File:Image from page 190 of "The history of mankind" (1896).jpg

Title: The history of mankind Year: 1896 (1890s) Authors: Ratzel, Friedrich, 1844-1904 Butler, Arthur John, 1844-1910 Subjects: Ethnology Anthropology Publisher: London, Macmillan and co., ltd. New York, The Macmillan co. Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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Text Appearing Before Image: -point for the Polynesianmigration has been connected with theword bolota, used by Polynesians forthe next world, the abode of the gods ; in which a reminiscence of Buru has been imagined. In spite of various indi-cations in that direction, we can hardly reconcile ourselves to the notion that asingle insignificant island of the great Archipelago can have given rise to thewidely-scattered peoples of the Central Pacific—all the less when we find Malayo-Polynesian affinities extending to the Melanesian Islands and Madagascar. Thecontinental origin of the Malayo-Polynesians is of special import for the rightunderstanding of them, since it reveals to us the possibility of their wider exten-sion in former times in the western coast districts of the Pacific. Their presencein Formosa, the traces of them in Japan, lead in that direction to a pointwhere the chain of relations with North-west America becomes more clearlyvisible. The question whether these races had once a wide extension on the

Text Appearing After Image: Dyak woman of Borneo. (From a photograph in theDamann Album.) i54 THE HISTORY OF MANKIND continent may here be passed over. Between Japan, where north-west Americaninfluences are recognisable, and Formosa, to which the Malayo-Polynesiansextend at the present day, so narrow a gap is left that transference is almostcertain. But a more important fact is that with so much larger an extensioneither on the coast or on islands towards the north, the possibility of directconnection by means of migration, voluntary and involuntary, is increased.The coast northward from the mouth of the Columbia river with its numerousislands, more especially the part between Puget Sound and Cape Spencer, theBeehive as Dall calls it, where continuous swarms of men are reared and sent forth,is some four thousand miles in a straight line from the Japanese archipelago. Onthis side also, and from hence northward to the Behring Straits, there stretches aregion where the art of navigation is highly developed. The poi

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