Linton — The Marquesas Islands 463 



The southeastern Polynesian type of cuUure probably originated in central 

 and southeastern Polynesia through the fusion in that region of an early negroid 

 population with immigrants of the Caucasic race. The cultures of these two 

 races no doubt differed considerably but it is almost impossible to tell which of 

 the features present in the resulting culture are referable to the negroids and 

 which to the Caucasic immigrants. The presence of a feature of the southeast- 

 ern Polynesian culture in Melanesia is not sufficient evidence for its ascription to 

 the negroid population, for the Caucasic people probably reached Melanesia as 

 ^^'ell as Polynesia. The contact of two cultures which are not too widely separated 

 in the scale of development is stimulating to both. Ideas and appliances are 

 borrowed back and forth and worked over to conform to the pattern of the bor- 

 rowing culture. When dissimilar cultures fuse, the resulting complex is compar- 

 able to a chemical rather than a mechanical mixture. Some features of the original 

 cultures may survive with little change but others wall be greatly modified and 

 new features may arise which can not be directly traced to either of the ancestral 

 cultures. In view of the general situation in Melanesia and Polynesia the fol- 

 lowing traits may be tentatively ascribed to the culture of the negroid stratum in 

 the Polynesian population : 



Round, oval or canoe shaped houses, five piece canoes with decorated bows 

 and sterns, axes and smoothly ground tangless adzes, staves and sickle or pick 

 clubs, the throwing cord, curvilinear art, cannibalism, spirit worship, initiation or 

 instruction for young men. 



The culture of the Caucasic immigrants seems to have been characterized 

 by the use of rectangular houses with permanent beds, special houses on posts, 

 five-piece canoes, double canoes, triangular sails, partially ground angular tanged 

 adzes, stone pounds, stilts, kites, human effigies, stone construction, exposure or 

 preservation of corpses with flexed burial for the very poor or diseased, preser- 

 vation of skulls of ancestors, head hunting and ancestor worship. 



The blending of these two cultures produced a hybrid culture which was 

 richer than either of its parents. There was a considerable improvement of 

 technical processes and a remarkable efflorescence of art. Several new features 

 of material culture seem to have been developed. Among these were the use of 

 wooden slide doors in dwellings, a characteristic form of canoe decoration, fully 

 ground angular tanged adzes, small stone effigies, shell trumpets with separate 

 mouth pieces, wooden trumpets, oval boxes with tight fitting covers, rigid con- 

 ventions in the pose of human effigies, and probably the practise of mummifying 

 corpses by evisceration and long continued rubbing with oil. 



The Hawaiian culture resembles the southeastern Polynesian culture in 

 some respects but lacks most of the features which, because of their wide oc- 



[203] 



