PITCAIRN ISLANDERS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 148, 19 December 1929, Page 32

PITCAIRN ISLANDERS

SHOW WORKINGS OF

HEREDITY

To the scientist who is devoting hia life to the study of anthropology and human genetics the island of Pitcairn, in an isolated corner of the South Pacific, offers one of his knottiest problems, says the New York "Times." Living on the tiny island kingdom of less than two miles square are a group of 195 people, all of them having common ancestors.

They are of keen scientific interest because they are the offspring of a cross between two distinct racial groups, the English and the Polynesian. All are descendants of nine mutineers who more than a century ago escaped from the British man-o'-war Bounty. Consequently the 195 persons who form the community are closely related by blood. Some show the traces of tho Tahitian ancestry, some show psonounced English traits. But most of the population show a mosaic of English and Tahitian characteristics. Despite interbreeding, according to Dr. H. Shapiro, if the American Museum of Natural History, who has paid the island several visits to study its inhabitants at close range, there is no evidence of deterioration in the offspring of these people. Strong evidence of genetic behaviour along Mendelian lines were found by Dr. Shapiro. This scientist, who says the inhabitants of the island offer a problem of human genetics '' of vast possibilities," studied the qualitative characters, such as eye colour, skin colour, and hair form and colour, and found ■>ample indications in support of the theory, of heredity in hybrids put forward by the famous Austrian abbot. These people are unsophisticated. The solo work of the men is toget food for the family—to pick fruit and to catch fish or fowl. Periodically . the men go on a whaling trip, which they carry on in. accordance with the New Bedford style. The women keep house and weave baskets and occasionally make a new dress.

The children go to Bchool in a Httle hut, -where an aged man who taught their parents and grandparents teaches them the rudiments of English, using the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer as his chief text-books. For amusement, once a week the community indulges in singing hymns.