The Geography of Polynesians in Utah
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(1974) Isles of the Pacific
ISLES OF THE PACIFIC- I The Coming of the Polynesians By KENNETH P. EMORY, Ph.D. HE ISLES of the South Seas bathed in warm sunlight in the midst of the vast Pacific-were Tsurprise enough to their European discoverers. But more astonishingly, they were inhabited! And the tall, soft featured, lightly clad people who greet ed the Europeans possessed graces they could only admire, and skills at which they could but wonder. How had these brown-skinned peo ple reached the many far-flung islands of Polynesia? When? And whence had they come? The mystery lingered for centuries. Not until 1920-the year I joined the staff of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu-was a concerted search for answers launched, with the First Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference, held in the Hawaiian capital. In subsequent years scientists fanned out over the Pacific to salvage whatever knowledge of their past the Polynesians retained. The field was vast, for Polynesia sprawls in a huge triangle, from Hawaii in the north to Easter Island in the southeast to New Zealand in the southwest. I have taken part in many of these expe Nomads of the wind, shipmates drop sail ditions from Mangareva to outlying Ka as they approach Satawal in the central pingamarangi, some 5,000 miles away Carolines. The past of their seafaring and beyond the Polynesian Triangle. ancestors, long clouded by mystery and After the Tenth Pacific Science Con gress in 1961, scientists from New 732 NICHOLAS DEVORE Ill legend, now comes dramatically to light author, dean of Polynesian archeologists, after more than half a century of research. -
Human Discovery and Settlement of the Remote Easter Island (SE Pacific)
quaternary Review Human Discovery and Settlement of the Remote Easter Island (SE Pacific) Valentí Rull Laboratory of Paleoecology, Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera (ICTJA-CSIC), C. Solé i Sabarís s/n, 08028 Barcelona, Spain; [email protected] Received: 19 March 2019; Accepted: 27 March 2019; Published: 2 April 2019 Abstract: The discovery and settlement of the tiny and remote Easter Island (Rapa Nui) has been a classical controversy for decades. Present-day aboriginal people and their culture are undoubtedly of Polynesian origin, but it has been debated whether Native Americans discovered the island before the Polynesian settlement. Until recently, the paradigm was that Easter Island was discovered and settled just once by Polynesians in their millennial-scale eastward migration across the Pacific. However, the evidence for cultivation and consumption of an American plant—the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas)—on the island before the European contact (1722 CE), even prior to the Europe-America contact (1492 CE), revived controversy. This paper reviews the classical archaeological, ethnological and paleoecological literature on the subject and summarizes the information into four main hypotheses to explain the sweet potato enigma: the long-distance dispersal hypothesis, the back-and-forth hypothesis, the Heyerdahl hypothesis, and the newcomers hypothesis. These hypotheses are evaluated in light of the more recent evidence (last decade), including molecular DNA phylogeny and phylogeography of humans and associated plants and animals, physical anthropology (craniometry and dietary analysis), and new paleoecological findings. It is concluded that, with the available evidence, none of the former hypotheses may be rejected and, therefore, all possibilities remain open. -
Sacred Kingship: Cases from Polynesia
Sacred Kingship: Cases from Polynesia Henri J. M. Claessen Leiden University ABSTRACT This article aims at a description and analysis of sacred kingship in Poly- nesia. To this aim two cases – or rather island cultures – are compared. The first one is the island of Tahiti, where several complex polities were found. The most important of which were Papara, Te Porionuu, and Tautira. Their type of rulership was identical, so they will be discussed as one. In these kingdoms a great role was played by the god Oro, whose image and the belonging feather girdles were competed fiercely. The oth- er case is found on the Tonga Islands, far to the west. Here the sacred Tui Tonga ruled, who was allegedly a son of the god Tangaloa and a woman from Tonga. Because of this descent he was highly sacred. In the course of time a new powerful line, the Tui Haa Takalaua developed, and the Tui Tonga lost his political power. In his turn the Takalaua family was over- ruled by the Tui Kanokupolu. The tensions between the three lines led to a fierce civil war, in which the Kanokupolu line was victorious. The king from this line was, however, not sacred, being a Christian. 1. INTRODUCTION Polynesia comprises the islands situated in the Pacific Ocean within the triangle formed by the Hawaiian Islands, Easter Island and New Zealand. The islanders share a common Polynesian culture. This cultural unity was established already in the eighteenth century, by James Cook, who ob- served during his visit of Easter Island in 1774: In Colour, Features, and Languages they [the Easter Islanders] bear such an affinity to the People of the more Western isles that no one will doubt that they have the same Origin (Cook 1969 [1775]: 279, 354–355). -
A Brief Ethnohistory of Rapa Island, French Polynesia, AD 1791–1840
2 ‘Dwelling carelessly, quiet and secure’ A brief ethnohistory of Rapa Island, French Polynesia, AD 1791–1840 Atholl Anderson Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, [email protected] Introduction In 1826, the first European missionary to Rapa, the Rev. John Davies, quoted Judges 18:7 in seeing the Rapans as ‘dwelling carelessly, quiet and secure, and having no business with any man’ (in Stokes n.d.:28; an idiomatic rendering of the passage). It was to some extent, possibly to a great extent, quite illusory. Rapa was certainly isolated by comparison with most of East Polynesia, and it was small, mountainous and relatively cold, but even the first European visitors found that Rapans exhibited evidence of contact with the outside world, and within Rapan traditions, historical observations and ethnographic data which together form the stuff of ethnohistory, the theme of contact and change is illustrated continually. Rapan society was East Polynesian in ancestry and culture. Rapans spoke an East Polynesian language, but its closest affinities were puzzling for a long time. The earliest historical contacts with Rapans showed that they found both Hawaiian and Tahitian largely unintelligible and later characterisation of Rapan by European scholars was confused because of the early introduction of Tahitian by missionaries and, after 1863, of other Polynesian languages by Tongans, Tokelauans and Cook Islanders, whose descendants came eventually to represent nearly half of the population (Stokes 1955). Samuel Stutchbury had observed, presciently, in 1826 (in Richards 2004:5) that the Rapan language was ‘something resembling the Marquesan’, but Horatio Hale (1968:141), about 1840, ‘obtained at Tahiti, from a native of Rapa, a brief vocabulary of the language spoken there, which turns out to be, with a few verbal exceptions, pure Rarotongan, and this in its minute peculiarities’, while the missionaries William Ellis (1838) and M. -
Rangi Above/Papa Below, Tangaroa Ascendant, Water All Around Us: Austronesian Creation Myths
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations 1-1-2005 Rangi above/Papa below, Tangaroa ascendant, water all around us: Austronesian creation myths Amy M Green University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/rtds Repository Citation Green, Amy M, "Rangi above/Papa below, Tangaroa ascendant, water all around us: Austronesian creation myths" (2005). UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations. 1938. http://dx.doi.org/10.25669/b2px-g53a This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RANGI ABOVE/ PAPA BELOW, TANGAROA ASCENDANT, WATER ALL AROUND US: AUSTRONESIAN CREATION MYTHS By Amy M. Green Bachelor of Arts University of Nevada, Las Vegas 2004 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in English Department of English College of Liberal Arts Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas May 2006 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1436751 Copyright 2006 by Green, Amy M. -
Body Size and Composition in Polynesians
International Journal of Obesity (1999) 23, 1178±1183 ß 1999 Stockton Press All rights reserved 0307±0565/99 $15.00 http://www.stockton-press.co.uk/ijo Body size and composition in Polynesians BA Swinburn1*, SJ Ley1, HE Carmichael1 and LD Plank2 1Department of Community Health, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; and 2Department of Surgery, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand OBJECTIVES: To compare the relationship between body size and body composition in New Zealanders of Polynesian and European descent and to develop speci®c regression equations for fat mass for Polynesians. SUBJECTS: 189 Maori (93 males, 96 females), 185 Samoans (88 males, 97 females) and 241 Europeans (89 males, 152 females) aged 20 ± 70 y. MEASUREMENTS: Height, weight, four skinfold thicknesses, bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) and dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). RESULTS: At higher body mass index levels, Polynesians (Maori and Samoans combined) had a signi®cantly higher ratio of lean mass : fat mass compared with Europeans. Four multiple regression equations incorporating resistance and reactance, height and weight, sum of four skinfolds or sum of two skinfolds were developed in two-thirds of the Polynesian participants using DXA fat mass as the dependent variable. In the remaining one-third of participants, the mean difference between fat mass predicted by these equations (r2 range 0.89 ± 0.93) and DXA fat mass ranged from 7 0.06 to 0.25 kg (s.d. 7 3.67 to 3.71 kg). CONCLUSION: At higher BMI levels, Polynesians were signi®cantly leaner than Europeans, implying the need for separate BMI de®nitions of overweight and obesity for Polynesians. -
Oceanic Encounters
Chapter 4 A Reconsideration of the Role of Polynesian Women in Early Encounters with Europeans: Supplement to Marshall Sahlins’ Voyage around the Islands of History Serge Tcherkézoff Europeans have been losing their way in the Pacific from the beginning when early explorers made up for navigational errors by claiming inhabited islands as new discoveries. Never mind that the islanders had simultaneously discovered the explorers, no doubt with a fair bit of despair and surprise, but since it took years for islanders to learn the tiny scratches that the visitors called writing, the European claims had a head start in the history books. (Aiavao 1994) Je n'ai jamais pu concevoir comment et de quel droit une nation policée pouvait s'emparer d'une terre habitée sans consentement de ses habitants. (Marchand 1961, 253) Ethnohistorical work on first and subsequent early encounters between Polynesians and Europeans remained focused on particular archipelagoes, which has meant that comparative hypotheses spanning the entire Polynesian region have not emerged. Moreover, it has been conducted mainly in eastern Polynesia (including Aotearoa), thus leaving aside the western part of the region.1 In this chapter I examine early encounters in Samoa, from western Polynesia, and also reconsider the Tahitian case, from eastern Polynesia, thus building a comparison of the nature of these early encounters across the region. The focus of the chapter is the apparent sexual offers that women made to the newcomers. If we go back to a number of journals written during the early voyages which have still not been studied in as much detail as they deserve, namely La Pérouse's journal and, for Bougainville's expedition, those of Nassau and Fesche,2 we can see that a crucial aspect of these apparent sexual offers ± 113 Oceanic Encounters the ªgirls' very youngº age and their ªweepingº ± has been overlooked. -
Intersections: a History of Chamorro Nurse-Midwives in Guam and a 'Placental Politics' for Indigenous Feminism
Intersections: A History of Chamorro Nurse-Midwives in Guam and a 'Placental Politics' for Indigenous Feminism Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific Issue 37, March 2015 A History of Chamorro Nurse-Midwives in Guam and a 'Placental Politics' for Indigenous Feminism Christine Taitano DeLisle Introduction: Stories of the embodied Chamorro landscapes of Guam's pattera 1. Among the well-known generative narratives of pre-World War II Guam are stories of the island's native nurse-midwives, the pattera.[1] Chamorro Capuchin priest and historian, Eric Forbes, shared one such story in his recounting of a conversation he had with a Chamorro man who spoke of his intense loyalty to the village where he had lived as a child over the village where he lived most of his adult life. When asked why this was the case, the man replied, 'Siempre nai sa' guihe nai ma håfot i toayå-ho!' (Certainly, because that's where they buried my towel!).[2] It was in this context that Pale' (Father) Eric learned of the pattera practice of burying the placenta (in Chamorro, the påres) and of the deep cultural meanings behind this ritual: The man was pointing to the physical and emotional connection he had with the soil of his native village; something intimately connected with his life in the womb was buried there. In his mind, he literally became part of the soil of his village. 2. The meanings and effects inherent in such practice and ritual is as tåhdong (deep) as it is multiple and varied. At one level, as Pale' Eric discerns, we see a profound connection between Chamorros and the land, such that landscapes become palpable and visceral so as to 'speak' to Chamorros in ways that, literally and figuratively, root them in the soil and tie them to the land. -
The Human Transformation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Pacific Ocean)
Binghamton University The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB) Anthropology Faculty Scholarship Anthropology 2013 The Human Transformation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Pacific Ocean) Terry L. Hunt University of Arizona, [email protected] Carl P. Lipo Binghamton University--SUNY, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://orb.binghamton.edu/anthropology_fac Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Hunt, Terry L. and Carl P. Lipo 2013 The Human Transformation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Pacific Ocean). In Biodiversity and Societies in the Pacific Islands, edited by Sebastien Larrue pp.167-84, Universitaires de Provence, Paris. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology at The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB). For more information, please contact [email protected]. Chapter 8 The Human Transformation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Pacific Ocean) Terry L. HUNT1 Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai'i Manoa Carl P. LIPO2 Department of Anthropology and IIRMES Abstract Rapa Nui (Easter Island) has become widely known as a case study of human- induced environmental catastrophe resulting in cultural collapse. The island’s alleged “ecocide” is offered as a cautionary tale of our own environmental recklessness. The actual archaeological and historical record for the island reveals that while biodiver- sity loss unfolded, the ancient Polynesians persisted and succeeded. Demographic “collapse” came with epidemics of Old World diseases introduced by European visitors. In this paper, we outline the process of prehistoric landscape transformation that took place on Rapa Nui. -
Women in the Islands an Annotated Bibliography Of
) WOMEN IN THE ISLANDS AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PACIFIC WOMEN'S ISSUES 1982-89 Anne catherine Wcx:xis Plan B Paper 8ubmitted to Dr. Karen Peacock, Dr. Terence Wesley-Smith, and Dr. Robert Kiste July 1990 TABLE OF CONTENTS User's Guide Introduction : Materials Included Subject Headings Annotations Abbreviations Symbols Associations & Organizations Regional Fiji Kiribati New Caledonia Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands Tonga Western Samoa Bibliographies & Directories Regional Papua New Guinea Biographies Regional American Samoa Fiji Guam New Caledonia 7 Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands Tonga Western Samoa corrnnunication & Networking Regional Fiji Guam Northern Mariana Islands Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands Western Samoa Economic Planning & Development Regional Cook Islands Fiji French Polynesia Guam Kiribati Marshall Islands Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands Tonga 'I\.rvalu Vanuatu Wallis and Futuna Western Samoa Education & Training Regional American Samoa Federated states of Micronesia ... Fiji Papua New Guinea Tonga Western Samoa Feminism & Feminist Scholarship Regional Fiji Guam Papua New Guinea Future Research Regional Fiji Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands Gender: Roles & status Regional Federated States of Micronesia Fiji French Polynesia Kiribati Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands Tonga Vanuatu Western Samoa Health & Nutrition Regional American Samoa Federated states of Micronesia Fiji ' Marshall Islands Niue Papua New Guinea Tonga Vanuatu Western Samoa History Regional Fiji French Polynesia New caledonia Papua New Guinea Tonga Vanuatu Law & Politics Regional 1-:c, . Cook Islands Fiji Guam New caledonia Papua New Guinea Tonga Vanuatu Western Samoa Literature & the Arts Regional French Polynesia Kiribati Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands Western Samoa Religion Regional Papua New Guinea Western Samoa Author Index Acknowledgements USER'S GUIDE INTRODUCTION This bibliography lists printed material concerning women in the Pacific Islands. -
Research Bibliography of Alcohol and Kava Studies in Oceania
Research Bibliography of Alcohol and Kava Studies in Oceania MAC MARSHALL1 Originally prepared in connection with the Working Session on Alcohol and Kava Studies in Oceania, held at the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania in March 1974, this bibliography has since been expanded to include all known articles, commission reports and papers read at professional meetings dealing specifically with alcohol and kava use and abuse in the Pacific Islands. The bibliography explicitly does not contain references to sections of larger works (e. g., ethnographies) that discuss alcohol and kava in the islands. \ Perusal of the citations below reveals a paucity of research into the role of al cohol historically during the contact period in the Pacific, and an even more striking lack of contemporary social science research into the place of alcohol in modern Pacific island cultures. This point has been developed at some length in Marshall (n. d.), where it also is noted that our knowledge of present-day kava use in Oceania is woefully deficient. The papers by Burtness et al., Demory, Fischer, MacKenzie, Marshall, Nason, Severance, and Urbanowicz, read at the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania Annual Meeting, represent a first step in filling this in formation gap, and publication of these papers as a set is expected shortly. For purposes of this bibliography, the compass of the term "Oceania" includes all of Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and New Guinea. Anonymous 1956. Alcool en Oceanie. Numero 66. Paris: Missions des Iles. [Marist Mission]. 1967. Kava drug a sleeper; Piper methysticum. Science News 91 :138 (Feb ruary 11). -
Early Settlement Ofrapa Nui (Easter Island)
Early Settlement ofRapa Nui (Easter Island) HELENE MARTINSSON-WALLIN AND SUSAN J. CROCKFORD RAPA NUl, THE SMALL REMOTE ISLAND that constitutes the easternmost corner of the Polynesian triangle, was found and populated long before the Europeans "discovered" this part ofthe world in 1722. The long-standing questions concern ing this remarkable island are: who were the first to populate the island, at what time was it populated, and did the Rapa Nui population and development on the island result from a single voyage? Over the years there has been much discussion, speculation, and new scientific results concerning these questions. This has resulted in several conferences and numerous scientific and popular papers and monographs. The aim ofthis paper is to present the contemporary views on these issues, drawn from the results of the last 45 years of archaeological research on the island (Fig. 1), and to describe recent fieldwork that Martinsson-Wallin completed on Rapa Nui. Results from the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Rapa Nui in 1955 1956 suggest that the island was populated as early as c. A.D. 400 (Heyerdahl and Ferdon 1961: 395). This conclusion was drawn from a single radiocarbon date. This dated carbon sample (K-502) was found in association with the so-called Poike ditch on the east side of the island. The sample derived from a carbon con centration on the natural surface, which had been covered by soil when the ditch was dug. The investigator writes the following: There is no evidence to indicate that the fire from which the carbon was derived actually burned at the spot where the charcoal occurred, but it is clear that it was on the surface of the ground at the time the first loads of earth were carried out of the ditch and deposited over it.