MUTINY MAKES A SUPERIOR MAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 48, 26 February 1938, Page 27

MUTINY MAKES A SUPERIOR MAN

The genetic result of the mutiny on the Bounty in the South Seas 150 years ago is a new type of man, physically superior in all but his teeth, reports the "Chicago Tribune."

This new man, who defies some popular beliefs about half-breeds and inbreeding, is described in a new study of the mutiny results, reported in "Natural History," the magazine of the American Museum of Natural History.

It is now the fifth generation of the descendants of the nine white men of the Bounty and the twelve native Tahitian women who fled to Pitcairn Island and set up a mixing of races under conditions ideal from the point of view of a scientific experiment. Pitcairn now has 202 and Norfolk Island, to which the new people spread, a larger number.

The race-mixing conditions were ideal, says Dr. Harry L. Shapiro, associate curator of physical anthropology, because there was no social stigma and no economic handicap such as is ordinarily imposed by neighbouring so-called pure races. For many years the Pitcairn Islanders were isolated from civilisation. Europe did not even know of their existence.

The first result, Dr. Shapiro finds, was an almost explosive "flowering of

civilisation." The hybrid mixture almost immediately was bigger and taller. Its stature was on the average three inches above the white men and two and a half inches over the Tahitian.

Fertility reached the human peak. Thus the first generation of. children produced an average of 7.4 young by mating. The next generation pushed up to 9.1 offspring for each mating. ,

Gradually the flowering fell off. Today the children per family are down to three. The stature has dropped, too. But not back to the level of the original ancestry.

They are, says Dr. Shapiro, physically sound in all respects except one. The white man bequeathed his teeth to them. The perfect teeth which the Tahitian mothers had were lost. The Pitcairners have worse teeth, Dr. Shapiro says, than the average civilised man.

There is some recorded evidence that the Bounty mutineers who escaped to Pitcairn had bad teeth. Dr. Shapiro says the teeth of the descendants may be an example of one of the results of inbreeding.

In colour this new type of man is intermediate between the whites and the Tahitians. Some almost white skins still persist.