Pacific Migrations and Racial
p. 52 · Read in the full issue
Theories
A T the Sydney University on February 27, Dr. A. P. Elkin, of the Australian National Research Council, commenced a series of lectures on Pacific peoples with the subject of “The Distribution of Native Races in the Pacific”.
Illustrating- with a number of striking anthropological photographic studies, Pro fessor Elkin showed that mixtures of types from the four main divisions of mankind —Caucasian, Negroid, Australoid, and Mongoloid—were to be found in the Pacific Islanders. With the aid of maps he traced the paths which, according to theory, were takep by the types on their journeys by land and sea into the Pacific Ocean.
It is generally accepted amongst an thropologists that the present peoples in the Pacific are descendants of races who had worked northwards from Africa and the Mediterranean, and southwards from Northern India, and converged, and spread eastwards through the chain of islands between south-eastern Asia and New Guinea, and continued on through the Pacific.
According to Dr. Elkin the main divi sions of native races in the Pacific are: Mongols, in Micronesia; Aborigines, in Australia (and, with a Negroid admixture, in Tasmania); Melanesians (roughly, the inhabitants of islands west of Fiji); and Polynesians (comprising the peoples east of the 180th. parallel).
The lecturer also touched on the inter esting anthropological problems of Poly nesian communities to be found in Mela nesia—such as Tikopia, etc. —and the mysterious remnants of former races in the Pacific —such as the strange carved figures on Easter Island.
Mr. George K. Whittaker, M. 1.0. (Syd.), who is well-known in New Guinea where he has been connected with the Depart ment of Public Health since 1925, recently resigned from the N.G. Administration.
He has now set up business at Wau as an optician, and has installed a com plete spectacle-making and lens-grinding plant.