Oceania: The Native Cultures of Australia and the Pacific Islands—Volume 1 9780824845704

Citation preview

Oceania

Oceania The Native Cultures of Australia and the Pacific Islands VOLUME I

D O U G L A S L. O L I V E R Illustrations by Lois Johnson

U N I V E R S I T Y OF HAWAII PRESS Honolulu

© 1 9 8 9 University of Hawaii Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States o f America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Oliver, Douglas L. Oceania : the native cultures of Australia and the Pacific Islands Douglas L. Oliver ; illustrations by Lois Johnson. p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. ISBN 0 - 8 2 4 8 - 1 0 1 9 - 8 (set) 1.Ethnology—Oceania. 2. Oceania—Social life and customs. I. Title. GN662.046 1988 88-29551 306'.099—dcl9 CIP The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of "Paper for Printed Library Materials ANSI Z 3 9 . 4 8 - 1 9 8 4

To the many anthropologists on whose descriptive writings this book is mainly based To Renée Heyum, bibliographer and curator, sans pareil, of writings on the Pacific and to Iris Wiley, matchless expert in the art and diplomacy of editing

Contents VOLUME 1

Preface ix Prologue xi Part I 1 2 3 4 5

1

The Natural Setting 3 Population and Physical Types Languages 66 Archaeology 78 Ethnology 104 Part II

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Background

Activities

27

123

Definitions, Religious Ideas, and Tools 125 Foods and Food Getting: Australia 157 Foods and Food Getting: The Islands 185 Domicile 321 Boats and Ocean Travel 361 Warfare and Killing 423 External Exchange 501 Sex and Reproduction 590 Infancy to Death—And Beyond 660 Notes 787 Maps 1. Australia 813 2. West-Central Oceania 814 3. Central Oceania 815 4. Eastern Oceania 816 5. Northwestern Oceania 817 Oceania front endpaper New Guinea back endpaper

VII

PREFACE

VII!

VOLUME 2 Partili 15 16 17 18 19 20

Social Relations

More Definitions 821 Australia 826 Polynesia 883 Micronesia 957 Melanesia 1026 Fiji 1150 Finale 1182 Notes 1185 Bibliography 1201 Indexes Subject 1261 Peoples 1266 Authors Cited 1270

819

Preface

I SET OUT to write this book eight years ago, partly in response to suggestions that I update my superannuated The Pacific Islands (written shortly after World War II) and partly in response to all the nonsense being disseminated about an alleged "The Pacific Way." Subsequently I decided to postpone work on a revision of The Pacific Islands (which deals largely with the Colonial Era) and to focus instead on the region's indigenous precolonial cultures—a daunting task by itself, because of the huge amount of anthropological research that has taken place during the last forty years. As my writing proceeded I experienced many doubts about the usefulness, other than encyclopedic, of attempting to portray such a vast and diverse cultural landscape; these doubts probably will be widely shared by anthropological colleagues. However, I hope, as the result of my efforts to standardize the book's technical terminology and to highlight both the similarities and diversities among the region's hundreds of distinct cultures, that the product will be judged to be more than a mere work of reference. Whatever the reception of this book by others, the writing of it has been a valuable exercise for its author. I have of course acquired more knowledge about Oceanians and their ways of life—and increased respect for many aspects of those ways. But also, my reading and collating of numerous ethnographies have served to reconfirm my appreciation for those ethnographers who separate their interpretations from their descriptions (to the extent that such is possible), and who in presenting the latter do not attempt to display their theoretical brilliance, or conceal their factual ignorance, in opaque metaphors or in the jargon of the day. Every ethnographer deserves the indulgence, or owes the obligation, to engage in interpretation—functional, structural, ecological, Marxist, semiotic, or whatever—but ought not deprive his readers of the possibility of doing their own. In addition to thanking all those scholars on whose writings most of

IX

X

PREFACE

the text is based, I wish to thank especially those whose lucid descriptions were drawn upon at greater than average length for the book's several comprehensive case studies (e.g., Busama, Butaritari-Makin, Choiseul, Ifaluk, Kapauku, Mae Enga, Majuro, Mekeo, Moala, Murngin, Nagovisi, Palau, Pitjandjara, Ponape, Seniang, Tikopia, Tolai, Trobriand, Truk, and Yap). My thanks are also due several colleagues who had a more direct hand in helping me with information and advice: namely, Ward Goodenough, Richard Gould, Bion Griffin, Alan Howard, Robert Kiste, Katharine Luomala, Leonard Mason, Michael Pietrusewsky, Donald Rubenstein, Matthew Spriggs, and especially George Grace, Alison Kay, and Peter Pirie. And in addition to all the wifely assistance she rendered during the book's protracted gestation, Margaret McArthur provided me with her unpublished writings on Kunimaipa, guided me through the shoals of nutritional science, and corrected countless infelicities in my prose. The half-million or so words that compose the book's text were typed in part by Sara Collins and Irene Takata, to whom I offer sympathy and thanks. I am likewise indebted to Ethel Okamura, who did the rest of the typing for no compensation other than the satisfaction she appears to derive from being helpful. Financial support for much of the typing and for some of the research was provided by two units of the University of Hawaii at Manoa: the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, then under the directorship of Stephen Uhalley, Jr., and the College of Arts and Sciences, at the behest of its dean, David Contois (who has since died, to the sorrow of myself and numerous other colleagues). I wish also to thank Earl Neller for having made photo reproductions of the Oceanians portrayed in chapter 2 , and Josie Herr for having drawn maps 1 through 5. The measure of my gratitude to Renée Heyum and Iris Wiley is indicated in the Dedication. I venture to predict that the numerous drawings by illustrator Lois Johnson, expressing both authenticity and artistry, will continue to evoke interest and admiration long after the book's text has ceased to be read. Honolulu, August 1988

Prologue

at least fifty thousand years ago bands of fully human primates (Homo sapiens sapiens) ventured eastward beyond the shores of Southeast Asia into Oceania, a region of islands scattered over an ocean area of some forty million square miles. Eventually, the descendants of those pioneers succeeded in occupying every habitable island in that vast expanse, including some that were isolated by hundreds of miles of open sea—and all without the benefit of metal tools or written languages. Although the pioneers into Oceania were all of them Asian, separate bands of them had set off from different places and at widely different times; hence they had carried with them many distinctive complexes of ideas and material goods. And to all such differences among them must be added the many varieties of geographic settings occupied by those separate bands or by this or that branch of their descendants: from the driest of deserts to the most rain-drenched of forests, from ocean-level beaches and plains to mile-high grasslands, from torrid swamps to the margins of glaciers. It is with the cultural culminations of the interplay among those many variables that this book is concerned: that is to say, with Oceania's hundreds of distinct indigenous cultures as they were just before they began to undergo radical Western-induced changes. (Separate bands of the pioneers had also borne somewhat distinctive gene pools, which, when subjected to various other circumstances—demographic, environmental, and cultural—terminated in a wide variety of physical types; but those matters are only incidental to the main concern of this book.) Not surprisingly, those hundreds of native cultures contained few if any traits shared by all of them. ("The Pacific Way" is an evocative and euphoric slogan but not much more, the modicum of reality it reflects being the product of the homogenizing influences of colonialism.) What traits all Oceanian cultures had in common (e.g., subsistence economies centered in domestic households, land ownership by kin-based social BEGINNING

XI

XII

PROLOGUE

units) existed in many other parts of the world as well. Much more striking were the differences among Oceania's cultures—for example, in numbers of participants (from fewer than a hundred persons to a quarter of a million or so); in food-getting technologies (from total dependence upon hunting and gathering to near-total dependence upon horticulture and animal raising); in government (from orderly anarchies to centralized ministates); and in social values (from fierce egalitarianism—among males, that is—to revered class stratification). No one or even a dozen books could describe fully all those differences; what this one attempts is to reveal their wide ranges. Here and there in its pages the book also tenders some explanations (some by the author but mostly by other writers), and here and there some evaluations show through. But the main purpose of the book is descriptive, and it is written for readers who are interested in the region as a whole and who want something more than a condensed (and therefore simplistic) account of its complex pre-Western cultural landscape. Part 1 of the book will serve as a background to that description; it deals with the geography of the region and with the biological, linguistic, and archaeological evidence concerning the origins of the Oceanians and their movements into and within the region. Part 2 describes the tools and techniques by which the recent (but not yet markedly Westernized) Oceanians satisfied their basic, pan-human needs, as qualified by their many different, culturally defined, perceptions of those needs: for food and shelter; for defense against dangers, real or imagined; for dealing with sexual drives; and for accommodating to the biological imperatives of birth, maturation, aging, and death. Finally, Part 3 focuses on the varieties of social structures within which those "technical" activities took place. The division herein made between the focus of Part 2 and that of Part 3 is acknowledgedly arbitrary: the so-called technical activities did not take place in a social-relational vacuum, and the so-called social structures did not function per se. Nevertheless, in a book such as the present one some division of subject matter is mandatory, and the one followed is most comfortable—for the writer, at least!

PART I

Background

CHAPTER ONE

The Natural Setting

To ANYONE who has gone so far as to open a book about Oceania it is probably unnecessary to have to justify devoting a chapter to the area's geography. But it may be useful to reinforce the reader's interest in that geography by recalling that for the people and events described in this book, the natural physical setting was crucially important. Only occasionally, and then usually superficially, are the residents of a temperatezone metropolis affected by the natural features of their surrounding landscape, or the velocity of their wind, and so forth. By seasonal changes in temperature, yes; but even these are tempered by suitable clothing and by the artificial heating or cooling of buildings. Not so for the Oceanians, in the past or even today. Consider the matter of bodily comfort. The flimsy shelters of many of Australia's desertdwelling Aborigines provided little or no protection from the seasonally bitter-cold night temperatures. Such people kept their nearly naked bodies comfortable mainly by sleeping close—sometimes too close—to small fires. And while in most other areas of Oceania the native dwellings were fairly protective against temperature extremes, the clothing of most Oceanians provided scant comfort against chill rains or cold high-altitude air or protection from a sun that could harm even darkly pigmented skins. But quite aside from bodily comfort, and in the end of far more crucial importance to their welfare, the natural settings in which the Oceanians lived set some limits to how they lived: for example, what they ate, the kinds of tools they worked with, the structures they built, and even the size and spatial distribution of their settlements. This is not to say that the physical environment exercised a direct, specifically determinant effect on their ways of living. As with humans everywhere such effects were mediated by their cultural resources—their knowledge, their tools, their techniques of production, the forms of energy they employed, and the like.

3

4

BACKGROUND

In certain respects the Oceanians' knowledge of their physical surroundings was extraordinarily minute. Thus, some among them knew details about the plants in their forests or the fish in their waters that even today's professional biologists may not know. And some of their tools and techniques for making use of such resources were probably as good as any that could be devised by anyone anywhere. There were, however, other natural resources in many places in Oceania that the local residents were not conscious of; or they may have lacked the tools or techniques or traditions for making use of them even if they had been aware of their potential. Reference here is not only to such things as metal-bearing ores (which existed in many places in Oceania but which were nowhere made into tools), or to fast-moving streams (which also existed in many places but were never used as a source of energy), but to far less complex matters, such as making and using pottery (which was manufactured in some places but not in others, even where clay abounded). These and other facts about the Oceanians' technologies will be described in later chapters. The negative cases are mentioned here only to emphasize, at the outset, that while the physical features of the places in which the Oceanians lived rarely determined directly and exactly what they did, some of those features did exercise strong influence on their lives. Thus, any account of the Oceanians' traditional ways of life must include a description of the physical setting in which they lived. But, a description from whose point of view? Probably no two Americans (or Englishmen, or Frenchmen) would view any particular landscape in exactly the same way, but most Europeans who have received some schooling in the physical and biological sciences would perceive it as being made up of various types of rocks and soils, various species of plants and animals, and so on—that is, entities classified according to the criteria of present-day science. Many presentday Western-educated Oceanians would likely view their natural environments through similar kinds of "scientific" lenses, but those not so schooled (including all of those who lived there before Europeans appeared on the scene) viewed their natural environments through perceptual lenses that differed not only from those of modern science but from one native society to another. As there were hundreds of such societies, there were also hundreds of different lenses. Of course, some of those lenses differed from one another in only minor aspects, so that it becomes feasible to fit them into a smaller number of generalized types, such as that of the Australian Central Desert peoples, or that of the natives of the central Caroline Island atolls, or that of the eastern New Guinea Highlanders. Later on, some of those native types of perceptions will be described, but for the readers of this book, who presumably have been schooled in present-day science, I shall first describe the natural physical aspects of Oceania in the more widely intelligible terms of mod-

T H E NATURAL SETTING

5

ern science. However, in reading this summary one should not lose sight of the fact that the Oceanians themselves utilized, adjusted to, and generally lived in their physical environments according to their distinctive— and in some respects more circumscribed, or more expansive—views of them. We can begin with what scientists have discovered about the lands and seas of this vast area insofar as that knowledge relates to the lives of the peoples who lived there before outsiders—Europeans, Americans, and Asians—began to introduce changes in their lives. And since it is now being proposed by archaeologists, most persuasively, that the ancestors of the present-day Oceanians had already begun to move into this area some forty or more millennia ago (earlier, in fact, than any Homo sapiens had reached Europe or the Americas) we must push back the descriptions that far in time. The most fundamental geological feature of the area now known as the Pacific is its lithosphere, the 60 or more miles' thick layer of rigid rock that comprises the earth's crust and upper mantle, which floats on a relatively plastic and even thicker layer of mantle called the asthenosphere. The earth's lithosphere is divided into a number of huge "plates," which are themselves rigid but are constantly in motion away from, toward, or sidewise with each other. When plates move apart the underlying molten magma of the asthenosphere flows up through the gaps to build mountainous ridges. Or, when two plates collide one of them subducts under the other, creating trenches, and often island arcs or sometimes underwater mountain ranges. Consequently, the most unstable zones of the earth's surface occur along the boundaries of its numerous plates. In Figure 1.1 are shown the plates that underlie the Pacific and neighboring areas, along with their direction of motion and the major physiographic consequences of their interactions. The tectonic features shown that are most relevant to this book's focus are: The southeast boundary of the vast Pacific Plate, which has created a mountainous rise on which Easter Island (among others) is based. The western boundary of the Pacific Plate, where it has pushed under (subducted) the Indian and Philippine plates, forming deep ocean trenches and island arcs, many now under sea level, and creating continuing conditions of vulcanism and earthquakes. The line formed by the latter trenches, commonly called the Sial (or Andesite) Line, also marks a division between two markedly different kinds of rock fundament. West of it lie Australia, New Guinea, and other islands of "continental" rock types (e.g., granites, slates, coal, etc.) that form a continuation of—a Platform of—Asia. In sharp contrast, the fun-

6

BACKGROUND ISO

180

150

135

Figure 1.1. Tectonic plates of the Pacific region (after Scientific American, June 1 9 7 9 : 1 6 6 )

dament of the vast ocean area east of the line (i.e., the true Pacific Basin) consists mainly of basalt. Huge quantities of molten magma have flowed up through this plate to form many mid-ocean ridges, some of them perpetually below sea level, and to spread crusts over some of the ocean floor. During the past fifty or so million years the Pacific Plate has been moving, slowly but surely, toward the northwest. Consequently, as it moves over the more or less fixed "hot spots" in the underlying mantle the upward flow of magma—the building of volcanic mountain ridges— trends toward the southeast. Thus, of the inhabited islands of the Hawaiian chain, Kauai, the farthest to the northwest, is the oldest, and Hawaii, the farthest to the southeast, is the youngest, with vulcanism still active there. The Platform and Basin areas also differ in several characteristics more directly relevant to human life.

T H E NATURAL

SETTING

7

To begin with a very obvious feature, the large land masses of the Platform area are on the average much larger and closer together than are those of the Basin. Second, the greater distances o f the latter from each other and from Asia, whence came nearly all of their pioneer living things, has resulted in the Basin islands having far fewer families, genera, and species of plants and animals than were found on the islands of the Platform. A third and less obvious difference between Basin and Platform lies in the types of volcanic activity. Most of the lava that intrudes into the Basin area is basaltic and flows upward and outward at slow and continuing rates, forming domelike mountains, under- and above-sea. In contrast, the more viscous andesite lavas of the Platform move upward more spasmodically and explosively. Thus, while the periodic flows from Hawaii's Kilauea craters (in the Basin) are a safe tourist attraction and spoil at most only a few hundred acres of land, the explosive eruptions of New Guinea's M t . Lamington (in the Platform zone) have devastated huge areas of vegetation and killed scores o f people even within the recent past. In fact, the Platform area generally is one of the earth's most "restless" geological zones. Along with the tectonic changes (i.e., faulting and folding) characteristic of most areas with continental foundations, and accompanying the movements along its boundary with the Pacific Plate, the Platform is not only shaken by numerous volcanic explosions but also by frequent earthquakes. By comparison, the islands in the Basin area are quiet, being subject only to occasional shaking, generally associated with local or nearby vulcanism. On the other hand some islands of both Platform and Basin are occasionally struck by "tidal waves"—tsunami— generated by volcanic or seismic disturbances, local or far-distant. The tsunami that struck Hawaii in 1 9 4 6 and killed more than 1 5 0 persons was set in motion by a strong earthquake in the Aleutian Islands. (While this was a major disaster by Oceania's standards, it was mild when compared with the 1 8 8 3 explosion of Krakatau, which caused a tidal wave that killed more than 3 0 , 0 0 0 Sumatrans and Javanese.) In comparison with the awesome kinds of land-building and landchanging events just described, the process of coral formation is undramatic although unremitting and nearly ubiquitous in the tropical Pacific. Coral is formed of calcium carbonate. It is the skeletal material of polyps, that is, of certain species of coelenterates. They attach themselves to a solid surface—the earlier generations to rock and the later generations to the skeletons of their predecessors—and thus build structures of various sizes and shapes, from ovoid to treelike. Plants also take part in this process, these being microscopic, unicellular algae, that live symbiotically within the cells of the polyps and assist in coral formation by stimulating their animal hosts' calcium metabolism. A most crucial characteristic of the coral-forming polyps is that they

8

BACKGROUND

live and reproduce only in warm, clear water. The optimum temperatures are between 7 3 ° and 7 8 ° F; below 6 4 ° the calcification process does not take place. Also, the water must be clear enough to admit sufficient sunlight to sustain the symbiotic algae. In other words, in the Pacific the coral polyps have built mausolea in a belt about 3 0 ° of latitude wide on both sides of the equator, and usually in depths no greater than about 150 feet and in water at least 80 percent as saline as the open sea. Because of the above requirements for growth, as shorelines rise or fall in relation to sea level the zones of coral formation also shift. In the case of a slowly rising shoreline the exposed coral dies while the living polyps continue to build at their lower margin. When a shoreline sinks, the upper margin of its coral crust will continue to build while the lower one will die for lack of enough sunlight and heat. Thus, as a result of the many large- and small-scale changes in shoreline level that have occurred in the Pacific over millions of years, the remains of coral reefs are found on the slopes of some islands as much as hundreds of feet above and below present sea level. The greater changes in Pacific shorelines just referred to were those that accompanied the vast land uplifts and sinkings of pre-Pleistocene times. Oscillations of shorelines in the Pacific (and elsewhere) continue to take place but usually very slowly and are of limited magnitude. During the Pleistocene, however, there occurred several relatively faster and larger worldwide shoreline changes that resulted less from up and down movements of the land than from rise and fall of the sea level itself, and these were of more direct relevance to mankind's history in the Pacific than were the vast changes of earlier epochs. During the Pleistocene epoch, which began 2 - 3 million years ago, there occurred a series of wide swings in atmospheric temperature. During the periods of lowest temperatures huge ice caps developed in the Northern Hemisphere (and mountaintop ice fields in the Southern Hemisphere), thereby freezing—and thus impounding—vast quantities of water that would otherwise have served to replenish the water lost from the oceans and seas by normal evaporation. One effect of this impounding was to lower shorelines around the world. The shoreline changes that had most to do with the human history of Oceania were those that occurred in the southern part of the Platform, in the area stretching from mainland Southeast Asia to the eastern edges of Australia and New Guinea. At various times during the Pleistocene the sea level in this area dropped so low that previously (and now) discrete islands were either joined to one another or separated by much narrower channels. These conditions facilitated the spread of terrestrial plants and animals throughout that area, most significantly from the Asian mainland; most crucially for the subject of this book the fauna thus affected

T H E NATURAL

SETTING

9

included humans. The chains of islands stretching from New Guinea to New Caledonia and Fiji were also enlarged and brought nearer together by these drops of sea level, and their flora and fauna thereby enriched, but less so than with the lands west of them. But for the islands farther north and east, in what are now known as Micronesia and Polynesia, their isolation was reduced only slightly and inconsequentially by the lowering of their shorelines. Large-scale shoreline oscillations continued throughout the whole of the Pleistocene, but it was only during the last phase of that period that such changes directly affected the humans with which this book is concerned. That phase began about 120,000 years ago and "ended" (perhaps temporarily?) with the Holocene, or Recent, geological era, which began about 1 0 , 0 0 0 years ago and which has been marked by the kind of (relative) stability in climate, and hence in eustatic sea levels, that now obtains. Throughout the final phase of the Pleistocene, sea levels were always somewhat lower than they are today, but during two lengthy periods they were as low as 4 0 0 - 4 7 5 feet below present levels. During those periods—one that reached its climax about 5 3 , 0 0 0 years ago and the other some 3 3 , 0 0 0 years later—the land surfaces of the western Pacific looked as shown in Figure 1.2. (The shaded areas are those presently under water but which were exposed by the lowered sea levels of those times.) Thus, the region contained two continent-size land units, Sunda and Sahul, with several enlarged and in places united islands in between. The dry-land shelf connecting Sunda with mainland Asia made it possible for Pleistocene land animals, including humanoid, and later fully human, primates, to walk dry-footed as far east as the eastern shores of Borneo and Java. But to reach the shores of Sahul (which the fully human primates achieved no later than about 4 0 , 0 0 0 - 5 0 , 0 0 0 years ago) would have required them to cross stretches of ocean at least 3 6 nautical miles wide. We will consider in chapter 2 the question of the earliest human settlers in Sahul, but let us consider now what kinds of natural environments they found when they stepped ashore there. That of course would have depended upon the location of their landfall, or rather, landfalls—it being reasonable to assume that the crossings were made by several groups, and that two or more routes were used during the millennia when they took place. Those taking the northern routes would have landed on the relatively narrow shelf bordering the mountains of present-day New Guinea, and those taking the central and southern routes, on the flat shelflands, now under water, that extended for hundreds of miles out from Australia's present northwest shoreline. Until about 1 0 , 0 0 0 years ago, when it became much as it is today, the climate of the late Pleistocene phase was more humid than at present in all those landfall areas, and although somewhat cooler than today's, it

IO

BACKGROUND

Figure 1.2. Sunda and Sahul showing earliest archaeological sites (shaded areas now submerged) was still warm enough to be labeled tropical. (At that time, however, glaciers existed in southeast Australia's mountains and in the central mountains of New Guinea.) But long before the present-day climates had become established, the descendants of the earlier groups of human pio-

THE NATURAL

SETTING

II

neers had pushed much farther east and south. By about 25,000 years ago they had penetrated into New Guinea's mountainous interior, some 900-1,000 miles east of the original landfalls. And by 30,000 years ago they had moved down Australia's eastern side at least as far as the site of modern Melbourne. The earlier pioneers in Australia and New Guinea (which were at that time united by the Sahul Shelf) found vegetation very similar to the one they had left behind, including most of those plants collected for food. The same may be said of the fauna, with the important exception of several mammals (especially elephants, rhinos, monkeys, and apes) that never managed to reach Sahul. In compensation for such losses, however, the pioneer settlers in Sahul found several unfamiliar species, including giant flightless birds (emus and cassowaries), and types of marsupials that were larger than any now alive. More will be said later about those now extinct beasts and birds; we turn first to the topography, climate, and so forth, of this and other parts of Oceania during the Holocene era when about 10,000 years ago, they came to be as they now are. Leaving aside Australia (which is about as large as the United States, less Alaska), the islands of Oceania may be divided into several geological types. Continental: those formed by processes of sedimentation, folding, faulting, and so forth, and thus consisting mainly of "continental"-type rocks. Most of these islands also contain intrusions of volcanic rock and have shorelines encrusted with live or dead coral. The heterogeneous rock foundations of these islands provide them with a wider variety of profiles and soils than can be found on other types of Pacific islands, and they contain many more metal-bearing ores than the latter. All of the "continental" islands of Oceania are located in the Platform area, that is, west of the Andesite Line; examples include New Zealand, New Guinea, Bougainville, New Caledonia, and Viti Levu. Volcanic: those formed by volcanic intrusion, either of the explosive or of the flow type. Examples of the former are Manam (off New Guinea's northern coast) and Kolombangara (in the western Solomons). Examples of the latter include mainly the "high" islands of the Basin area (e.g., Upolu, Tahiti, Oahu, Kusaie, and Ponape). Compared with those of continental-type islands the basic rocks of the volcanic islands are quite homogeneous, consisting chiefly of volcanic products; but the latter vary widely in shape, due mainly to differences in weathering and in the kind of volcanic intrusion (explosive or flow) that created them. Relatively speaking, the Hawaiian Islands are more weathered than, for example, the Marquesas; and within the populated islands of the Hawaiian chain Kauai, the westernmost and geologically the oldest, is more weathered than Hawaii, the easternmost, youngest, and in fact still-growing island.

12

BACKGROUND

The ultimate stage in weathering is represented by those volcanic islands whose presence is revealed above sea level only by rings of coral reef (atolls). Coral island. As described earlier, coral occurs throughout those shoreline zones of Oceania where the seawater conditions were favorable for its growth. Mostly it occurs as fringing reefs off both "continental" and volcanic islands, but in many instances it constitutes the largest or even the only visible parts of such islands. Oceania's coral reefs vary both in thickness and in the depth at which they are found. Many schemes of classifying their shapes have been put forward; one such distinguishes eight forms, as shown in Figure 1.3. Even finer distinctions could be made if necessary but the one shown will serve to indicate the wide variety of coral islands found in Oceania; some of the profound cultural consequences of such differences in their inhabitants' lives will be described in later chapters. One could go on endlessly proposing schemes for classifying Oceania's islands—by size, shape, composition, and so on—and almost inevitably one would end up with categories that could only be labeled "mixed." However, enough has been said to provide the reader with an impression of the wide variety of geomorphic types, and of the parameters by which such classifications can be devised. So we turn now to some other aspects of the natural environments of the islands—first, to the major ocean currents that swept (and sweep) their shores and that affected, directly or indirectly, their inhabitants' lives. Two vast gyres dominate water movements in the Pacific (Fig. 1.4). The one north of the equator flows clockwise, its counterpart south of the equator, counterclockwise. The southern segment of the northern gyre flows from the American side to the Philippines before it is turned north (except east of the Hawaiian and Mariana islands, where parts of it are deflected from its east-west course). Some of the northern segment of the counterclockwise gyre flows westward as far as Australia, but much of it is deflected southward by the numerous intervening islands. In between these two major whorls flows the equatorial counter-current in a Pacific-wide sweep, from the Caroline and Gilbert islands all the way to Panama. 2 The width of this counter-current varies between five and ten degrees of latitude, and its position shifts northward and southward in response to the seasonal change in inclination of the earth. Oceanians living on islands affected by this patterning of currents were influenced by it in at least two ways. Indirectly, it served to determine which species of ocean-borne plants and animals an island received from elsewhere. More directly, it served to facilitate, or to impede, boat travel between islands, with all the cultural and social consequences of such interactions or isolations. Apart from New Zealand (and nearby Chatham Island) and the south-

APRON REEF ¿jt, I w o j i m a

0

1

2

miles

A L M O S T BARRIER R E E F Wallis Islands

FRINGING REEF R a r o t o n g a , Cook Islands

0

1 2

3

miles

BARRIER R E E F ¿> f Palau Islands V 5

ATOLL à r a w a , Gilbert Islands

Figure 1.3. Types of coral islands (after W. Thomas 1968)

14

BACKGROUND

ern two-thirds of Australia nearly all of the inhabited lands of Oceania are within the tropics; the other exceptions are Raivavae, Rapa, Pitcairn, and Easter islands, all of which lie just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. With the exceptions just noted, the year-round temperatures experienced by Oceanian Islanders were predictably high. However, surrounded as they are by the ocean, which radiates its stored heat more slowly than do large land areas, few places among Oceania's tropical islands experience the very high temperatures that occur in summer in many places in the Temperate zones. Also, the temperatures in many of Oceania's island areas are tempered by offshore winds. While most of those islands undergo some seasonal variation in climate, these consist of very small changes in temperature and are the result mainly of changes in wind and rainfall. Again apart from New Zealand and the southern two-thirds of Australia, Oceania's surface wind patterns are few in number and fairly regular in occurrence (Fig. 1.4). North of about 2 5 ° north latitude and south of about 2 7 ° south latitude the strong mid-latitude Westerlies blow almost continuously year round. Between them lie four kinds of wind patterns: trades, monsoons, doldrums, and typhoons. Trade winds dominate in the eastern parts of the tropical Pacific. Those north of the equator blow from the northeast and are strongly felt as far west as Kusaie (about 1 6 5 ° west longitude); those south of the equator blow from the southeast and spend their main force farther east. The Pacific trade winds blow during every month of the year but more uninterruptedly and steadily during the period from May to September. More narrowly seasonal winds, or monsoons, take the place of the trades in the western third of Oceania. The periodic heating and cooling of Asia's land mass, augmented by seasonal changes in Australia, exercises a powerful influence upon wind direction as far east as the Solomons, and smaller but perceptible influence even farther east. During the Asian winter, winds are pushed out from there to the south and east, the direction being reversed during Asia's summer months. The Asian winter winds—which in western Oceania become the northwest monsoon, are stormier and more variable than the local southeasterly winds and tend to bring more rain. The largest areas of doldrums are located between the two trade wind zones and extend as far west as the Solomons (where the monsoonal pattern takes over). Doldrums are characterized by low wind velocities; they are also marked by high humidity, much cloudiness, and by even, yearround, high temperatures. Typhoons (hurricanes) occur throughout much of tropical Island Oceania, but are most frequent and violent in the regions shown in Figure 1.4. The high winds and torrential rains that constitute typhoons are devastating and life-destroying even in our era of advance-warning com-

T H E NATURAL

SETTING

15

munications and massive rescue operations; they doubtless destroyed whole populations in the past. Like the more explosive volcanic eruptions and the unheralded tsunami, they were and are an unavoidable hazard to many Oceanians' lives. "The climatic element of greatest variability in the Pacific is rainfall" (W. Thomas 1968: 22). Even the least informed reader knows about Australia's widespread aridity—except in the northern, eastern, and southeastern coastal zones of the continent. And temperate New Zealand is widely known for the contrast in precipitation between North and South islands, and for South Island's extremely wet western coast. But elsewhere in Oceania there are also some surprisingly wide precipitation extremes—between islands and within single islands (Fig. 1.5). Generally speaking, most islands near the equator experience year-round high rainfalls (averaging 8 0 - 1 6 0 inches per annum); the ones farther north and south receive about half that amount and on a more seasonal basis. On the other hand there are several equatorial islands in the central and eastern Pacific that receive virtually no rainfall at all (e.g., Canton, Baker, Enderbury, Howland); and some others (e.g., the southern Gilberts and the Phoenix group) may receive no rainfall for months at a time. Farther west, where monsoonal winds take over, the rainfall follows a more regular seasonal pattern, complicated however by some islands' mountainous terrain. Precipitation may also vary among islands in the same archipelago; a prime example is the Hawaiian chain, where the island of Kauai has an annual rainfall in some locations of over 600 inches, in contrast with Kahoolawe, which lies in the rainfall "shadow" of Maui and has a rainfall average of only 10-25 inches per annum. One very widespread pattern of precipitation occurs on those mountainous islands that are located in zones of prevailing rain-laden winds. Very commonly such winds drop most of their moisture on the windward slopes, leaving the leeward slopes and shore lands relatively dry. An extreme example is seen on the large island of Hawaii, where annual rainfall averages about 450 inches in the wettest parts of the windward side and 10 inches or less in some parts of the leeward side. Elsewhere same-island differences of such magnitude are rare, but even the most inattentive traveler to, say, Oahu or Viti Levu or New Caledonia cannot fail to notice the differences between the wet windward and dry leeward sides—differences not only in vegetation but in topography and, of course, in human ways of life. Turning now to Oceania's plant life, we consider first that of the tropical islands (New Zealand's will be described later in this chapter, and Australia's in chapter 7). The factors, some of them interdependent, most influential in determining the kinds and locations of plant life in

-a a

u o -o G

«

B Ih 3 O e « z

8

3b

Üc

i8

BACKGROUND

those tropical islands were: distance from Asia (and, secondarily, from Australia), rainfall, soil (including groundwater level and salinity), altitude (translated into temperature), insolation (amount of sunlight), and the actions of humans. Parts of southern New Guinea share several kinds of indigenous plants with Australia—a heritage, in part, of their contiguity during the Pleistocene—but most of the non-endemic plants in the tropical islands derived from Asia. Concomitantly, and other factors being equal, the farther from Asia an island is, the fewer genera of plants it will have—a tendency greatly increased by the progressively wider water gaps, from west to east, separating the islands from Asia. 3 In other words, the only terrestrial plants that managed to migrate into such islands were those whose reproductive parts could be carried by wind or birds, or later by man, or those that could survive long immersion in salt water. Thus, plants "dropped out" in their journeys from west to east, so that, for example, while hundreds of genera are known from Bougainville, only thirty are known from Easter Island (about 6 , 5 0 0 miles to the east) (Skottsberg 1920: 489). The "other factors" referred to earlier served to modify somewhat this pattern (e.g., Canton Island is much less isolated and is nearer to Asia than are the "high island" Marquesas but because it is an atoll it has fewer genera of plants than the latter), but the pattern does generally hold true. A few plants migrated successfully to Oceania's islands from the Americas in pre-European times, but compared with Asia's (and even Australia's) contributions, the numbers from that direction were small and very limited in distributions—except for the sweet potato, about which more in chapter 4. In pre-European times the major changes wrought by humans in Oceania's natural vegetation came about as the result of gardening and hunting, for which purposes some fairly extensive areas were cleared or burnt over and converted eventually to secondary forest or grassland or scrub. The most conspicuous examples were to be found in the huge grasslands of the New Guinea Highlands and in the extensive treedenuded agricultural terraces of New Caledonia. Australia's vegetation was affected only sporadically and temporarily by its native inhabitants, and that by burning done in connection with hunting. There were vast stretches in New Guinea and other large islands of the Platform region whose virgin plant covers were altered scarcely or not at all by humans. Elsewhere, however, in the vicinity of most human settlements the effects of agriculture endured in the form of secondary forest or scrub or more or less permanent garden sites and orchards. Thus, while Oceanians made less extensive and less radical changes in their natural environments than Europeans were to do later (with plantations, ranches, mines, and towns), it would be inaccurate to characterize Oceanians in

T H E NATURAL

SETTING

19

general (as some writers sententiously do) as having existed in ("praiseworthy") symbiosis with pristine nature. Nevertheless, it is relevant to this account to describe the types of pristine plant associations encountered by humans when they first settled in Oceania. This description will be presented in two separate chapters: that concerning Australia will be given in chapter 7 and that concerning Island Oceania here. As with all schemes for classifying natural phenomena, a listing of the Islands' phytogeographic zones—the complexes of plants found repeatedly in regular association—can be as short or as long as its purpose requires. For example, one botanical survey of the island of Tahiti divides it into three major vegetation zones, one of which was divided into three and another into four subzones (Papy 1954). And a survey of Bougainville differentiated that island's "types" of vegetation complexes into six major divisions and thirty-two subdivisions (Heyligers 1967). Nor are such fine distinctions mere scientific pedantry, irrelevant in terms of their native inhabitants' uses. Detailed ethnographic studies on both of these islands have revealed that many of the distinctions in question were in fact correlated with differences in human use, or deliberate non-use. However, for the broader purposes of this book it will be sufficient to classify all of the Islands' vegetation complexes into nine major types. Seacoast or Strand. This plant complex, which is present on nearly every tropical Pacific island—and indeed, throughout insular Southeast Asia as well—is usually confined to very narrow areas and hosts only a small number of genera. The larger tree-size plants usually include casuarina (ironwood), barringtonia, hibiscus, pandanus, Indian almond, and the extremely useful coconut palm (which, however, is found mainly where it has been planted by man). With these are usually found the white-flowered scaevola, various woody vines and legumes, wiry bunchgrass, and sedges. Common to all these plants is the capacity to survive near salt water, and they owe their wide distribution to the ability of their seeds to be borne long distances in the ocean without loss of viability. The beaches composed of black volcanic sand are typically poorer in vegetation than are the white coraline ones. Mangrove Forest. This vegetation complex includes "true" mangrove trees, terrestrial ferns, and epiphytes—all of them specially adapted to grow in mud flats partly or totally covered by salt or brackish water. Such plants thrive along shores protected from wind and wave, and along the swampy banks of tidal creeks. Trees of the mangrove genus (Rbizophora) have slender but very tough trunks and are supported by numerous prop roots. Alluvium collects around the dense growth, thus extending shores outward, but the plants themselves appear to have had little or no utility for the Oceanians. Swamp. Several subtypes of swamp-vegetation complexes occur in

20

BACKGROUND

Oceania, either in large and pure stands or interspersed among other types of complexes. In some the huge nipa palm is dominant, growing in brackish waters, usually near the coasts. In the East Indies a toddy was made from the fleshy part of this palm's floral spike, but Oceanians used only its fronds, and those for thatch. The sago palm (genus Metroxylon) also is widespread throughout Oceania, growing in swampy patches intermixed with other forest plants at altitudes from sea level to 2,000 feet; vast pure stands of it grow in many swampy parts of New Guinea— for example, in the south central part of West New Guinea, in the delta region of the Gulf of Papua, and bordering the Memberamo and Sepik rivers. In some of these places the starch made from the sago palm constituted the principal vegetable food of the local people; elsewhere it was used, if at all, only as a famine food, or as a supplement to other plant foods. And its fronds, like those of the nipa palm, were widely used for thatch, often in preference to coconut fronds. Other kinds of swamp vegetation occur in patches or in large stands throughout the wetter parts of the region, including some at very high altitudes. In a few places of relatively dense population the swamps were drained for gardening, but elsewhere they were generally left alone. Lowland Rainforest. Throughout the "continental" lands of the Platform area and on most of the mountainous islands of the Basin as well, this is the most widespread type of vegetation complex, and the one divisible into most subtypes, since the components differ somewhat according to soil, topography, and altitude (from sea level to about 3,000 feet). Forests of this type are characterized by large numbers of different plants, including huge trees festooned with vines and ferns. In alluvial soils such forests may have as many as four separate levels of vegetation under their highest canopies. The tree trunks are so huge and buttresses of the largest trees so thick that felling them presents difficulties even for a modern power saw; one can imagine how laborious the job must have been for natives equipped only with stone tools. But fell them they did, as is witnessed by the vast stretches of former rainforest terrain now occupied by native gardens or secondary growth. In their primal state such forests provided the Oceanians with a number of resources; including hulls for canoes, posts for houses, fibers for cordage, herbs for medicines —along with birds and wild or feral mammals. There is a cathedral-like majesty about an undisturbed lowland rainforest. The quiet, cool, and shaded depths of these forests have always provided me with a welcome change from the heat and glare outside; and they seemed to impress my native companions in the same way—an enjoyment complicated in their case by alertness for signs of valuable plants and animals to collect, and by slightly fearful awe. Montane or Subtropical Rainforest. Under similar conditions of atmospheric moisture, the vegetation typical of the lowland rainforest changes

T H E NATURAL SETTING

21

with increase in altitude and in distance from the equator. In near-equator New Guinea the boundary between the two types of complexes occurs at about 3,000 feet above sea level; in Fiji, which is 10 degrees farther south of the equator, as low as 900 feet. The constituents of these montane rainforests differ somewhat from island to island, but in general they consist of only two levels of vegetation, rather than the three to five found in their lowland counterparts. In them some plants typical of the lowland forests (palms, rattans, creepers, epiphytes, and many species of tall buttressed trees) are replaced, by oaks, beeches, araucaria pines, podocarp pines, and the like. Also, tree ferns are frequently the dominant species of the lower-story level. High Montane Cloud Forest. In New Guinea this kind of plant complex replaces the montane rainforest at about 6,000 feet; in the other islands where it is found the transition from rainforest to cloud forest takes place at lower altitudes. In this chill, wet atmosphere there is generally a single-story canopy and Temperate-Zone trees dominate, such as myrtles and rhododendrons, festooned with mosses and liverworts and ornamented with orchids. In drier New Caledonia the equivalent of this complex at such levels consists mainly of resinous species of plants, such as the mountain kauri (Agathis ovata). Alpine. Above the usual cloud level the climates of the tropical Oceanian Islands become dry and sunny, and the mossy forests change, first into shrubby woodland, and higher still into meadows of tussocky grasses and herbs. Patches of such vegetation occur at the summits of the highest mountains in the Solomons, but the original stands of this kind of vegetation are above about 11,000 feet in New Guinea and above about 6,000 feet on the highest islands of the Hawaiian chain. Grassland and Savanna Woodland. Vegetation complexes of this type occurred widely in Island Oceania, either as a result of insufficient rainfall or of continuous burning (by man) of the original forest vegetation, or both. The largest of such were areas on New Guinea (e.g., several parts of the Highlands, along with areas south of the Fly River and around the present-day town of Port Moresby). Somewhat smaller stretches of this complex were located on the leeward sides of some large islands (Guadalcanal, New Caledonia, Viti Levu, and the island of Hawaii). And even smaller, but nevertheless extensive, stretches of it were found on Vanua Levu and Easter Island, and on several other islands of the Hawaiian chain. And finally, there is New Zealand. The two principal islands of this "Polynesian" archipelago extend north and south some 745 miles and comprise about 96,000 square miles of land, which is an area larger than the total of all the other islands occupied by Polynesian-speakers in preEuropean times. Even the northernmost tip of New Zealand, at 34° south latitude, is well outside the tropics, and the archipelago's South

22

BACKGROUND

Island is seasonally very cold. Modern geographers divide the archipelago into three major natural regions (Cumberland 1 9 4 9 ) . One comprises the northern two-thirds of North Island except for an extensive and still partly active volcanic area in the island's center. T h e central region comprises the southern one-third of North Island and the aforesaid volcanic area, along with the southeastern coastal area of South Island. And the southern region is made up of the rest o f South Island, including the very extensive Southern Alps. T h e northern region, which is temperately warm and frostfree, supported a luxuriant semitropical coniferous forest on its fertile volcanic soils, and here were found about four-fifths of the archipelago's native inhabitants in pre-European times. T h e central region, where about 15 percent of the inhabitants lived, is cooler, with some forest growth. T h e southern region, which had only a small and widely scattered native population, was forested largely with beech; it provided some natural food plants for the inhabitants but was evidently too cold for the native system of horticulture. Even more unfavorable than the southern region for human livelihood were the Chatham Islands, which are located some 5 5 0 miles east of South Island and on which some Polynesian migrants from N e w Zealand eked out their lives. As noted earlier, it is unlikely that any pre-European Islanders would have classified and characterized their vegetational environments in the way just presented, most of them having lived out their lives in only one or two types of zones. But the scheme I have given should suggest to the reader the wide differences that obtained, perforce, between the ways of life of, for example, the residents of a relatively dry atoll in the eastern Pacific and those who dwelt in a shore-level rainforest of, say, New Britain or in a New Guinea settlement bordering montane rainforest and savannah grassland. With modern tools, appliances, buildings, and communications an affluent individual of today could live much the same kind of life in any of these settings, but with the tools and materials available to the Islanders in pre-European times, the particular environments in which they lived, and especially the vegetational aspect of those environments, exerted strong influences on the ways they lived. T h e types and numbers of species of terrestrial vertebrates found in the tropical Pacific Islands in pre-European times were influenced by three geographic circumstances: (1) the unbridged gulf of ocean that has existed between Asia (Sunda) and New Guinea-Australia (Sahul) during the last sixty or so million years; (2) the dry-land connections that existed between New Guinea and Australia (including Tasmania) during some phases of the Pleistocene before their most recent separation several millennia ago; and (3) the progressively wider ocean distances between island archipelagoes from west to east—and, of course, the vast distances between the easternmost islands and the nearest shores of the Americas.

THE NATURAL

SETTING

2.3

The consequences of these circumstances were manifold. First was the absence of any American land vertebrates in Oceania. Second was the absence in Oceania of many of Asia's—more particularly Southeast Asia's—larger vertebrates (elephants, rhinoceri, carnivores, and nonhuman primates). Third was the similarity between Australia and New Guinea with respect to many of their vertebrates—a heritage of their connections during the Pleistocene. And fourth was the attenuation in number of genera of land vertebrates, from west to east. Reflecting their long isolation from Asia, Australia and New Guinea contained representatives of only a few vertebrate orders, including only four orders of mammals. Two of the latter, the bats and rodents, were closely related to those of Southeast Asia, but the monotremes (duckbills and echidnas) were unique to Australia-New Guinea. The marsupials, which were the dominant mammals of Australia-New Guinea, included species of numerous forms and sizes: kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, marsupial "tigers," and two species of carnivores—"Tasmanian wolves" and "Tasmanian devils." Some of Australia's Pleistocene marsupials were huge (e.g., a rhino-size wombat, and a kangaroo about 9 feet tall), but these, along with the "tigers" had become extinct by European times (either killed off by the Australians or, more probably, by the results of climatic changes on their food supplies). Giantism also occurred in ostrich-like emus and in some echidnas; one of the latter still exists in New Guinea, but it is not clear whether any of the others survived into the era of human settlement. (Fig. 1.6) In addition, there were numerous other vertebrates—reptiles and birds —in Australia a n d / o r New Guinea when Europeans first arrived, and also freshwater crayfish and mollusks. And finally, there was Australia's doglike dingo, which will be discussed in chapter 4. New Guinea appears to have been the entry zone of most of the Asian vertebrates that reached the islands farther east, and generally speaking (as was the case with plants) the farther the island is from New Guinea the fewer were the species of land vertebrates it harbored. For example, except for human-introduced dogs and pigs, the only mammals found on pre-European Bougainville Island were opossums, tree rats, flying "foxes" and mice, and bats. Except in the case of New Zealand, the only mammals found on more distant archipelagoes were rodents; and even they may have been introduced, unwittingly, by humans. Attenuation in genera also occurred in other land-based orders of fauna, including snakes and birds. Actual crow-fly distance from New Guinea, however, was not the only factor; an island's faunal inventory was also influenced by the betweenisland distances that separate it from New Guinea, by the environment of the intervening islands, and of course, by the island's own environment. Thus on Palau, which is about 560 miles north of New Guinea, there

Figure 1.6. Land vertebrates of Australia and New Guinea

THE NATURAL

SETTING

2-5

were only thirteen bird species (as compared with New Guinea's 860), whereas in Tahiti, which is some 3,600 miles southeast of New Guinea, there were seventeen. While the two large and numerous small islands comprising New Zealand harbored no snakes and no land mammals except bats, they contained a large number of genera of land-based birds, including some that were flightless; one such, the giant moa (Dinornis maximus), attained heights up to 9'A feet (a faunal remnant, perhaps, of New Zealand's connection with Australia tens of millions of years ago). However, the smaller number of an island's land fauna was not always an unmitigated disadvantage to its human occupants. The lack of venomous land reptiles in some islands, for example, would have been an advantage. And more important, the absence of the malaria-transmitting anopheles mosquito throughout Micronesia and Polynesia and in New Caledonia and Fiji, was a blessing of great value, whether the Oceanians so blessed realized it or not. Distance was not, of course, an absolute obstacle to the truly Oceanic birds (such as gulls, terns, noddies, albatrosses, and shearwaters), nor to some far-flying land birds such as the golden plover (which migrates annually from the Arctic to Hawaii and beyond). While freshwater fauna tended to be influenced by the same distance rule that governed terrestrial fauna, the distribution of saltwater animals was determined by conditions of other kinds, including currents, water temperature, undersea topography, and coral formation. Additional particulars of the Islands' physical environments will be given in later chapters, but certain other factors that exercised major influences on the Oceanians' health should be pointed out here. Mention was made above of the presence of malaria-bearing mosquitoes throughout most of Melanesia. As is well known, malaria is a disease that results in conditions ranging from mild debility to death. It is caused by any of several species of Plasmodium, a genus of parasitic protozoans, which spends part of its life cycle in the anopheles mosquito. Another dangerous disease widespread in the Pacific Islands is caused by the filaria parasite, which is carried from human to human by mosquitoes of the species Aedes polynesiensis. These wormlike microbes cause fever and chills, and if untreated the disease may result eventually in elephantiasis, a gross enlargement of both limbs and testicles. In addition, there were (and are) scores of other human-maiming parasites inhabiting one or another part of Oceania, just as there are in most other parts of the world. The climatic conditions of most of tropical Oceania tend to encourage their persistence, but no more so than in other tropical places, and much less so than in tropical places where the human populations are more numerous and crowded. Finally, it may be useful to add a few words of guidance to the reader

26

BACKGROUND

confronted with the problem of trying to cope in his memory with the innumerable habitats whose human residents make up the subject matter of this book. N o student of Oceania's peoples and cultures, however interested and conscientious, may be expected to learn and remember the natural environments of each of the thousands of populated places throughout this vast region. But by knowing the location of any particular place, and by recalling the different kinds of patterns described in this chapter—patterns of geological history, of wind and water circulation, of rainfall, and so on—one should be able to compose a fairly accurate image of that island's geography, climate, and plant and animal life. Thus, knowledge that such-and-such a people inhabited, say, Tarawa, or an inland area of New Caledonia should provide telling clues not only about their local topography and climate but also about the potentially useful natural resources available to them. Clues to whether or not the people in question actually utilized such resources must await the description of cultural variables, to be found in later chapters of this book.

CHAPTER TWO

Population and Physical Types

Population E S T I M A T I N G the number of pre-European inhabitants of Oceania is like trying to photograph a fast-moving train broadside, with a Brownie camera. To begin with, the "pre-European" period ended for the Chamorro, the natives of the Mariana Islands, with Magellan's arrival there in 1521, but for some New Guineans it ended only a few years ago—in fact, it was not until the 1920s and 1930s that the existence of a half million or so New Guinea Highlanders became known to the census-taking world. Moreover, the very process of European "discovery" reduced the numbers so greatly in some places, between the instant of first European contact and the time of deliberate and careful nose-counting, that the precontact figures can only be guessed. That process included both outright killing of Oceanians by some discoverers and the slower but in the end more devastating consequences of the introduction of European firearms and diseases. An example of the former took place in the Marquesas: during Mendana's five-week visit there in 1595 his crew shot and killed some 200 natives as a result of so-called misunderstandings. An example of the second occurred at Tahiti: during the period from 1767, when the first European ship visited, to 1797, when the first deliberate census was taken by English missionaries, the island's population declined from an estimated 35,000 to about 16,050. Estimates range in credibility from the expertly deduced ones of modern demographers (e.g., N. McArthur 1968; Schmitt 1973) to the guesses of some of the discoverers themselves. In the case of Tahiti, for example, the plausible figure of 35,000 just given may be compared with Boenechea's 1772 figure of "about 10,000" and James Cook's 1774 estimate of "no less than 204,000." Unfortunately, only a few of Oceania's separable populations have been subjected to expert historical study,

2-7

28

BACKGROUND

Figure 2.1. Numbers of Oceanians just prior to European contact Australia (including Tasmania) Melanesia N e w Guinea and nearby Islands (e.g., Torres Strait, Louisiades, D'Entrecasteaux, Trobriands, Woodlark, Karkar, Shouten, Yapen, Biak, Waigeo) Island Melanesia (from Admiralties to N e w Caledonia, excluding the Polynesian outliers)

300,000 2,000,000

390,000

Fiji (Viti Levu, Vanua Levu, and nearby islands; Lau Islands)

140,000

Polynesia (including its several outliers in Melanesia)

520,000

Micronesia TOTAL

180,000 3,530,000

hence summaries for the whole area must be constructed from both sand and bricks; Figure 2.1 is a summary, admittedly makeshift, that contains as much brick as I can find. It is broken down into the regions, partly geographic and partly cultural, in which the whole realm will be divided in this book, and it consists of estimates and guesses as to the sizes of the populations during the century before contacts with Europeans served to alter the numbers—a point in time that varied from place to place over a period of more than four centuries. There is so much guesswork in these figures that they should be—and undoubtedly will be—received with much caution. Much of that guesswork is based on an assumption that most of Oceania's separate peoples had reached, at the time of contact, a large degree of stability in terms of numbers. That is without question a big assumption, because there were some striking exceptions. Turning again to Tahiti, for example, there is good reason to believe that the number of its inhabitants may have been decreasing during the decade or so prior to European contact, through a combination of rampant warfare and religiously encouraged infanticide. And it is safe to conclude, because there have been similar postcontact occurrences, that the inhabitants of some small islands were wholly or in large part wiped out by occasional storms or tidal waves. In contrast, in view of the surmise that the numbers of some separate peoples had increased quite rapidly during some periods of their distant past—for example, as the result of the spread of sweet potato cultivation in parts of the New Guinea Highlands—it is reasonable to conclude that such processes were also occurring in some places at the time of first European contact. On the other hand there are persuasive reasons for holding to the assumption, stated above, that in most of the other reproductively autonomous peoples of Oceania their numbers had reached a point of stasis, or at most very slow rates of increase, during the century or so prior to European contact. A major question is, why was that so? A comprehensive attempt to answer this question for Island Oceania is

P O P U L A T I O N AND P H Y S I C A L T Y P E S

contained in an article by Peter Pirie, whose arguments I will combine with some comments of my own. In view of the generally favorable environmental factors that obtained in most of the places where they lived and of the Islanders' generally adequate food production techniques and lengths of residence—from 1 , 0 0 0 to over 4 0 , 0 0 0 years—in the absence of other kinds of constraints their numbers should have been much larger than they actually were at first European contact. (This reasoning is of course based on the widely accepted biological theory that "populations will tend to multiply up to the point of balance of equilibrium with the energy sources available in their domains" [Pirie 1 9 7 6 ] ) . For example, in Western Samoa, given the natives' technology, the physical environment would have supported at least 3 5 0 , 0 0 0 persons—a number which could have been easily reached through very modest rates of growth during these islands' 2 , 5 0 0 or more years of settlement. Yet, when the first census was made, in the 1 8 4 0 s , the population was only about 4 0 , 0 0 0 , and, writes Pirie, it is improbable that it had ever exceeded 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 . In a few cases (e.g., Tikopia and several central Pacific atolls) the number of inhabitants may indeed have reached the food-production limits imposed by the small size or unproductiveness o f the habitats, thereby leading to purposive migrations or reduction in births; in most of Island Oceania, however, the situation resembled that of Western Samoa. T h e explanation for the population "stasis" of some Island peoples may lie in periodic reductions resulting from deliberate or forced emigration, but in most cases stability in population numbers must be accounted for by endogenous processes, resulting in balance over time between fertility and mortality. With respect to mortality, there were only a few Oceanian Island peoples among whom deaths of reproductive or pre-reproductive persons were numerous enough to account for that balance. In the Society Islands, for example, infanticide was so habitual just prior to European contact that it undoubtedly contributed to that people's numerical stability or possibly decline. Similar conditions may have existed in a few other places, but among most other peoples infanticide, or some other form of intracommunity homicide, seems not to have been frequent enough to have kept numbers down. N o r does intercommunity killing in warfare appear to have been frequent enough to have done so. As will be described in chapter 11, warfare itself was widely prevalent in Oceania but resulted in relatively few deaths (until, that is, the introduction of European guns). As for fatal, or reproductively disabling diseases, much of Island Oceania was exceedingly fortunate in this respect, in comparison with many other parts of the tropical or semitropical world. Malaria, which was limited to Melanesia north of New Caledonia, doubtless killed or reproductively disabled many persons, but not enough to

3°

BACKGROUND

account for the stasis or slow growth in numbers that prevailed there. The same strictures apply to the Islands' other widespread contagious or infectious diseases, such as filariasis and yaws (treponemiasis). 1 In fact (according to Pirie) the principal explanation for the pre-European slowdown or cessation of population increase among most Island peoples lies not in high mortality but in low rates of fertility, which resulted from widespread cultural practices such as lengthy prohibitions against sexual intercourse—for example, between the parents of a newborn child, for youths during rites of maturation, and for males in general in consequence of their fear of "female pollution." These prohibitions, which will be described in later chapters, seem not to have been designed, consciously, to control numerical growth, but they did have that consequence. Certain other practices, such as institutionalized homosexuality and individually specific attempts at abortion or contraception may have reduced fertility somewhat but not, probably, as greatly as the prohibitions just mentioned. 2 Turning now to Australia (including Tasmania), it has proved difficult enough to obtain agreement among the experts concerning the sizes of its population at the times of European contact and quite impossible to know when those numbers had been reached. 3 Nevertheless, in a few studies of aboriginal groups still living relatively pre-European-type lives, ethnographers have confirmed the presence of factors that would, presumably, have constrained "natural" increase: for example, the large numbers of young males killed in warfare, the degree of female infanticide, and the tendency of older men to monopolize reproductive females. (See chapter 16.) Needless to say, few of Oceania's peoples remained numerically "stable" after Europeans appeared on the scene.

Physical Types Many uncertainties and disagreements have arisen concerning the physical aspect of Oceania's native peoples. Here I will attempt to deal with this controversial, and emotion-laden, matter in the form of two questions: What were the physical characteristics of the Oceanians at the time of first European contact? and What can that tell us about the genetic relationships among the numerous distinctive inbreeding populations of Oceania and between them and populations elsewhere? Almost any European or Asian visitor to present-day urban centers, such as Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), Noumea (New Caledonia), or Suva (Fiji), could not escape perceiving differences in the outward physical appearances of the Oceanians met with there. (A view that would be reciprocated, often with unflattering amusement, by the Oceanians about the Europeans and Asians.) Furthermore, the differences

POPULATION AND PHYSICAL

TYPES

31

perceived by the tourists would include not only clothing, coiffure, cut of beard, voice pitch, sitting posture, and the like—that is, characteristics with cultural attributes—but also with biological traits such as hair form, skin color, stature, and shape of face. And the more observant of the tourists would undoubtedly differ among themselves as to which of the latter traits made for differences among "types" of Oceanians. In this respect, even the most expert of anthropologists are like the hypothetical (but nowadays ubiquitous) tourists. Most anthropologists rule out for comparison those traits obviously alterable by the individual's own experience, such as pigmentation affected by exposure to the sun, or face shape changed by loss of teeth. Some give weight to one combination of visible traits, some to others. Some deny the significance of most or all external, readily observable physical traits and focus on internal features, like the antigens and enzymes in red blood cells, and the globulins of the blood serum. And some say that the various statistical procedures used in constructing taxonomies out of biological traits are faulty at best, as well as being socially and morally invidious. Regarding the scientific value of such taxonomies, it is of course true that one could (hypothetically!) line up, say, all thirty- to forty-year-old male Oceanians according to each of the more "external," unalterable physical traits—stature, skin color, hair form, cephalic index, and so on4 —and find that they form a continuous series. In skin color, for example, one would probably place some (but not all) "pure" Caroline Islanders or eastern Polynesians at the light end of the series and most North Solomon Islanders at the opposite end. In hair form the series would range from straight (many Caroline Islanders and eastern Polynesians) through wavy-curly (most Australians and some Polynesians and Micronesians) to tight-frizzly (many New Guinea Highlanders). Moreover, if one were to separate all such thirty- to forty-year-old males for any of these single traits into their distinctive inbreeding populations (i.e., those clusterings of people who tend to interbreed fairly exclusively), one would also find some variation within each such cluster with respect to some of the traits. On the other hand it is exceedingly unlikely that any such cluster would be found to contain individuals exemplifying the whole Oceanian range of differences in any one trait. In fact, the members of each inbreeding population would probably occupy a relatively narrow segment of the series as a whole. Also it is likely that the combination of single-trait segments exemplified by any one inbreeding population would be found to be somewhat different from analogous combinations within all other inbreeding populations in the series. So far, so good. If, then, we agree that the traits used in this exercise are truly heritable and not alterable by environmental and other later influences, or that they do not owe their likenesses to coincidence (i.e., to different blends of different genes), there is justification, and scientific merit, for

32

BACKGROUND

generalizing about those populations in such terms, even though no one individual in the population in question would be found to exemplify all of the averages characterizing the population as a whole. It is the next step in this taxonomic procedure that has caused all the fuss; I refer here to the efforts that have been made by some anthropologists to combine separate and more or less distinctive inbreeding populations into still larger combinations, or "races." Here again the difficulty has been and continues to be the lack of consensus among the experts as to where to draw the boundaries. Underlying that are their differences of opinion concerning which traits are most indicative of common genetic history and how trait differences between distinctive inbreeding populations are best explained. Among nonexperts and even among some of the earlier experts, skin color, stature, and hair form have been the most popular criteria used for racial classification. Based on these criteria various "pure" Oceanian "races" have been proposed: for example, Negroid (dark skin, frizzly hair, medium stature), Negritoid (dark skin, frizzly hair, short stature), Australoid (dark skin, curly hair, medium stature), Micronesian (light skin, straight to curly hair, medium stature), Polynesian (light to brown skin, straight to curly hair, medium to tall stature— that is, a mixture of Micronesian with a touch of Negroid, and perhaps even some Caucasoid). This provides an interesting guessing game for the amateur, and one that continues to be played in spite of the contradictory evidence that each of the features used as a criterion is now known to be compounded of several different genetic strains. Other more elaborate taxonomies have been constructed from larger numbers of criteria and with more sophisticated, computer-aided, analytic techniques; but even these are based on opinions, which differ from expert to expert, concerning the evidential weighting to be assigned to this or that trait. (If carried far enough, such efforts will inevitably lead back to the subdivisions, the separate and usually small inbreeding populations, with which most taxonomies begin.) Some other racial taxonomies of Oceanians have been constructed from skeletal material alone. And while acknowledging that skeletons cannot reveal an individual's pigmentation or hair form or so forth, they or parts of them are about the only evidence available concerning the physical characteristics of Oceanians of the distant past. Finally, some experts have constructed their classifications, exclusively or complementarily, with the more immutable, more directly generelated, traits such as antigens, enzymes, and globulins. These latter have the advantage of providing discontinuities: a person either has AB bloodtype genes or he has not; it is not a question of having more or less, such as in the case of derivations and imperfectly understood traits like skin color, hair form, or shape of skull. Thus, racial taxonomies based on antigens and the like are more clear-cut and less subject to differing opin-

POPULATION AND PHYSICAL

TYPES

33

ion as to where to draw boundaries. But one cannot help feel that they tell only part of the story. When having a beer in a New Guinea pub with, say, a Highlander (short, light-tan skin color, tightly coiled, frizzly hair), a Bougainvillian (medium stature, jet-black skin color, less tightly coiled hair), and a Coast Papuan (yellow-tan skin color, tall stature, curly hair), the visual evidence is overwhelmingly convincing that these men are genetically different, no matter how difficult it may be to pin down the exact genes involved in those difference. (And, I must confess to this opinion, no matter what their antigens, globulins, and so forth, may be.) Explanations for the perceived differences among Oceanian inbreeding populations (and "races") are numerous. One of the oldest and most persistent of them traces such differences, however perceived, to separate migrations into Oceania of peoples who were racially different to begin

Plate 1. Oceanians' precursors: a, skull of Solo Man, Java, as reconstructed by F. Weidenreich (American Museum of Natural History); b, skull from Niah Cave, Borneo, as reconstructed by D. Broth well (British Museum of Natural History); c, skull from Kow Swamp, Australia, as reconstructed by Alan Thorne; d, skull from Keilor, Australia, as reconstructed by N. W. G. Macintosh. (All from Howells 1973.)

Plate 2. Australian Aborigines: a, short-statured Aborigines of the Queensland rainforest a b o u t 1890 (Tindale and Lindsay 1963); b, William L a n n e , the last surviving full-blooded Tasmanian m a n in 1866, three years before he died (Bonwick 1884); c, Truganina, the last surviving full-blooded Tasmanian w o m a n . Truganina died in 1 8 7 6 , at a b o u t age 7 3 (Bonwick 1884)

34

Plate 3. Australian Aborigines: a, man of Melville Island, North Australia (Coon 1965); b, w o m a n of Melville Island, North Australia (Coon 1962); c, man of Western Desert (Mountford 1962); d, woman of Eastern Desert (ibid.)

35

Plate 4. "Pygmoid" New Guineans: top, Aiome men, average stature 4 feet, 6 inches, Ramu River area (Guiness 1936); bottom, men of MaiMai area, between Sepik River and northern coast (photo by D. Oliver 1937)

36

Mpf

c

d

Plate 5. New Guinea Highlands: a, man of Mendi (Kaufmann 1975); b, woman of Mendi (ibid.); c, man of Dugum Dani (Heider 1970); d, woman of Dugum Dani (ibid.)

37

Plate 6. Southern New Guinea (Specht and Fields 1984): a, woman of Gogodara; b, man of Lake Murray; c, woman of Elevala; d, man of Collingwood Bay.

38

Plate 7. Northern New Guinea and nearby islands: a, man of Ninigo Island (Kaufmann 1975); b, man of Wogeo Island (Hogbin 1946); c, man of Middle Sepik River (Kaufmann 1975); d, man of Siassi Islands (ibid.)

39

Plate 8. New Britain, New Ireland, and Massim: a, woman of Kilenge, New Britain (Dark 1974); b, man of Kilenge, New Britain (ibid.); c, woman of Trobriand Islands (photo by M . McArthur); d, man of New Ireland (Kaufmann 1975)

40

c

d

Plate 9. Bougainville Island, contrasting physical types (photos by D. Oliver 1938): a, man of east coast; b, man of northern mountains; c, man of southern plains; d, man of southern mountains

4i

Plate 10. Solomon Islands: a, man of Malaita Island (Hogbin 1939a); b, woman of Malaita Island (Ross 1973); c, woman of Guadalcanal (Hogbin 1946); d, man of Santa Cruz Islands (G. Koch 1973)

42

Plate 11. New Hebrides and New Caledonia: a, man of Malekula, New Hebrides (Guiart 1951a); b, woman of Malekula, New Hebrides (Hermann and Bonnemaison 1975); c, man of New Caledonia (Tischner 1958); d, woman of New Caledonia (Coon 1965)

43

c

d

Plate 12. Fiji, Tonga, and Rotuma: a, woman of Moala, Fiji (Sahlins 1962); b, the late R. R. Nayacakalou, Fiji's distinguished anthropologist (Nayacakalou 1975); c, man of Tonga (Siers 1978); d, woman of Rotuma (photo by A. Howard)

Plate 13. Polynesia: a, man of Ontong Java (Hogbin 1946); b, man of Tikopia (Firth 1936); c, man of Samoa (Coon 1965); d, woman of Samoa (ibid.)

45

c

d

Plate 14. Polynesia: a, man of Hawaii (Sullivan 1927); b, woman of Hawaii (ibid.); c, man of New Zealand, face tatooed (Robley 1896); d, woman of Tahiti (Danielsson 1956)

46

Mfgiapk«»; ay»*

Plate 15. Eastern Micronesia: a, woman of Gilbert Islands (Phelan 1958); b, woman of Marshall Islands (Kiste 1974); c, man of Kusaie (Thilenius 1 9 1 9 ) ; d, man of Ponape (Thilenius 1932)

47

c

d

Plate 16. Caroline Islands: a, woman of Truk (Thilenius 1932); b, man of Satawal (Thilenius 1935); c, man of Palau (Thilenius 1919); d, man of Yap (Thilenius 1917)

48

P O P U L A T I O N AND P H Y S I C A L T Y P E S

49

with. In fact, as we shall see, all interpretations of racial differences in Oceania, including the most recent and best informed ones, include at least two or three distinct ancestral strains; and some interpretations include four, five, or more. A large book could be written about some of the more bizarre theories regarding the peopling of Oceania. Most readers will recall the Kon Tiki expedition, which sought to prove a New World origin for the genes of some Oceanians, but which actually demonstrated only that a few adventurous young Europeans, armed with determination and modern knowledge about the Pacific, could manage to keep a raft afloat for 102 days, as it was moved from Peru to the Tuamotu Archipelago by favorable (and predictable) current and wind. Then there was the Heliolithic Theory, first formulated by an eminent anatomist, Sir Grafton Eliot-Smith (who should have stuck to anatomy), and fleshed out by an amateur ethnologist, W. J . Perry, in a book, Children of the Sun, wherein an expedition of gold- and pearl-prospecting Egyptians is alleged to have brought their genes and their civilizing influences to the benighted savages of Island Oceania many centuries ago. Less preposterous (but also biased ethnically) has been the theme of several writers, including some respected experts, that the Polynesians (i.e., peoples who spoke "Polynesian" languages and who were regarded by many Europeans as the most handsome and the most highly civilized of the Oceanians) contained generous portions of "Caucasian" genes in their makeup, acquired in their "homeland" in Asia. In chapter 5 I shall give a résumé of the most plausible of these migration theories (which now for the first time are able to draw on archaeology as well), but before that it should be mentioned that all of the more credible of the theories take into consideration certain other factors, which doubtless contributed to differences among Oceania's inbreeding populations in pre-European times. The first of these factors is genetic drift. As in all other animal species, the genetic composition of humans is subject to random change (i.e., mutations in the genes themselves) and to changes in their number and organization. Under ordinary circumstances the numbers of such changes that survive from one generation to the next, and are accompanied by changes in the physical characteristics of the individual members of an inbreeding population, tend to occur very infrequently, and the resulting slow change is usually described as "drift." Thus, if for some reason, an inbreeding population becomes divided and its divisions separate so that the members of one division no longer interbreed with members of the others, then they will in time come to differ in some of their heritable physical characteristics. Generally speaking the larger the inbreeding population the slower will such changes encompass it; hence, inasmuch as most of Oceania's inbreeding populations were very small,

5°

BACKGROUND

relative to a universal scale, their "drift" may have been relatively fast. How fast, however, has not been determined in any historical case that I know of. Along with the random genetic changes exemplified cumulatively in drift, some changes appear to perpetuate by natural selection. That is to say, some genetic changes in an organism confer such advantages to it in its struggle for survival that the individuals incorporating them have a better chance than others in the population to mature and carry out the function of reproduction, thereby passing on their distinctive genetic resources to future generations and hence, ultimately, to the whole population. A hypothetical example of such a change would be a chance mutation in a native of, say, New Guinea, that would serve to immunize him against malaria and thus give him a better-than-average chance of surviving until he had sired offspring receiving from him the same immunity. After a number of generations the chances are that the whole population in question would consist exclusively of descendants of that lucky pioneer. In the real world things do not work out so simply. Chances are that our hypothetical population would somewhere along the line— through centuries or millennia—come to acquire other genetic qualities that would offset the beneficial one just mentioned and leave its members worse off, or no better off, than before. The theory of natural selection has provided anthropologists with an attractive explanation for several perceived differences between human populations. For example, the thin lineal build of African Nilotic peoples (those living in the region of the Upper Nile) has been interpreted as a natural and beneficial adaptation to the high temperatures and humidity in which those populations lived (i.e., beneficial because of the larger skin area provided for the cooling evaporation of sweat). In contrast, it has been proposed, the reduced skin area (relative to body mass) covering the short and stocky frame of an Eskimo has been explained as an evolutionary adaptation to the need to conserve body heat. Or, it has been advanced quite plausibly (but not demonstrated experimentally) that the preponderance of darkly pigmented populations in tropical regions of the world has resulted from the protection, and hence reproductive advantage, provided by such pigment against harmful sun rays. A little, or even a lot, of truth may reside in such theories, but I know of no instance involving an Oceanian population in which any of its physical characteristics has been proven to be the outcome of natural selection. For example, there is nothing peculiarly distinctive now known about Bougainville's sunlight that would account for the very dark skin color of its native inhabitants—the blackest in the Pacific. And there is nothing now known about the soil or topography or climate of any locations of Oceania that can be shown to have led to the differing genetic makeup of their populations (as distinct from those physical characteris-

POPULATION AND PHYSICAL

TYPES

5i

tics acquired after birth by diet, work habits, endemic disease, etc.). This is not to deny that natural selection has taken place among Oceanians, enough indeed to have produced some of the genetic differences believed to obtain among them. It is simply an opinion, on my part, that proven instances of it have not yet been publicly adduced. It could be argued, I suppose, that the physical hazards and difficulties attending pioneer settlement in new places—especially those involving long oversea voyages—would have served to eliminate the physically weak and favor continued reproduction by the strong. If such weaknesses and strengths had in fact been expressive of genetic differences in the individuals in question, then something akin to "natural selection" might be certified; but so many variables and unknowns would have to be weighed that I for one would not wish to argue the case. No less an expert than the Nobel Laureate D. Carlton Gajdusek once made the suggestion that the small and wiry bodies of some New Guinea mountain peoples may to some degree be adaptations to their work habits, but he attributed more influence to deficiencies in their diets (Gajdusek 1970). Social selection could, hypothetically, act faster than natural selection in bringing about change in a population's gene pool. If, for example, it became officially or fashionably mandatory for all individuals under 5 feet tall, or all blondes, or all whatever, to be celibate, then the genetic consequences would become visible and widespread within two or three generations. In fact, all peoples of Oceania had one or another set of rules regarding who should marry whom, and most such rules were probably carried out in large measure. However, with very few exceptions, those rules did not pertain to physical characteristics. In the few exceptions that I know of, for example, the preference of Tahiti's aristocrats for rotund brides, there is no evidence that the preferred physical characters in question had genetic roots. This is not to say that physical characteristics played no part in spouse selection; in most Oceanian societies, however, more emphasis was attached to other factors (e.g., to type and distance of kinship tie, to economic and political considerations, or to availability alone). During the early phases of European contact, Oceanians in many places considered it advantageous to mate with or have their daughters mate with Europeans. More recently, with the growth of sentiments of nationalism and ethnic consciousness and pride, the attitudes have in many places become reversed—even to the extent of disfavoring marriage between Oceanians of different cultural and physical types (e.g., between black-skinned Solomonese and "redskinned" New Guinea Highlanders). But such attitudes, first pro and then con, were the products of the colonial experience and were evidently either absent or rare in pre-European times. Even in individual cases where choice of marital mate may have favored or disfavored some physical characteristic that happened to be

52.

BACKGROUND

genetically derived, the subsequent genetic effects were unlikely to have been widespread. T h e grandees of ancient Hawaii might have married portly w o m e n (of equivalent social rank), but they did not disdain fornication with smaller, thinner, lower-class types. In the Oceanian communities I k n o w best, n o physical or mental handicap was repugnant e n o u g h , evidently, to preclude fornication. T h e r e is, however, one f o r m of genetic selection that has operated in Oceania with very large consequences. I refer to the process of ocean travel, successful and otherwise. From the very beginning of h u m a n movements into Oceania some 4 0 , 0 0 0 - 5 0 , 0 0 0 years ago, the pioneer voyages f r o m one island to another have served to "select" the initial genetic composition of the populations founded by the successful pioneers. An extreme example of this process w o u l d have been the arrival on a hitherto unpopulated island of a single couple, whose descendants would have in time peopled the whole island, without the addition of any new immigrants. In such a case the t w o somewhat different sets of genes brought by the original couple—and which would have differed from those of other members of their home populations (except for their identical twins, if any) would be perpetuated in the new h o m e l a n d , thereby making it different, genetically, f r o m all populations elsewhere. In the course of time that "pioneer" genetic combination would become altered somewhat by drift, and p e r h a p s also by natural a n d / o r social selection, but its overall composition w o u l d probably continue to be different f r o m those of all populations elsewhere. This so-called founder principle of selection has undoubtedly occurred at many times and places during Oceania's long period of h u m a n settlement. It is likely to have occurred most typically during the first phase of settlement of Australia and N e w Guinea, and then much later, w h e n people, using more efficient seagoing canoes, were pushing out f r o m the relatively densely islanded region of Melanesia into the scattered and fardistant landfalls of Micronesia a n d Polynesia. T h e oversea movements have of course had some negative consequences as well. In the course of such traveling, whatever its reason, accidental or deliberate, many canoe loads of travelers must surely have been lost at sea, and their genetic peculiarities consequently lost forever. Probably the lives, and genes, so lost outnumbered the surviving ones by many, m a n y times; but that of course can never be ascertained. A m o n g the myths of many Oceanian peoples are accounts of "primal parents," which may be authentic references to actual "founders" but are more likely t o be local variants of the almost worldwide Adam and Eve myth theme. But the Oceanians' mythologies contain few references to people w h o have left but never returned. Still another process that increased (or in some instances served to decrease) genetic variability a m o n g Oceania's peoples in pre-European

P O P U L A T I O N AND P H Y S I C A L T Y P E S

53

times was interbreeding between hitherto separate populations. Countless legends, from all parts of Oceania, describe such events—including sexual adventures of single strangers, and the meeting and merging of whole communities. Archaeologists should eventually be able to document some of those junctions (to the extent that they were exemplified in artifacts), but some of the legends themselves are circumstantial enough to invite belief. When I visited Bougainville Island during 1 9 3 8 - 1 9 4 0 , there was a large village on the east central coast named Arawa (phonetically, Uruava), whose residents spoke an Austronesian language closely related to languages spoken in the islands immediately south of Bougainville. They told me confidently and unequivocally that their ancestors had immigrated to Bougainville only a few generations before. On a return visit to the island in 1968, I found the village of Arawa still there, but only the oldest of its residents were fluent in their former language, the rest were speaking the Papuan (i.e., non-Austronesian) language of their hinterland neighbors, the northern Nasioi. And in the process of losing their language the former Arawans had also intermarried extensively with the neighboring Nasioi. I had measured the 1938 Arawans and their Nasioi neighbors and found them to be significantly different in many physical, genetically based, respects. Regrettably, I was unable to measure the 1968 Arawans, so I cannot document quantitatively the physical changes they had undergone, but in my visual judgment they were much closer to hinterland Nasioi than they had been in 1938. The Arawa merger evidently took place peacefully and perhaps even deliberately: not deliberate in the sense of "let us merge," but as the result of the decisions of many individuals about the advantages accruing to mating with someone in the other village. Elsewhere in Oceania however, peaceful relations between populations were not, however, a prerequisite of interbreeding. In fact there have been many instances of warfare that was accompanied by some interbreeding between the enemy sides, or that culminated in complete merger. Several examples have been observed of customary matings between separate peoples for political and other purposes. (As some New Guineans expressed it: "We cooperate with our friends; we marry our enemies.") After a time, of course, such intermarrying units will qualify as a single population, with a common array of genetically based physical traits, not exactly like that possessed by either of them before. I turn now to the second question posed at the beginning of this section, namely, to the genetic relationships of the Oceanian populations with each other and with populations elsewhere. As noted earlier, there are wide differences among Oceania's many populations with respect to genetically based physical characteristics,

54

BACKGROUND

and many ways of classifying them have been devised.5 In fact, a large monograph could be written describing and criticizing the more authoritative of those taxonomies; I will reproduce here the ones proposed by W. W. Howells in his book, The Pacific Islanders (1973). I do so not only because of the book's comprehensiveness and currency, but out of respect for the author's judgment, which was compounded of extensive firsthand knowledge of the data, of scientific acumen, and of good sense. Unlike some other writers on the subject, Howells had no axe to grind— lithic or cerebral—and showed an open-minded readiness to modify his ideas to accommodate new data. 6 Figure 2.2 summarizes the relationships among 151 living populations (adult males) based on comparison of seven measurements: stature, head length and breadth, face length and breadth, and nose height and breadth. Similar studies made by Howells on skulls alone (i.e., seventy linear measurements and angles) reveal relationships among some representative Oceanian populations, and between these and populations located elsewhere around the Pacific rim. Howells' study, summarized in Figure 2 . 3 , should put to rest once and for all the notion that the dark-skinned and frizzly-haired peoples of Oceania (i.e., most of those of Melanesia) are "racially" close to those of Africa. In fact, the former differ significantly from the latter in having much heavier brow ridges and more facial, especially lower facial, prognathism. Also, the hair of even the more wooly-haired peoples of Melanesia is less frizzled than that of most Negro Africans. Even the types of the dark pigment, melanin, in the skins of the two peoples are structurally different. In Africans the small granules of this pigment are longer and wider and individually dispersed; in the Melanesian peoples so far examined for this feature the pigment is "packaged" in groups surrounded by membrane (as in the case of Caucasians, East Asians, and American Indians). On the basis of the above findings, and of many other somatic data that cannot be included in this brief overview, Howells concluded that "the irreducible number of basic populations entering the Pacific would appear to be two" (1973: 49). 7 Within this broad frame he suggests several intraregional links: Melanesians are a single basic population rather than composite, but a population of great genetic diversity. Melanesians and Australians have characters in common, especially cranially, but they are not a continuous or single population. Together, however, they are well differentiated from other populations, Pacific or otherwise. [Polynesians are] a fairly well-defined population, relative to Oceanic peoples generally.

POPULATION AND PHYSICAL

TYPES

55

Figure 2 . 2 . Relationships among certain Oceanian populations in terms of selected measurements -A -BI

-Q

'Pygmies' of interior New Guinea Baining of New Britain; central New Ireland; Timorini of West Irian Nakanai of New Britain; south New Ireland; northeast Espíritu Santo Many short peoples of north New Guinea, north New Ireland, Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, and New Hebrides Slightly larger peoples of New Guinea, New Ireland, Bougainville (Solomons); western Micronesia (Palau, Yap, Marianas)

-D,

Moderately small and narrow-faced peoples of north New Guinea, south Bougainville, Malaita, Carolines (Truk, Mortlocks, Kusaie), Ontong Java

-D 2

Slightly larger, more narrow-faced peoples of Carolines and Marshalls; some possibly Micro- or Polynesian-affected Melanesians in New Guinea, Bougainville, Malaita, Eromanga (New Hebrides)

•GI

Polynesia: Tonga, Samoa, northern Cooks, Marquesas, Maori, Nukuoro, and Kapingamarangi; Tanna of New Hebrides Polynesia (more broad-headed): Society Islands, Hawaii, southern Cooks, Pukapuka Fiji, Tonga, and Kapingamarangi; southern New Caledonia

(after Howells 1973: 40)

-K,

Some Australians (18 peoples), continentwide; also Tolai of New Britain, northern New Caledonia, Uvea (Loyalties)

-K,

Australians of Arnhem Land, Cairns region, southeast coast, and Murray River; Loyalty Islands (Lifu and Mare); some Nakanai of New Britain

[Micronesians are] varied (the material is not of the best), having some Polynesian resemblances but interdigitating with Melanesiafns] t o a considerable extent. [Melanesians] have received spotty admixture from Polynesians in the east . . . [and have] undergone considerable local mutual admixture with Micronesia[ns]. (ibid. 4 8 - 4 9 ) With respect to physical likenesses between Oceanian populations and those elsewhere, Howells reiterates the wide differences between Melane-

56

BACKGROUND

Figure 2.3. Clustering of certain circum-Pacific populations based on multivariate analysis of skulls

(after Howells 1 9 7 3 : 4 6 )

I