130 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



systems show but faint if any resemblances to any other known 

 tongues, whereas the Melanesian group is but one branch, though 

 the most archaic, of the vast Malayo-Polynesian Family, diffused 

 over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. 



8. Owing to their linguistic, geographical, and to some extent 



their physical and social differences, it is desirable to 

 The terms treat the Papuans and Melanesians as two distinct 



Papuan, 



anesian though closely related sub-groups, and to restrict 

 ^d PU the use of the terms PAPUAN and MELANESIAN 



accordingly, while both may be conveniently com- 

 prised under the general or collective term PAPUASIAN. 



9. Here, therefore, by Papuans will be understood the true 

 aborigines of New Guinea with its eastern Louisiade dependency \ 

 and in the west many of the Malaysian islands as far as Flores 

 inclusive, where the black element and non-Malay speech pre- 

 dominate ; by Melanesians^ the natives of Melanesia as commonly 

 understood, that is, the " Bismarck " Archipelago (New Britain, 

 New Ireland and Duke of York) ; the Solomon Islands ; Santa 

 Cruz; the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Loyalty, and Fiji, where 

 the black element and Malayo-Polynesian speech prevail almost 

 exclusively. PAPUASIA will thus comprise the insular world from 

 Flores to New Caledonia, forming geologically a northern and 

 north-eastern extension of the Australian Continent. 



Such appear to be the present limits of the Papuasian 

 domain, which formerly included Micronesia also 

 ( the Marianne, Pelew, and Caroline groups), and 



Past and possibly extended over the whole of Polynesia as 



Present. J 



far as Easter Island. The results of the Funafuti 

 boring (1897) "indicate almost without doubt that Polynesia 

 is an area of comparatively recent subsidence 2 ,'' so that the 

 insular remnants of that drowned continent may still have been 



That is, the indigenous Papuans, who appear to form the great bulk of 

 the New Guinea populations, in contradistinction to the immigrant Melane- 

 sians (Motu and others), who are numerous especially along the south-east 

 coast of the mainland and in the neighbouring Louisiade and D'Entrecasteaux 

 Archipelagoes. (Eth. p. 287 sq.) But even here the Papuans form the 

 substratum, and despite present overlappings are no doubt the true aborigines. 

 : R. Lydekker, Knowledge, Jan. i, 1898. 



