Instead of indulging in surmises as to the state of the world in a remote past, it is safer to begin with existing conditions and try to retrace the steps of development. It has already been seen that various links connect the people now living on Easter Island with the great images. Tradition is not altogether extinct; in a few cases the names of the men are actually remembered who made the individual statues, and also those of their clans which are still in existence. But the two strongest bonds are the wooden figures and the bird cult. The wooden figures were being made in recent times, and they have a design on the back resembling that on the stone images, while they also possess the same long ears. There is no reason why a defunct type should have been copied, and it is probable that they date at least as far back as the same epoch. The bird cult also was alive in living memory. It is allied to that of the statues by the residence of the bird-man among the images, by the fact that the bird rite for the child was connected with them, and above all by the presence of a statue of typical form in the centre of the village at Orongo. Assuming then, at any rate for the sake of argument, that the stone figures were the work of the ancestors of the people of to-day, the next step is to inquire who these people are. Here for a certain distance we are on firm ground. They are undoubtedly connected with those found elsewhere in the Pacific; much of their culture is similar; and even the earliest voyagers noted that their language resembled that found on the other islands. The suggestion that Easter Island has been populated from South America may therefore, for practical purposes, be ruled out of the question. If there is any connection between the two, it is more likely that the influence spread from the islands to the continent. Having reached this point, however, we are faced by the larger problem. Who were the race or races who populated the Pacific? Here our firm ground ends, for this is a very complicated subject, with regard to which much work still remains to be done. It is impossible as yet to make any broad statement, which is not subject to qualification, or which can be implicitly relied on. The Solomon group and other islands off the coast of Australia are inhabited by a people known as Melanesians, who have dark skins, fuzzy hair, and thick lips, resembling to some extent the natives of Africa; this area is called Melanesia. Certain outlying islets are, however, populated by a different race, who possess straight or wavy hair and fairer skins. Eastward of a line which is drawn at Fiji this whiter race, called Polynesian, predominates, and the eastern part of the Pacific is known as Polynesia.