Pacific Negroids of Solomon Isnands are Race Mystery Life magazine April 1940 Κοινωνική Ανθρωπολογία ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ

 

Pacific Negroids of Solomon Islands

Life magazine April 1940

Κοινωνική Ανθρωπολογία

ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ

 

 

 

   ( η λεζάντα της φωτο )

 

 

 

Pacific Negroids of Solomon Islands

are Race Mystery

 

 

    A major anthropological mystery is a racial “black spot” of negroid people who inhabit the island of Bougainville and a few other smaller Solomon Islands in the western Pacific.

   First intensive study of the “black spot”, announced last month by Harvard University’s Peabody Museum, is the achievement of young Anthropologist Douglas Oliver.

   In native villages in the jungle interior of Bougainville, Dr. Oliver and his wife lived and worked for 16 months. Elaborate anthropometric and linguistic data, fist product of the study, have already defined the black-spot people as a distinct racial group. Correlation with other Peabody Museum researchers may link them to the New Guinea, New Britain and Australian primitives as the original inhabitants of the Pacific islands.

 

 

 

   Bougainville, only 125 miles long, ringed by marshes, ribbed by mountains that rise to 10.000-ft. volcanic peaks and drenched by year-round rains, is one of the least habitable of the Pacific islands. It’s 30.000 black-spot inhabitants are divided into eight different language tribes.

   In sharp contrast to the familiar Austronesian canoe-beach culture, the Bougainville negroids hug the interior and subsist in a primitive garden culture. Their social and religious life, matching their climate, follows no rhythmic seasonal drama.

   On this aboriginal foundation, they have erected a complex political system, in which there is incessant competition for power. Rank is based not on wealth or strength but on sheer talent for manipulating the rich and mighty.      

 

   Τhough the black-spot natives have a strong sense of property and an elaborate system of inheritance, they recognize no hereditary political or social rank. In their wide-open competition for political power, the prime virtue is an abstract personal quality, Potu, best translated as prestige. The idea of prestige dominates their whole existence and permeates their religion. Unlike other primitive tribes, their religious rituals treat birth, marriage and death not as biologic crises but primarily as occasions to exhort the spirits for wealth, an outward sign of Potu.

   Basic social unit is the family, usually polygamous but with few children. From its quarter-acre garden and from the produce of wild jungle trees, the family gets a bare subsistence. By complex clan relationships, the family is tied into the broader political units of tribe and village. It is through these connections that the climber gifted with Potu rises to the top. Political crises come after ripened jungle fruits are harvested. Then the climber mobilizes the total wealth of his relatives and friends, overwhelms his rivals with great feasts. Giver of the biggest feast holds power for the rest of the year.

 

 

 

 

   

Life magazine, April 15, 1940, pp. 59-68.

 

  

 

 

ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΓΡΑΦΟΣ

eleftherografos.blogspot.com

[ ανάρτηση 22 Ιανουαρίου 2025 : 

Pacific Negroids of Solomon Islands

Life magazine April 1940

Κοινωνική Ανθρωπολογία

ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ ]