THE PACIFIC

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 123, 26 May 1928, Page 20

THE PACIFIC

"AN OCEAN PACKED WITH ■ ;' .ISLANDS" For ■the. Pacific as a whole perhaps tlio most significant feature of land distribution is the extension of Asia southeastward through the Malay Peninsula and on through Sumatra, Java, Celebes, Cerain, Papua-—five big islands associated with many small islands in such nianncv as to form nearly continuous lantl (writes Dr. Herbert 13. Gregory, director of the Bishop Museum at Honolulu, in his work, "The Geography of the Pacific"). And beyond Papua as far as Fiji, the dpean is packed with islands. In, essence- this great region of Indonesia and Melanesia is a suburb.of Asia. In-ago and composition its rocks are those of the continent; its animals and plants predominantly are those which now live or once lived on the larger land mass. Human beings like those of the Asiatic continent have been living in. this suburb doubtless since this form of animal life has been in existence. The earliest trace of human beings on earth is the fossil remains of a man-like creature which lived in Java some 600,000 years ago. It may well bo that in Indo-China and adjoining islands originated the first groups of human beings that hunted' aninials, caught fish, cooked food, and built shelters, and that their descendants migrated to Malaya and Indonesia before western Asia, Europe, and Africa were known. ... But the oceanic islands offered no facilities for migration. They mark oaf; mo route from anywhere to anywhere. They are small, wide spaced, irregularly distributed, and for plants and man to reach thorn involves exceptional conditions. Few.of .the plants and still fewer of the animals common to Asia and the Americas are found in the Polynesian Islands, and it is doubtful if human beings saw them before Borne had extended. her Empire into Syria, Germania, Gaul, and Britain. But even these scattered islands are much more closely, related to Asia than to America. Their, plant and animal affinities are predominately Asiatic. In a geographic sense the Pacific is an Asiatic : ocean. Tho remoteness of its connection with tho Americas is an outstanding geographic feature.