people of a tiny island living in two districts more or less hostile to one another, and the people of each district divided into smaller groups who live in settlements round the coast. The resemblance in this respect is especially striking if the map opposite p. 233 of Mrs. Routledge’s book is compared with Mr. Durrad’s map of Tikopia given on p. 335 of the first volume of my History of Melanesian Society. The difference between the two is that while the social groups of Tikopia are definite examples of exogamous totemic clans, those of Easter Island bear no signs of a totemic character, and seem to take no part in the regulation of marriage. They are local groups comparable with those of other parts of Polynesia rather than clans, as in Tikopia.
In a final too short chapter on the present position of the problem of Easter Island Mrs. Routledge recognises the existence of two elements in the population. The physical variation of the inhabitants, especially as shown by the skulls, the tradition of a feud between the long-ears and the short-ears, and the dissociation of the bird-cult from the chiefs of the important Miru clan led Mrs. Routledge to the hypothesis that the earlier of the two strata was formed by a negroid people who distended the ear-lobe and practised the bird-cult, these practices being adopted by the later arrivals who conformed more closely to the usual Polynesian type. It is left an open question which of these two elements furnished the makers of the statues. The presence of distended ear-lobes in the statues, however, can leave little doubt that the makers of the monuments practised distension of the ears, while the presence of a bird carved upon the statues also points strongly to the association of these two elements in culture. There are several doubtful assumptions in the argument by which the bird-cult is assigned to the earlier culture. It is an open question whether the negroid element in the population of Polynesia is early or late. It may have been introduced at any time by the arrival of migrants who had passed through Melanesia and brought with them children resulting from unions with the women of that region. There are facts pointing to this explanation of the negroid element in the Maori,[1]
- ↑ Man, vol. xviii. (1918), pp. 97-98.
