Up Front

with the Editor

Back in May, 1963, PlM’s then assistant editor, Robert Langdon, wrote a piece drawing attention to the fact that an ancient cannon had been found embedded in a reef on Amanu atoll in French Polynesia, and said that nobody had been able to explain how it got there.

In January, 1968, in a much longer article and after considerable research of his own. Bob put forward in PIM what we then described as “a startling new theory” that the cannon had come from a Spanish vessel wrecked in 1526, and that the Spanish crew had survived and made an extra ordinary long-term impact on the Polynesians.

And now, almost 11 years after becoming aware of the cannon, and six years after beginning serious re search, Robert Langdon in February completed a 130,000-word manuscript explaining in detail his romantic and sensational theory of how the crew of San Lesmes changed the course of Pacific history. Titled The Lost Caravel, Pacific Publications will pub lish the book towards the end of this year.

Bob, who these days is executive officer of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau at the Australian National University, contends in what is a fascinating who-dunit, that the 70odd shipwrecked Spaniards introduced many aspects of their culture to Poly nesia, that they became chiefs and established Hispano-Polynesian dynas ties that lasted down to Captain Cook’s time.

He believes they went to extra ordinary lengths to keep their blood lines “pure”. He believes that much of the culture that has previously been attributed to the genius of the Polynesians was, in fact, derived from Eurone.

For example, Langdon pours cold water on the idea that the early Poly nesians of the eastern Pacific were skilful seamen and accomplished navi gators. Instead, he marshals an array of evidence to show that the only islanders who knew anything of con sequence about canoe-building and

navigation in Captain Cook’s time were apparently descendants of the San Lesmes castaways.

Langdon also contends that many of the elaborate ‘Polynesian’ chants were actually derived from the Bible; and he carefully documents his theory that Spanish castaways greatly in fluenced dress, drama, music, the method of counting and the computa tion of time in Polynesia; that they probably abolished cannibalism in some areas; that they substituted hand-shaking for nose-rubbing as a form of greeting; and much else.

The Lost Caravel seriously chal lenges the principal theory of Thor Heyerdahl of Kon Tiki fame—that the light-skinned people of the eastern Pacific were descendants of a tribe of blond Indians driven into the Pacific manv centuries ago. The book even suggests that the mysterious in scribed tablets of Easter Island, which Heyerdahl has attributed to American Indians, may have been derived from the system of writing introduced by San Lesmes castaways.

On the other hand, Langdon’s book offers some unexpected support for Heyerdahl’s views; and this, in itself, is likely to add new fuel to the 200-year-old controversy on where the Polynesians came from. But the main thesis of Langdon’s book will take everyone by surprise— anthropologists, historians, linguists, geneticists and churchmen, not to mention the general reader who has long cherished romantic notions about the Polynesians. Scholars in many disciplines will have to rethink their positions.

It’s all done against the background of early European exploration and penetration of the Pacific, presented in a refreshing way because he has had to look at it from a different angle.

His arguments, in my view, carry so much weight that they must con vert most readers—and they have converted me. But there will be great controversy, which should be half the fun.

Stuart Inder