Newstudies Of

Islander Origins

Genetic studies by researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) are producing new evidence about the origins of populations in the Pacific.

A group led by the head of ANU’s department of human biology in the John Curtin School of Medical Re search, Dr Robert Kirk, has been studying the genetics of living populations in relation to disease and evolutionary changes.

As a by-product the results have been used to study the early move ments of man of Asia into the Pacific Dr Kirk says that archaeological evidence shows the earliest inhabi tants of New Guinea had no pottery and predated horticulture; earliest pottery began to appear in Island Melanesia about 4 500 years ago.

Similar types in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa and several hundred years later in the Marquesas, suggests Fiji as a cradle for the development of a proto-Polynesian culture which spread to Tonga and Samoa, then the central Pacific, radiating from there to Hawaii, Easter Island, Tahiti and back to the west, reach ing New Zealand about 1 000 years ago.

Intensive linguistic studies lend support to this view, as do measure ments of skeletal remains.

Dr Kirk says genetic studies can be used in two ways to give evidence about a people’s origins. The first involves looking for unique traits in specimens of blood and finding which populations have these traits; the other uses statistical techniques to combine results from many genetic systems into a single measure of genetic similarity, or dis similarity, of a population.

At present, among other studies, the researchers are studying the im portance of genetic factors in susceptibility to leprosy and malaria in Papua New Guinea, a tendency to obesity in Samoans and the effects of environmental changes in heart dis ease in Tokelau Islanders.

A Preacher In Png

An Australian Aboriginal writer, social worker and preacher, Doro thy Buyuminy, is spending up to three months in Papua New Guinea, studying book production and crea tive writing, bilingual education, and women’s educational program mes. Ms Buyuminy, who works in the bilingual education section of the Australian Government Depart ment of Education in Darwin, is one of 10 people to receive awards in 1977 under the Aboriginal Overseas Study Awards Scheme.