Voyaging Distance and Voyaging Time in Pacific Migration Author(s): Robert Heine-Geldern Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol.

118, No. 1 (Mar., 1952), pp. 108-110 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1791267 Accessed: 23/06/2010 11:08
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note that it was Hohnel who introduced chamois from the Emperor's hunting grounds at Muerztag to the mountains of New Zealand. His next commission was the armoured cruiser St. George, in which he was despatched to New York. Eighteen months later he was appointed Commander of the Sea Arsenal at Pola, and in May 1909 he retired from the service. Until his death he continued to take the keenest interest in Africa exploration and, when visited in Vienna in 1935, he spoke fluent English and had still a command of Kiswahili. His hobby was to follow the movements and exercises of the Royal Navy for which he had an unbounded admiration. With the death of Admiral Ritter Ludwig von Hohnel a link with the past was broken, for there were few who could still claim to have travelled in the Africa of Livingstone and Stanley, at a time when the white man was still unknown to a majority of the native peoples. V. E. F.

CORRESPONDENCE VOYAGING DISTANCE AND VOYAGING MIGRATION TIME IN PACIFIC

I wish to lodge a protest against the manner in which Heyerdahl, in his last article in this yournal, has misquoted and misinterpreted my words.1 Referring to me, he says: "It is to go too far to deduce, as he does, that our westward drift from Peru to Polynesia on a balsa raft establishes that a canoe must accordingly be able to travel eastward from Polynesia to Peru with the same ease, and thence return to Polynesia again." I never said such a thing. Of course, Heyerdahl's westward voyage does not prove that the Polynesians were able to sail eastward, from Polynesia to America. It does however prove that, if Polynesians reached the coast of South America, return voyages were perfectly feasible, and that is what I said.2 It is so obvious a conclusion that it needs no comment. Heyerdahl writes: "Since it is generally agreed among Polynesian scholars that the neolithic people who brought these blade types (i.e. the various types of stone adzes) to Polynesia arrived in separate waves, roughly over a period from 500 A.D. to 1300 a.d.,3 Heine-Geldern realizes the obvious chronological difnculty in bringing them straight in from the contemporary Iron Age of the Old World. He suggests as an alternative that the Polynesians themselves have reached the Iron Age in Asia but that, after a migration through coral atolls, they would have lost all memory of metal work after fifty or sixty years. If they were so forgetful, how then, we may ask, could they remember in Polynesia what specific stone adze types their long lost ancestors in China had manufactured at a time even before they had used bronze or iron." Were this a correct presentation of my views I would have to confess to having written utter nonsense. What I really said was that neolithic cultures persisted in some parts of Indonesia until late in the Christian era and that, even where 1 Geogr. J. 117 (1951) 69-77. 2 Geogr. J. 116 (1950) 190. 3 There is, of course, no general agreement on this matter among scholars. I shall deal with this subject elsewhere.

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bronze or iron had become known, the use of stone tools continued for a con? siderable time. These are facts every prehistorian familiar with the region will be able to confirm.1 I further pointed out that "it is not inconceivable that the ancestors of the Polynesians, while still in Indonesia, might have come into contact with metal-using peoples or might even themselves have used metals to a certain extent." 2 This is quite different from suggesting "that the Poly? nesians themselves have reached the Iron Age in Asia." To imply that I had said that they had given up the making of stone tools and ironically to ask how the Polynesians, after having entered the Pacific, could have remembered "what specific stone adze types their long lost ancestors in China had manuof what I had factured," is an irresponsible and unfair misrepresentation written. suggests yet another explanation; Heyerdahl again says: "Heine-Geldern iron was already in general use in Indonesia by the first or second century a.d. where, according to an earlier publication of his, it spread more rapidly than Hindu culture, and at the time of Polynesian migrations only isolated and backward savages had not acquired its use. It is from these isolated and backward savages that, we are now to infer, trans-Pacific voyagers set out, still with a Stone Age culture, at this late date." I never said that iron was in general use in Indonesia in the first or second century a.d. It certainly was not. The passage in my paper which Heyerdahl cites, reads as follows: "It is probable that its (i.e. iron's) general use started only after the establishment of the first Hindu colonies in the Archipelago (first or second century a.d.?). However, it spread more rapidly than Hindu culture, and since many tribes in remote islands and in the interior of Borneo and Celebes remained out? side organized Hindu or Mohammedan rule and some of them continued to live under 'prehistoric' conditions as late as the beginning of this century, we may well speak of a prehistoric Iron Age." 3 I do not think that any person with a minimum of archaeological and ethnological knowledge could have misunderstood what I meant, i.e. that the general use of iron in Indonesia began only after the establishment of Hindu colonies in the first or second century a.d.?but how long after the establishment of those colonies I did not say; nor do I, nor does any one else, know for certain. In regions immediately adjacent to those colonies iron may have been in general use within a few decades, while its spread to more distant areas took centuries or, in certain instances, a millennium or more. HeyerdahPs assumption that those peoples of Indonesia who retained neolithic cultures until a late date must have been "isolated and backward savages" who could not have migrated into Polynesia, is, of course, totally unwarranted. There is no reason to assume that the higher type of late neolithic peoples in Indonesia were on a lower cultural level than the Polynesians. Heyerdahl further writes: "The pre-Inca graves contemporary with Tia? huanaco contain no bronze, iron, or other hard metals, whereas Heine-Geldern himself once wrote of the megalithic graves in Indonesia he now seems to pro? 'All the stone cist graves of South Sumatra, Central pose as proto-Polynesian: and East Java contained glass beads and metal, bronze, gold, copper, or iron. 1 Only recently have I learned from a missionary on the island of Flores, in the Lesser Sunda Islands, that even today stone axes are still used there for felling the trees set up as sacrificial posts in certain rituals. 2 Geogr. y. 116 (1950) 186. 3 Heine-Geldern, "Prehistoric research in the Netherlands Indies," in 'Science and scientists in the Netherlands Indies' (New York 1945), p. 148.

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The same was the case in similar graves that have been investigated in the Malay Peninsula.' " Here again Heyerdahl completely misrepresents what I wrote. I never pro? On the posed that the stone cist graves of Indonesia were "proto-Polynesian." contrary, I distinguished between an earlier and a later megalithic culture, stating that the stone cist graves belong to the latter. I expressly pointed out that this later megalithic culture never reached Oceania. Here are my words, which Heyerdahl either did not read or did not understand: "While the older megalithic culture spread over wide regions of Indonesia and from there to l Oceania, the area of the younger megalithic culture is much more restricted." Heyerdahl asserts that the megaliths of what he chooses to call "the eastern fringe of Polynesia" are "far beyond the range of Assam and Java," thereby creating the impression that I had tried to link eastern Polynesia directly to Java and Assam without taking into account the enormous distance which separates them. Actually, I had pointed out that a practically continuous megalithic area extends from Assam to eastern Polynesia, a fact with which any person pretending to solve the Polynesian problem ought to be familiar.3 I cannot help feeling somewhat amused by Heyerdahl's holding up to me, as proof of the American origin of the Polynesians, what he calls the "Ekholm Exhibit." He means the exhibition, "Across the Pacific," set up on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History by Gordon Ekholm, Junius Bird and myself on the occasion of the International Congress of Americanists, held in New York in 1949. I can assure him that none of us three ever suspected that we had contributed any argument in support of his thesis of the American origin of the Polynesians, but that, on the contrary, we were convinced that we had proved Asiatic and Oceanic influences in pre-Columbian America. RoBERT Heine-Geldern 14 December i95r. CULTIVATION TERRACES IN NIGERIA

In the course of the discussion on Mr. Grove's paper on south-east Nigeria as reported in the September issue of the Journal, the question of terraced agriculture was raised. As Professor Stamp points out, terraces occur elsewhere in Nigeria. They are to be found in many parts of the Jos Plateau, e.g. at Pankshin, Hoss and in the Lere hills. Here though bold, the terracing is rough and only approximates to a contoured lay-out. Sometimes adjacent lines of walling coalesce, sometimes a line simply peters out, so that there is no regularity in either the width or slope of the terraces. Their height however is fairly constant at a matter of 2 or 3 feet in the cases known to the writer. He has been told by the village schoolmaster of Lere that in his opinion terracing was not a practice learned from outside but one spontaneously developed by a people who, cultivating rough hill-sides, had many stones to dispose of. The terraces, in his opinion, grew gradually; as stones were unearthed during hoeing they were laid on one side. But soil creep banked the earth against them and made their utility obvious so that further stones, as they came to light, were added to the rows and the terraces grew till stability was reached. Farther east, in the Gombe area, slightly higher and more regular terraces occur on the hilly ground, but the most perfect development of terracing is found in Dikwa Emirate in the Cameroons, under British Mandate, where the 1 Heine-Geldern, "Prehistoric research in the Netherlands Indies," in 'Science and scientists in the Netherlands Indies* (New York 1945), p. 151. 2 Geogr. y. 116 (1950) 188-189.