Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume I
- Frontispiece
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Preface to Volume I
- Part I Rethinking the Pacific
- Part II Humans and the Natural World in the Pacific Ocean
- Part III Deep Time: Sources for the Ancient History of the Pacific
- 10 Biological Anthropology and Genetics in Pacific History
- 11 The Word as Artefact
- 12 Oral Traditions in Pacific History
- 13 The Evolution of Pacific Island Societies
- 14 Ancient Voyaging Capacity in the Pacific
- 15 Revitalizing ‘Traditional’ Navigation Systems in the Contemporary Pacific
- Part IV The Initial Colonization of the Pacific
- Part V The Evolution of Pacific Communities
- Part VI Europe’s Maritime Expansion into the Pacific
- References to Volume I
- Index
10 - Biological Anthropology and Genetics in Pacific History
from Part III - Deep Time: Sources for the Ancient History of the Pacific
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2022
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume I
- Frontispiece
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Preface to Volume I
- Part I Rethinking the Pacific
- Part II Humans and the Natural World in the Pacific Ocean
- Part III Deep Time: Sources for the Ancient History of the Pacific
- 10 Biological Anthropology and Genetics in Pacific History
- 11 The Word as Artefact
- 12 Oral Traditions in Pacific History
- 13 The Evolution of Pacific Island Societies
- 14 Ancient Voyaging Capacity in the Pacific
- 15 Revitalizing ‘Traditional’ Navigation Systems in the Contemporary Pacific
- Part IV The Initial Colonization of the Pacific
- Part V The Evolution of Pacific Communities
- Part VI Europe’s Maritime Expansion into the Pacific
- References to Volume I
- Index
Summary
Biological anthropology has a long history in the Pacific region, and the focus and trends in this region have very much paralleled the general history of science, and the development of the field of anthropology more broadly and biological anthropology more specifically: from the hierarchical and highly romanticized descriptions of ‘civilized’ Polynesians and ‘savage’ ‘Melanesian’ populations made by the early European explorers, through to the attempts at typological classification of peoples based on various combinations of morphological characteristics of the new ‘scientific’ approaches of the mid nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to studies of the more invisible characteristics of blood type, and, most recently, to genomic studies of Pacific ‘populations’.
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- The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean , pp. 225 - 245Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023