55-i 



Tl 



NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 





Photograph from Dr. J. P. Thomson 



TRADERS FROM THE HILLS ON A VISIT TO THE LOWLANDS: NEW GUINEA 



There is a never-ending feud between the mountain and shore people of New Guinea. 

 However, since necessity knows no law, the men come down from the hills to trade bows 

 and arrows for pottery. 



Island and the Carolines, or else the 

 islanders are a decadent people. 



Be this as it may, the fact remains that 

 these ruins are a mystery to the present 

 inhabitants of the Pacific islands, who 

 have no knowledge of the art of building 

 in stone and are ignorant of architecture, 

 apart from their own primitive huts. 



Even native tradition is singularly 

 silent as to the origin of the inhabitants 

 and their migratory movements among 

 the island groups. 



THE FATE OP THE EARLY INHABITANTS 

 AN UNSOLVED PROBLEM 



As to the fate of the original prehis- 

 toric inhabitants, who left such indelible 

 traces of a higher order of civilization 

 behind them as exists in the cyclopean 

 ruins of the Carolines, we have no means 

 of knowing, and mere conjecture can 

 help but little. Whether they were over- 

 whelmed by some mighty and wide- 

 spread cataclysm or exterminated by epi- 

 demic disease will probably never be 

 known. 



Is it possible these ruins may have had 

 their origin in some migratory wave 

 sweeping across the Pacific from the 

 shores of Asia to the coast of South 

 America? Had this been the case we 

 should expect to find some marked traces 

 of Asiatic blood in the present inhabit- 

 ants ; but instead of this the dark Melane- 

 sians bear greater resemblance to the 

 Papuans, while, next to the Patagonians, 

 the Polynesians are the tallest people on 

 the globe and are allied to the Maoris of 

 New Zealand. 



The only feature in which they bear 

 any resemblance to the peoples of East- 

 ern countries is in the practice of circum- 

 cision, and this is not general, but mostly 

 confined to the Western Pacific. 



In point of fact, there is stronger 

 ground for assuming that the Polynesian 

 peoples are remotely allied to the Aus- 

 tralian aborigines, on account of the cere- 

 mony of initiation of youths into the rites 

 of manhood which is practiced by both. 

 In Australia this is known as the "Bora" 

 ceremony, and in the Fiji group it is called 



