MIGRATIONS IN PACIFIC

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26523, 11 September 1951, Page 3

MIGRATIONS IN PACIFIC

THEORY OF KON TIKI EXPEDITION

MUSEUM DIRECTOR’S VIEWS “The Press'* Special Service

AUCKLAND, September 10. The theory that the Polynesian race populated the Pacific islands • from Indonesia had not been shaken by the Kon Tiki raft voyage, spid Dr. Gilbert Archey, director of the Auckland Museum, in a lecture at the museum yesterday. He described the book by the Norwegian scientist, Mr Thor Heyerdahl, as a remarkable and entrancing story which did prove that it was possible for people from Peru to reach Polynesia occasionally. However, he added, the theory went further and suggested America as a source of population spread. Archey said he was surprised at Mr Heyerdahl’s suggestion that anthropologists disagreed about where the Polynesians came from. Physical anthropologists were in full agreement as to what race the Polynesians belonged and it was based on repeated observation.

Similarity between the languages of Polynesia and South America, as suggested by the leader of the Kon Tiki expedition, was not complete evidence of a common origin, continued Dr. Archey. Some words were common to both peoples, but not many. On the other hand there were hundreds of words in the Malay tongue which matched Polynesian ones and the structure the languages was similar. While the Kon Tiki scientists might be °2 surer ground when they suggested that the kumera was brought from Peru to Polynesia, Dr. Archey said botanists had not agreed that the kumara was a wild plant of South America. It was suggested that the Peruvian word for the plant was kumar” but it could not be found in a Peruvian vocabulary which the museum had. He agreed that a chance voyage could have brought the kumara from Peru to Polyhesia, but said that such a voyage would not have populated the area. Arts and Metals j Pf? Archey also denied Mr Heyerdahl s claim that Peruvian and Polynesian adzes were similar. He said they were dissimilar, and Polynesian adzes conformed with the Indonesian pattern. If the Polynesians came from South America, he wondered why they did not .bring with them knowledge of useful arts like pottery making and weaving, why they did not know metals and why they did not carve in stone other than human figures, as the Peruvians did. Also, if the Polynesians came from Peru they and the Peruvians be the same race. As it was the races of America were Mongoloid and the Polynesians Caucasoid.

The links with the West which he had mentioned had led to wide agreement between physical and cultural anthropologists that the Polvnesians came out of Indonesia and not out of America, said Dr. Archey. The adze-language-race bridge was the soundest one on which to bring the Polynesians into the Pacific, and not Mr Heyerdahl’s wind and water bridge from America.