Poor Man, Rich Man, Big-man, Chief: Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia

摘要: With an eye to their own life goals, the native peoples of Pacific Islands unwittingly present anthropologists a generous scientific gift: extended series experiments in cultural adaptation and evolutionary development. They have compressed institutions within confines infertile coral atolls, expanded them on volcanic islands, created with means history gave cultures adapted deserts Australia, mountains warm coasts New Guinea, rain forests Solomon Islands. From Australian Aborigines, whose hunting gathering existence duplicates outline later Paleolithic, great chiefdoms Hawaii, where society approached formative levels old Fertile Crescent civilizations, almost every general phase progress primitive culture is exemplified.