264 DIXON— A NEW THEORY OF POLYNESIAN ORIGINS. 



grew that the racial history of the Oceanic area could be logically 

 and satisfactorily explained by a series of waves of fundamental or 

 derived types spreading from west to east throughout the whole 

 area. The theory of a series of successive waves bringing different 

 physical types into Oceania is, of course in no sense new, the novelty 

 of the present results lies in the character and ultimate affiliations 

 of the fundamental types assumed. 



We may now turn to the outcome of this present study, so far as 

 it relates to Polynesia. The underlying and probably historically 

 the oldest of the fundamental types in Polynesia is one which, so far 

 as crania alone are concerned, is practically identical with that of 

 the Negrito. This result was so unexpected that at first it was 

 believed that some error had been made ; for that a relatively fair, 

 tall people such as the Polynesians, with normally wavy hair, should 

 comprise a substantial factor comparable with the dwarfish, black- 

 skinned and woolly-haired aborigines of the Philippines and the 

 Malay Peninsula, seemed most improbable. Further examination, 

 however, showed that not only was the Brachycephalic, Hypsi- 

 cephalic, Platyrrhine group in Polynesia the exact equivalent of that 

 which characterized the Negrito in the three correllated indices 

 together with the facial index, but also in the absolute measure- 

 ments of the head, face and nose as well as in capacity. The 

 identification, therefore, had to be accepted. The geographical dis- 

 tribution of this Negrito type as it may tentatively be called, is 

 significant, but at the same time puzzling, for it survives in any 

 strength only in the Hawaiian Islands, and there seems concen- 

 trated in Kauai, the northernmost of the group. The influence of 

 this type in derivative forms, may be traced in most of the other 

 marginal groups in the east and south of Polynesia, but, on the 

 basis of our very scanty data from Tonga and Samoa, seems to 

 be absent in the west. 



Second in historical sequence probably, is the Dolichocephalic, 

 Hypsicephalic, Platyrrhine type, whose proximate affiliations lie 

 with the negroid population of Melanesia and Australia. That 

 some element of Melanesian character had entered into the Poly- 

 nesian complex has long been recognized but has usually been ex- 



