38 ANTHROPOLOGY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE AND PACIFIC ISLANDS. 



RESEARCH PROBLEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES IN ANTHROPOLOGY. 



THE PACIFIC ISLANDS. 



Expansive as is the area of the Pacific Ocean, it is the seat of a unit, 

 though complex, anthropological problem, namely, that of the origin and 

 spread of the Pacific islanders and their culture. Fortunately this large 

 problem must be approached and solved through its smaller separate prob- 

 lems, each largely confined to a distinct ethnic type. The large problem of 

 the Pacific islands will remain with us until the problems of these several 

 ethnic groups have been solved separately and also in their numerous inter- 

 relations. There are five of these ethnic groups: Polynesian, Melanesian, 

 Micronesian, Malayan, and Negritic. 



POLYNESIA. 



Polynesia is the best-known island area of the Pacific and has been the 

 most thoroughly studied scientifically. Polynesia extends southward from 

 the large Hawaiian Archipelago and embraces the smaller Cook, Austral, 

 Society, and Tuamotu Archipelagoes, and again the Samoan, Tongan, and 

 Marquesan Archipelagoes, with Easter Island lying alone far to the eastward; 

 lastly, the large group of islands, far to the southwest, called New Zealand. 



Over all these islands a single race, the Polynesian, has spread. So far 

 as history or reliable traditions tell, it was the original race in that area. 

 There are some stories of an early dark race and, as will be presented later, 

 some unknown vanished people once resided in several of the Polynesian 

 islands, leaving there gigantic stone remains which, sphinx-like, have not 

 yet told the mysterious story of their creators. 



The Polynesians are a brown-skinned people with dark wavy hair, stat- 

 uesque in bearing, and often with straight Caucasian-like features. They 

 have an elaborate oral history, including much information which has been 

 reduced to writing by several able students. In speaking of this history, 

 Churchill says, in contrasting the Polynesians with the Melanesians: 



"In the case of the brown Polynesian race the circumstances are far other. 

 We have ample traditions of migration, we have the names of halting-places; we 

 find a whole race, widely sundered upon the sea, looking back to the west with a 

 single gaze to an ancestral home." 



All authorities agree that in comparatively recent times the Polynesians 

 came to their present area from an earlier home to the west. Of their origin, 

 and of their migration before they entered Malaysia, from which they went 

 eastward, theories are legion ; the problem is yet unsolved. Keane, struck by 

 their physical resemblance to the so-called Caucasian type of Eurasia, makes 

 them a branch of that division of mankind which in neolithic times migrated 

 from the Asiatic mainland to the Indian Archipelago; Giufi"rida-Ruggeri 

 regards this similarity as due to independent mutations in their respective 

 habitats. Brinton considered them a branch of the Malayan stock. Bopp 



