November 10, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



529 



posts and bed-spaee; (2) ,a canoe made of five 

 parts; and (3) the tanged adze; to -Culture B, 

 (1) the oval house; and (2) wooden head rests 

 and utensils with legs. 



It is interesting to note that the basal Poly- 

 nesian physical type (Type I), as worked out 

 by Sullivan, is universally distributed, but 

 strongest in the south, and the original culture 

 (Culture A), also universally distributed, is 

 clearest in the south (New Zealand) and east 

 (the Marquesas). Also phj^sical Type II is 

 strongest in north and central Polynesia, the 

 same region in which elements in Culture B 

 are dominant. This demonstrated parallelism 

 of racial types and cultural stratification rests 

 on conclusions arrived at independently by 

 members of the museum stafiE working in widely 

 separated fields with no opportunity for con- 

 sultation. It is regarded as a very important 

 contribution to the attack on the Polynesian 

 problem. Another contribution is the defini- 

 tion of characteristics and elements belonging 

 to the respective types and cultures — a pre- 

 requisite to comparative studies. 



As regards the sources of these racial types 

 and cultural elements and the routes by which 

 they came to Polynesia, the evidence in hand 

 indicates the region of the Malay archipelago 

 (Indonesia) and southeast Asia as that from 

 which the Polynesian ancestors commenced 

 their eastwai-d drift. Whither, beyond that 

 region the search for ultimate origins may 

 lead, can not be foreseen. The writing of the 

 earliest chapters in the history of the Poly- 

 nesians and of other Pacific races must await 

 the definition of ancient and modern Asiatic 

 types and cultures and the determination of 

 early stages revealed through archeology. 



The work of the acheologists of the Bayard 

 Dominiek Expeditions revealed no very ancient 

 human habitation in the central and south 

 Pacific. For the Polynesian settlement the evi- 

 dence serves to substantiate the conclusions of 

 William Churchill, based on linguistic and cul- 

 tural study. The following dates are consid- 

 ered re-asonable estimates: A.D. 0, the first 

 Polynesian migratory movement; A.D. 600, a 

 second migration; and A.D. 1000, a period of 

 great Polynesian expansion. According to S. 

 Percy Smith and other Maori scholars, New 



Zealand was already in possession of original 

 settlers by the tenth century although the main 

 Maori migration did not occur until the thir- 

 teenth and fourteenth centuries. Dr. Handy 

 has concluded that the Marquesas Islands were 

 first settled in the tenth century or slightly 

 earlier, and Fornander presents good reasons 

 for the belief that the original settlers of 

 Hawaii experienced the coming of a migratory 

 wave at the beginning of the eleventh century. 



At least three general routes of migration 

 appear to have 'been used through Indonesia: 

 (1) along the coasts of New Guinea, (2) 

 through Micronesia, (3) through and along 

 the marginal region east of Melanesia. 



Two years of organized study has shown 

 that the history of Polynesia is fundamentally 

 a field problem and that progress depends 

 upon the accumulation of facts by trained stu- 



'^^^^^ Heebert E. Geegoey, 



Director 

 Beenice p. Bishop Museum 



SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 



A FOREST UNDER THE CITY OF WASH- 

 INGTON 



Evidence of the existence of an ancient 

 swamp in which great trees flourished in days 

 long past, possibly contemporaneous with 

 earliest man in America, has been discov- 

 ered in a deep excavation made for the founda- 

 ition of a hotel under construction in Washing- 

 ton, D. C. At a depth of about twenity-flve 

 feet below the street level the excavation dis- 

 closed a layer of black swamp muck, contain- 

 ing large quantities of wood, tree trunks and 

 stumps. Some of the stumps are of great size, 

 a few of them reaching a diameter of nine or 

 ten feet. Much of the wood is well presei-ved, 

 showing -clearly the woody struoture and the 

 external markings of the bark. A prelimmary 

 examination indicates that one of the more 

 common trees of this ancient swamp was 

 cypress. 



The story of these trees, however, is only a 

 brief chapter of tlie whole geologic history 

 shown in the excavation, which has just been 

 examined toy Chester K. Weritwonth for the 



