The Origin Of Pacific Races.

Significance of Rock Carvings Found in Fiji by Mr. Vogan.

AN interesting controversy has been proceeding in the “Fiji Times” between our old friend, Mr. A. J. Vogan—who de scribes himself as “an archaeological in vestigator and a humble collector of fast disappearing facts”—and Professor Mac millan Brown, of New Zealand, who is one of the few scientists of any standing to-day who has given serious attention during the last 20 or 30 years to the early history of the Pacific.

The Pacific Islands are inhabited by two distinct races of people, the Polynesians and the Melanesians; and, curiously enough, the line which divides them is also the line which divides the fixed time of the civilised world. In other words, if one takes the 180th degree of longitude (which represents the place where, ac cording to Greenwich calculations, the old day ends and the new day commences) one will find that the Polynesian peoples live to the eastward of the line and the Melanesian peoples to the westward.

Along the line one will find a mingling of the two tropical types, which has pro duced a race that usually is described as Micronesian. The Fijians, who quite clearly represent a mingling of the Poly nesians and Melanesians, live right on the 180th degree. Further north, about the Gilbert and Ellice Groups, slightly to the westward of 180 degrees, one finds large communities of Micronesians.

It is perfectly clear that, during thous ands of years, there have been successive waves of migration from Southern Asia into the Pacific, each in turn spreading slowly across the Pacific Islands. The people who are now the Polynesians were among the first-comers and they appar ently are of Aryan descent. Their pre dominating racial characteristics, while showing a slight admixture of Asiatic and African blood, indicate a Caucasian rela tionship, and racially they are nearer to the Pacific newcomers (the Europeans) than almost any other indigenous people east of Suez. After their arrival in the Islands there came successive waves of migrants whose racial character was dominated by African and Asiatic blood, and thus we get the Melanesians in a wide variety of types, seen particularly in the more westerly islands. In Papua and New Guinea, for instance, the anthropolo gist can point out a dozen different racial types—which, incidentally, makes it very difficult to insist on the use of any generic term such as “Melanesian.”

It is clear that the impact of these suc cessive waves of migration was felt sharply in the more westerly islands close to Asia—such as New Guinea and the Solomons—but that the waves exhausted themselves as they ran eastwards, and petered out in the vicinity of the 180th degree of longitude; so the peoples to the eastwards were able to preserve a more sharply defined racial type—and these are the Polynesians. Any intelligent man travelling about in Tonga, Samoa, Cook Islands, Hawaii, Tahiti and the Maori dis tricts of New Zealand will find people of very similar characteristics and speaking languages that are closely akin. But in the islands of the western Pacific—Fiji, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Solomons, and New Guinea —he will find an indefin ite variety of types classified generally as Melanesians, but which clearly do not belong to any one racial group, and whose multiplicity of tongues have little relationship one to another.

There is a good deal of evidence that there existed in the Pacific, apparently before the advent of the Polynesians, a great and mysterious civilisation. There are ruins scattered about the central islands which suggest the early presence there of a people with knowlege and power far greater than anything which the well-cultured Polynesians appear ever to have possessed. It is supposed that the early waves of Polynesian migration over whelmed and wiped out that ancient civilisation—but it. is all supposition. All we have now is the existence of mighty ruins.

Therefore, archaeological investigation in the Pacific is very desirable; and the activities of men like Professor Macmillan Brown and Mr. Vogan should be encour aged in every way. But the controversy which has been proceeding between those two gentlemen in Fiji impresses one as being somewhat feeble and fatuous. Act ually, they agree more than they disagree.

It appears that Mr. Vogan, some four years ago, discovered in a cave in the Yasawa Islands (fn the northern part of the Fiji Group) certain inscriptions cut into solid rock. He made photographs of them—but with difficulty, standing up to his neck in water—and some people to whom he has referred those pictures said they appeared to be ancient Chinese char acters. This year, Mr. Vogan, with praiseworthy enterprise and devotion to

the cause of science, returned at his own cost to the Fijian cave and there built platforms by which he was able to reach the inscriptions and take plaster casts thereof. He has returned to Australia with those casts.

In addition, Mr. Vogan, on his visit, made further discoveries, which he has thus described to the “Fiji Times’’: “At the extreme north of Yasawa Island I also found the most wonderful figure yet discovered in the Pacific. It is that of a man sitting down with a baby on his knee. The child is kissing the man, and its dimpled cheek and arm round the neck of the latter'is in perfect art. The group is about fifty feet high. I also found a splendid head in tke same cave as the inscriptions. It is about eight feet high In both cases a suitably shaped rock has assisted the artist, or perhaps suggested the idea to him. In both cases the carv ing is very good, but very old. There are carved figures in stone in various parts of Fiji, which indicate that the race respon sible was permanently and widely distri buted here —that is as permanent as any thing can be in a tropical land.’’

Professor Macmillan Brown, interviewed in Christchurch, New Zealand, expressed interest in Mr. Vogan’s inscriptions; but said he was doubtful whether they were of the age suggested (namely, some 2,000 years). He also said that, in his opinion, the Chinese never achieved anything as navigators and he would be very sur prised to learn that they had succeeded in voyaging over so great a distance as that represented between China and Fiji.

The point appears to this non-scientiflc observer to be of considerable interest, but not of sufficient importance to squabble about. Let any man, with imag

ination and knowledge of history, study a map of the Pacific, showing Australia and the eastern half of Asia. Let him remem ber that, during the past 3,000 or 4,000 years, great empires rose and fell in eastern and south-eastern Asia; and that there were successive waves of migration, pushing south-eastwards into the Pacific, via Indo-China and the East Indies.

While admitting that the Chinese people themselves were no navigators, it must be apparent that in the course of the ages people from south-eastern Asia —particularly peoples of the Malayan type—would voyage eastwards and southwards into the unknown Pacific, seeking new lands and new trade. It was, perhaps, an off shoot from those Asiatic civilisations which penetrated the Central Pacific and established there the empires which were responsible for the now puzzling ruins.

It may be taken as certain that expedi tions based on Asia got as far as Fiji, and it is quite conceivable that it was some such body of adventurers which placed the carvings on Mr. Vogan’s Fijian island.

But it still has to be proved that the inscriptions and works of art found by Mr. Vogan are definitely of Chinese origin.

That is not going to be easy. There are thousands of rock inscriptions all over the world which bear a more or less slight resemblance to some kind of systematised writing; but it is impossible to say that they are of that particular writing until their meaning has been ascertained.

This, however, is clear. If Chinese navigators were responsible for the in scriptions, they evidently were only an isolated party. There is not anywhere any other evidence that the Chinese in vaded or migrated to the central and south Pacific in sufficient numbers to found settlements. With all respect to Mr. Vogan, there are no Chinese charac

teristics among the Polynesians. One must journey westwards through the Pacific many thousands of miles —in fact, right into the central and western parts of New Guinea—before one begins to no tice the racial characteristics of the Chinese among the indigenous people.

That bears out Professor Macmillan Brown’s contention that the early Chinese were not navigators.

It is a great pity that more people of scientific inclinations do not take an interest in the early history of the Pacific.

There is a fascinating story waiting there, to be unearthed and pieced together. As Mr. Vogan has pointed out, the evidence available to the scientific student is very limited in quantity—and what there is of

it is rapidly disappearing.

R.W.R.