Four Man University Team to Trek To Yap for Anthropological Survey

Yap--island of warlike natives and tropical diseases--will be in the scene of an intensive nine-month anthropological survey next fall by a four-man team from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Joining with groups from 20 other American colleges, the University team will take part in a sweeping study of social conditions in the Marians and Carolines at the request of the Navy Department. The investigation will begin next September.

With scientists spread over the South Pacific, the Harvard group will concentrate on Yap, generally reckoned to be the toughest assignment of the survey. A sharp decline in population and the odd customs of a people about whom little is known will be particular objects of the investigation.

The trek to the island groups will be the first in 16 years. The last survey took place in 1921. Since that time the islands have been held by the Japanese who restricted the area to foreign powers. Now the Navy wants more information about the peoples and is conducting the survey.

Scott to Brief Group

The University group will be briefed before its departure next September by Donald Scott '00, Peabody Professor of American Archeology and director of the Peabody Museum, and Carleton S. Coon '25, associate professor of Anthropology.

The report of the group's findings will be delivered to the government after it has first been submitted to the University.