ANTHROPOLOGY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE AND PACIFIC ISLANDS. 39 



believed them to have sprung from the same original stem as the Indo- 

 Europeans; Max IVtiiller claimed for them Turanian affinities, and recentl.y 

 Macdonald has championed a theory of Semitic origin. The Ganges Valley 

 is their i^rimeval home, according to J. R. Logan and S. P. Smith. E. Tre- 

 gear says they originated either in India or in central Asia, and passed through 

 India, from which they took to the sea, journeying eastward through the 

 Malayan Archipelago. 



Churchill recently has largely solved the Polynesian migration problem 

 in the Pacific Ocean. These diverse views on Polynesian origins and migra- 

 tion are presented here to show how varied have been the theories about the 

 Polynesians, concerning whom more is known than of any other Pacific island 

 peoples. Even Churchill's study has left unsolved the origin of the Poly- 

 nesians and their migrations before they entered Malaysia, as well as the origin 

 and migration of the entire Tongafiti swarm of Polynesians. "This much is 

 certain," he declares, "the Tongafiti migration has left absolutely no trace of 

 its passage in Melanesia." Whence, then, did they come? The answer must 

 be left for further study. 



There are many unsolved problems of Polynesian culture. Where and 

 by whom were their cultures originated? Among these phenomena are those 

 of tabu; of hereditary aristocracy which developed such superior men as 

 Kamehameha III and left us our present Hawaiian royalty; there are impor- 

 tant agricultural beginnings; and those of zooculture, perhaps founded on 

 royal decree to spare certain birds from which were obtained the brilliant 

 feathers woven into royal robes. 



Among the interesting cultural discoveries perhaps possible in Polynesia 

 is one which so many students have said can not be attained, namely, "a 

 true knowledge of the genesis of the speech of man." Churchill says that 

 the Polynesian languages are of "the most elemental character " whose " parts 

 of speech have but just begun to make their appearance." He even says posi- 

 tively: "we find ourselves engaged with a language family in which we can 

 discover the beginnings of human speech." 



In Polynesia the student is brought face to face with frequent decay and 

 loss of culture forms. Among such cultural features is the almost complete 

 absence, amid many other evidences of advanced culture, of such arts as 

 pottery and weaving, and the occasional loss of the art of navigation in a race 

 otherwise more completely naval than any other. In many coral islands the 

 absence of suitable pottery clays is sufficient to explain the absence of the art 

 of pottery, but this explanation will not answer in New Zealand, where there 

 is excellent clay. Neither may the loss of weaving there be explained by the 

 absence of textile fibers, because such fibers are abundant. The Polynesians 

 of Easter Island are said to be devoid of canoe-craft. Absence of suitable 

 growing timber in Easter Island maj' explain largely the loss of this central 

 cultural factor of the Polynesian people there, though American-grown cedars 

 drifting in the open sea furnished the material for the large war canoes of the 



