THE POLYNESIAN RACE.

Taihape Daily Times, 3 October 1918, Page 2

THE POLYNESIAN RACE.

ETHNOLOGICAIL DISCOVERY. PROBABLE ORIGIN IN JAPAN. Important ethnological investigations have been conducted in Hawaii by Professor J Macmillan Brown, of Christchurch, who returned to Auckland by the Makura. Eac|®pinter for several years past Professor Brown has visited a fresh group of islands in the Pacific for the purpose of continuing his studies of the origin of the Polynesian race, of which the Maoris are said to be the most virile branch. The professor stated that the Hawaiian group has been more Europeanised than any other, but, in spite of this condition, he collected a great deal of information likely to be of assistance to him in his studies. As the outcome of his present visit to Hawaii, said Professor Macmillan Brown, he had abandoned the idea that the Polynesians originally came from the Malay archipelago and India. Ho had alaways doubted the truth of that generally-accepted theory. He was of the opinion that the Polynesians came through. Japan. There were elements in Hawaiian culture which supported this theory, and he described several native characteristics in support of his contention. In Japan he had soon a large number of men of great stature, who were a race apart from the Japanese of the present day. These tall men indicated an ancestry that was neither Japanese nor in any way Mongolian. The present race, of Japanese were descendants of the Ainu, who came through Siberia, and drove out the then inhabitants, who spread through the stepping-stone lino of islands through the Mariannes and Carolines in Polynesia, Professor Brown said that as a result of Ms visit to Hawaii he concluded that the natives of that particular group of islands were rapidly dying out. As a people they were very decadent. Ho was of opinion that decadence began prior to European settlement but had become much more rapid since that period. The natives were flocking into' the cities, and modern civilisation was overwhelming them, morally and physically. In order to stem the tide of decadence the Hawaiians must resume their old occupations, the chief of which were agriculture and navigation. In ancient times the natives of the Hawaiian group were the greatest sailors in the world. Thousands of years before the compass was known they travelled into unknown parts, gmided by the stars and their knowledge of winds and currents. The Maori word Pipiwhareou-Roa meaning “the Bird of Long Voyages,” clearly illustrated the maritime skill of the Hawaiians. The Maoris gave the name the shining cuckoo, enormous flocks of which collected about March every year on the most northern part of the North Island of New Zealand, and flew across the Pacific to Siberia.