258 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the eastern island world, especially with their great distances apart, 

 a variety of mankind that had never manifested any aptitude for 

 maritime enterprises should have spread themselves over this vast 

 ocean area, in order to settle down on this island and on that, is so 

 unreasonable that it has found scarcely a defender worth naming. 

 More and more the blacks are coming to be considered the original 

 peoples, the 'Indios' to be the intruders. For this there is a quite 

 reasonable ground, in that on many islands the blacks dwell in the 

 interior, difficult of access, especially in the dense and unwholesome 

 mountain forests, while the lighter complexioned tribes have settled 

 the coasts. To this are added linguistic proofs, which place the lighter 

 races, of homogeneous speech, in linguistic relations with the higher 

 races, especially the Malays. Dogmatically it has been said that 

 originally these islands had been occupied entirely by the primitive 

 black population, but afterwards, through intrusions from the sea, 

 these blacks were gradually pressed away from the coast and shoved 

 back into the interior. 



The problem, though it appears simple enough, has become com- 

 plicated more and more through the progress of discovery, especially 

 since Cook enlarged our knowledge of the oriental island world. A 

 new and still more pregnant contrast then thrust itself to the front in 

 the fact that the blacks and the lighter-colored peoples are each sep- 

 arated into widely differing groups. While the former hold especially 

 the immense, almost continental, regions of Australia (New Holland) 

 and New Guinea, and also the larger archipelagos, such as New Heb- 

 rides, Solomon Islands, Fiji (Viti) Archipelago — that is, the western 

 areas — the north and east, Micronesia and Polynesia, were occupied by 

 lighter-colored peoples. So the first divison into Melanesia and Poly- 

 nesia has in latest times come to be of value and the dogma once fixed 

 has remained. For the Polynesians are by many allied to the Malays, 

 while the blacks are put together as a special ethnological race. 



For practical ethnology this division may suffice. But the scientific 

 man will seek also for the blacks a genetic explanation. The answer 

 has been furnished by one of the greatest ethnologists, Theodor Waitz,* 

 who, after he had exposed the insufficiency of the accepted formulas, 

 came to the conclusion that the differentiation of the blacks from the 

 lighter peoples might be an error. He denied that there had been a 

 primitive black race in Micronesia and Polynesia; in his opinion we 

 have here to do with a single race. The color of the Polynesians may 

 be out and out from natural causes different; indeed, 'their entire 

 physical appearance indicates the greatest variability.' Herein the 



* Anthropologie der Naturvolker, Vol. V; The South Sea Islanders, Part 

 II; The Micronesians and Northwestern Polynesians. Leipzig, 1870, pp. 33-36. 

 Finsch, Verh. d. Berliner Anthrop. Ges., 1882, p. 164. 



