Books, Reviews, Writers

The Islanders' Origins: A Modern

Solution To An Ancient Riddle

Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia: when did man first set foot in these regions, where did he come from, what other peoples was he related to? These questions are of interest to many Pacific people: to the indigenous peoples wanting to know more of their origins and heri tage, and to settlers seeking an identi fication with their adopted countries.

William Howells’ Pacific Islanders is aimed at filling this need; it is to my knowledge the only thorough going, modern treatment of all the Pacific Island peoples and their rela tionships, both broad in scope and authoritative in detail, able to dismiss old myths about racial stereotypes and to replace them with a more realistic modern view.

The author is one of the most eminent names in Physical Anthro pology, the field which covers human evolution and variation in modern man. It is quite usual to find a man of his acknowledged position a kind of fossilisation of body and mind: of body, because having achieved the sought-for status, the individual ceases to be active in original re search; and of mind, in a reluctance to accept new advances in the field made by other, younger colleagues.

Not so Howells: in this book one will find a description of work re cently undertaken by the author him self on elucidating relationships be tween Pacific peoples, and on every page is evidence of serious considera tion of recent findings by other

physical anthropologists, by linguists,

and by archaeologists. Not only this; the relevant information is slotted in,’ its implications discussed, its ramifica tions explored even when it requires revision of older views, including those formerly espoused by Howells himself. AH this indicates that we are in the presence of an up-to-date work written by a considerable authority.

In case anyone is put off by all this air of science, let me say at once that the book is written with humour and humanity. Not a dry academic irony, but a genuine light touch per vades the text; where there is no

alternative but to give long lists and quote statistics, the author is duly apologetic but in the meantime he has taken care to draw attention to the importance of such things, and give the reader an interest in what the statistics reveal. There is no attempt to blind with science; even such a complex topic as Multi variate Analysis is duly explained so that the reader is borne along and is made to understand not just what the solutions are, but how they are arrived at.

The first chapter, entitled Taming the Wild Surmise, has a first-rate dis cussion of the concept of race.

Howells describes how older writers on the subject interpreted variations within a population as being the re sult of race mixture, and how a spurious appearance of authority could be imparted to this interpreta tion by referring to migration and conquests, historical or legendary, which were supposed to have caused an influx of foreign blood.

He does not say so, but it is prob ably World War II as much as any influence from the science of genetics which forced a change of heart on the part of anthropologists studying race: the ‘pure race’ concept had been the cause of so much bloodshed that it came into disrepute and so fell into abeyance; since then specialists have found, sometimes rather to their

surprise, that they could well do without it from a scientific point of view as well as a purely humanitarian one.

And so it is that Howells, having dismissed the excesses of the Pure Race concept and gently chided those who might be tempted to revive it, can go on quite naturally to trace not racial movements, but distribu tions of features that vary geo graphically; skin colour, skull form and single-gene characters including what he calls, following R. A. Fisher, ‘honorary blood-groups’, such as different types of ear-wax! Then follows a section on language: while warning that languages can be adopted by peoples apart from the original speakers, he feels that the problem of the origin and spread of the Austronesian language—the Malayo-Polynesian group, and related tongues—is of relevance to the study of the peopling of the Pacific region.

The four gross regions of the Pacific are then described one by one, their prehistory being described along with physical anthropology and linguistics. First, the aboriginal peoples of Australia (including Tas mania) are described: there is quite a full discussion of Birdsell’s theory that three different ‘racial stocks’ in vaded Australia and mixed to pro duce the present aboriginal popula tion, and the theory is eventually rejected though after sympathetic handling.

Also laid to rest are the hoary old claims that the Australian aborigines are in any way related to the Ainu of Japan, and that the Tasmanian aborigines were displaced Negritos (Oriental pygmies) or indeed in any way dwarfish. The prehistory of Australia is described in some depth, and the difficult problem of the apparent coexistence of two anatomic ally different human populations in Australia in the Upper Pleistocene is discussed but not solved.

The chapter on Melanesia is inter twined with a consideration of the history of population changes in Indonesia, which the author sees as

having been formerly inhabited by hunter-gatherers of Melanesian/Aus tralian type, who were replaced by agriculturalists from the north. Cer tainly, the available evidence points to a replacement of one physical type by another, but need it have been by influx of new peoples, or could it have been simply a matter of gene flow? Here I could wish that Howells had not gone so decisively for the ‘influx’ explanation.

The Polynesians and Micronesians share a final chapter; as the author points out, Micronesia has long been unjustly neglected in the study of Pacific peoples, and he proposes that it has in fact played a crucial role as a cul-de-sac but the starting-point for Polynesian origins. As he points out, anthropologists are currently more inclined to favour Melanesia as the stopping-off point on the Poly nesians’ route to Tonga and the Great Pacific, but this meets with several stumbling blocks, not the least being the overwhelming predominance of physically dissimilar peoples in Mela nesia.

In his final chapter, Howells pulls some of the threads together; there were, he suggests, ‘two fundamental and ancient population complexes in eastern Asia,’ deriving from two homelands. Old Melanesia stretching from Australia and New Guinea through Indonesia and the Philippines to Malaya, and Hoabhinia being placed to the north of this as a Proto-Mongoloid’ homeland.

Perhaps Howells does not mean to imply such a sharp division be tween the two groups as this, but as t stands it does tend to show how difficult it is to avoid thinking in pure race’ terms. And then there vas the archaic Solo Man, co existing in Java with the modern nen of Old Melanesia (though to ny mind the dating of Solo Man is ar too poor to permit even specu ation about this), and perhaps sur viving very late in mixed form as he Kow Swamp population of south :astern Australia.

But these qualifications may be ust quibbles. I thoroughly recom nend this book to anyone interested n the peopling of the Pacific: echnical but not abstruse, academic »ut not dry, witty but not patronis ng, well-written but not facile.

Jere you will find the facts pre ented readably, the problems faced quarely, but easy solutions there ire not. And for anyone interested in aking it further there is an exhaus ive bibliography of 280 items.— "olin P. Groves.

(The Pacific Islanders, By William

Lowells; People of the World’ series, ed. onia Cole. Published by A. H. & A. W. :eed Ltd, Wellington, Sydney, Auckland, 'hnstchurch. $7.55 paperback.)