Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/411

 in regard to Easter Island. 377

to 33 show a number of avio-human pictographs from the Easter Island tablets, in which sometimes the human attributes predominate and sometimes the avian.

Lastly, I give a striking parallel derived from figures of the human form without avian attributes. Fig. 34, Picto- graph of a man seated in a peculiar, conventional manner, with legs wide apart, " spread-eagle " fashion. The hands are raised and one is holding a fish. The head is repre- sented with lateral appendages indicating, no doubt, the largely distended ears already referred to — Easter Island ; for comparison with Fig. 34a, Design of human figure represented rather more realistically in an identical attitude, with wide-spread legs, upraised hands and dilated ear- lobes indicated by large lateral appendages. The figure is not shown holding up a fish as in the pictograph, but on either side of it a fish is represented. Again, I think, a very striking parallel.

Conclusion. What are we to infer from the ethnological parallels to which I have drawn attention } Many of the coincidences revealed by a comparative study of the culture of Easter Island and of the Western Pacific, may appear to be of trivial importance if taken singly ; but many, on the other hand, are sufficiently striking in them- selves, and when all are taken together, the cumulative effect of the evidence is far too important to be overlooked and lightly set aside. I venture to think that the following points arise from the evidence available.

(i) That the culture of Easter Island is definitely com- posite and exhibits traces of fusion of at least two distinct culture-stocks.

(2) That a Melanesian migration at one time, or inter- mittently, ranged eastwards over the Pacific, and that these people reached Rapanui, amongst other islands, and took root there. That typical elements of Melanesian culture were thus introduced into the island, including the practice of distending the ear-lobe, characteristic