266 DIXON— A NEW THEORY OF POLYNESIAN ORIGINS. 



Hypsicephalic, Leptorrhine type, whose affiliations may be said, for 

 lack of a better term, to be distinctly Caucasic. Its marginal dis- 

 tribution in the north and south, leads to the conclusion that its 

 position is early rather than late in the historical sequence, and there 

 is much to suggest its appearance in company with the Austro- 

 Melanesian stratum. 



It must not be understood for a moment, that the present theory 

 would claim that the various primitive and fundamental types came 

 into Poylnesia as pure types, and that all the manifold blends have 

 originated only after arrival. On the contrary, much blending and 

 crossing must have occurred before any of these types even entered 

 the Oceanic area, and much more en route. Yet it is believed that 

 the successive waves or streams although more or less complex in 

 their make up before reaching Polynesia, nevertheless contained in 

 each case a considerable core of pure types. In no other way can 

 the relative abundance of such pure types in the extreme marginal 

 portions of Polynesia, be easily accounted for. 



It is in the highest degree unfortunate that we have practically 

 no measurements or descriptive data in regard to the living popula- 

 tion of this region. For we have in consequence no means of know- 

 ing whether skin color, hair and stature are more or less definitely 

 correlated with the cranial types defined. That there were great 

 differenecs in all of these three features, however, we know from 

 the general accounts given by the earlier explorers, the presence in 

 particular of distinctly negroid individuals being frequently men- 

 tioned. Such statements thus greatly strengthen and confirm the 

 belief in the complexity of the racial origins of the Polynesian 

 people. 



In summary it may be said that the investigation made seems 

 to show that the racial history of the Polynesian area is even more 

 complex than it has hitherto been supposed to be. The underlying 

 stratum here, as well as further westward, appears to be indis- 

 tinguishable from the Negrito, although the problem of how it 

 reached this remote region is not yet wholly clear. This stratum 

 was followed by a wave of negroid peoples whose most numerous 

 modern representatives in this portion of the world form the bulk of 



