{"id":19374,"date":"2011-12-30T01:00:54","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T01:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=19374"},"modified":"2011-12-30T01:07:49","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T01:07:49","slug":"19374","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=19374","title":{"rendered":"Results of Inbreeding on Norfolk Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Results of Inbreeding on Norfolk Island<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Science\u00a0 Magazine<\/a>
\nVolume 65, Number 1693<\/a> (1927-06-10)
\npage x
\nDOI: 10.1126\/science.65.1693.0x-s<\/a><\/p>\n

Providing the original stock is sound, inbreeding among human beings results in no deterioration, physical or mental. Nor does mixture of widely differing races produce an inferior type.\u00a0 Such are the conclusions of Dr. Harry L. Shapiro<\/a>, ethnologist of the American Museum of Natural History, from a recent study of the inhabitants of Norfolk Island<\/a>, a small island north of New Zealand<\/a>.\u00a0 They are the Tahitian-English half-castes<\/a> whose history dates back\u00a0 the mutiny of the crew of the ship Bounty<\/em><\/a> in 1789.\u00a0 At pesent there are more than 600 of these islanders and they are the descendants of twelve Tahitian women and nine Englishmen, part of the mutinous crew.<\/p>\n

In 1789 the crew of the Bounty<\/em>, a vessel sailing in the southern Pacific, mutinied, casting the captain adrift in a small boat and making for Tahiti<\/a>. Here nine of the crew, fearing capture, sailed to Pitcairn<\/a>, a small uninhabited island east of Tahiti. They took with them twelve Tahitian women and nine Tahitian men.\u00a0 On Pitcairn the women were divided among the Englishmen as wives.\u00a0 The Tahitian men were allowed no women. This lead to\u00a0jealousy and the Tahitian men where killed, leaving no descendants.\u00a0 The Tahitian women and the Englishmen all of them sound stock established a\u00a0 line of half-castes.\u00a0 They were completely isolated and they multiplied rapidly.<\/p>\n

By 1856 the population was to great for the small space of Pitcairn.\u00a0More that 150 moved to Norfolk Island which was at that time uninhabited. To-day there is a population of 600 on Norfolk Island and 175 on Pitcairn, all descendants of the original Tahitians and English.\u00a0 It is of the Norfolk Islanders that Dr. Shapiro has made a study.<\/p>\n

Dr. Shapiro has found these islanders to be of sound physique, taller than the average English and Tahitians, and of good mentality.\u00a0 There is only one feeble-minded person, he said, on Norfolk Island.\u00a0 Their education has of necessity been rudimentary for generations, but they are now provided with teachers by the Australian Government under the jurisdiction of which they come.\u00a0 And the teachers are getting excellent results.<\/p>\n

Thus, according to Dr. Shapiro, the Norfolk Islanders prove that, when the stock is sound to begin with, intensive in-breeding makes for no decrease in stamina.\u00a0 Likewise, race mixture, in his opinion, brings go deterioration.<\/p>\n

The idea that the half-caste is inferior, he maintained, comes largely from the fact that pure races have always look down on the half-caste.<\/strong> In Norfolk Island, he said, the half-caste has a chance to show his worth, for there is no discrimination against him, as the entire population is half-caste.\u00a0 And Norfolk Island, he pointed out, is one of the only places in thw world with no stigma is attached to half-castes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Results of Inbreeding on Norfolk Island Science\u00a0 Magazine Volume 65, Number 1693 (1927-06-10) page x DOI: 10.1126\/science.65.1693.0x-s Providing the original stock is sound, inbreeding among human beings results in no deterioration, physical or mental. Nor does mixture of widely differing races produce an inferior type.\u00a0 Such are the conclusions of Dr. Harry L. Shapiro, ethnologist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,2039,8,4405],"tags":[8934,8936,8935,8932,8933,2471,1745],"class_list":["post-19374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","category-oceania","tag-harry-l-shapiro","tag-harry-lionel-shapiro","tag-harry-shapiro","tag-norfolk-island","tag-pitcairn","tag-science-magazine","tag-tahiti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}