Polynesians ?

Vhence the Polynesians ? ew Survey of A Fascinating Subject

comment on the origin of the Pacific Islands races and more especially the Polynesians contained in a report of a lecture ren by Dr. H. D. Skinner, of New iland, and published in the Journal of ! Polynesian Society of March, 1951. fhis excellent NZ publication is a little e in getting into circulation, but it itains the usual wealth of material, e following is a condensation of Dr.

Inner’s lecture. fhe origin of the Polynesian race has m a subject of discussion for a hundred irs; and scientists still are arguing, w material and new theories are con ,ntly being advanced. Dr. Skinner’s lure apparently surveyed all material lilable at the end of 1950.

IHE Polynesian and related . languages have had nothing approaching the thoroughness investigation bestowed on the do-European family, or on mitic, or on some other linguistic jcks. However, Pater Schmidt’s neralisation about t&em has been

dely accepted.

Schmidt employs the term Austric designate the whole linguistic )ck of which Polynesian is a mem r. He divides the Austric stock to two branches—Austro-Asiatic id Austronesian.

The former includes Munda, oken in Chota Nagpur south of e lower Ganges; Mon, spoken by attered groups in Assam and irma; and Khmer, spoken by some Irteen million people in Cam dia.

Austronesian comprises Malay and > offshoot in Madagascar, Mala wi; Micronesian of the Caroline Lands; Melanesian which, besides e languages of the main groups in e island chain, includes some astal dialects of New Guinea; and jlynesian spoken in closely allied ilects over an immense area of the Dbe, points around the boundary ing the Hawaiian group, the Mar lesas, Easter Island, Rapa, the lathams, the Aucklands, New jaland, Norfolk Island, the eastern jis, the Ellice Islands, Tikopia, mnel and Bellona, the boundary en running back again to Hawaii.

This is an immense area on the rrestrial globe, but the area of nd surface within it is small. At ie present time the number of jlynesians is somewhat less than ilf a million. I think it unlikely tat the total population of Poly nia ever greatly exceeded that imber.

The distances between the prin pal island groups are immense, tid yet the differences between the alects spoken are very small. ;ephenson Percy Smith told me lat no competent Maori linguist ould have any difficulty in taking

part in an Easter Island conversa tion, though the island is distant from New Zealand some 5,000 miles.

Herbert Williams told me that Marquesan stands almost equally close to Maori, and Captain Cook’s use of a Tahitian interpreter on his last voyage through Polynesia is familiar proof of the close relation ship throughout.

In Melanesia the case is far dif ferent. Sometimes, on a single island, several mutually unintelli

gible dialects are spoken. The coming of Austronesian language to Melanesia may perhaps have been somewhat earlier in time than the coming to Polynesia of Polynesians; but the real cause of the linguistic variety in Melanesia, contrasted with uniformity in Polynesia, is that in Melanesia there was already a long-established Negroid popula tion, probably equipped already with diverse languages, while the first settlers in Polynesia entered an

ipty world —were the earliest ;tlers in the latest inhabited of world-areas. [f there were no other evidence in language it would still be clear at the Polynesians were recent rivals in Polynesia. And the me conclusion might be drawn >m the very small variations in ;ial organisation and in religion, [t seems reasonable to draw from guistic evidence a further con ision—namely, that the corridor which Polynesia was reached was e the Micronesian chain of ands, and that the region from lich they came was eastern and rth-eastem Malaysia, with stern Asia as the remote back jund.

[Etals, Pottery, Weaving

* Polynesia, metal was unknown or, rather, long sojourn in coral islands or on the purely volcanic ?h islands had resulted in the :hniques >of ore reduction and jtal working being completely rgotten, though it is permissable suppose that some old imple mt-, weapon-, or amulet-forms irked out originally in metal were 11 retained —expressed in Poly sia in stone.

Pottery likewise was absent; no lere in the Polynesian area, ex pt in the marginal areas of New aland and Fiji, were suitable clays ailable.

Another basic technique that was st by the Polynesians was weav

ing. It is to be supposed that in the movement south-eastward across the equator from the Philippines and Micronesia to Western Poly nesia and the Tahitian Islands the early Polynesians found no pressing need for warm clothing. Such need for clothing as did exist was met by tapa bark-cloth.

And so, we may suppose, the tech nique and the mechanical devices of weaving, well known by them when living in eastern and north eastern Malaysia, were forgotten.

Buck has pointed out that when the Polynesian settlers reached New Zealand they had lost the art and, in spite of urgent need of warm clothing, they did not re-invent weaving, but moved along the much less satisfactory line of elaborating the plaitwork technique of basketry. . . .

From Indonesia, Via

Micronesia

IN Buck’s view, the Polynesians came originally from Indonesia, where they had learned navi gation, into the Caroline Islands, passing thence via the Phoenix group, the Tokelaus, and Tongareva to the Tahitian group.

Buck is cautious about dates, but he places the departure from Indo nesia about the fifth century, and the arrival in the Tahitian group in or about the eighth century AD.

There is general agreement with Buck in deriving the Polynesians from Indonesia, and in taking them

through the Carolines. All will agree, also, that the Tahitian group is the immediate cultural homeland of the Hawaiians, Marquesans, Tua motuans, Easter, Austral, and Cook Islanders, and the Maoris of New Zealand, B U t how are we to fit the Western Polynesians—the Samoans and the Tongans into this historical re

construction? They are Polyne sians, certainly, both racially and culturally.

Buck, having made the Tahitian Islands his theoretical first settle ment in Polynesia has to bring the first Samoans and Tongans back westward from Tahiti.

Consultation of the map will show

that geographical considerations are so much against this view as to out weigh decisively Buck’s single argu ment in support of it. It seems much more probable that the Samoan islands were the first group in Polynesia to be settled by the Proto-Polynesians, and that the Tahitian group was settled after,

though probably at no long ini val.

Hypotheses Based On

Cultures

BUCK holds that prior to tl migration into the Tahit group the Proto-Polynesi sojourned long in the atolls of Marshalls and the Gilberts* —so 1< that they lost virtually all the c ture they had brought with tb from Indonesia and became p fishermen, losing even domestica plants and domesticated animal: Thus, when they moved on ag and occupied the lovely moi tainous islands that form Tahitian group they were, s Buck, almost cultureless, their o link with the Indonesian culti world being language.

In their new Tahitian homek they created for themselves, he ss a new culture, Polynesian culti In the three centuries betw -1,000 and 1,300 AD maritime tivity carried this new culture and wide across immense distant to Hawaii, Marquesas, Tuamc Mangareva, Easter Island, Austn Cooks, New Zealand. Tonga, Ni Samoa.

The last three will be left out this discussion; for the rest, € dence indicates that migration fr Tahiti to all other groups did oci in this period,-and that the culti brought to these groups was the c ture current in the Tahitian grc

t the time each group of emigrants ft it.

But I shall attempt to show that lany elements in the material cul- U'e of these groups go back beyond ahiti to Indonesia and eastern sia, and, in some cases, further 111. If I can establish this, then uck’s hypothesis that the Proto olynesians who colonised Tahiti ere cultureless fishermen, and that 11 that is characteristic in Poly esian culture was first developed lere, must be abandoned.

It is here suggested that the olynesian ancestors were moving it of Indonesia and the Philip mes about the seventh and eighth mturies AD. They were part of a ‘afaring community which had mtact, direct or indirect, with lands and coastlines throughout idonesia, and their culture is [lied to elements from all parts of idonesia, including areas strongly ifluenced by India in Bali, Java, umatra, and Cambodia. Com mnities in the Philippines were in )uch also with China: in the re nte past they had been linked with orth-east Asia.

In the central Carolines —Yap, onape—sultanates were probably f up, best known from the impos ig ruins on Ponape, and move tents were made southward to the ew Guinea coast, and the northern lands of Melanesia—the Admiralty 'oup, New Ireland, the Solomons, le Santa Cruz group.

At the same time many Proto olynesians went south-east to amoa and Tahiti, not as culture ss fishermen, but as well-equipped cplorers and colonists, taking with xem all the domesticated animals ad plants their vessels could carry, he culture ultimately developed in le Tahitian group by these Proto olynesians would differ from that ft behind.

Metal and pottery, known per aps as imports in the Carolines, ould be lost entirely in the new ome, since it had neither metal res nor clay, and distance forbade *ade. Loom products were re laced by bark cloth.

In this hypothesis, the first cul ire establisned in the Tahitian roup was characterised by elaborate rts and crafts. When groups of 'ahitians hived off between 1,000 nd 1,300 AD to the marginal areas f Hawaii, Marquesas, the Tuamotu, aster Island, the Australs, Cooks, [ew Zealand, they took with them well-developed decorative art as r ell as the purely utilitarian arts, a these new marginal settlements epresentational and decorative art ither declined, as in Hawaii, the ’uamotus, Mangareva, or else con inued to flourish, as in the Mar uesas and New Zealand.

This hypothesis also requires that i the Tahitian Islands, as genera ions passed, representational and .ecorative art dwindled almost to .othing. It is suggested that these rts declined because the energy ormerly expressed in them was de

fleeted into the immense elaboration of socio-religious ritual seen by European discoverers and explorers, ritual directly linked with the de velopment of the marae in the Tahitian Islands.

Whether or not this is the correct explanation, the European dis coverers found in Tahiti an elabora tion of socio-religious ceremonial unknown in such marginal areas as

New Zealand, coupled with almost complete absence in Tahiti of rep resentational and decorative art.

The absence in recent times of de corative and representational art in Tahiti has been treated as the trump card in the hand of those who argue that Maori decorative and representational art is a purely local product. For, say they, if this side of Maori art is not local but

indent, why is it not present in rahiti? The reply is that it was here anciently, but has since been ost.

' It is admitted that the New Zea and Maori developed a characteris ic local style, especially on the ecorative side. So also did the 'olynesians of the Cook and Austral rea, and so did the Polynesians of be Marquesas. But the more losely the art of each of these areas studied the more numerous are Dund to be the motives which they ave in common.