THE POLYNESIAN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 146, 12 August 1911, Page 8

THE POLYNESIAN.

WHERE HE CAME FROM. The other day onr cable messages mentioned that Professor Bioavh had delivered an address in Sydney on the above subject, and we take t\e folio Aving fuller particulars of the address from the “Daily telegraph ’• That curly-haired, broAvn Islander on the deck of the mission ship in tho Eastern Solomons may be descended, through the ages, from some blue-eyed Scandinavian on the shores of the North Sea. East across Siberia, ’down along the . river Amur, and over’ tho Japanese Archipeligo, south into Polynesia and, away over to the Solomons; that,,..would have bean the track of his ancestors through the ages. As he- Avent, intermarriage Avith 1 other races, and other causes, darkened his hair and skin and altered the shape of his bones, until ho became;’as, he is iioav. That is' the effect pj; part of tne story told yesterday by . the AvellknoAvn ethnologist .Professor Macmillan Brown, avlio has just come back from studying the Solomon Islanders.

The, Solomon Islanders are a a:ixturo of a great number of races. Not only do some of them show traces i of a Caucasian element, but there f re also among them very strong negroid characteristics; they arc related, it appears, not only to us Europeans, but to the little black pigmies of Now Guinea, and perhaps to those discovered by Livingstone in Central Africa. ‘‘Their negroid characteristics are acknowledged,” says Professor Brown. “They have tiro woolly hair, the thick lips, and the flattened noses of the negro; many have projecting chins—so marked sometimes as to make them look like apes. On the other hand I found,” he says, “that thov have short or round heads, though extremely long heads are a characteristic of negro races. Again, the Solomon Islanders have at the root of the nose a deep notch, like the Australian natives, with whom, I think, therefore, that they have a distinct kinship. The round head is found in only one section of the negro races—the negrito. These people are always pigmies; they have been found in African forests, in the Philippines, arc! lately in Dutch New Guinea. I am convinced that some of the Solomon Islanders are descended from this section of the negro race. At that rate, the original people of the Solomon Islands must have come down from Asia, across the Malay Archipeligo, and along the coasts of New Guinea. Another evidence of this is that their language is of the type of Polynesia and the Malay Archipeligo. They came down, probably, at a geological time when there was a process of earth elevation going on, so that they would have been able to travel almost the whole way across dry land. 'Flic negro races never cross much water; probably there were only narrow straits to go over. THE CAUCASIAN WAVE. “Other waves, a Caucasian race, swept down, also from Southern Asia, over these negroids. They could not have been very deep, because it is only in the west of the Solomons that you find very tall figures, and because none of the Solomon Islanders have much face hair. ’But in the northwestern islands, though the natives are coal-black, some of them have a really fine Caucasian profile, with Semitic noses, and many have straight or wavy black hair, which is, of course, Caucasian. In the eastern Solomons you get another type of the negroid and Caucasian combined. This type is lighter coloured, with a lightbrown shin, and quite .'!() per coat of them have light-brown hair, which is curly, and not woolly at all. In more cases than not this goes with a European sort of profile; thin lips, small upper lip, flue Grecian nose, r.fiong chin, and fine large forehead.

Once I saw on a Malaita boy a real Apollo howmouth!’ Now, tn-.se .s----lamls are the nearest to Polynesia—with Fiji lying in between —and Frolessor Brown believes that lids ligni skinned, liglit-haired type rep. osenu a wave that came down from Polynesia. Not only are similar types common there, and in Fiji and the Mala\ Peninsular, but the social systems arc the same. TRACING BACK THROUGH THF. .MOTHER. For instance, though in all the Sol onion Islands except Malaita, and everywhere about them, families tract back relationship through the mother, in that island they count back through the father, as we do, and as is the custom in Fiji and in Polynesia. With the Matriarchate, again, goer the separation of the people into kii. divisions, members of any one Oj which must marry on'y a man or wo man of another kin division, on pen alty of death. “Ruling tens of thousands ol years,” said the professor, “this wave must have kept corning down from Polynesia. The south-east trade winds brought them down, through the Ladrones, the Carolines, tire Marshall Islands, the Gilberts, the Ellice, and Union Groups, and the Paninotns. Ail these islands arc atolls or coral reefs, and it is fairly well accepted now that a coral atoll in the Pacific means land gone down. AVhcr. Polynesia was first populated there may have been, where these atolls are now, fairly broad and high islands. Through the whole of human time these may have been gradually subsiding; hence would come the practices of abortion and infanticide, which still prevail among tire Polynesians, though there is no more subsidence. Hence, again, comes it that the Polynesian race is the only on: which learnt oceanic navigation without the compass.” They learnt it because they had to! The land was sinking under them ; they had to gc somewhero. “So that was what led these Polynesians as far off as Malaita and others of the Solomons.” WHERE THE WAVE CAM E FROM “Where did this Caucasian wave come from in tho beginning? From' the North of Europe., They came through Siberia, following tho line ol inland seas that stretch from the Black Sea to Lake Baikal. They followed the Amur down to the Japanese Archipeligo, and finally reached the zone of islands that is represented now only by Atoll and reef. On the west coast of oapan every fifth man is over oft. him, and many are over 6ft. high; these men never came out of the Japanese stock. Nor did they come from the “hairy Ainu,” another Caucasian race, and tailor than the Japanese. In Corea, again, I saw fair-haired and hlno-eyed people, and you get them again in the north of Turkestan.” Tho Polynesians even got over to South America, says the Professor. They ruled hip cities there—-one, Grand Chimn, lo miles long by 6 miles broad! And. just as the Finns, a r.mo of pure Mongols from Asia, are now fairhaired and hluc-eyed, mainly from intermarriage witn the Northern European stocks, so tho Europeans that wandered down as far as Australasia, darkened, until only some differences in height and colour, and shape of face and skull give too cine to what thev were.