PITCAIRN ISLANDERS

Taranaki Daily News, 28 December 1929, Page 16

PITCAIRN ISLANDERS

AMERICAN. .SCIENTIST’S VISIT.

To the scieutist .who is devoting his life to-the. study .of anthropology and

human genetics, .the. island of Pitcairn in aii isolated corner of the South Pacific, offers one of .his .knottiest , problems, says the New York Tinies. 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 Bounty. Consequently the 195 persons who form the community are closely related by blood. Some show traces of the Tahitian ancestry, some show pronounced English traits. But most of the population show a mosaic of English and Tahitian characteristics. Despite < interbreeding, according to Dr. 11. Shapiro, of the American Museum of Natural History, who 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 say's 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 o f heredity in hybrids put for- I ward by the famous Austrian abbot. These people are unsophisticated. The sole .work of the men is to get 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 Bed'ford style. The women keep house and weave baskets and occasionally make a ■ new dress. ‘ I

The children go to school in a little 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.