to assume an an artistic people in Japan before the Japanese, before the Amos, who, when not subdued and absorbed, were driven out of the Northern archipelago, and took i the arts of carving and designing south- ; into Polynesia, and thence farther south j into New Zealand. Easter Island, Pitcairn Island, and Rapa-iti. The same people also took with them the art of fortification, both in stone and earthj work. Theirs, too, were probably the j half - underground dwellings, though i either they or some other migrants from j the North brought the art of building I great timber houses ornamented ■with carved work. One of the Northern migrations brought the aute, or papermulberry tree from Japan, to cultivate in Polynesia, for its bast, and may have brought some of the methods cf agriculture too, probably the primitive method of avoidance of animal ipanure, and that of shifting from patch to paten and burning down the scrub or bush. But the culture of edible bulbs came from South Asia, and, in all probability, the edible dog, the pig, and the domestic \ fowl. An the healing art, as it finally J existed in Polynesia, came with the last j migrants from the same region. j THE LAST IMMIGRANTS FROII : SOUTH ASIA BROUGHT NEGEOiB I BLOOD AND CANNIBALISM. But these rested in Papuasia or j Melanesia by the way, and married the ) dark negroid women before they went ,on to the "island world. But they did j no£ rest l on S enough to take the bow ias a ■weapon of war ■with them or to j think of pottery as an art that should j displace the calabash and the steamoven of the Polynesian aboriginals. Some of them settled, in these resting-places, and others afterwards led back Polynesian colonies to reinforce the settlers they had left. It is more than likely that they learned cannibalism in these resting-places. and took it with theiA as an intermittent habit into their final settlements. It was always sacred to the men, and usually to the aristocrats and warriors. The women as a rule were not allowed to touch human flesh. Only one or two contingents took the pig with them, the others indulging in cannibalism till that animal ■was introduced into their group. One or two seem to have missed taking the domestic fowl with them. But most of them took the dog. This and this alone will explain the choice of animals by the six canoes, when they came to New Zealand. Both the pig and the fowl had got into some of the groups long , before that emigration, as we know from the language. NO MIGRATION FROM THE NORTH AFTER THE SIXTH CENTURY BEFORE OUR ERA, AND NONE FROM THE SOUTH AhTKK ITS BEGINNING—NONE FROM A PEOPLE WITH AX ALPHABET. And all this occurred before the beginning of our era, as the iron age commenced in Indonesia about that time. Had the immigrants seen any weapon made of the new metaL warlike as they ■were, they would not have failed to bring it, with them. The complete absence of iron from the whole of Polynesia before the arrival of the first European voyagers makes it quite certain that there, was no migration into that region after our era began. And the cause o£ the cessation was undoubtedly the new maritime power of the Malays, ■which preyed upon commerce and upon peaceful as well as adventnr-t ous expeditions. From the north migra« tion ceased at an earlier period- For bronze weapons came in with the Japanese into the northern archipelago six or seven centuries before our era. and had migrants gone south after that they would have taken those with. them. It was this very Japanese invasion that stopped emigration from their islands; the invaders were too busy for many centuries subduing the Amos to attend, to navigation or foreign ambitions. Not till their empire was consolidated, and they had surplus population, did their maritime enterprise extend beyond their own and the Chinese coastal seas. Nor did the immigrants by either route come from a people that had risen to the dignity of a script or written alphabet. For none came into the region except in the far east, into Easter Island. And this bars an Semitic land as the origin of any immigratiottFor all the Semitic peoples in South Asia had reached that stage of culture thousands of years before our era. THE METHODS ADOPTED IN THE ARTICLES. "There still remain many interestingquestions in connection with the peopling of Polynesia, including the problems of Easter Island and the relationships of eastern Polynesia and the American coast. But they stand apart. The problems discussed have had special reference to western Polynesia, and most of all to New Zealand. And their solution had been attempted with the one aim of eliciting the truth. The methods applied have been those of scientific research. The facts were classified, and hypothesis after hypothesis was tried till a good working hypothesis was found, that would explain them aIL If a flaw became apparent in it through. ; the discovery of other facts., that it did not cover, it was rejected or modified. It has happened frequently, howerer, that it helped to explain new facts and difficulties, and to solve unforeseen problems; and then it became practically; a fact herself. If wider knowledge, combined with scientific method, can suggest truer working hypotheses, no one would be more ready "to adopt them fa place of his own ita tt» writer of these artifiiii^