December 8, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



825 



von Luschan, of Leo Frobenius, Graebner and 

 Churchill. 



The first volume of the book is wholly de- 

 scriptive. It brings new data on the material 

 culture and art, religion, ceremonial and 

 social organization of several of the island 

 groups of Melanesia. The data on social 

 organization are particularly welcome, for 

 they fill a long felt gap; unfortunately the 

 author's own material also falls far short of 

 being exhaustive; many details of the social 

 systems described are lacking, nor are even 

 the fundamentals always as definite as might 

 be desired. Dr. Rivers, moreover, himself 

 characterizes the descriptive part of his book 

 not as an exhaustive treatise but rather as a 

 preliminary survey. Further contributions 

 covering the field are already announced: a 

 volume on the Western Solomon Islands by 

 Mr. A. M. Hocart and the author and a mono- 

 graph by Mr. G. C. Wheeler on the islands of 

 Bougainville Straits. Only one phase of his 

 subject has Dr. Rivers covered almost ex- 

 haustively, the systems and terms of relation- 

 ship together with the behavior of relatives. 

 A valuable comparative list of terms used in 

 the different island groups is appended to the 

 first volume. 



Of far greater significance and general in- 

 terest is volume II. In it the author attempts 

 a systematic albeit speculative reconstruction 

 of Melanesian history. Whatever one may 

 think of the author's conclusions, or even of 

 his method, he deserves the highest credit for 

 having conceived and carried out a logically 

 coherent theoretical argument, at the hand of 

 a multiplicity of concrete data, an argument 

 which fills more than five hundred pages and, 

 as an intellectual effort, stands unique in the 

 whole range of ethnological literature. 



In the first part of the volume the author 

 uses the time-honored evolutionary method of 

 historic reconstruction based on the theory of 

 survivals. The fundamental assumption made 

 by the author, which he uses as the corner- 

 stone of the entire argument, is the basic and 

 permanent character of social organization. 

 This assumption is supplemented by the 

 theory that the terms of relationship directly 



and faithfully reflect the social structure, par- 

 ticularly the forms of marriage. Operating 

 with these hypothetical tools the author ex- 

 amines the morphology of the relationship 

 systems of Melanesia and arguing from these 

 to forms of social organization, particularly 

 of marriage, he arrives at the earliest form 

 (for the purposes of his argument, at least) 

 of Melanesian society, characterized by a 

 dual organization, maternal institutions, and 

 a communism associated with a gerontocracy, 

 the rule of old men, who tended to monopolize 

 the women of the group and wielded undis- 

 puted authority in tribal affairs. During that 

 remote period individual marriage gradually 

 came into being and the relations of father 

 and child became for the first time clearly 

 defined. By argumentative steps which space 

 forbids us to follow the author proceeds to 

 carry Melanesian society through later stages, 

 among these a totemic one, which, however, in 

 some parts at least of Melanesia later again 

 disappears, leaving no traces of its former 

 existence. 



The next move is a linguistic reexamina- 

 tion of the relationship terms of Melanesia, 

 the result of which is a complete reinterpreta- 

 tion of the evolutionary process outlined above. 

 For the author's comparative survey reveals 

 two sets of terms : one set is very much the 

 same linguistically in the whole of Melanesia, 

 the other varies as one passes from island 

 group to island group. The conclusion is 

 that the uniform terms must belong to an 

 ancient indigenous population, the diversified 

 ones to a later people of immigrant origin. 

 Thus is reached the conception of the cultural 

 complexity of Melanesia. Follows an elab- 

 orate analysis of the secret societies of the 

 island of Mota (Banks group). For reasons 

 to be stated later the author ascribes these 

 societies to an immigrant people, and detailed 

 examination of the rituals of the societies 

 provides a test for immigrant strata in Me- 

 lanesian cultures. Supplementing this by a 

 comparative study of methods of burial, the 

 author finally resolves Melanesian culture into 

 a series of strata : the most ancient culture 

 of the dual people, followed by that of the 

 kava people, followed by that of the betel 



