Peru to Polynesia
THE theory long held by most European and nearly all American anthropologists is that in the distant past some very lowly savages with a very primitive cultural equipment made their way from Asia to America across the Behring Strait, and that from that time till the coining of the Spaniards there was no communication whatever between the continent of America and Asia or any of the Pacific islands. This theory, held with such surprising dogmatism that facts and arguments telling against it have often been ignored or misrepre- sented, is known to the profane as the anthropological Monroe Doctrine.
There is, however, an increasing minority who regard the resem- blances between certain cultures of the old and new worlds as too numerous and too detailed to be accounted for by coincidence or by the alleged similar working of the human mind, and have therefore been led to postulate voyages between Asia and America in pre- Columbian days. They have, however, almost always assumed America to be the end and not the starting-point of these voyages, and herein lies the novelty of Mr. Heyerdahl's theories. These are three in number, and to take them in this order the first is that the modern Polynesians, whom he calls the Maori-Polynesians, came from the coast of British Columbia. The accepted theory is that they reached their present habitat from South-east Asia by way of the East Indies and then either New Guinea or the chain of tiny islands to the north of it.
Mr. Heyerdahl shows that, except for some frontier islands such as Fiji, where there is evidence of Polynesian infiltration from the east, there is very little in common between the cultures of Polynesia and the more westerly islands, and not the slightest sign that such people as the Polynesians passed through the latter. He shows on the other hand that the Polynesians have much in common with the coast Indians of British Columbia, whom physically they much resemble. They share with them on the one hand double canoes of the same design, totem poles, elbowed adzes of stone and a variety of other artefacts, and on the other hand ignorance of metal, pottery and the loom. He also shows that winds and currents would make it easy to _reach Hawaii from Vancouver, but almost impossible to find it from the south-west if you did not know it was there. Hawaii he believes to have been the centre of dispersion of the Maori-Polynesians. This theory would seem to require some modifications if it is to stand, but in its main outlines it seems at least no less probable than its rivals.
His second theory is that when the Maori-Polynesians reached the islands they found on some of them an earlier population, whom they in part exterminated and in part absorbed, and that this earlier population came from Peru. Of the many items pf evidence for this theory which he gives, perhaps the most important are the sweet potato and the large stone statue. It is now known that the sweet potato was widespread in Polynesia in pre-Columbian times, that it is a native of Peru, and that in both Polynesia and the Andean region it is called by the same name, kumara. These facts have led some of the more open-minded among the doctrinaires to admit that the sweet potato must have been taken from Peru to Polynesia by human agency, but, though Mr. Heyerdahl has shown that it is easier to go from Peru to Polynesia than the other way, they insist that it was Polynesians who took it.
Possibly it was, but this does not apply to the stone statues, for these are found only in Eastern Polynesia, and the Maori-Polynesians have never made anything of the kind. It is astonishing that anyone should make such statues, and few peoples have. Moreover there are some surprising resemblances between those of Peru and Polynesia ; for example in both areas they are carved with forearm and upper arm at right angles, and with large cylindrical top-knots. It is a pity that all his evidence is not of this quality, and we may in particular demur at the suggestion that one man founded all the civilisations from Mexico to Chile, and then went on to Polynesia. We can, however, without committing ourselves to a belief in Kon-Tiki, regard Peruvian influence in Polynesia as pretty certain.
There is much evidence in the Andes for the former presence of people with fair skin and brown beards, and the author's third theory is that these may have drifted across from the Canaries. Their apparent numbers, however, suggest a regular migration, and it is possible that they were connected with the mysterious Ainu.
One could wish that Mr. Heyerdahl knew the proper use of such words as " due," " feasible " and " refute " ; that he had read the proofs more carefully and that he had employed an indexer who used sub-headings instead of following "'Europe " with 227 page numbers ; but the book is a fine achievement and one is left with the conviction that this gallant voyager is a safer guide to the mysteries of the Pacific than his critics. At any rate their conduct in blaming him for unproved theories when their own are but guesses calls for
Previous page
