[38] The Malays proper, whose home until the twelfth or thirteenth century lay in Sumatra, are to be distinguished as a particular people from the Malaysian or East Indian group which we name after them, in the same way that the Mongols are a nation which is but one of many that constitute the Mongolian race and Mongoloid stock.

[39] Several languages in the interior of the larger Melanesian islands have been described as non-Malayo-Polynesian. If they confirm as such, they may be regarded as survivals of a group of languages which were the original tongues of the Melanesians and are probably to be classed with the Papuan languages. The Malayo-Polynesian speech of the majority of the modern Melanesians may in that case be considered as having been taken over through contacts with brown peoples of a higher culture. A similar situation exists in Madagascar, which in race is predominantly Negroid, but whose speech is purely and whose culture largely Malaysian.

[40] The population attained only to a minority fraction of a million, perhaps not over 150,000 all told.

[41] It may be corroborative of this interpretation that totemism and exogamy are more irregularly distributed, and therefore more difficult to reconstruct as to their history, in South than in North America. The Tropical Forest area, in which these institutions occur in South America, has long been exposed to the influence of the higher civilization of the Andean region, much as Africa has been exposed to Europe and Asia.

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