Polynesia

Peru's Impact On

Arguments Against a Theory

By A. C. Rowland

THE anthropologist who is floating in the sea between the coast of Peru and French Oceania is, in my opinion, trying to reproduce an event which did not happen.

The fact that the Inca road-builders had abandoned, and had eventually lost, the arts of ship-building and navigation, does not prove that the Peruvians of the pre-Inca Period were so ignorant that they did not know how to use the high way of the sea.

When railways were established in the United States, the craft of ship-building became almost a lost art: and river trans portation declined to the vanishing point.

The bulk of US overseas commerce was carried in ships flying the British flag.

The Gambier islanders—descendants of the great Polynesian navigators—had lost the art of canoe and shin-building when Europeans first visited that archipelago The expeditions from South America may have occurred five thousand or more years ago. Then, as in the case of the Polynesians, the memory and location of then: ancestral home-land may have faded from the knowledge of later gen erations, born and bred on the islands.

The average young person in the Western States of North America knows nothing and cares less about the State and town in the East whence his grand parents migrated three-quarters of a century ago. West of the Mississippi River the immortal Washington is re membered only as the boy who cut down «w«5 her] 7 tree ’ rather than as the “Father of His Country.”

The early Peruvians undoubtedly be- J« Ve A Q th i e i7 L f nd rT 2. f - the Sun -?°d to be In the West. Their expeditions were nnt b fn bl m,S ieS f t "i ed Primages that set thiir of Paradise; perhaps to offer their sacrifices and prayers for protection enemies menacing their nation irom the north.

The Maya of Yucatan (if my memory e l rr) h !? d the belief that their had . departed by sea to of . the Sun - an d would, fe y ’ return - The massive structures age !’ on,. Eas ter Island, represent some great petition to the Hosts of °n (what may in that far-off of 7 seel}5 ee1 considered) the out-post of the Land of the Sun.

A student should not lose sight of the fact that the very late period, when European exploration was undertaken, was an era of decline of many once highly developed civilisations in remote parts of the world. This has been especi ally true on the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. Only recently has serious study been given to that rich achaeological treasure-house.

I attended school with a gentleman of pure Spanish descent who was born in Yucatan, The complete disappearance of the Maya civilisation and the condition of the modern Maya—as he has described it —is a perfect example of what hap pened to the pre-Inca Peruvian, his culture and his language.

A recent letter from my old friend indicates that the modem citizen of Mexico has come to regard Cortez and the Conquistadors as a minor incident, compared with the ATA avalanche. The city of Mexico, apparently, has become the Whoopee Capital of the World.

Mrs. E. M. McDonald has taken up duties as housekeeper in the Port Moresby Hotel, Papua.