Introduction.

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1 Free ebooks ==> Introduction The intent and purpose of this book is to shed light on the ambiguous history of the cultures and history of the west coast of South America, more specifically what is now called Peru, and the islands that lie to the west, as in Easter Island, Tahiti, New Zealand and Hawaii. What the latter 4 have in common, is that they all clearly, whether one accesses western driven academia, or the oral traditions of the Native people, is a clear and historic past, that of the so called Polynesian people. Scholars disagree greatly on the common root of these people, and much of what is written is either at odds with the oral traditions of the people themselves, if and when the latter is or has been consulted. Map of the area under discussion in this book

2 Free ebooks ==> The lack of western academics inclusion of the knowledge of Native people is hardly restricted to Polynesia, which is itself a name that the indigenous people never called nor call themselves, but a geographic label, and it is an example, symbol and symptom of colonialism. All of these Polynesian, meaning simply many islands people have an ancient tradition that speaks of a time when a light skinned people, with reddish or auburn hair and in some accounts green eyes either lived alongside them, or were indeed an ancestral line from which they draw at least part of their genetic inheritance. The coast of Peru is to this very day a place where ancestral skeletons are found, often with reddish hair still attached to their scalps. This is due to the extreme dryness of the area being a perfect place, whether intentionally or by accident for the preservation of human bones and tissues. Thor Heyerdahl, the famous, but much maligned researcher whose perhaps greatest accomplishment was the Kon Tiki expedition, whereby he and 5 of his compatriots successfully sailed from the coast of Peru to the Society Islands in 1947, was adamant that Pacific Islands, such as Easter, were first inhabited by non-polynesians.

3 The Kon Tiki under full sail It is purely out of curiosity, and without any sort of political or racial agenda, that I pursue this story, which Heyerdahl gleaned from historic accounts of the Inca, Spanish and others, of the existence, in the deep past, of a race, or at least group of people, who bore non Indigenous physical characteristics, and may have left their mark, in the form of stone structures, oral traditions, and descendants throughout Polynesia and perhaps beyond. Many island people, especially in New Zealand, which should properly, in my view, be called by its native name Aotearoa, or Land of the Long White Cloud, speak with pride of these mysterious ancestors, much of whose identity seems to be lost in the mists of time. The idea of a lost race or company of tall, light skinned and auburn haired sea farers often brings up the idea that Europeans, especially the Irish or other Celtic people must have traveled the world s oceans and occupied the ancestral lands of people like the Polynesians long ago. This I immediately dismiss as pure fantasy, and do not include in this book, aside from casual but superficial glimpses. The

4 topic and theory, which basically has no merit nor evidence in my view, will simply attract a storm of racism, from both sides, and controversy which will muddle my intent. Who were these ancient people, and what did they leave behind to tell us the story of their existence? Crimson Horizon: The Mysterious Ancient Sea Kings Of The Pacific Ocean 3500 km west of the Chilean coast of South America sits Easter Island, also known as Isla de Pascua (Spanish) and Rapa Nui (the Indigenous language.) This remote outpost of civilization has fascinated visitors ever since it was first discovered by the Dutch explorer Jakob Roggeveen on Easter Sunday, 1722; he thus named it Easter Island, or more properly Paasch-Eyland (18th century Dutch for "Easter Island") (1) and that name has stuck ever since, much to the consternation of the Native islanders, who knew their home by their own names for hundreds if not thousands of years.

5 Free ebooks ==> The name Rapa Nui, for example, which is the title best loved by the present day population, who are a mix of Polynesian and Chilean descent, means Big Rapa, but this term was supposedly coined after the slave raids of the early 1860s, and refers to the island's topographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group. (2) In the source s own words, he being

6 William Thompson writing in 1891, Throughout southeastern Polynesia this island is known as Rapa Nui, but the name is of accidental origin and only traces back about twenty years. When the islanders, kidnapped by the Peruvians, were being returned to their homes, there was for a time a question as to the identity of those from Easter Island. The native name of "Te Pito te Henua" was not recognized by the French officials, and finding certain fellow-sufferers hailing from Oparo, an island lying 2,000 miles to the westward, were more successful under the local appellation of Rapa iti (Little Rapa), the euphonious title was dropped and Rapa nui (Great Rapa) substituted. Te Pito O te Henua is another native style name, and has been said to be the original name of the island since Alphonse Pinart gave it the romantic translation "the Navel of the World" in his Voyage à l'île de Pâques, published in (3) However, there are two words pronounced pito in Rapa Nui, one meaning 'navel' and one 'end', and the phrase can thus also mean "land's end". Yet another name, that being Mata ki te rangi, means "Eyes looking to the sky" and this may be in reference to the famous large stone statues, called Moai, which ring the island and are in the shape of, predominantly, human heads and torsos. And finally, Thor Heyerdahl, the amazing Norwegian explorer best known for his 1947 Kon Tiki adventure, and later the Ra and Tigris expeditions, insisted that Rapa was the original name of Easter Island, and that Rapa Iti was named by refugees from there. (4) Heyerdahl was in fact the first European, and in fact outsider, to conduct archaeological excavations on the island, which is well documented in his book Aku- aku: the Secret of Easter island written in What is perhaps most intriguing and perplexing about Easter Island are the recurring stories of two separate people and cultures cohabiting this small island which Roggeveen was the first outsider to witness in He states that they were "of all shades of colour, yellow, white and brown" and they distended their ear lobes so greatly with large disks that when they took them out they could "hitch the rim of the lobe over the top of the ear". (5) The latter is in reference to the so-called Long Ears, or Hanau epe people, who are generally regarded as

7 having been a high caste group, whereas the Hanau momoko were the Short Ears, and the working class. All of the large stone Moai heads depict Long Ears The Hanau eepe were theorized by Thor Heyerdahl to have come from South America (6), perhaps being the early Inca or the predecessors, while the Hanau momoko were Polynesians, most likely coming from Oparo or Rapa iti island which is in the Australs. Much controversy surrounds the relationships between

8 these people, as well as time lines of conflicts that in fact did occur; however, a full discussion of this will come later. However, Roggeveen clearly indicated that he observed two distinct peoples upon his arrival to Easter Island, the Polynesians and White people, whose ear lobes were heavily distended. Not only was their skin colour much lighter than the Polynesians or Hanau momoko, but their hair was also reddish or even blonde. What Heyerdahl purports in Aku-aku is that the evidence exists to show that the island was invaded by a white skinned people that arrived on the island about 500 A.D. This race of people had unusual features that included red hair and long thin noses. They were remembered by the natives as the long ears because they wore large ear rings that elongated their earlobes. They took possession of the island and forced the natives to work as labourers. Descendants of the long ears still exist on the island today. They are the predominant families, many of them still with red hair and European facial features that set them apart from the dark haired, dark-eyed natives. (7) This is the first example of several instances, on different lands and islands of the Pacific Ocean, and the purpose of this book, to show that our generally accepted theory about the exploration and settlement of the world s largest ocean is not as simple as we have been led to believe. The area called Polynesia, (from Greek: πολύς "polys" many + νῆσος "nēsos" island) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs. (8) More specifically, it forms what is called the Polynesian Triangle which is bordered by Hawaii in the north, Easter Island to the southeast, and New Zealand (Aotearoa) in the southwest. Conventional scholarship believes that the first settlers of this triangle were native people from south-east Asia in the distant past, a subject we shall explore in detail later, and that no other humans were resident in this area prior to these Polynesian people. However, the presence of red haired and light skinned

9 individuals, as we have already seen in our brief account of the history of Easter Island, places this simplistic view in doubt. The same seems to be true of the Pacific side of the South American continent, which we shall also delve much more deeply into in the book; accounts by the first Spanish conquistadors and chroniclers speak of the presence, within the Amerindian populations of mysterious light skinned and red haired individuals. Again, conventional archaeology and anthropology would have us believe a very simple story, that all of the pre-columbian residents and populations of North, South and Central America came exclusively across what is called the Bering Land Bridge, linking Asia and Alaska prior to the melting of the vast ice sheets which were present up until approximately 12,500 years ago. Clearly something is missing from this idea. Map of the basic pattern of Indigenous migrations

10 Free ebooks ==> It is not my contention to suggest that Europeans with bright red hair explored the world s oceans and occupied lands which conventional wisdom decrees was first found and settled by native people, such a claim immediately invites cries of racism and muddies the waters of an intellectual enterprise with emotional baggage. However, when the stories of the native people themselves, especially the Maori of New Zealand, Hawaiians, and various South American indigenous people, especially those of Peru speak of light skinned and red, or more properly auburn haired ancestors, then it is natural to take notice.

11 Female skull in Paracas History Museum So, rather than dealing with the Pacific Ocean as a whole, this book is mainly about the area called Polynesia and the west coast of South America, more

12 specifically Peru, because it is these two areas where frequent accounts of the illusive red haired ancestors exist. Through this exploration we will encounter many physical clues which strengthen the idea that these two areas were linked together in far more complex ways, in the distant past, than most scholars will accept; these include the presence of plant species, which would have to have been physically carried by people from one place to the other, not the whim of natural forces. So, let us return to Easter Island, and explore further the two distinct groups of people that seemingly cohabited that small island prior to the advent of European colonization. This exploration will naturally draw us to other parts of Polynesia, especially New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii, as well as the western shores of South America. Wind patterns and ocean currents will act as guides for us, as they did for the ancestral people, to hopefully reveal the true history of this part of the world, and the rich network in which the people, land, sea, plants and animals wove the story of the past. Rapa Nui: Navel Of The World Why start with this little island? Because on a purely physical level, it is in the center of the area that we will be discussing. The big dispute, as we have already briefly seen, is that two distinct groups lived on Rapa Nui (the name we will use from here on in as it is at least somewhat native in nature, whereas Easter Island is a title imposed by a European simply based on the date that he arrived there, as the first non-native witness.

13 Map of Polynesia, with conventional migration pattern ideas Great disputes arise in the timing and identity of these two groups, the Hanau epe (Long Ears) and Hanau momoko (Short Ears.) Conventional wisdom, taken from the loosest of sources, as in Wikipedia, tells us the following: Estimated dates of initial settlement of Easter Island range from 300 to 1200 CE, approximately coinciding with the arrival of the first settlers in Hawaii. Rectifications in radiocarbon dating have changed almost all of the previously-posited early settlement dates in Polynesia. Rapa Nui is now considered to have been settled about CE. An ongoing study by archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo suggests a still later date: "Radiocarbon dates for the earliest stratigraphic layers at Anakena, Easter Island, and analysis of previous radiocarbon dates imply that the island was colonized late, about 1200 CE. Significant ecological impacts and major cultural investments in monumental architecture and statuary thus began soon after initial settlement." (9)

14 However, such a broad range of dates, even with radiocarbon as a time measure more clutters the situation than defines it, when, again, taking into account the two separate groups that dwelt there. According to Heyerdahl s own words, delivered in a series of lectures to the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography in Stockholm: "at some unidentified date prior to AD 380, the first settlers landed on Easter Island, and found a verdant island covered by trees, shrubs, and palms." He proved this to be true from the extensive pollen samples taken from the crater lakes with the aid of 26 feet long cores from the sediments. Thor Heyerdahl inspecting a buried wall of great antiquity

15 His excavations proved that there were 3 separate epochs in the History of Easter Island, which the archaeologists have named Early, Middle and Late Periods. In the Early Period there was no production of giant statues, only altar-like elevations of very large, and most precisely cut and joined stones, which were erected with their facades towards the ocean, and a sunken court on the inland side. They were astronomically oriented, and constructed by highly specialised stone masons who studied the annual movement of the sun and in their religious architecture. Not until the Second Period were the well known Giant Statues quarried and placed on the platforms. The archaeologists believe that during this period, around AD 1100, the Birdman Cult arrived and marked the commencement of the raising of the large ancestor statues. During a period of less than 6 centuries, more than 600 giant ancestor statues were carved from the quarries on the slopes of Rano Raraku after the forests had been cleared. When the statue production reached its peak the island engineers were able to erect statues up to 40 feet tall, weighing more than 80 tons, and balance a red stone cylinder hat, weighing up to 12 tons, on top of its head. According again to Heyerdahl, about 50 years after Roggeveen first visited Rapa Nui, the Spaniard Don Felipe Gonzales was the next foreigner to describe the people of this island, in "The Spaniards met on the island tall, fair men. Two of the biggest were measured and were respectively 6 feet, 6l/2 inches and 6 feet, 5 inches tall. Many had beards, and the Spaniards found that they were quite like Europeans and not ordinary natives. They noted in their diaries that not all of them had black hair: the hair of some was chestnut brown, and in other cases it was even reddish and cinnamon-colored. (10)

16 Rapanui Moai with red top knot hats, or red hair? Heyerdahl based his theory of emigration from South America in large part on the oral traditions of the people of the Peruvian and Bolivian highlands, especially around Lake Titicaca, which spoke of the characters known as Kon Tiki and Viracocha. Most scholars agree that these two characters were one and the same, and in fact another interpretation of the name is in fact Con Ticci Viracocha. According to "History of the Incas" by Pedro Sarmiento De Gamboa, "The natives of this land affirm that in the beginning, and before this world was created, there was a being called Viracocha. He created a dark world without sun, moon or stars. Owing to this creation he was named Viracocha Pachayachachi, which means "Creator of all things." And when he had created the world he formed a race of giants of disproportioned greatness painted and sculptured, to see whether it would be well to make real men of that size. He then created men in his likeness as they are now; and they lived in darkness.

17 Depiction of Con Ticci Viracocha used by Thor Heyerdahl on his sail Viracocha ordered these people that they should live without quarrelling, and that they should know and serve him." As men became bad, he decided to punish them; he turned them into stone, into things, and some were swallowed up by the earth and others by the sea. A general flood which they call uñu pachacuti, meaning "water that overturns the land", came over them. "They say that it rained 60 days and nights, that it drowned all created things, and that there alone remained some vestiges of those who were turned into stones, as a memorial of the event, and as an example to posterity, in the edifices of Pucara, which are 60 leagues from Cuzco."

18 "He lived amongst men, and he taught them many arts. He it was, as the priests of those who were here before the Incas say, showed men how to bring streams of water to their crops, and taught them how to build terraces upon the mountains where crops would grow. And when the bird that cries out four times at dawn cried out, and the light came upon the cross he had set up, Viracocha went from amongst men. He went down to the sea, and he walked across it towards the west. But he told those whom he had left behind that he would send messengers back who would protect them and give them renewed knowledge of all he had taught them." (11) The timeline of Viracocha s departure from the mainland of South America, the departure point most often believed to have been northern Peru in the area of the present town of Tumbes, is completely, unknown, lost in the fog of time. However, it would have been prior to the existence of the Inca, which most accounts give as being about the year 900 AD, when they were forced to leave the Tiwanaku area, near lake Titicaca in Bolivia, and found Cusco, which was to become their capital city. (12) Contrary to the romantic stories written about and perhaps by the Inca, whereby their creator god Viracocha raised their progenitors, Manco Capac and Mama Occllo from the waters of Lake Titicaca, or sent them down from heavenly or celestial realm, the Inca were in fact chased out of the Lake Titicaca area by the tribal Aymara people. The two locations at the lake which would have been probable homelands of the Inca, or more specifically their ancestors, since Manco Capac is regarded as being the first true Inca ruler, are the Island of the Sun, now located in the Bolivian half of Lake Titicaca, and Tiwanaku, 11 miles inland from the southern shore of the lake. The majority of oral traditions speak of Viracocha as having raised or drawn the first Inca from the waters of the lake, but what one must take into account is that oral records such as this tend to be poetic in nature, and not a clear description of historical, real events. Thus, to be raised from the waters most likely means to come from the Titicaca Lake area. Such a culture like the Inca, famous globally for its stone construction capabilities, especially in Cusco, the nearby Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu should obviously

19 Inca period ruins on the northern end of the Island of the Sun come from a location where similar building styles and most likely materials would be found, perhaps more primitive, but at least existing. The Inca would not have invented and perfected the stone masterworks attributed to them in places like Cusco without there having been a learning curve prior to this. On the Island of the Sun, there is very little of what we would call megalithic constructions, or examples of stone masonry which matches the amazing achievements in and around Cusco. Some oral traditions do say that when the Spanish first arrived in the imperial capital in 1533, and wrecked havoc on the local population, especially with the looting of gold and silver objects from the most sacred locations such as the Coricancha, which was the Inca s holiest of holy sites, that word was sent, via the Chasqui system of royal runners, to destroy all of the great stone buildings on the Island of the Sun, and throw the building blocks, as well as silver and gold contents into the lake, so that the Spanish could not steal them. In this way, the mindset was that without anything to pilfer, the Conquistadors might just leave the residents of the island alone.

20 Free ebooks ==> What remains on the Island of the Sun to show that a great builder society once lived there is scant. There are an abundance of agricultural terracing systems, climbing up hillsides, which the Inca are very well known for having mastered, and some crude stone buildings on the north end of the island, made of split and found field stone, but nothing like the grandeur one finds in the Sacred Valley area. Very little if any underwater archaeology has been ever conducted to see if the oral traditions about the deconstruction of any great buildings in fact occurred, so we simply don t know. The author at the Sun Gate at Tiwanaku Tiwanaku is a completely different situation. Shaped stone remnants of a very advanced nature still literally litter the ground at this location, as well as the nearby site known as Puma Punku, which puzzle open minded archaeologists and engineers. The precision of the stone surfaces defy the idea that primitive people shaped them. Christopher Dunn, the British engineer living and working in the aerospace industry in the United States, a man who knows what precision means,

21 has found examples of flat surfaces on stones at Puma Punku which are up to 5/1000 of an inch accurate; meaning, that the flatness of the surface only deviates that much from being perfect. (64) Clearly an advanced people once lived in this area; their name and nature of who they were lost to us. According to conventional archaeology, the area around Tiwanaku may have been inhabited as early as 1500 BC as a small agriculturally based village. (65) Most research, though, is based around the Tiwanaku IV and V periods between AD 300 and AD 1000, during which Tiwanaku grew significantly in power. During the time period between 300 BC and AD 300 Tiwanaku is thought to have been a moral and cosmological center to which many people made pilgrimages. The intriguing thing, is that conventional scholars never address how the so called Tiwanaku people shaped the stone with such accuracy, or explain how the material, especially the grey blocks which made up Puma Punku were moved from the quarries. The quarries, from which the stone blocks used in the construction of structures at Tiwanaku came, lie at significant distances from this site. The red sandstone used in this site's structures have been determined by petrographic analysis to come from a quarry 10 kilometers away; a remarkable distance considering that the largest of these stones weighs 131 metric tons. (66) The green andesite stones that were used to create the most elaborate carvings and monoliths originate from the Copacabana peninsula, located across Lake Titicaca. (67) One theory is that these giant andesite stones, which weigh over 40 tons were transported some 90 kilometers across Lake Titicaca on reed boats, then laboriously dragged another 10 kilometers to the city. (68) I can honestly say that such theories are complete, and impractical nonsense. A 40 ton stone on a boat made out of reeds? Clearly the builders were people of amazing knowledge that defies what the conventional scholars say. That the Inca were possibly the descendants of such an evolved race or community is quite possible, if we see what they are reputed to have accomplished in and around Cusco. And the Viracochans are said to have come from this place as well, although the timeline is fuzzy as to when they left. The why seems to be that they may have been chased out, or chose to spread their knowledge and wisdom in surrounding lands. A huge stone human face

22 profile exists at the Inca site of Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley, a depiction local oral tradition states to be that of Viracochan, also known as Tunupa. They say that he was a tall stranger, wearing a cape, and carrying a staff. Some versions say that he was a white man with a beard and long white hair, but whether such claims are fabrications by the church, or are pre-columbian in age are unknown. He taught the fine arts of civilization to the people, then left to the northwest, never to be seen again. The large stone carving was done in his honour. Famous depiction of Viracocha from Tiwanaku

23 Here again Heyerdahl comes into play, not in the 10 th century, but the 20 th. It was his belief, of course, that at least some of the ancestry of Rapa Nui came from the Pacific side of the South American continent, based on the presence of the clearly non-polynesian Long Ears, but also on many other factors. The idea that Viracocha, or the Viracochas as a people left the shores of northern Peru on some sort of vessel led Heyerdahl to speculate as to what sort of vessel would have been employed, and where it would have gone. Thus arose his building and sailing of the famous Kon Tiki, a balsa wood raft equipped with a large square rigged sail, which he and 5 others crewed from the port of Callao, near Lima Peru. After a 101 day, 4,300-mile (6,900 km) journey across the Pacific Ocean, Kon-Tiki smashed into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, Kon-Tiki demonstrated that it was possible for a primitive raft to sail the Pacific with relative ease and safety, especially to the west (with the wind). The raft proved to be highly maneuverable, and fish congregated between the nine balsa logs in such numbers that ancient sailors could have possibly relied on fish for hydration in the absence of other sources of fresh water. Inspired by Kon-Tiki, other rafts have repeated the voyage. One key factor was that Heyerdahl and his companions, although they carried some modern navigational aids, and had equipped the Kon Tiki with 5 centreboards and a large aft fixed steering paddle, did not attempt to predetermine an exact course. They knew that Tahiti, the Marquesas Islands and Tuamotus lay to the west, and that by making their use of the prevailing wind as efficient as possible, would land somewhere amongst one of these island groups. During the ocean voyage a few experiments were carried out with the centreboards. It was found that the five centreboards, six feet deep and two feet wide, when securely attached, were enough to permit the raft to sail almost at right angles to the wind. It was also ascertained that by raising or lowering the centreboard fore or aft, the raft could be steered without using the steering oar. On this expedition an attempt to tack into the wind failed completely. In 1953 Thor Heyerdahl experimented on a smaller test raft constructed like the Kon Tiki of nine Balsa logs lashed together. He found that a correct interplay between the handling of the sail and the centreboards enabled him to tack against contrary wind, and even to sail back to the exact spot from where he had set off. The

24 centreboard method of steering a raft was astonishing through its simplicity and effectiveness. (13) These experiments proved that the early Peruvian high cultures were very advanced in marine matters, and that an entire reappraisal of early Peruvian seamanship and navigation was necessary. Early pen and ink depiction of a Peruvian coastal sailing raft None of this is really surprising because in 1748 two Spanish naval officers became sufficiently intrigued by the navigation technique employed by the local Indians to look further into the history of the indigenous centreboards. Part of their report read as follows: - "Hitherto we have only mentioned the construction and the uses they [the raft] are applied to, but the greatest singularity of the floating vessel is that it sails, tacks and works as well in contrary winds as ships with a keel, and makes very little leeway. This advantage it derives from another method of steering than by a rudder, namely, by some boards three or four yards in length, and half a yard in breadth, called guaras, which are placed vertically, both at the head and stern

25 between the main beams. By thrusting some of these deep in the water, and raising others, they bear away, luff up, tack, lay to, and perform all the other motions of a regular ship. The method of steering by these centreboards is so simple, that once a Balsa is put in her proper course, one only has to raise or lower as occasions require, to keep the Balsa in her intended direction." Had Heyerdahl and his crew chosen to specifically aim the Kon Tiki to Rapa Nui, it is possible that they could have achieved such a goal, depending on their navigational capabilities and the patterns of the winds and currents at that time. The Humboldt Current, also known as the Peru Current, is a cold, low-salinity ocean current that flows north-westward along the west coast of South America from the southern tip of Chile to northern Peru. It is an eastern boundary current flowing in the direction of the equator, and can extend 1,000 kilometers offshore. It is this current, and prevailing southerly winds which accompany it, that carried the Kon Tiki first northwards and then westwards for its 101 day journey. The presence of El Nino and El Nina events off the shore of Peru, where the offshore water either warms significantly (El Nino) or cools (El Nina) can drastically affect the course of the Humboldt current. In some cases they would assist in guiding a vessel to Rapa Nui, and in other cases prohibit it. Native navigation in Peru and adjoining sections of north-western South America is a subject that is little known and still less understood by modern boat builders and anthropologist. The apparent reason is that the Peruvian Indian boat building was based on principles entirely different from those of our ancestry. To the European mind the only seaworthy vessel is one made buoyant by a watertight, air-filled hull, so big and high that it cannot be filled by the waves. To the ancient Peruvians the only seaworthy craft was one which could never be filled by water because it's open construction formed no receptacle to retain the invading seas, which washed through. They achieved this by building exceedingly buoyant rafts of Balsa wood. This type of Peruvian Balsa raft could travel as far as the islands of Polynesia, 4000 miles away. The first record of a Peruvian Balsa raft antedates the actual

26 discovery of the Inca Empire. When Francisco Pizarro left the Panama Isthmus in 1526 on his second voyage of discovery down the Pacific coast of South America; his expedition found Peruvian merchants sailors at sea long before he discovered their country. His Pilot was sailing ahead to explore the coast southwards near the equator, when off northern Ecuador his ship suddenly met another sailing vessel of almost equal size, coming in the opposite direction. Drawing from 1619 depicting craft off the South America coast The raft was manned by 20 Indian men and women, 11 of whom were thrown overboard, four were left with the raft, and two men and three women were retained by the Spanish to be trained as interpreters for later voyages. The Spaniards estimated the raft capacity at 36 tons, only a fraction less than their own vessel.

27 Their report stated that it carried masts and yards of very fine wood, and cotton sails in the same shape and manner as on their own ships. It had very good rigging of hemp, stronger than their own rope, and mooring stones for anchors. Many similar accounts described rafts made of long and light logs, always of odd number, 5,7,9 or 11, tied together with cross beams and covered by a deck. The larger ones had the ability to carry up to 50 men and three horses, and had a special cooking place on board in a thatched hut. The cargoes often included salt, another proof of their seaworthiness. (14) A maritime exchange system stretched from the west coast of Mexico to southernmost Peru, trading mostly in Spondylus, which represented rain, fertility and was considered the principal food of the gods by the people of the Inca empire. Spondylus was used in elite rituals and the effective redistribution of it had political effect in the Andes during the pre-hispanic times. (15) It was in fact the rafts of the Chincha culture, located to the south of modern day Lima and including the Paracas Peninsula, who were the great navigators and sailors prior to the arrival of the Inca in the area in the 15 th century. And, in fact, spondylus jewelry found in graves of the Paracas culture, dating from 800 BC to 200 AD, hint that the Paracas themselves were capable of visiting and trading with the natives of the coast of Ecuador during this period. What this all indicates is that not only were pre-colombian sea farers in existence on the coast of Peru, but had the capability to make long distance voyaging, and could have reached Rapa Nui. And then of course there are the plants that exist on both Rapa Nui and the western areas of Peru. The most obvious and lauded is the sweet potato, or Kumara, (camote being the common Peruvian name) which Heyerdahl and others have used, effectively, to show that human contact between the two areas in the distant past is probable, as the kumara would unlikely be carried by birds, or float on its own across the great expanse of the ocean. The center of origin and domestication of sweet potato is thought to be either in Central America or South America, and most likely the former, where they were domesticated at least 5,000 years ago. (16) The plant, most likely in the form of

28 cuttings, had most likely been spread by local people to the Caribbean and South America by 2500 BC, with Peru most likely being one of the last places on the continent where it proliferated, due to its geographic distance from the Central American source. The sweet potato was also grown before western exploration in Polynesia. Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated in the Cook Islands to 1000 AD, and current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia around 700 AD, possibly by Polynesians who had traveled to South America and back, and spread across Polynesia to Hawaii and New Zealand from there. (17) However, as we have just seen, it is also very likely that people, aka the Long Ears from the coast of South America could have brought the sweet potato with them when they visited and settled Rapa Nui. Polynesian sweet potato effigy in the Hawaiian Bishop Museum Other plants of interest include the totora reed, most famously native to Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia, where it has been used in the making of boats, houses and even floating islands by the Uru people for thousands of years. (18) It is also

29 prevalent along the mid coast of Peru, where the native people have used totora to build their caballitos de totora, small rowed and straddled fishing vessels, for at least 3,000 years. Surprisingly to most, The Rapanui people of Easter island used totora reeds - locally known as nga'atu - for thatching and to make pora (swimming aids). These are used for recreation, and were formerly employed by hopu (clan champions) to reach offshore Motu Nui in the tangata manu (birdman) competition. How the plant arrived on the island is not clear; Thor Heyerdahl argued that it had been brought by prehistoric Peruvians but it is at least as likely to have been brought by birds. In any case, recent work indicates that totora has been growing on Easter Island for at least 30,000 years. (19)

30 One of the few totora boats still made at Lake Titicaca

31 However, what has seemingly not been addressed is that the name they call their craft made from this material is practically the same, save one letter, on both Rapa Nui and in Peru; Pora in the former, and Tora in the latter. Even if birds had carried the seeds thousands of years before humans supposedly set foot on ships to cross the Pacific, it is clearly likely that they would have brought such a useful plant on their voyages. Manioc, gourd, and another plant known to the Rapa Nui islanders as tavari, used as a medicinal plant, are all originally from South America, but also grow on Rapa Nui. Like the totora, tavari grows in Lake Titicaca. This last information supports the case for contact with Tiahuanaco (Tiwanaku.) Manioc is also called cassava, and more specifically yucca in Peru, where it is still a commonly eaten starchy tuber. Moche Culture If the Viracocha people or person did indeed travel to the north coast of what is called, in present day, and left the shores of the continent as foam of the sea which the term Viracocha refers to, then that territory at the time, of the Moche culture, who existed there from about 100 to 900 AD. Depictions of fishing craft are well known through the abundant and realistic ceramics made by these people, especially depictions of the caballito de totora, water horses which were and are made from totora reeds. Named for the way they are ridden, straddled ('little reed horses' in English), fishermen use them to transport their nets and collect fish in their inner cavity. The name is not the original name as horses were not introduced to South American until after the Spanish arrived in the 15th Century. They are made from the same reed, Scirpus californicus, used by the Uros in the Lake Titicaca region. Fishermen in the port town of Huanchaco famously, but in many other locations practically, still use these vessels to this day, riding the waves back into shore, and suggesting some of the first forms of wave riding. There is currently a minor debate in the surfing world as to whether or not this constitutes the first form of surfing. Though there is evidence through pot shard depictions of slightly larger water craft at the time of the Moche, open sea going vessels have not been documented.

32 Depiction, from ceramics, of a Moche ocean craft The Inca tradition keeps the record of the great Tupac Yupanqui Inca`s expedition to the East Pacific c The Inca`s flotilla, composed by at least 400 or more well-manned balsa rafts. It returned successfully nine months later. Heyerdahl says that centuries before the Vikings began to sail the open seas, the voyages from the Lambayeque Valley Peru- had started navigating in the open Pacific. (20) The voyage is mentioned in the History of the Incas by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa in 1572, whereby Tpac Yupanqui reportedly visited islands he called Nina chumpi ("Fire Island") and Hahua chumpi (or Avachumpi, "Outer Island"). De Gamboa s account states: there arrived at Tumbez some merchants who had come by sea from the west, navigating in balsas with sails. They gave information of the land whence they came, which consisted of some islands called Avachumbi and Ninachumbi, where there were many people and much gold. Tupac Inca was a man of lofty and ambitious ideas, and was not satisfied with the regions he had already conquered. So he determined to challenge a happy fortune, and see if it would favour him by sea. The Inca, having this certainty, determined to go there. He caused an immense number of balsas to be constructed, in which he embarked more than 20,000 chosen men. Tupac Inca navigated and sailed on until he discovered the islands of Avachumbi and Ninachumbi, and returned, bringing back with him black

33 The possible course of the voyage of Tupac Yupanqui people, gold, a chair of brass, and a skin and jaw bone of a horse. These trophies were preserved in the fortress of Cuzco until the Spaniards came. The duration of this expedition undertaken by Tupac Inca was nine months, others say a year, and, as he was so long absent, every one believed he was dead. Some have surmised that this expedition was to Rapa Nui, while others suspect the Galapagos; yet others dismiss the entire account as simply being a myth based on fantasy. If such an expedition was indeed carried out between 1480 and 1489, where realistically could it have been to? Columbus didn t leave the shores of Europe until 1492 One idea could be that Tupaq Yupanqui actually visited Olmec territory, as in southern Mexico where images are carved into stone of possible African faces but that is another topic. The timeframe is where we enter very cloudy waters. If the Long Ears came from the South American coast, then we have already covered the known possibilities in this book. They may have come from the northern coastal areas, as in the Moche culture who were know were sea farers prior to 700 AD, or they were the Viracochas, whose actual existence has not been proven, and date of existence is

34 pure speculation, were the Inca ( but that is late chronologically) or were the Paracas Paracas Culture The Paracas culture is an enigma, to put it mildly. According to conventional academic sources, the Paracas culture was an important Andean society between approximately 800 BCE and 100 BCE, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management. It developed in the Paracas Peninsula, located in what today is the Paracas District of the Pisco Province in the Ica Region. Most of our information about the lives of the Paracas people comes from excavations at the large seaside Paracas site, first investigated by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello in the 1920s. Julio C. Tello, the father of Peruvian archaeology

35 Free ebooks ==> And indeed, this is the root of the problem. Tello, a very well respected Peruvian archaeologist, and in fact perhaps the father of South American archaeology, was the only great academic to do any intensive work at Paracas. In 1919 Tello was working with a team at the Chavín de Huantar archeological site, where he discovered a stele since named for him, the Tello Obelisk. Construction of the first temple at this major religious center was dated to 850 BCE. The work of Tello and others established that the center had been a center of complex culture that lasted for several hundred years, to sometime between 500 and 300 BCE. Until late-20th century discoveries established the dates of the 5000-year-old Norte Chico site, better known as Caral, the Chavín culture was believed to be the oldest complex civilization in Peru. (21) Stone heads of the Chavin culture at Chavin de Huantar Museum Although Tello was fundamental to the analysis of both Chavin and Paracas, his claim that Paracas was heavily influenced and in fact perhaps founded by the

36 Chavin culture has impeded present day research. Based almost solely on the similarity in ceramic designs, especially those of felines, Tello put a cultural origin date for the Paracas at that of Chavin, as in approximately 800 BC. Unfortunately, this has stuck. Although no one really knows where the Paracas people came from, the only reference cited and accepted is that of Tello. However, a simple question to ask is, why would a coastal people have originated in the highlands of Peru? Could not at least some aspect of their ancestry have come from the sea? The location of Paracas on the west coast of South America

37 Again, for this we return to the fact that totora reed has been on the coast of this part of Peru for at least 9000 years, and was clearly used by these fisher people to make boats of some kind with. This, with the other fact that cotton is also a local ancient plant, and you have the perfect combination of materials for making a sailing craft; totora for the body of the boat or raft, and cotton for the sail. The last of the Paracas, as a people, are believed to have disappeared about 200 AD, when they became completely absorbed, both culturally and genetically with the Topará culture. These people, later to become known as the Nazca are thought to have invaded from the north at approximately 150 BC. The two cultures then coexisted, both at this site and in the nearby Ica Valley, and their interaction played a key role in the development of the Nazca culture and ceramic and textile traditions.

38 A classic example of a Paracas culture textile What made the Paracas, at least their ruling and religious elite, different at least in appearance from other Peruvian coastal people, was the presence of elongated skulls and red, or more properly auburn hair. The lack of these two features alone puts the idea that Chavin was the cultural birthplace of the Paracas in serious doubt.

39 Classic Paracas elongated head with wavy auburn hair The royal family of the Paracas, much like the Inca, were presumably a relatively small group of people who commanded, or at least coordinated, the lives of a

40 Free ebooks ==> much larger population of agriculturists and fishermen. Their influence extended from present day Chincha in the north to Nazca and Cahuachi to the south, west to the ocean and east towards the highlands of Ayacucho. Archaeological remains in and around the town of Chaco, which borders the Paracas Wildlife Reserve, as well as sites within the reserve itself shows that a large population of people were actively involved in the growing of maize, peanuts, beans, yucca, cotton and other agricultural products, thanks to the abundance of subterranean aquifers and streams whose source were and are the highlands and Andes mountains. Also, the presence of enormous quantities of sea shells and fish bones show that many fishermen were involved in the procurement of foods from the sea. As well, sandals and other wearables made from sea lion skin, and even dolphin and sperm whale bones have been found in the archaeological record. The latter would be very difficult to find and catch, and would require a very high level of seamanship and hunting ability. Two Paracas elongated skulls next to a normal skull from the same period

41 The elongated skulls are found in four specific cemetery sites in the area, which have been plundered, mainly for ceramics, gold and silver ornaments and textiles since the early 20 th century. In general, the graves of commoners are not found in these four sites, attesting to the concept that even in death, the elongated skull people were to remain special. Cerro Colorado and Cabeza Larga are the two sites where the richest and oldest of the elongated skull graves have been found, and are presumed to be the oldest cemeteries. However, no carbon 14 or other forms of dating have been performed on the artefacts removed from these places, again, since very little archaeological excavations have been performed since Tello s depature in What Tello did find, at Cerro Colorado, were approximately 300 funeral bundles. Each bundle contained the body of a member of the elite elongated skull Paracas people, wrapped in numerous layers of immaculately well made coloured textile; the ornamental mantles of royalty. Portrayal of one of the Paracas funeral bundles

42 The bundles were found in what Tello presumed were family mausoleums, each containing up to 30 bodies. Inside, as well as the deceased royal person, were often found desiccated food products, such as maize and beans, as well as ceremonial items like feathered fans, the feathers having been procured from the Amazon jungle native people, beyond the eastern slopes of the Andes. Appearance of Paracas people according to artist Mark Laplume

43 Drawing of family mausoleum grave at Cerro Colorado This style of burial was unique to the Paracas; there are no contemporary equivalent rituals to be found in the area, or anywhere else in Peru. The graves

44 also tended to face the sea, which would be a logical thing to do if you were a sea faring people. Another intriguing aspect of Paracas behaviour, which again is unique for the time, was that they, the noble class at least, lived underground, in subterranean houses. The logical reasoning for this could very well be to protect themselves from the strong winds which are common to the area, and the occasional sand storm called Paracas, or more correctly Para Aca, which is Quechua, the language of the Inca for raining sand. The naming of the place and hence the people by the Inca in the 15 th century shows us how little is left of their culture; we have no clue what the Paracas called themselves, and what language they spoke. Example of a subterranean Paracas house from Cabeza Larga The facts that their burial rituals and nature of their housing are completely different than any other previous or later culture suggests, at the least, that the Paracas people may have very well not originated in the area. However, the idea that they came from the highlands of Peru, as we have seen, from the area of

45 Free ebooks ==> Chavin, lacks much substance. Where we do find people whose nobility had elongated heads, and evolved as well as complex rituals and construction methods, is at Tiwanaku, and her sister sister site Puma Punku, in the high altiplano of Bolivia, just south of Lake Titicaca. Could Tiwanaku have been the homeland of the Paracas? Or was it visa versa? Lake Titicaca, being 120 miles long and 60 wide, is the size of many of the world s seas, and is clearly large enough to have once been home to a culture or cultures that developed sailing ships, of totora reed. But this is clearly speculation at this point. On the northern shore of the Paracas Peninsula there is a large geoglyph, an impression in the hard sand surface, which gives another piece of evidence to the theory that the Paracas people were sailors. The geoglyph known locally as the Candelabra

46 At almost 600 feet tall, the Candelabra can easily be seen by ships out on the ocean; in fact, that is the only way to observe it, aside from being in a plane, helicopter or balloon. Many people have wrongly presumed that the Nazca people constructed it. Also, many alien researchers have also erroneously stated that this geoglyph points towards Nazca, which is to the southeast of Paracas; it in fact is directed due south. The explanations by archaeologists, local tour guides and others as to what the Candelabra in fact is varies from a treasure map made by pirates to a huge cactus created by native people who worshipped that plant, specifically the San Pedro, for it s hallucinogenic properties. The most logical idea however, in my mind, is that it is a navigational marker made by an ancient sea faring culture; in fact, a marker for home. The date of when it was made is also completely unknown, but varies, depending on who you talk to, at between 3000 and 400 years ago. The Candelabra was possibly created in a specific area where prevailing winds from the ocean do not impact it, and since the area only receives about one inch of rain per year, erosion has had very little effect. The very dense and compacted sand which makes up the Candelabra and surrounding area has a very high concentration of salt in it. This not only makes it resistant to erosion, but also sharpens its ability to be seen, especially during a full moon. Finally, Spondylus shell, which only naturally occurs off the coast of Ecuador, to the north of Peru, has been found in the graves of some of the Paracas elongated headed elite. The photograph below is of a necklace in the collection of the Paracas History museum, collected by Sr. Juan Navarro. Its presence in a Paracas cemetery tells us that the Paracas people clearly traded with counterparts in Ecuador up to 3000 years ago, or perhaps even further back. What is unknown is whether the Paracas traveled north to trade for it, or if the Ecuadorians moved south.

47 Spondylus necklace to the left, and emerald one to the right; both coming from Ecuador And where do we see the red or auburn hair featured prominently elsewhere? Francisco Pizarro, the head of the Spanish Conquistadors who crushed the Inca starting in 1532, who was not literate, did have a secretary who was. He wrote about the appearance of the Inca, via Thor Heyerdahl: "silky and wavy, as found amongst Europeans, they have long skulls and remarkably tall bodies. Hair experts have shown by microscopic analysis, that the red hair has all the characteristics that ordinarily distinguish a Nordic hair type from that of Mongols or American Indians." (22) Could the Paracas have been the descendants of the Viracocha, who decided to stay on the coast of Peru? At this point it is a tantalising idea, but that is about all.

48 Portrait of a Paracas female noble by artist Amida Carlus

49 Photo of the Paracas red haired female noble and baby The most intriguing lead for future research can be seen in the photo above. In the tomb where the noble female was found, a baby s skull was also present. Though no forensic scientist has yet studied this very rare find, it is clear that the child has an elongated head, and his or her hair is red in colour. Nazca As we have already established, the Nazca were a culture that came and mixed with the Paracas from approximately 100 BC to 200AD. After this point, the elongated skull attribute of the people ceased to exist, as did the Paracas as a distinct people. The Nazca flourished in the lands previously inhabited by the Paracas, and made distinct improvements in ornamental pottery production, irrigation and thus agricultural production, and possibly major adobe constructions, such as the massive Cahuachi complex of pyramids, though the actual timeline of the latter is disputed by various scholars.

50 Free ebooks ==> Paracas culture skulls found at Cahuachi From 500 CE, the civilization started to decline and by 750 CE the civilization had fallen completely. This was due to El Niño which triggered widespread and destructive flooding. Evidence also suggests that the Nazca people may have exacerbated the effects of these floods by gradually cutting down Prosopis pallida trees to make room for maize and cotton agriculture. These trees play an extremely important role as the ecological keystone of this landscape: in particular preventing river and wind erosion. Gradual removal of trees would have exposed the landscape to the effects of climate perturbations such as El Niño, leading to erosion and leaving irrigation systems high and dry. (94)

51 The Nazca culture is characterized by its beautiful polychrome pottery, painted with at least 15 distinct colors. The shift from post-fire resin painting to pre-fire slip painting marked the end of Paracas-style pottery and the beginning of Nazcastyle pottery. The use of pre-fire slip painting meant that a great deal of experimentation took place in order to know which slips produced certain colours. The Paracas were known for their extensive agricultural productivity, especially in the Chincha Valley area, but the Nazca later improved on this by developing an aqueduct system, with complex spiralling access holes collectively called puquios to sustain life in the exceedingly arid environment. The exact date of construction of the puquios has been under contention for some time now. Dating of the puquios is quite difficult because of the materials involved in their construction. Attempts at dating the trenches have also been difficult as the puquios were found by excavation. (95) Two of a long series of puquio entrance holes near Nazca Cahuachi was a major ceremonial center from 1 CE to about 500 CE. Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Orefici has been excavating the site for the past few decades, bringing a team down every year. The site contains over 40 mounds topped with adobe structures. It is a huge architectural complex covering 0.6 sq. miles (1.5 km 2 ). Although ascribed solely to the Nazca, the pyramids themselves,

52 which may number as many as 30, could in whole or in part been the work of the Paracas. (96) The only one of thirty Cahuachi pyramids that have been excavated What also remains of the presence of the Nazca are graves, exposed to a great extent not as the result of government sanctioned archaeological digs, but as the result of grave robbing. At the main Nazca graveyard of Chauchilla, located about 30 km south of the city of Nazca, many skulls have been unearthed, and discarded by the grave robbers, called Huaquero, having red hair. The cemetery was discovered in the 1920s, but had not been used since the 9th century AD, and includes many important burials over a period of 600 to 700 years. The start of the interments was in about 200 AD, presumably based on carbon 14 testing, and so would have been at the tail end of any Paracas presence in the area.

53 Chauchilla skeleton with obvious red hair Chauchilla skeleton with long red dread locks

54 Nazca trophy head showing distinctly red hair

55 Chachapoyas: Cloud Warriors The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, were an Andean people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonas region of present-day Peru When the Spanish arrived in Peru in the 16th century, the Chachapoyas were one of the many nations ruled by the Inca. Their incorporation into the Inca Empire had not been easy, due to their constant resistance to the Inca incursions. Since the Incas and the Spanish conquistadors were the principal sources of information on the Chachapoyas, there is little first-hand or contrasting knowledge of the Chachapoyas. Writings by the major chroniclers of the time, such as El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, were based on fragmentary second-hand accounts. Much of what we do know about the Chachapoyas culture is based on archaeological evidence from ruins, pottery, tombs and other artefacts. The chronicler Pedro Cieza de León offers some picturesque notes about the Chachapoyas: They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen in Indies, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple. The women and their husbands always dressed in woolen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos, which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere. Contrary to erroneous assertions, no early Spanish accounts describe the Chachapoyas as "blond haired" or "blue eyed". The oft-quoted Cieza de Leon merely records that they were the "whitest" in coloration he had seen. There is no indication of "racial" connotations in this description - another early Spanish source, Pedro Pizarro, describes all the Indians of Peru as "white". Hair and eye color are not mentioned. Thus the supposedly "enduring mystery for scholars of the region as to their ultimate origin" is a modern slant based on a misunderstanding of the sources, and seems largely driven by a desire to find a trans-atlantic origin for the Chachapoyas. (49)

56 All that seems to be indicated by Cieza de Leon is that the Chachapoyas were among the lightest in skin color, of the Andean natives the Spanish contacted. Inge Schjellerup's book Incas and Spaniards in the Conquest of the Chachapoyas (1997) refers to anthropological examinations of the physical remains of Enigmatic burial effigies of the Chachapoyas Chachapoyans. There is no reason from these to conclude that the Chachapoyas had any exotic origins different from other ancient Peruvians. For instance, the teeth show an almost complete absence of Carabelli's cusp on the upper molars, while shovel-shaped upper incisors are universally present - in both of these the Chachapoyas resemble other Amerindians, and differ from "white" Europeans. (50) Polynesian Ancestors Of Rapanui Orthodox researchers believe that Easter Island was settled only once: by Polynesians in the 4th century AD. Since no seafarers in those days are supposed

57 to have had maps, it is thought that the island must have been discovered mainly by chance, and that such an unlikely event could not possibly have happened more than once. As John Flenley and Paul Bahn put it: The chances of Easter Island being reached even once were extremely limited; to imagine it being reached several times over vast distances is beyond belief. (23) Some of the island s legends, however, imply two or three different migrations. As is often the case, native traditions are sometimes contradictory and cannot all be historically accurate, but they may offer important clues. Map of the orthodox patterns of Polynesian migration In fact, what do the present day living people of Rapanui say about how difficult it could have been, or in fact today is, to navigate to the island from the Polynesian homeland of Tahiti? According to a member of the Rapanui royal family I met in Hawaii in 1996, whose last name is Rapu, but shall not reveal her actual identity for privacy reasons, the sea path from Tahiti to Rapanui was used for centuries, the last navigator sailor being her own father, in the 1950s.

58 The Hawaiian voyaging double hull sailing canoe Hokule a (called a Wa a Kaulua in Hawaiian), which was first launched in 1975, which was named after the star Arcturus (Star of Gladness), was the first traditional vessel, under wind power, to have been documented traveling from Tahiti to Rapanui in hundreds of years. Hokule a is most famous for having shown, thanks to her governing body, the Polynesian Voyaging Society, under the guidance of Dr. Ben Finney, Herb Kane and Tommy Holmes, that the Hawaiian people could have comfortably sailed from Tahiti, the believed homeland of all Polynesian people, to Hawaii without western navigational instruments. This she achieved in 1976, thanks in large part to her traditional navigator, a Micronesian master mariner named Mau Piailug. Drawing by Herb Kane of Hokule a There had not been any Hawaiian master navigators for hundreds of years, a subject I delve deeply into in my book Hawaii: From Origins To The End Of The Monarchy, available at: Mau was one of the few men living in the Pacific, and perhaps the last, who could possibly guide the Hokule a from Hawaii to Tahiti, and this he did very successfully.

59 By day he was guided by the rising and setting sun but also by the ocean herself, the mother of life. He could read how far he was from shore, and its direction, by the feel of the swell against the hull. He could detect shallower water by colour, and see the light of invisible lagoons reflected in the undersides of clouds. Sweeter-tasting fish meant rivers in the offing; groups of birds, homing in the evening, showed him where land lay. He began to learn all this as a baby, when his grandfather, himself a master navigator, held his tiny body in tidal pools to teach him how waves and wind blew differently from place to place. Later came intensive memorising of the starcompass, a circle of coral pebbles, each pebble a star, laid out in the sand round a palm-frond boat. This was not dilettantism, but essential study; on tiny Satawal Atoll, where he spent his life, deep-sea fishing out in the Pacific was necessary to survive. (24) Mau Piailug celebrated for his mastery of traditional navigation A canoe sailing directly to Rapa Nui from the Marquesas, thought by some to have been the source of Rapa Nui migrants, would have to cross almost 2,000 miles of open ocean. At 1,450 miles away, Mangareva, another candidate as a source

60 Free ebooks ==> island, is somewhat closer. A scattering of atolls and the tiny high island of Pitcairn lying to the east of Mangareva cuts this gap by 300 miles. But, even from Pitcairn, a voyage across 1,150 miles of open ocean to a single, small island would be a difficult undertaking. That Rapa Nui lies to windward, with respect to the easterly trade winds, of the rest of Polynesia would seem to compound this difficulty immensely. Polynesian canoes can tack to windward, but it is a long, slow process as almost four miles has to be sailed obliquely to the wind to make one mile directly to windward, a ratio that increases greatly when also sailing against a strong current. A crossing from Pitcairn to Rapa Nui made directly against the southeast trades and accompanying currents would therefore require a canoe to sail over 4,000 miles, a task made even more difficult by the beating the canoe and crew would suffer pushing directly against wind and sea. According to such reasoning, a voyage from Pitcaim or any other Polynesian island to Rapa Nui would seem out of the question; even the colonization from the west of the main Polynesian archipelagos would look improbable because of their position to windward. Indeed, Heyerdahl largely based his argument against the orthodox theory of Polynesian settlement from the west on his assertion that canoe voyagers could not have sailed across the tropical Pacific against "the permanent trade winds and forceful companion currents of the enormous Southern Hemisphere." The easterly trade winds are, however, anything but permanent. Periodically they die down, and the winds blow from the west, not from the east. This monsoonal pattern is strongest in the western Pacific; in Indonesian waters the alternating seasons of winter easterlies and summer westerlies are still exploited by commercial sailing vessels to carry cargo back and forth from one end of the archipelago to another. The regular extension of these summer westerlies virtually to the edge of Polynesia was undoubtedly exploited by the immediate ancestors of the Polynesians, the makers of the famous Lapita pottery, to expand so rapidly into the central Pacific. Although these summer westerlies become much more episodic in the eastern Pacific, spells of westerly winds apparently were frequent and long-enduring enough to enable the Polynesian descendants of the Lapita pioneers to spread beyond Samoa and Tonga to the archipelagos directly to the east. (25)

61 And now, a broader perspective of where the original Polynesians came from, according to academia, and then we can get back to a more focused discussion of the migration to Rapanui. Lapita: Possible Polynesian Origins Lapita is a term applied to an ancient Pacific Ocean archaeological culture which is believed by many archaeologists to be the common ancestor of several cultures in Polynesia, Micronesia, and some coastal areas of Melanesia. The archaeological culture and its characteristic geometric dentate stamped pottery are named after the type of site where it was first uncovered in the Foué peninsula on Grand Terre, the main island of New Caledonia. The excavation was carried out in 1952 by American archaeologists Edward W. Gifford and Richard Shulter Jr at 'Site 13'. (26) Classic Lapita design; not similar to Polynesian designs to a great degree The settlement and pottery shards were later dated to 800 BC and proved significant in research on the early peopling of the Pacific Islands. More than two

62 Free ebooks ==> hundred Lapita sites have since been uncovered, ranging more than 4000km from coastal and island Melanesia to Fiji and Tonga with its most eastern limit so far in Samoa. In Western Polynesia, Lapita pottery is found from 800 BC onwards in the Fiji-Samoa-Tonga area. From Tonga and Samoa, Polynesian culture spread to Eastern Polynesia areas including the Marquesas and the Society Islands, and then later to Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. However, pottery making did not persist in most of Polynesia, mainly due to the lack of suitable clay on small islands. Many scientists believe Lapita pottery in Melanesia to be proof that Polynesians passed through this area on their way into the central Pacific, despite only circumstantial evidence connecting Lapita with Polynesia. Plainware pottery is found on many Polynesian islands and was thought to be a significant player in the transformation of Lapita society into a Polynesian cultural complex. Unfortunately no classical Polynesian artifacts have been found within this plainware assemblage. Archaeological evidence indicates that plainware pottery ceases abruptly in Samoa around 0BC, being replaced by classic Polynesian cultural complex. This clearly indicates a change in the control of the islands, from the waning Lapita settlers to a culture that used gourds, two-piece fishhooks, trolling lures, harpoon heads, tanged adzes, stone pounders and tattooing needles none of which are found amongst Lapita artifacts. (27) According to Anita Smith: Although ceramics have been used as the primary material culture correlate for cultural change in West Polynesia, they are perhaps least suited to identifying Ancestral Polynesians in the archaeological record. Ceramics were not manufactured by Polynesian societies at any time in East Polynesian prehistory. Therefore trying to connect Lapita and plainware pottery with Polynesians is illogical. (28) Other attempts to link Lapita culture with Polynesians are similarity in, for example, the techniques used to shape, grind and sand adzes and other stone tools. So, very little direct evidence indeed, and much speculation. Unfortunately, as often occurs, if academics say it is so then the general public accepts it, blindly. But what do the oral traditions of the people say? The various Polynesian cultures each have distinct but related oral traditions, that is, legends or myths traditionally considered to recount the history of ancient times (the time of "pō") and the adventures of gods ( atua ) and deified

63 ancestors. The accounts are characterised by extensive use of allegory, metaphor, parable, hyperbole, and personification. The Maori of New Zealand (Aotearoa) especially, as well as some Hawaiians believe that the homeland of all of the Polynesian people, more correctly known as the Maori (Aotearoa, Tahiti and Rapanui) and Maoli (Hawaii) is a mythical, or perhaps real land called Hawaiki. Of course, the similarity to the name Hawaii is obvious, but most believe that it represents the island, in Tahiti more commonly known as Raiatea.

64 Map of the islands of Raiatea and Tahaa When European scholars began to investigate tribal traditions in depth, some were taken by stories concerning Hawaiki. Given the ubiquity of Hawaiki in tribal traditions all describe Hawaiki as some kind of originating point some Europeans attempted to understand more.

65 One scholar was S. Percy Smith, the founding president of the Polynesian Society and author of numerous texts on tribal history and traditions. In his book Hawaiki, the original homeland of the Maori (1904), Smith advanced his theories as to the physical location of Hawaiki. He suggested that islands such as Savai i in Samoa, Hawaii and even Java near Indonesia were actually Hawaiki in localised forms. His method was to develop a view on the origins of the Māori people by analysing the traditions held by Māori in his time. This method had widespread acceptance and many scholars, both Māori and European, were excited by his conclusions. (29) Criticisms of Smith s methodology are numerous, but two presented by Margaret Orbell in Hawaiki: a new approach to Māori tradition (1985) are particularly telling. First, she suggests that it is inappropriate to view tribal traditions as historical; in other words, they should not be read literally as a record of actual events. She argues that by the time Europeans arrived in New Zealand, iwi traditions were on the whole mythical in character. In her view the memory of a Polynesian homeland was transformed into myth over a long period. Therefore, it is more useful to interpret iwi traditions as symbolic of past events rather than as a literal representation. Second, she points out that Smith and others were too willing to explain away inconsistencies and to smooth over difficulties. Orbell writes: Unfortunately they approached their material in such a wildly speculative and uncritical manner that the whole subject is now in some disrepute.' (30) The idea that Raiatea is the homeland of the Maori and Maoli people is given credibility by the presence of Taputapuatea, which is and has been the central marae, or holy place of these people for centuries at least. As it is said, by European descended scholars and Native people alike, Tahiti sits at the center of what is known as the Polynesian Triangle; the three points that make up this triangle are Hawaii in the north, New Zealand (Aotearoa) to the southwest and Rapanui in the southeast. Raiatea, and more specifically Taputapuatea, whose age is unknown, even to the inhabitants of the island, and whose name roughly translates as the very sacred white place which does not refer to skin colour, but to purity, was and is the central spiritual place for the triangle. Raiatea is also known as the homeland of the Gods, namely Tane, Rongo, Tu and Tangaroa, shared by all of the so called Polynesian people, and these Gods, whose

66 home is the summit of the mountain named Temehani, are believed by some to still live there. Unfortunately, after exhaustive years of research into where the Polynesians came from prior to this, based on oral traditions, I have hit a wall; there is apparently no information, or at least none that I have been able to access, through books, the internet, and even my journey there some time ago. So how did the Maori people of Rapanui arrive on their island, and when according to their own traditions? According to legend, a powerful supernatural being named Uoke, who came from a land called Hiva, travelled about the Pacific prying up whole islands with a gigantic lever and tossing them into the sea where they vanished beneath the waves. After destroying many islands he came to the coast of Easter Island, then a much larger land than it is today, and began to lever up parts of it and cast them into the sea. Eventually he reached a place on the island where the rocks were so sturdy that his lever broke. He was unable to dispose of the last fragment, and this remained as the island we know today. Easter Island s culture was founded by the legendary god-king Hotu Matua ( prolific father ), who is said to have lived on a remnant of Hiva called Maori, in a locality called Marae Renga. According to one version of the legend, he set sail for Easter Island due to the cataclysm caused by Uoke. Another version says he was forced to flee after being defeated in war. After a magician in Hiva called Hau Maka had made an astral journey to Easter Island in a dream, a reconnaissance voyage of seven youths was sent there, and Hotu Matua followed later in a double-canoe. (31) The most widespread tradition today is that Hotu Matua s homeland was a large, warm, green island to the west of Easter Island, but a tradition told to the earliest European explorers says that the first settlers came from a land to the east, known as Marae-toe-hau, the burial place, which had a very hot climate. (32) One tradition suggests that the first Polynesian migration, led by Hotu Matua, was followed by a second Polynesian migration about 100 years later. References are also made to several voyages being made back and forth to Hiva. There are indications that Easter Island was inhabited even before Hotu Matua arrived. According to one tradition, when Hau Maka had his prophetic dream, he

67 saw six men on the island. Another mentions that Hoto Matua s seven explorers found an inhabitant on the island, who had arrived with another person who had since died. (33) Drawing of Hotu Matu a guiding the way to Rapanui A third account says that a burial platform was found at Hotu Matua s landing place, and a network of stone-paved roads built by earlier settlers was found inland. (34) This may prove key to the idea that there were in fact two distinct periods of construction on Rapanui, very refined stone walls, small in size and referred to as temple bases, or Ahu, as well as the first of the great head, and or head/body figures called Moai. But this we shall get into later. Francis Mazière, who conducted archaeological excavations on the island in 1963, was told by a native elder that very big men, but not giants, lived on the island well before the coming of Hotu-Matua. Another related the following legend:

68 The first men to live on the island were the survivors of the world s first race. They were yellow, very big, with long arms, great stout chests, huge ears although their lobes were not stretched: they had pure yellow hair and their bodies were hairless and shining. They did not possess fire. This race once existed on two other Polynesian islands. They came by boat from a land that lies behind America. (35) The key players in the island s traditional history are the Hanau eepe and the Hanau momoko. These terms are often translated long-ears and short-ears respectively. However, some researchers say that this is erroneous, and that the correct translations are stocky race and slender race. Hanau means race or ethnic group. Eepe means stocky or corpulent, but there is also a word epe, which means earlobe. Thor Heyerdahl says that the term was formerly spelled Hanau epe. Whatever the correct term may be, the people referred to certainly had elongated earlobes. Today momoko carries the sense of sharp-pointed, and it is assumed that the word probably used to mean slender or weak. 8 Some writers have concluded that the Hanau eepe were the upper class, and the Hanau momoko the lower class. (36) The long-ears reportedly subjugated the short-ears, until the latter finally rebelled. All the long-ears except one were allegedly massacred in the latter half of the 17th century; after a fierce battle the short-ears drove them into the Poike ditch, in which piles of brushwood had been set alight. Most researchers doubt this story, as no weapons or bones have ever been found in the ditch. Although some charcoal excavated from it has been radiocarbon dated to about 1676, other charcoal has been dated to about 386 AD and to the 11th century, and it could all have come from bush fires or slash-and-burn practices used in clearing the fields. In any event, it is unlikely that only one long-ear survived such a battle, since a period of civil war followed when all the long-eared statues were overthrown, and there were still people with elongated earlobes alive when the first Europeans arrived. In contrast with the powerfully supernatural origin myths of many of the world's indigenous cultures, the story of Hotu Matu'a is actually probable in many respects. Glottochronology, a linguistic analysis technique that aims to determine when languages with common root tongues separated from each other, indicates that the language of Rapa Nui contains many Polynesian place names and a strong structural commonality with an archaic central eastern Polynesian dialect, as well

69 as elements of an archaic western Polynesian dialect that would have only been present in earlier forms of the central eastern tongue. Using these criteria, it has been surmised that the people of Rapa Nui split completely apart from the rest of Polynesia sometime between 300 and 550 CE, probably voyaging from the westerly Marquesas, or (more likely) the central eastern Mangareva or Pitcairn. The linguistic evidence corresponds with a recent count of 57 generations since Hotu Matu'a which, judging by an average of 25 years per generation, would place an approximate date of 450 CE for the founding population. The earliest firm radiocarbon dates for human habitation on the island are from Ahu Tahai on the island's southwest corner (near Hanga Roa), and date to 690 CE plus or minus 130 years; this data is also consistent with legend since it would have taken sometime before the first Ahu s construction. Questions as to the historical trajectory of the island have been contentious for decades. Many theories have been propounded about comings and goings to the island from South America as well as later migrations from Polynesia. More recently, the archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo have pursued the hypothesis that the island was not colonized until the 12th-13th centuries CE; however, current paleo-environmental and linguistic evidence points to a single migration and an earlier settlement which is consistent with legend. (37) Rapa Nui's southwest corner seems to have been colonized first, and it is here where introduced Polynesian species of plants and animals would have initially been nurtured in this new environment. Due to the climate being slightly colder, drier, and windier than most of Polynesia, however, certain staple domesticates (such as the breadfruit and coconut) did not grow. In addition, there is no evidence of the presence of dogs and pigs on the island before European contact. At the north coast's Anakena, the legendary landing site of Hotu Matu'a, the first habitations seem to date to the 8th or 9th centuries CE, with the first Ahu built here by 1100 CE. The south coast didn't build up until around 1300 CE, when monumental construction on the island peaked. This construction was centered on the Ahu and Moai. While Rapa Nui s monumental architecture developed into highly distinct forms, analogous examples can be found in traditional Polynesia. The Ahu platforms have clear antecedents in the Marae platforms of Tahiti, where wooden Moai-like figures and smaller stone idols were erected. On Rapa Nui, Moai represent respected ancestors and chiefs, often serving as funerary monuments. With their great size and stately form, they likely served as a type of sacred border between

70 Free ebooks ==> the terrestrial world and the heavens; between life and death. Positioned on Ahu, the Moai of the coast faced inland; they were said to be infused with the Mana (spiritual power) of the persons they were dedicated to. These Moai exercised considerable power over the island, a power which likely included a solid territorial stake for the descendants of the persons they represented. As social boundaries seem to have been fairly strong between the different chiefdoms, and likely got more defined through the early 11th-16th centuries CE, it has been inferred that the bulk of the Moai carving and Ahu construction was undertaken not by a centralized authority but by individual chiefdoms, and quite likely in a competitive manner. Who Were The Stone Masons, And When? As is stated above, the conventional belief by academics is that most, if not all Moai, and the Ahu altars of Rapanui were made between the 11 th and 16 th centuries AD. Most of the Moai were made of volcanic tuff, which is a relatively soft material. However, 53 of the known 887 are of harder stone, in some cases basalt. In fact, there are 13 Moai carved from basalt, 22 from trachyte and 17 from fragile red scoria). (38)

71 Moai on an Ahu on Rapanui A basic description of the Moai is as follows. The Moai are monolithic statues, their minimalist style related to forms found throughout Polynesia. Moai are carved in relatively flat planes, the faces bearing proud but enigmatic expressions. The over-large heads (a three-to-five ratio between the head and the body, a sculptural trait that demonstrates the Polynesian belief in the sanctity of the chiefly head) have heavy brows and elongated noses with a distinctive fish-hookshaped curl of the nostrils. The lips protrude in a thin pout. Like the nose, the ears are elongated and oblong in form. The jaw lines stand out against the truncated neck. The torsos are heavy, and, sometimes, the clavicles are subtly outlined in stone. The arms are carved in bas relief and rest against the body in various positions, hands and long slender fingers resting along the crests of the hips, meeting at the hami (loincloth), with the thumbs sometimes pointing towards the navel. Generally, the anatomical features of the backs are not detailed, but sometimes bear a ring and girdle motif on the buttocks and lower back. Except for one kneeling Moai, the statues do not have legs.

72 What has perhaps attracted the most attention about the Moai is that you don t appear, in general, to look Polynesian. The noses especially, being oblong, are in contrast to what may be described as the more common flattened ones of Polynesians. Was this an artistic expression, or an indication that the Moai were not meant to portray Hotu Matua and his descendants? Classic Moai on Rapanui with topknots Dr. Robert Schoch, the American geologist from Boston University, who was a pivotal force in proving that the Sphinx in Egypt is clearly far older than the accepted date by Egyptologists of around 2500 BC. In his own words: In 1990 I first traveled to Egypt, with the sole purpose of examining the Great Sphinx from a geological perspective. I assumed that the Egyptologists were correct in their dating, but soon I discovered that the geological evidence was not compatible with what the Egyptologists were saying. On the body of the Sphinx, and on the walls of the Sphinx Enclosure (the pit or hollow remaining after the Sphinx s body was carved from the bedrock), I found heavy erosional features (seen in the accompanying photographs) that I concluded could only have been caused by rainfall and water runoff. The thing is, the Sphinx sits on the edge of the Sahara Desert and the region has been quite arid for the last 5000 years. Furthermore,

73 Free ebooks ==> various structures securely dated to the Old Kingdom show only erosion that was caused by wind and sand (very distinct from the water erosion). To make a long story short, I came to the conclusion that the oldest portions of the Great Sphinx, what I refer to as the core-body, must date back to an earlier period (at least 5000 B.C., and maybe as early as 7000 or 9000 B.C.), a time when the climate was very different and included more rain. (39) Sphinx in Egypt: weathering of the body was not caused by wind When he visited Rapanui, albeit briefly in January of 2010, Schoch was particularly impressed by the varying degrees of weathering and erosion seen on different moai, which could be telltale signs of major discrepancies in their ages. The levels of sedimentation around certain Moai also impressed him. Some Moai have been buried in up to an estimated six meters (20 feet) of sediment, or more, such that even though they are standing erect, only their chins and heads are above the current ground level. Such high levels of sedimentation could occur quickly, for instance, if there were catastrophic landslides or mudflows, but Schoch could not find any such evidence (and landslides would tend to shift and knock over the tall

74 statues). Rather, to his eye, the sedimentation around certain Moai suggests a much more extreme antiquity than most conventional archaeologists and historians believe to be the case. Recent excavations showing that some Moai have bodies

75 Not only does sedimentation around the statues suggest a longer and different chronology than conventionally accepted, but so too do weathering and erosion patterns, and stylistic considerations. Although on one level most of the Moai are stylistically similar and even stereotypic, at another level each is unique and they could, Schoch believes, be categorized according to stylistic considerations. Amazing example of what still hides below the surface

76 The Moai should, in addition, be sorted according to lithology (stone type) as well as weathering and erosion levels (taking orientation and relative exposure to the elements into account). Another key to solving the problem will be to compare weathering, erosion, and sedimentation rates in historical times. Schoch has begun to gather photographs of various Moai and landforms on Easter Island taken over the last 130 years so as to compare them geologically to their conditions today, and in this way attempt to get a quantitative handle on weathering, erosion, and sedimentation rates. (39) The earliest Moai appear to have been more finely worked from harder stone such as basalt, compared to the volcanic tuffs of most Moai, which appear to date from later periods. The few surviving basalt Moai have been found at deeper stratigraphic levels below other Moai and the platforms upon which they were erected, or were reused in later structures thus indicating the basalt Moai are among the earliest on the island. Furthermore, at least one of the basalt Moai (now housed in the museum on Easter Island) is of a very strange form; with an elongated head and well-defined breasts it is often considered a female while virtually all other Moai appear to be males. Another major puzzle, which is directly applicable to the chronology and dating of the Moai, is the matter of where they were quarried. Quarries on the rim of the volcanic crater, where large Moai were carved from the volcanic tuffs, are well exposed and still contain partially carved sculptures still in place. Based on the geology of Easter Island, Schoch expects that any suitable basalt deposits, from which the harder stone Moai came from, would occur lower in the stratigraphic section, so low in fact that they might currently be under sea level off the coast of the island. Sea levels have risen dramatically since the end of the last ice age, on average 350 feet globally, some ten thousand or more years ago, and if the basalt Moai were quarried along the coast of Easter Island from areas since inundated by the sea, this could help to date them, and is immediately suggestive that they are thousands of years older than conventionally believed to be the case. Also, while the later standard Moai carved of volcanic tuffs could be relatively easily cut out of the rock using primitive tools found in abundance on the island, the same cannot be said for the apparently earlier and more sophisticated basalt Moai, which may have formed the model and set the standard for the later volcanic tuff ones. (40)

77 Such a concept, based on a clearly reliable geologist like Robert Schoch, fits in well with the idea that Rapanui was populated, for an extensive period of time, by two separate peoples; one, who were masters of hard stone sculpture and wall (Ahu) building, and another, that was most likely put into service, whether voluntarily or by force, to replicate the earlier works. Detail of masonry mastery at Vinapu Ahu on Rapanui And hence we return again to the discussion of the Hanau eepe and Hanau momoko, the so called Long Ears and Short Ears. Certain traditions relate that the Hanau Eepe brought moai carving and other civilized arts to Easter Island, and they generally dominated, and even enslaved, the Hanau Momoko. This situation ended when the Hanau Momoko rebelled against their masters, drove the Hanau Eepe to one corner of the island, and in an epic battle all or almost all (traditions vary) of the Hanau Eepe were killed. Whether the Hanau eepe arrived first or last we have endeavoured to ascertain in earlier parts of the book.

78 It is highly unlikely that they came afterwards, because, if the theory is that they were lighter skinned people from the coast of Peru, and in fact the Inca, what is now known from my research, and that of others, such as David Hatcher Childress, Jesus and Alfredo Gamarra and others is that the Inca themselves were not great stone masons. They were not responsible for the construction of the best known enigmatic hard stone works such as those found around Cuzco, and in the Sacred Valley of Peru, such as the Coricancha, Sachsayhuaman and Ollantayambo, as well as the Sun Temple and Hitching Post of the Sun at Machu Picchu. These predate the Inca by thousands of years, because they display the clear presence of technological prowess which the Inca did not have. In the archaeological record, the Inca only possessed bronze chisels and stone hammers, tools which could not have produced the can t fit a human hair in between the stones accuracy seen at the above sites. For more information as regards this, I refer you to my own books, located at and Clearly a struggle did ensue between the two races that Roggeveen witnessed when he visited in 1722, but when exactly, and why? He states that they were "of all shades of colour, yellow, white and brown" and did not record any strife occurring between these people, who were clearly from different genetic, and therefore most likely cultural origins. In 1770 a Spanish party from Peru claimed the island for Spain. A conflict seems to have raged on the island before the arrival of the British navigator Captain James Cook four years later. He found a decimated, poverty-stricken population, and observed that the statue cult seemed to have ended, as most of the statues had been pulled down. It s possible that some of the statues were toppled even before the Dutch and Spanish visits but that those sailors did not visit the same sites as Cook. (41) The Frenchman La Pérouse visited Easter Island in 1786 and found the population calm and prosperous, suggesting a quick recovery from any catastrophe. In 1804 a Russian visitor reported that at least 20 statues were still standing. Accounts from subsequent years suggest another period of destruction so that perhaps only a handful of statues were still standing a decade later. Some of the statues still upright at the beginning of the 19th century were knocked down by western expeditions.

79 Drawing from the visit by Captain Cook in 1774 The reason for the precipitous decline in the population of the Rapanui people after the first visit by an outsider, as in Roggeveen, is obvious; disease. Whether intentionally or by accident, more likely the latter, contact with Europeans, after having been isolated for centuries, would have made the Rapanui people vulnerable to diseases carried by the outsiders. To add insult to injury of the local population, in 1862, Peruvian slave ships took 1,000 men (most of the male population), to work the Guano Islands of Lima. Included in this group of slaves were the king, his son, and most of the native priests. 100 survivors were later returned, of which 15 reached their homes (carrying smallpox), which almost finished the population of the island. (42) By

80 Free ebooks ==> , the total remaining island population was 111. (originally estimated at 5,000). The impact on the oral traditions and memory of the survivors, and those that live on Rapanui today, is quite obvious. Such a drastic and quite rapid reduction in a population of people, small to start with, would have no doubt killed off many, if not most of the educated members, and with them would have gone the knowledge of their history. Until 1888, Rapa Nui was unclaimed by any foreign country: The island was an unattractive target for acquisition for it lacked rivers and trees, and a safe anchorage. But into this void stepped Chile, which annexed the island under the impression that it had agricultural potential and strategic possibilities as a naval station. Formal annexation brought little change to the island until 1896 when Chile placed the island under the jurisdiction of the Department of Valparaiso. The island was turned into a vast sheep ranch under the direction of a Valparaiso businessman, Enrique Merlet, who confiscated buildings and all animals left to the Rapa Nui by the missionaries who had fled the island in the wake of Dutrou- Bornier's reign of terror. Islanders were forced to build a stone wall around the village of Hangaroa and, except for work, permission was needed to leave the area even to fetch water from the crater. Those who revolted against these perverse rules were exiled to the continent, few returned. A Scots Chilean company, Williamson Balfour, was the "owner" of the company and in 1903 they created a subsidiary, The Easter Island Exploitation Company. All the island outside of Hangaroa village was given over to the commercial production of wool and animal byproducts. These activities made radical changes in the vegetation of the island as well as on the archaeological sites some of which were destroyed to obtain rock for sheep pens and other structures. Successive Chilean governments continued to contract with the Company which controlled every part of island life, from employment to the food supply. Reports in Chilean newspapers described the pitiful plight of the Rapa Nui who often were clad in rags and lacked such essentials as soap. Supply ships came infrequently and irregularly. At one point, desperate islanders petitioned the government to allow them all to emigrate to Tahiti. Reports of the miserable conditions on the island were verified by Bishop Edwards who came to study the problem of leprosy in Edwards' ensuing 'crusade' brought some changes but, in general, things were the same on the island into the 1950s.

81 Horses on Rapanui today contribute to habitat destruction Instead of renewing the sheep company's contract, in 1953 Chile appointed the Navy to oversee the island. This was not a happy time for the islanders who continued to be confined to the village. Navy rule proved to be much harsher than that of the former sheep ranchers, for they had the manpower and means to enforce their rigid rules. From 1944 to 1958 forty one Rapa Nui tried to escape their island 'prison' in open fishing boats. Some made it to the Tuamotus; at least half disappeared at sea. But at this time, interest in the island's archaeology brought the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to the island, followed by restoration projects and systematic surveys begun by William Mulloy, one of the members of the Norwegian Expedition. These projects awakened Chilean authorities to the possibility of attracting tourists to the island and also opened new vistas for islanders. By 1966, many Rapa Nui had been to continental Chile for schooling or for economic reasons and had become aware of what life was like, outside the island. A revolt by the islanders eventually resulted in Easter Island receiving the status of a civil department and a municipal constitution. Once Civil Law arrived on the island, civil servants from Chile came and this influx greatly influenced the Rapa Nui lifestyle and the economic situation. The most significant changes after 1965

82 Free ebooks ==> resulted from construction of an airfield and subsequent regular air communication with the outside world. For the first time, tourists and scholars were able to reach this isolated island with relative ease. To meet the demand, hotels, restaurants, and gift shops sprung up and islanders found many economic opportunities in relation to tourism. (43) This is part of, in fact much of, the reason why Rapanui is such an obscure place, and why it attracts global attention as a place of mystery. In the latter years of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century various writers and scientists have advanced theories regarding the rapid decline of Easter Island s magnificent civilization prior to the time of the first European contact. Principal among these theories is that postulated by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. Diamond's saga of the decline and fall of Easter Island is straightforward and can be summarised in a few words: Within a few centuries after the island was settled, the people of Easter Island destroyed their forest, degraded the island's topsoil, wiped out their plants and drove their animals to extinction. As a result of this self-inflicted environmental devastation, its complex society collapsed, descending into civil war, cannibalism and self-destruction. When Europeans discovered the island in the 18th century, they found a crashed society and a deprived population of survivors who subsisted among the ruins of a once vibrant civilisation. (44) While the theory of ecocide has become almost paradigmatic in environmental circles, a dark and gory secret hangs over the premise of Easter Island's self destruction: an actual genocide terminated Rapa Nui's indigenous populace and its culture. Diamond ignores, or neglects to address the true reasons behind Rapa Nui's collapse. Other researchers have no doubt that its people, their culture and its environment were destroyed to all intents and purposes by European slavetraders, whalers and colonists - and not by themselves! After all, the cruelty and systematic kidnapping by European slave-merchants, the near-extermination of the Island's indigenous population and the deliberate destruction of the island's environment has been regarded as "one of the most hideous atrocities committed by white men in the South Seas" (45) The three most mysterious aspects of Rapanui which I have still not been clearly understood are; how were the Moai moved, what are the red adornments that

83 some of them once wore, and when and from where did the mysterious Rongorongo written language come from, the only example of a hieroglyphic text that exists, or supposedly ever existed in Polynesia? Numerous attempts have been made to move the Moai from the quarry in Rano Rarak Crater to their more commonplace present locations, in some cases a distance of 14 miles. Some suggest that they were moved in an upright position and kept stable by crews manning ropes. This mode would verify the island legends of the statues "walking" to their sites. From a distance seeing one of these great Moai moving along the road bobbing up and down as the logs moved underneath would surely have looked like a statue moving under its own power with a procession alongside it. (46) However, recent computer simulations by Jo Anne von Tilburg at UCLA have shown that it would have been much simpler to position the Moai in a horizontal position on two large logs and then roll the whole unit along on other logs placed perpendicular to it. Using this method Van Tilburg calculated that an average Moai could have been moved from the quarry to Ahu Akivi in less than 5 days, using approximately 70 men. Her theories were recently put to the test in a successful experiment to move a Moai replica on Easter Island sponsored and filmed by Nova television in the United States. Many Moai are still standing on the slopes of Rano Raraku volcano. These statues were still under construction. They were carved on three sides, then lowered onto the slopes below where they were stood upright. Then the backs of the statues could be completed. Once that was done, they were then ready to be moved to their intended ahu. But moving them was harder than carving them, and today many are still standing on the crater slopes. The logistics involved must have been staggering. The Moai were lowered to the ground by ropes in order for the carving to be completed. Thus we find, on the very peak of the volcano rim, round holes carved into the rock, five feet deep and over two feet in diameter. Into these, the islanders would have placed palm trunks to act as bollards, and by running ropes around them they could control the statues as they lowered them down the 45 degree slope. It is calculated that the ropes must have been about 600 feet long and at least three inches thick - a considerable amount of rope, and a considerable amount of tree bark from which to manufacture it.

84 Ropes were also used to move the Moai statues to the platforms. For this to work, the hauling ropes would have had to have been about 250 feet long, which at an inch thick would have weighed over a ton. Many people required to make the rope, many people required to pull. Some Moai were erected up to 15 miles from the quarry, and until recently it was assumed they would have been hauled along on wooden rollers. However, latest research by Professor Charles Love who has been excavating the moai roads, shows that rollers would not have worked because the road beds themselves were not level, but slightly concave. (47) In 1986, Pavel Pavel, Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon Tiki Museum experimented with a five-ton moai and a nine-ton moai. With a rope around the head of the statue and another around the base, using eight workers for the smaller statue and 16 for the larger, they "walked" the Moai forward by swiveling and rocking it from side to side; however, the experiment was ended early due to damage to the statue bases from chipping. Despite the early end to the experiment, Thor Heyerdahl estimated that this method for a 20-ton statue over Easter Island terrain would allow 320 feet (100 m) per day. (48) And what do the oral traditions say? They speak of the use of Mana, a spiritual force which is well known throughout Polynesia. In Polynesian culture, mana is a spiritual quality considered to have supernatural origin; a sacred impersonal force existing in the universe. Therefore to have mana is to have influence and authority, and efficacy, the power to perform in a given situation. This essential quality of mana is not limited to persons; peoples, governments, places and inanimate objects can possess mana. There are different ways to obtain mana: through birth, warfare and, according to Hawaiians, pono (balanced) actions, reflecting the balance that exists in the world and humanity's responsibility toward maintaining that balance.. People or objects that possess mana are accorded respect because their possession of mana gives them authority, power, and prestige. The word s meaning is complex because mana is a basic foundation of the Polynesian worldview. Pukao are the hats or topknots formerly placed on top of some moai statues on Easter Island. They were all carved from a very light red volcanic stone scoria, which was quarried from a single source at Puna Pau. Pukao are cylindrical in shape with a dent on the underside to fit on the head of the moai and a boss or knot on top. They fitted onto the moai in such a way that the pukao protruded

85 forwards. Their size varies in proportion to the moai they were on but they can be up to 8 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter. But what are they? Very little information is available as to what the Pukao is meant to portray. Throughout Polynesia, red was sacred color associated with both the deities and with the highest social classes. (51) This was especially true in Hawaii, where recreations of ceremonies performed by the Ali i (Ariki in Tahiti) still occur to this day, though somewhat watered down once must admit. Portrait of Hawaiian Ali I by Herb Kane If the Pukao does represent a form of head ornament, then it would be unique to Rapanui, as such a shape is not seen in other Polynesian head gear. More likely

86 Free ebooks ==> the top knot represents the hair style of the elite of Rapanui. The colour, being red, could be the natural tone, or even possibly a dye of some kind, but the latter is unknown. A Maori warrior from New Zealand (Aotearoa) with traditional top knot hair

87 There are no examples that I have found of Peruvians with hair top knots, but it is possible that such a form of ornamental style is a blend of the Polynesian and other cultures, as in red hair and top knot. Rongorongo In 1864, the French lay missionary Eugène Eyraud -- the first known non- Polynesian resident of Earth's most isolated inhabited island, Easter Island or Rapanui -- reported in a letter to his superior that he had seen there "in all the houses" hundreds of tablets and staffs incised with thousands of hieroglyphic figures. Two years later, only a small handful of these incised artefacts were left. Most rongorongo, as the unique objects were subsequently called, had by then been burnt, hidden away in caves, or deftly cannibalized for boat planks, fishing lines, or honorific skeins of human hair. The few Rapanui survivors of recent slave raids and contagions evidently no longer feared the objects' erstwhile tapu or sacred prohibition. When Eugène Eyraud died of tuberculosis on Rapanui four years later in 1868, his fellow missionaries there, who had arrived only in 1866, knew nothing of the existence of incised tablets and staffs on the island. Rongorongo comprised the Easter Islanders' best-kept secret. (52) Fine example of a Rongorongo tablet No other Polynesian culture had a hieroglyphic system, so why do we find it on Rapanui? Many scholars have argued that the origins of this form of writing can be found in various parts of the world, from

88 Most of Rapanui's Rongorongo inscriptions consist of parallel lines of signs or glyphs that represent human figures, birds, fishes, plants, geometrics, and other things. These fingernail-size glyphs were traditionally incised on large battle staffs, driftwood tablets, small wooden "Birdmen" and other statuettes, pectorals, ceremonial paddles, and even human skulls. Rongorongo glyphs also figured among the inventory of special tattoos for the Rongorongo experts. On the staffs and tablets, every other line of Rongorongo appears upside down; this orientation forces the reader to rotate the artefact 180 degrees at the end of each line of glyphs, evidently to enable continuous reading and to avoid confusing the parallel lines. At a cursory glance, Rongorongo offers a fanciful parade of hieroglyphics, and for over 130 years many eminent scholars from many nations have burned the midnight oil in attempting to discover what this hieroglyphic parade celebrates. Remains of a wooden Rongorongo tablet Although there were several claims that the script had been deciphered, none have proven worthy of scrutiny. Script itself is a non-polynesian characteristic and the search for its origin was eventually rewarded through one of its particular characteristics, which is that it is 'arranged in boustrophedon, i.e. in a continuous serpentine band where every second line is turned upside-down. Europeans,

89 Chinese and the Indus Valley people never wrote in boustrophedon, and the language had been forgotten by the time of the Europeans first arrival. In fact, the only place in the world where this particular style of writing can be found is in South America; Peru to be precise. (53) Heyerdahl mentions that on the arrival of the Europeans, the Indians of Lake Titicaca area still 'continued a primitive form of picture writing.' (54) This conforms with the observation by Russian rongo-rongo expert J. V. Knorozov, that the only two places where 'reversed boustrophedon' occur in the world are Easter Island and ancient Peru. Sariemento Gamboa, upon consulting as assembly of forty-two learned Inca historians recorded the following in reference to the ninth Inca 'Patchacuti Inca Yupanqui': '...after he had well ascertained the most notable of their ancient histories he had it all painted after its order on large boards, and he placed them in the house of the sun, where the said boards, which were garnished with gold, would be like our libraries, and he appointed learned men who could understand and explain them...' (55) The famous Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui, who was in fact the ninth high Inca, reigned from 1438 to Fernando de Montesinos was a writer from Spain, who lived in Peru, and published a book entitled The Historical Memoirs Of Peru in 1644, in which he states, based on another book called The Quito Manuscript, by an earlier unknown writer, that the Inca had a written, or more correctly, a hieroglyphic language. This was called Qillqa, and The Quito Manuscript states The amautas (learned men) say that the events of those times were known by the traditions of the most ancient ones that when this prince reigned (Pachacutec) there were letters, and men learned in them, whom they call amautas, and these taught reading and writing. Pachacutec is believed to have banned the use of this writing system, and had all examples of it burned. There does however, remain tantalizing evidence that examples of this hieroglyphic system may still exist. A few tapestries and tunics worn by the royal Inca which still exist portray repeating patterns of specific symbols.

90 Free ebooks ==> Smoking Genetic Gun So, did South Americans help colonise Easter Island centuries before Europeans reached it? Clear genetic evidence has, for the first time, given support to elements of this controversial theory showing that while the remote island was mostly colonised from the west, as in Polynesia, there was also some influx of people from the Americas. Erik Thorsby of the University of Oslo in Norway has found clear evidence to support elements of Heyerdahl's hypothesis. In 1971 and 2008 he collected blood samples from Easter Islanders whose ancestors had not interbred with Europeans and other visitors to the island. Thorsby looked at the HLA genes, which vary greatly from person to person. Most of the islanders' HLA genes were Polynesian, but a few of them also carried HLA genes only previously found in Native American populations. (83) Because most of Thorsby's volunteers came from one extended family, he was able to work out when the HLA genes entered their lineage. The most probable first known carrier was a woman named Maria Aquala, born in Crucially, that was before the slave traders arrived in the 1860s and began interbreeding with the islanders. But the genes may have been around for longer than that. Thorsby found that in some cases the Polynesian and American HLA genes were shuffled together, the result of a process known "recombination". This is rare in HLA genes, meaning the American genes would need to be around for a certain amount of time for it to happen. Thorsby can't put a precise date on it, but says it is likely that Americans reached Easter Island before it was "discovered" by Europeans in This does not completely solve the riddle of the possible arrival of migrants from the coast of the Americas, and most likely Peru as we have seen, but it adds real genetic, and thus concrete scientific evidence that will fuel future investigations. Farther To The West Stories and evidence of ancient people with red hair are found in Hawaii, where they were and are called Ehu haired, as well as in New Zealand (Aotearoa) where they are and were known as Uru Kehu. In order to establish if there are

91 connections between these places and the west coast of South America in the distant past, we need to travel through the islands in between and see what evidence, if any of red haired people and or complex stone constructions exist, or existed as clues. As the above map shows, the next two islands west of Rapanui are Pitcairn and Henderson. Pitcairn is of course known to the world because of the mutiny on the Bounty. The tale of the mutiny of His Majesty s Armed Vessel Bounty is briefly as follows. A coastal trader named Bethia was refitted and re-christened as Bounty for a voyage to collect breadfruit tree seedlings to take to the West Indies for

92 Free ebooks ==> cultivation as food for slaves. On 23 December 1787 Bounty, under the command of William Bligh, left Spithead for the English Channel. On 26 October 1788, after a difficult voyage, Bounty finally arrived off Tahiti. It was to be another five months before Bounty would set sail. During this time, the crew had spent some time ashore and when the time came to return to England, some were already contemplating staying on the island. On 28 April 1789, three weeks after leaving Tahiti, Fletcher Christian and some of the ship s crew mutinied, setting Bligh and 18 of his loyal crew adrift in an open boat. (56) Eventually, Christian and his crew, along with six Polynesian men (three of which were stowaways), twelve Polynesian women and a baby girl were to continue the journey to their unknown home. Pitcairn was sighted on the evening of 15 January 1790, and the rest is, as they say, history. The descendants of the Bounty still reside on the island to this day. What is less well known is that, though uninhabited at the time that Fletcher Christian and his people landed on the rocky shores of Pitcairn, there was evidence that others has once lived there. Many relics of a Polynesian civilization were found scattered around the island. Roughly hewn stone gods, which guarded sacred sites, representations of animals and men carved into cliff faces, burial sites yielding human skeletons, and earth ovens, stone adzes, gouges and other artefacts of Polynesian workmanship were discovered. The stone gods were deliberately destroyed when pushed off cliffs into the sea, and although many stone adzes have been given away or removed, some are still being found today. (57)

93 Postage stamp from Pitcairn showing generic Polynesian style stone implements Henderson Island is an uninhabited raised coral atoll in the south Pacific Ocean, that in 1902 was annexed to the Pitcairn Islands colony and is located 193 kilometres (120 mi) northeast of Pitcairn. Although Henderson is virtually uninhabitable, archaeological evidence suggests that it was inhabited by a small Polynesian permanent colony between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. (58) The reasons for the group's disappearance are unknown, but are probably related to the similar disappearance of the Polynesians on Pitcairn Island, on whom the Hendersonians would have depended for many of the basics of life. The Pitcairn Polynesians may in turn have disappeared because of the decline of nearby Mangareva; thus, Henderson was at the end of a chain of small, dependent colonies of Mangareva. (59) There was a time (approximately the 10th to the 15th centuries) when the Gambier Islands, of which Mangareva is the major one, hosted a population of several thousand people and traded with other island groups including the Marquesas, the Society Islands and Pitcairn Islands. However, excessive logging by the islanders resulted in almost complete deforestation on Mangareva, with

94 disastrous results for the islands' environment and economy. The folklore of the islands records a slide into civil war and even cannibalism as trade links with the outside world broke down, and archaeological studies have confirmed this tragic story. Today, the islands can support a population of only a few hundred. (60) Mangareva Island in relation to Pitcairn Interesting ancient wood carving from Mangareva

95 Free ebooks ==> I have not found any references to red hair in Tahiti, or the Society Islands in general. Yet, if the travelers from the coast of Peru did in fact travel as far as Hawaii and New Zealand (Aotearoa) then they would by necessity have to at least travel through these islands. Winter winds would have easily propelled ships through Tahitian islands The only large megalithic structure of note in the Tahitian group of islands is on the island of Raiatea, as touched on earlier. The site of Taputapuatea, which roughly translates as being most sacred white place, where white refers to purity, and has nothing to do with skin colour, has been the central holy of holies in the Polynesian world for at least hundreds of years. It is called a Marae, which is a term used throughout Polynesian, except for Hawaii, and refers to a cleared site used for celebration and most notably veneration. At Taputapuatea, the Marae was already established by 1000 AD with significant expansion after this time. The marae was a place of learning where priests and navigators from all over the Pacific would gather to offer sacrifices to the gods and share their knowledge of the genealogical origins of the universe, and of deep-ocean navigation. (61)

96 The actual age of the Marae is unknown, and could be far older than 1000 years. Since Raiatea sits right in the center of the Polynesian Triangle, it would be a logical place to have a central meeting place for all of the related people of the Polynesian world. Also, since it sits within a very protected harbour surrounded by a reef, has abundant fresh water, trees for canoe and other ship repairs, and food, especially fruit, any sea farer would be attracted to visit and stay. Small Tiki in front of the massive Marae of Taputapuatea A major conflict occurred at Taputapuatea some time in the 15 th century, causing the deaths of dignitaries from such far flung places as Aotearoa. As a result of this, the sacredness of the site was made Tapu (from whence we get the word taboo) and no one used it in a ritual way until 1995, when several voyaging sailing canoes, including the Hokule a, performed a ceremony to lift the Tapu. This bit of information was included in order to explain why Polynesian deep sea voyaging ended; the central place of worship was deemed off limits for about 600 years. Such a statement flies in the face of many archaeologists and anthropologists ideas that the various Polynesian peoples had become self-sufficient and thus no longer required long trips back to the Tahiti area. They clearly did not consult the descendants of the people themselves.

97 To the northwest of the Tahitian group lie the Marquesas Islands. The islands were given their name by the Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira who reached them on 21 July He named them after his patron, García Hurtado de Mendoza, 5th Marquis of Cañete, who was Viceroy of Peru at the time. Of all the major island groups of the Pacific, the Marquesas Islands suffered the greatest population decline as a result of diseases brought by European explorers, reducing the estimated sixteenth century population of over 100,000 inhabitants, to about 20,000 by the middle of the nineteenth century, and to just over 2,000 by the beginning of the 1900s. During the course of the twentieth century, the population increased to about 8,500 by 2002, not including the Marquesan community residing on Tahiti. (62) The image most favored by Marquesan artisans was that of the wise and potent ancestor Tiki, recognized generally through Polynesia as the creator of the human race. Frequently found carved in large freestanding wood and stone figures and in high relief on clubs, bowls, dishes, canoe paddles, stiltsteps and many objects of personal adornment, Tiki Ke'a, as he was known to the Marquesans, was most frequently portrayed as a squat, heavy figure of inscrutable mien and menacing power. Carvings of a type found (with local variations) throughout Polynesia invariably show the Tiki figure with hands clasped over a protruding stomach, with large round eyes, a flat but prominent nose and a elliptical mouth. The complete Tiki figure is rarely found in flat low relief decoration, but the face or head alone was frequently used and often incorporated with other nonrepresentational designs on a large variety of Marquesan utensils and artifacts. (63) Some examples of the original stone Tiki still exist on Nuku Hiva and Hiva Oa; the rest were most likely destroyed on the orders of zealous missionaries, though some may still be awaiting rediscovery in the dense jungle. The almost total collapse of the population, like on Rapnui after contact with the outside world most certainly caused the evaporation of many of their oral traditions, and thus a true sense of their origins. The faces on the Tiki, however, do not appear, along with those on Rapanui, to represent the Polynesian face, and thus could have ties to earlier visitors.

98 Ancient Tiki figure from the Marquesas The name Tiki is found all over Polynesia, being Ki i in Hawaii. It generally refers to the first man and or an ancestor in these cultures. Kon Tiki or Con Tiki, according to Thor Heyerdahl was another name for Viracocha, the sun god, or

99 Viracochan(s), the people who came from the sun god. From Graham Hancock s epic book Fingerprints of the Gods we get And they heard it from their fathers, who in their turn had it from the old songs which were handed down from very ancient times... They say that this man travelled along the highland route to the north, working marvels as he went and that they never saw him again. They say that in many places he gave men instructions how they should live, speaking to them with great love and kindness and admonishing them to be good and to do no damage or injury one to another, but to love one another and show charity to all. In most places they name him Ticci Viracocha. Also, Mr. Hancock includes the following: Con Ticci returned... with a number of attendants Con Ticci then summoned his followers, who were called viracocha Con Ticci commanded all but two of the viracocha to go east (69) As well as: There came forth from a lake a Lord named Con Ticci Viracocha bringing with him a certain number of people... (70) Is it too simplistic to draw direct correlations between the names and definitions, somewhat, between Con Ticci and Tiki? Perhaps for now. North To Hawaii Where did the Hawaiians come from? Tahiti. That is the overwhelming opinion of academics from the fields of archaeology and anthropology, and largely seems to be the case. However, there is ample and mounting evidence that they didn t come from one specific place, and not all at the same time. Tahiti is a generic term and name for most people; an idyllic group of islands in the south Pacific where the pace of life is slow and carefree that is Hollywood s glossed over interpretation. Tahiti is in fact a singular island, on which is located the capital city called Papeete. Tahiti is one of a group of islands known as the Society Islands, and along with the Marquesas and Tuamotus make up French Polynesia. Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sighted Tahiti on 18 June 1767, and is considered the first European visitor. Visitations by French ships soon followed, and on April 1769, Captain James Cook made his first visit to the island on orders from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and the Royal Society on 2 June. Cook estimated the population to be 200,000 including all the nearby islands in the chain. (71) This estimate was later lowered to 35,000 by

100 Free ebooks ==> Map of the Society Islands of French Polynesia anthropologist Douglas L. Oliver, the foremost modern authority on Tahiti, at the time of discovery in (72) After European contact, the population fell rapidly and traditional society was disrupted by guns, prostitution, venereal disease, and alcohol. Introduced diseases including typhus, influenza and smallpox killed so many Tahitians that by 1797, the population was only 16,000. Later it was to drop as low as 6,000. (73) As in Rapanui, contact with the outside world was the number one cause of depopulation in Tahiti and French Polynesia in general, and as we shall see, in Hawaii as well. This also, in turn reduced the level of the historical knowledge of the descendants as to their origins, making this book somewhat of a task to piece together and complete. In 1842, a European crisis involving Morocco escalated between France and Great Britain when Admiral Dupetit Thouars, acting independently of the French government, convinced Tahiti's Queen Pōmare IV to accept a French protectorate, and the Society Islands, Marquesas and Tuamotus have been under French control ever since. I have included this foreign incursion material simply to set the stage for our Hawaii discussion, in order that the reader understand that just because the Society Islands and Marquesas, for example,

101 have different names, it does not mean that they did not have historical relations. These titles were imposed on the islands and their people by Europeans. The early settlement history of Hawaiʻi is still not completely resolved. Some believe that the first Polynesians arrived in Hawaiʻi in the 3rd century from the Marquesas and were followed by Tahitian (Society Islands) settlers in AD 1300 who conquered the original inhabitants. Others believe that there was only a single, extended period of settlement. Patrick Kirch, in his 2001 Hawaiki, argues for an extended period of contact but not necessarily for a Tahitian invasion: There is substantial archaeological as well as paleoecological evidence confirming Hawaiian settlement no later than 800 AD, and quite possibly as early as AD The immediate source of the colonizing population in Hawaiʻi is likely to have been the Southern Marquesas, but continued contact between Hawaiʻi and islands in the core region is indicated by linguistic evidence (lexical borrowings from the Tahitic subgroup), abundant oral traditions, botanical indications, uniquely shared mtdna sequences in populations of the Pacific Rat, and possibly some archaeological style changes as well. However, long distance voyaging between Hawaiʻi and the central Eastern Polynesian core became less frequent after about AD 1200, and was little more than a memory encoded in Hawaiian oral traditions by the time of European contact. (74) As we saw earlier in this book, cessation of long distance voyaging was most likely the direct result of the shutting down of the Marae called Taputapuatea on the Society Island of Raiatea. However, who were the first people and where did they come from? As stated above, it is believed that the first Hawaiians came from the Marquesas (traditional name being Hiva.) The argument for these islands as being the homeland is based in part on linguistic and biological evidence: "Indeed, the close relationship between the Hawaiian and Marquesan languages as well as between the physical populations constitutes strong and mutually corroborative evidence that the early Hawaiians came from the Marquesas." (75) Similarities in

102 household stone objects, such as taro root (Poi) pounders between the two island groups also adds archaeological data. Another argument to support the proposition that the primary migration to Hawai'i came from Hiva is that the islands of Hiva are the best departure point for sailing to Hawai'i from the South Pacific. They are closer to Hawai'i and farther east than the Society Islands, the Tuamotus, or the Cook Islands. A canoe heading north in the easterly tradewinds is better off starting from a point as far east of Hawai'i as possible. In computer simulation of voyages from the Marquesas to Hawai'i, over 80 percent of the canoes that headed in the right direction (NNW to NW by N) reached Hawai'i. (76) Most literature, which is not extensive, tends to focus more on the arrival by the Tahitians most likely in the 12 th century AD. What offends me the most is the lack of Hawaiian oral traditions on the subject, as most books about Hawaiian history brush over the topic of the Hawaiians all together, and focus on the arrival of Captain James Cook, followed by the whalers, missionaries, formation of plantations, and then American statehood. Part of the reason could be the obvious fact, as discussed earlier in regards to Rapanui and French Polynesia, that the indigenous population of the Hawaiian Islands were devastated by introduced diseases. When Capt. James Cook arrived in Hawaii in 1778, there were about 300,000 Hawaiians on the islands; however, infectious diseases reduced the native population. Today, about 20 percent of Hawaii's people are of native Hawaiian ancestry, and only about 10,000 are of pure Hawaiian descent, (77) if that. Thus, the oral traditions of the islands may be somewhat diluted, as many of the wisdom keepers may have not been able to pass on all of their teachings. This was also clearly the case in Rapanui and other Pacific island groups. Also, due to religious persecution starting with the arrival of zealous Christian missionaries, Native belief systems and knowledge was vigorously stamped out if the indigenous population. It is also very possible that since sacred ancient knowledge was and is preserved, but in secret, it is not written down, and kept by a privileged and trusted few. This is not only the case in Hawaii, but also in Native communities around the world.

103 From an oral tradition standpoint, the best source I have found, in written form, is a small book which recounts the oral history of the Kai akea family of the Mo o Clan of Moloka i, which traces its roots back to an estimated 800 B.C. These stories are recorded as told by Kaili ohe Kame ekua of Kamalo, Molokai ( ). It is called Tales From The Night Rainbow. The stories within it were collected by Koko Willis and Pali Jae Lee and first published in 1986 as a compilation of remembrances for the children of the Ohana Kame ekua, as the family elders wanted the children to know who they were and the history of their family. Cover of Tales From The Night Rainbow

104 The following is an excerpt from the book: The ancient ones were the people who were maoli (native) to Hawaii. Seven or eight years ago the Tahitians came to our islands, and since then the stories of our origins and lifer have been dominated by their outlook. In many ways the Tahitians were a people similar to us, but in other ways we were as light is to the dark. The early ones lived with an attitude about life that gave them what we would call great mana (power) over their surroundings, but it is really the power of love and kinship working through the feelings of the objects we live among. It was the belief of our family line that we had been here from the beginning. People had gone out from our land to the East and to the West, and populated other lands. We had chants that told of such migrations from our islands. (78) In this book, the first people are called Mu, as are the islands. Some who read this book may be acquainted with this name referring to a continent, once thought to have existed in the Pacific Ocean, hosting a large and sophisticated civilization, which disappeared beneath the waves, much akin to the supposed fate of Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean, several thousand years ago. Tales From The Night Rainbow also goes on to say that these first people were also called Manahuna, or Manahune. Manahuna, when broken down into its two component words, Mana is spiritual power, or life force, and Huna is secret or knowledge. The much corrupted term Kahuna, which in Hollywood movies depict predominantly as evil witch doctors casting spells, simply refers to someone who is an expert in a given field of endeavour. A Kahuna Kalai Wa a, for example, is a master canoe maker. The term Manahune was imposed by the Tahitian people, who were the second wave of migration to the islands. This word, when again broken down into components, means of little power, and later became Menehune, which is the name that many tour guides in Hawaii, poorly informed as they are, call fictitious little people that once lived in the deep forests, especially on the northern island of Kaua i. The Manahuna were well known, even in the silly modern tour guide stories, to be master builders using stone. As compared to most Hawaiian stone constructions, such as at the few Heiau, or temples that survived the destructive zeal of the missionaries and plantation bosses, which are made up of loose and rarely shaped lava rocks, the Manahuna ones are of dressed stone. The most famous example of this is on Kaua I, and is called the Menehune Ditch. Although the ditch appears quite ordinary on first sight, inspection of the waterway reveals

105 Small section of the Menehune ditch on the island of Kaua i a unique kind of fitted and faced stonework that has been found nowhere else in Hawaii. Only a tiny portion of the ditch has been preserved but it once stretched for miles, starting from a dam upstream of Waimea River and running down the cliff to the farms below. The ditch was led past the perpendicular cliff by building up a wall and waterway with smoothly cut stone blocks to form a structure which is unique in Polynesia. (79) The idea that they were short in stature is very doubtful; since the marauding Tahitians regarded them as being of little power meaning that they were not war like, they were also most likely also as dismissive as regards their appearance. This would have been what the Tahitian dominated stories from then on would be based on, taking us, as said earlier, to the stupid stories of tropical leprechauns that present day tourists to Hawaii hear about as they sip on their Maitai drinks. In all likelihood the Manahuna were of normal build and height.

106 Massive fishpond on Kaua I believed to be the work of the Manahuna This second wave of people to Hawaii were led by a priest named Pa ao, is said to have been a high priest from Kahiki, specifically "Wawau" and "'Upolu." In Hawaiian prose and chant, the term "Kahiki" is applied in reference to any land outside of Hawai'i, although the linguistic root is conclusively derived from Tahiti. "Wawau" and "'Upolu" point to actual places in the Society Islands, Samoa, and/or Tonga, although Hawaiian scholars and royal commentators consistently claim Pa'ao came from either Samoa or Tahiti, or even that he was a Tahitian resident of Samoan origin. Accounts recorded by Mary Kawena Puku'i, David Malo, Abraham Fornander, Kanuikaikaina, and other custodians of Hawaiian lore support the notion that Pa'ao came from the islands known today as Samoa. Once in Hawaii, he placed a new high chief in power, named Pili, who again is believed to have been brought from Samoa. The ensuing centuries saw the Manahuna people slaughtered and marginalized, as well as being exploited for their abilities as stone masons. In fact, they were often worked to death. As the power and influence of Pa ao and Pili

107 increased, first on the southernmost Big Island of Hawaii, and gradually moving north, the Manahuna that could migrated ahead of their oppressors, ahead of continuing destruction. Merchandising of the Menehune history Their last refuge and outpost was the island of Kaua i, and it is on this island that most of the legends written about them take place. In most of the stories, again the Manahuna are spoken of as being shy people of short stature that live in the dense tropical forests, only appearing in public when they go to the ocean to feast on seafood. The reality is more likely that being constantly hunted down by the followers of Pa ao and Pili, the hid in the camouflage of the vegetation to avert detection, and would make sporadic trips to the ocean in order to supplement their forest foraging diet. But did they have red hair? Unfortunately, I have not found many references to this. Writer Frank Joseph, in an article he wrote about the mysterious underwater ruins off of the Japanese Island of Okinawa states, regarding the Manahuna s

108 ability to construct stone monuments: they were first built, according to Hawaiian tradition, by the Menehune, a red-haired race of master masons who occupied the islands long before the arrival of the Polynesians. The original inhabitants left, unwilling to intermarry with the newcomers. (80) The Menehune presence was still on Kaua i as late as the early-19th century when a handful of Kaua ians living in a remote valley on the north part of the island identified themselves as menehune. No narrative survives that describes these people as being small in stature, and no archaeological digs have ever uncovered any dwarf-like remains. (81) Map of the entire Hawaiian Archipelago Hawaiians today tell tales about how the little people abandoned Kaua i for the islands of Necker and Nihoa to the north [see information below]. Archaeologists have found sophisticated stonework on those islands that is reminiscent of that on Kaua i, and is certainly proof of an advanced civilization existing there. Necker Island (Mokumanamana) in the Hawai ian island chain is fish hook-shaped piece of land populated almost exclusively by tens of thousands of seabirds and located

109 Megalithic standing stones on Necker (Mokumanamana) Island approximately 300 miles to the northwest of Kaua i. When the Polynesians settled on Kaua i, the indigenous Menehune are believed to have escaped to Necker Island. Curiously, the Hawaiians living to the south did not seem to know about the existence of this tiny knob of rock. Although the famous French explorer Jean- Francois de la Perouse was the first Westerner to visit the island in 1786, no one is known to have attempted a landing there until 1894 when it was annexed for the United States. The first Americans on Necker Island discovered stone platforms similar to heaius and carved stone idols. Additional expeditions found more stone artefacts, but no evidence of recent or long-term habitation.

110 Stone head found on Mokumanamana There is also a very good chance that the Manahuna lived on Ni ihau Island, just 17 miles to the south west of Kaua i. There are stories on Niihau about visitors who had come to the islands long before Captain Cook s visit. These early visitors were called Ehu because of their red hair and fair skin. Legends suggest these foreigners settled in the Napali region of Kauai. (82) Elizabeth McHutchison Sinclair ( ) purchased Niʻihau and parts of Kauaʻi from the Hawaiian king Kamehameha V in 1864 for $10,000 in gold. Ever since then it has been in the possession of the Sinclair family, and is known as the Forbidden Island, because

111 not only have outsiders been prohibited from visiting, but even the Native Hawaiians that live there, mainly working for the Sinclairs on their extensive sheep ranch, are restricted as to their movements, and that of their relatives and friends. Ni ihau, due its isolation, became to some degree the last refuge, of sorts, of the pure blooded Hawaiian people. With them may remain the last of any realistic genetic expression of the Manahuna people, if in fact the latter were from a different source than the 12 th century wave of people. Descendants of the people of Ni ihau, including possibly those of the Manahuna, live to this day on all of the main Hawaiian Islands. Due to the amount of time that has passed, and the overwhelming racial mixing that has occurred since the arrival of Captain Cook, and later influx of Chinese, Japanese, Caucasian, Philippino and Portuguese immigrants, very few modern people would physically exhibit any Manahuna characteristics. My friend Bully. Unfortunately he is wearing a Ti leaf lei on his head!

112 However, I have personally met a few people, while I was living in Hawaii between 1996 and 1998 working on a Hawaiian voyaging canoe project, who had what is called Ehu red hair. One is Bully, who is a veteran coach at the Kihei Canoe Club on Maui. His hair becomes what one could best call rusty red partly due to exposure to the sun, which is the nature of an outrigger canoe club coach, but also, possibly, as a result of genetics; both of his parents came from Ni ihau. New Zealand (Aotearoa) It is common practice to classify all people who were in New Zealand when Captain Cook visited as Maori and to assume that all were of Polynesian ancestry. Yet, there is ample evidence that far from being branches of one people, there were many varied lines of peoples who sailed to and from these shores in antiquity. Perhaps the last word on the historic mobility of peoples across the South Pacific should go to an ancient chicken. In June 2007, a group of Chilean and New Zealand archaeologists analysed a single chicken bone recovered from the archaeological site of El Arenal-1, on the Arauco Peninsula, Chile. Radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis provided firm evidence for the pre-columbian introduction of chickens to the Americas and strongly suggested the birds were of Polynesian origin. A searching question from people on the coast of South America provides another fresh perspective. When shown photos of Maori digging implements and exploring similarities between the two peoples, they were amazed and asked: Were these people OUR ancestors? (84) So begins perhaps the most delicate of all chapters of this book, clearly open to, but wrongly I believe, cries of racism. I am in no way, once again, assuming or suggesting that Europeans lived in, or even knew about Aotearoa before the Native Maori people, but the land is ripe with oral traditions of the very early presence of people with red hair, green eyes, and in some stories, light coloured skin. They are known by various names; Waitaha, Moriori and Patupaiarehe. These are all people believed to have existed on Aotearoa, and the Chatham Islands in the case of the Moriori prior to the arrival of the Maori people, the latter being the predominant indigenous population of Aotearoa today, and who archaeologists, anthropologists, and the people themselves regard as having come from other parts of Polynesia. First I will write about the general concept of Urukehu, and then the proposed different races or groups that seem to have had this genetic characteristic.

113 Around 950 AD, Maori legend tells us that Chief Kupe first arrived in New Zealand. He traveled from the mythical homeland Hawaiki in a canoe called the Maataahourua. He is said to have landed near Wellington in a place called Whanganui-atara and when he first spotted the land he said, "He ao, he aotea he aotearoa" (It is a cloud..a white cloud.. a long white cloud). (101) Maori legend tells us that the first mass arrival of Polynesian settlers was around This is called the great fleet. The Great Fleet forms part of the Maori canoe tradition, handed down orally from generation to generation. According to this tradition, the canoes of the Great Fleet arrived from the mythical homeland of Hawaiiki, generally considered as being somewhere in Eastern Polynesia; most probably the island of Raiatea, whose other name is Hawaiki. Urukehu People The red hair is known to this day, as Urukehu, just as Ehu is the term that we discussed earlier regarding the same characteristic in Hawaii. In the 19 th century, the writer Edward Tregear wrote of the term s widespread use among the Polynesians: I have not yet found kehu in Maori standing alone, but it may be traced in its compounds -viz., makekehu-, light-haired, and urukehu, light-haired. The Polynesian shows this to be a strong secondary meaning. Samoan, 'efu, reddishbrown: Tahitian, ehu, red or sandy-coloured, of the hair, roureuhu, reddish or sandy hair: Hawaiian, ehu, red or sandy hair, ruddy, florid; ehuahiahi, the red of the evening, or old age; ehukakahiaka, the red of the morning, or youth: Tongan, kefu, yellowish, applied to the hair: Marquesan, kehu, fair, blonde; hokehu, red hair; oioikehukehu, daybreak: Mangarevan, keukeukura, blonde, fair: Paumotan, kehu, blonde, fair-haired. (85) In Aotearoa, the presence of Urukehu hair is still prominent enough for it to be a term that is still in use, and has been documented by European New Zealanders for a very long time. The early New Zealand painter ( mid 19 th century) G F Angas reproduced in his book The New Zealanders a painting entitled: Children of the boiling springs by Taupo Lake. The painting depicts three Maori children, the centre boy having blond hair. Angas wrote of his painting:

114 In the very heart of the interior, light or golden hair may occasionally be observed The boy whose portrait is given in the centre figure is the son of one of the chiefs of Tukano, a settlement near the boiling springs of Taupo Lake, where no intermixture with Europeans could have taken place. (86) Physical evidence for the urukehu existed and was once on public display, but apparently is no longer to be found. Sir Peter Buck, the celebrated Maori anthropologist, writing of his study on Maori somatology, commented on several braids of reddish hair that were at the time exhibited at the Auckland Museum: The general colour is black, but brown and reddish hair occur. Certain tribes have been stated to have had more than their share of red hair, and in these tribes it is said to occur in certain families. It was supposed to be more prevalent amongst the Tuhoe, Maniapoto and Upper Whanganui tribes. Red hair is known as Urukehu, and was popularly supposed to be another Patupaiarehe inheritance. Warahoe was a red-haired ancestor of the Urewera people at Te Whaiti, hence the proverb, Ka urukehu te tangata, ka kiia no Warahoe. If a person is red haired, it is said to be from Warahoe. Anau keu is the Mangaian equivalent of the Maori whanau kehu. In the Auckland Museum there is a hank of beautiful wavy red hair, obtained from a rock shelter near Waitakerei. That it belonged to pre- European days is proved by the root ends being plaited together and bound round with fine braid prepared from the same hair. Curiously enough, the only other specimen of hair in the same case is also bound round with fine hair braid and is dark-brown in colour. It was obtained from the same cave as the very old carved coffins from Waimamaku. Words denoting very fair or flaxen hair are korito or korako, the latter being the same word as used for an albino. As another example of the Maori belief in the inheritance of fair hair from certain ancestors, we have the proverb, He aha te uru o to tamaiti? Kapatau he uru korito, he korako, he uru ariki no Pipi. What is the hair of your child? Were it flaxen hair or whitish, it would be the hair of high chieftainship from Pipi. Pipi was a woman of the highest rank who flourished twenty-four generations ago and was an ancestress of the Ngati-Ira tribe. (87) In recent years enquiries by this writer and others regarding the exhibits of braided hair mentioned by Dr Buck have been met with incomprehension by Auckland Museum staff. Apparently they are not even indexed in their archives.

115 The Ngati Hotu are a special case, and well worth discussing. They are described not simply as manifesting the urukehu strain of red or fair hair, but as being an urukehu folk per se. Ngati Hotu is regarded as extinct as a distinct people. However, representatives have in recent years come forward to affirm their continued existence. They once inhabited the entire central North Island from coast to coast, with their centre around Lake Taupo. But conflicts between themselves and Maori tribes caused their numbers, and bloodline to be reduced greatly. The most detailed account of the decline of the Ngati Hotu from a Maori scholarly perspective seems to be provided by Sir John Te Herekiekie Grace in his history of the Tuwharetoa, who occupied the Taupo District after having displaced the Ngati Hotu. Sir John writes: Ngati Tuwharetoa was a tribe that originally settled on the Bay of Plenty coast and during the 16th Century found its way into Taupo. It found there tribes in occupation of the district, but by gradual absorption, diplomatic alliances and aggressive warfare, finally took complete possession of the land. The original occupants of the land were a tribe of the fair skinned and flaxen haired people called Ngati Hotu. They lived by the lake in company withanother fair skinned tribe, Ngati Ruakopiri. The third tribe was Ngati Kurapoto (88)

116 Ms. Monica Matamua As recently as 2008, claims by descendants of the Ngati Hotu have been heard, such as this example from Monica Matamua: Our Ngati Hotu ancestry is something we hold dear to, although our whanau never really spoke of it. Growing up at school, the tribe was ridiculed and I was teased for my red hair. I remember once being called a urukehu. I told my mother about it and she told me of our Kui Te Mihi Terina who had red hair and green eyes, green eyes inherited from her grandfather, Te Pikikotuku. (89)

117 Descendants of the Ngati Hotu There are about 2,000 Ngati Hotu left. I hope more will come forward when they read this story. Of my generation of our family, there are only four left me, my brother and two sisters. There are 800 in our whanau. When the seven warrior waka arrived in New Zealand, my people were here. Our history says that our people first came to Aotearoa a long time back from what is now called Iran. If you go there today, the women still have moko, the black lips. Our people came here through Borneo. Monica jokes about her curved Mediterranean nose. Her mother taught her the Ngati Hotu language, a tongue that she says that is quite unlike Maori. Linguists have taken no note of this vital link with the ancient history of New Zealand. How could they, when Ngati Hotu were said to be extinct?(90) Patupaiarehe

118 In Maori tradition patupaiarehe, also known as turehu and pakepakeha, were fairy-like creatures of the forests and mountain tops. Although they had some human attributes, patupaiarehe were regarded not as people but as supernatural beings. Patupaiarehe had light skin, and red or fair hair. Historian James Cowan was told that they were a lighter complexion than Maori; their hair was of a dull golden or reddish hue, urukehu, such as is sometimes seen in Maori of today. (91) There is still debate about their height. The Tūhoe tribe records that they were small, but others say they were similar in size to humans. Whanganui stories claim them to be giants, more than 2 metres tall. Patupaiarehe were generally found deep in the forests, or on mist-covered hilltops. In these isolated places they settled and built their homes, sometimes described as forts. In the North Island they were said to live mainly in the Waikato Waipā basin, the Cape Colville Te Aroha range, the hills about Rotorua, the Urewera ranges and Wairoa districts, and the Waitākere ranges in the Auckland region. South Island traditions had them living mainly in the hills around Lyttelton Harbour, Akaroa and the Tākitimu range, and in the hills between the Arahura River and Lake Brunner. (92) They were generally a closed group who shunned intruders, and were unfriendly to those who ventured into their midst. Patupaiarehe were hunters and gatherers, surviving on raw forest foods and sometimes fishing from the shores of the sea or a lake. Their canoes were made of kōrari (flax stalks). Fearing the light, they were active mainly in the twilight hours and at night, or when the mist was heavy enough to shield them. Now is it just me, or do these people sound like they had reasons to shun intruders, eat raw food, and were active mainly at night? It seems to me that these could very well have been real people, similar to the Ngati Hotu, and why they displayed the above characteristics is because they were persecuted by others; possibly some branches of the Maori that arrived later in time? The whole description is eerily like the situation of the Mu or Manahuna people who were oppressed by the later Hawaiian people brought to the islands of the same name by Pa ao and Pili from Samoa. Mayor Island (or Tuhua) is a dormant shield volcano located off the Bay of Plenty coast of New Zealand's North Island. The island is considered special by Maori partly because of the presence of black obsidian, a volcanic glass created by the

119 rapid cooling of silica-rich lava, prized as a cutting tool. The obsidian was called Tuhua by Maori who called the island by the same name. Captain James Cook called it Mayor Island when he sighted it on November 3, 1769, in recognition of the Lord Mayor's Day to be held in London a few days later. (93) From here we get this oral tradition, as accounted by Evelyn Stokes: The ancient people of Tūhua were patupaiarehe, people with magical powers. When the Hawaiki people settled on Tūhua, the tangata whenua, the patupaiarehe, did not fight. They retreated into the tangled bush of the interior and the rugged cliffs and beaches to the north of the island. The patupaiarehe were rarely seen. They just seemed to melt away into the bush and lived there peacefully. (97) Fanciful portrayal of the patupaiarehe Waitaha

120 In 1995 a book by Barry Brailsford, Song of Waitaha: The Histories of a Nation, claimed that the ancestors of the "Nation of Waitaha" were the first remembered inhabitants of New Zealand, three groups of people of different races, two of light complexion and one of dark complexion, who had arrived in New Zealand from an unspecified location in the Pacific, 67 generations before the book was written. The book was written at the request of the Waitaha people and was a recording of their oral legends and stories, including the aboriginal people they met on arrival in New Zealand, and their eventual downfall after invasion by North Island Maori. The subject matter in this book has been very controversial and the subject of massive political and tribal debate in New Zealand. Many deny that Waitaha ever existed.

121 A highly credible source, he was principal lecturer at the Christchurch College of Education, has served at government level overseas and in 1990 was awarded an MBE for services to education and Maori scholarship. He says he was approached in the late 1980s by Waitaha elders and was asked to write down what, until then,

122 had been the oral and highly secret history of their people. The Waitaha knowledge he uncovered adds 1000 years to documented New Zealand history and takes occupation by first people back to the time of Christ. (98) Brailsford says the Waitaha was initially comprised of 200 ancestors who came together in New Zealand from homelands in the Pacific. For about 200 years they made regular forays there, each time leaving small groups to settle. A peace loving people, their history and bloodline was almost wiped out by the later arrival of Maori people, of the Ngai Tahu clan. Ngāi Tahu, or Kāi Tahu, is the principal Māori iwi (tribe) of the southern region of New Zealand, with the tribal authority, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, being based in Christchurch and Invercargill. The iwi combines three groups, Kāi Tahu itself, and Waitaha and Kāti Mamoe who lived in the South Island prior to the arrival of Kāi Tāhu. Ngāi Tahu trace their traditional descent from Tahupōtiki, the younger brother of Porou Ariki, founding ancestor of Ngāti Porou, a tribe of the East Coast of the North Island. They originated on the east coast of the North Island, from where they migrated south to present-day Wellington. In the late 17th century they began migrating to the northern part of the South Island. (99) Moriori Moriori are the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands (Rekohu in Moriori, Wharekauri in Māori), 767 km south east of the New Zealand archipelago. These people lived by a code of non-violence and passive resistance, which led to their near-extinction at the hands of Taranaki Māori invaders in the 1830s. It was once believed that Moriori were a Melanesian people, but it is now thought that they share the same Polynesian ancestry as Māori people. (100) Claims that the Moriori were red headed people with light skin and green eyes has not been substantiated, and is thus an urban myth. Megalithic Anomalies There are many seemingly man made stone structures in New Zealand that some have speculated were created prior to the arrival of the Maori. Some are standing stones while others are seemingly circles of megalithic rocks which

123 may or may not be the work of people. Perhaps the most famous is the Kaimanawa wall, located on the North Island of New Zealand, near Lake Taupo. Before the 1990s, locals in the area knew of the wall. Most of them had dismissed it as natural, weather and water-eroded rock outcropping. However as trails and roads opened the area to tourists, and more human traffic came through, many visitors were struck by the seemingly smooth blocks stacked atop of each other. To many observers, the blocks in the wall appeared to be too perfect for nature to create. (102) The Kaimanawa wall near Lake Taupo In 1996, researchers Barry Brailsford (cited above) and David Hatcher Childress, the world famous author of more than 20 books pertaining to lost civilizations, the paranormal, UFOs and ancient energy technologies, as well as owner and publisher of Adventures Unlimited Press, studied the site. Brailsford states that the four visible stones in the front were a uniform 1.9 metres wide by 1.6m tall, and one metre wide [deep]. "In one place you can insert an arm into a root-ridden cavity and feel the back face and the front face of the

124 next tier". Brailsford surmised, based on surface probing, that the wall was part of a stepped pyramid-like structure made of cuboid blocks stepping back up the hillside. He contends the "blocks" are evident (by probing) to a height of 6-7m above the base of the wall (i.e., the structure is at least 4-5 blocks high). (103) The subject has caused a lot controversy; some Maori people do not like the idea of an earlier race mentioned, as it could compromise their land claim issues as being the first people of Aotearoa, and scientists and geologists scoff at the notion that Kaimanawa is anything more than a natural construction. Refugees From A Lost Continent? Speculation and controversy are ripe with the thought that a continent once existed in the Pacific Ocean, in the distant past, and that the people who presently live on the islands we have already discussed, as well as Peru, are descendants of such a sunken realm. Common depiction of the lost continent.

125 The two most common names for this land are Mu and Lemuria, and we will discuss both of them here. Lemuria In 1864 the zoologist and biogeographer Philip Sclater wrote an article on "The Mammals of Madagascar" in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Using a classification he referred to as lemurs but which included related primate groups. (104) He was puzzled by the presence of their fossils in both Madagascar and India but their complete absence in Africa or the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent. He wrote: The anomalies of the Mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be explained by supposing that... a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans... that this continent was broken up into islands, of which some have become amalgamated with... Africa, some... with what is now Asia; and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands we have existing relics of this great continent, for which... I should propose the name Lemuria! (105) The bottom line is that, geologically speaking, there is no known geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans that corresponds to the hypothetical Lemuria, and any thoughts otherwise are wishful thinking. The acceptance of the works of Charles Darwin in the 19 th century led scientists to seek to trace the diffusion of species from their points of evolutionary origin. Prior to the acceptance of continental drift, biologists frequently postulated submerged land masses in order to account for populations of land-based species now separated by barriers of water. Similarly, geologists tried to account for striking resemblances of rock formations on different continents; they clearly must have been connected by other land at some time was the thought. After gaining some acceptance within the scientific community at that time, the concept of Lemuria began to appear in the works of other scholars. Ernst Haeckel, a German Darwinian taxonomist, proposed Lemuria as an explanation for the absence of "missing link" fossil records. Locating the origins of the human species on this lost continent, he claimed the fossil record could not be found because it had sunk beneath the sea. (106)

126 The Lemuria theory disappeared completely from conventional scientific consideration after the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift were theorized and then accepted by the larger scientific community. According to this theory, Madagascar and India were indeed once part of the same landmass (thus accounting for geological resemblances), but plate movement caused India to break away millions of years ago, and move to its present location, colliding with the Asian mainland, and forming the Himalaya mountains, which are supposedly still growing, vertically, to this day. Lemuria entered the lexicon of spiritual belief systems through the works of Helena Blavatsky, who claimed in the 1880s to have been shown an ancient, pre- Atlantean Book of Dzyan. According to L. Sprague de Camp, an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography, Blavatsky's concept of Lemuria was influenced by other contemporaneous writers on the theme of Lost Continents, notably Ignatius L. Donnelly, American cult leader Thomas Lake Harris and the French writer Louis Jacolliot. (107) One of the most elaborate accounts of lost continents was given by the later theosophical author William Scott-Elliot. This English theosophist received his knowledge from Charles Webster Leadbeater, who supposedly communicated with the Theosophical Masters by "astral clairvoyance". In 1896 he published The Story of Atlantis, followed in 1904 by The Lost Lemuria, in which he included a map of the continent of Lemuria as stretching from the east coast of Africa across the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. (108) Mu Although Lemuria and Mu are used interchangeably, this is not necessarily the case. The concept and the name Mu were proposed by 19th century traveler and writer Augustus Le Plongeon, who claimed that several ancient civilizations, such as those of Egypt and Mesoamerica, were created by refugees from Mu, which he located in the Atlantic Ocean. (109) Surveyor, doctor of medicine and photographer, Le Plongeon spent twelve years in Yucatan, as the first to excavate the ruins of Chichen Itza. His excavations of Mayan ruins in the 1880s convinced him that refugees from Mu, a lost continent resembling Atlantis, had founded the Mayan civilization. (110)

127 Map of Mu by James Churchward, 1931 Le Plongeon actually got the name "Mu" from Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg who in 1864 mistranslated what was then called the Troano Codex using the de Landa alphabet. Brasseur believed that a word that he read as Mu referred to a land submerged by a catastrophe. (111) Brasseur de Bourbourg was a noted French writer, ethnographer, historian and archaeologist. He became a specialist in Mesoamerican studies, travelling extensively in the region. His writings, publications, and recovery of historical documents contributed much to knowledge of the region's languages, writing, history and culture, particularly those of the Maya and Aztec. According to Le Plongeon: "In our journey westward across the Atlantic we shall pass in sight of that spot where once existed the pride and life of the ocean, the Land of Mu, which, at the epoch that we have been considering, had not yet been visited by the wrath of

128 Humen, that lord of volcanic fires to whose fury it afterward fell a victim. The description of that land given to Solon by Sonchis, priest at Sais; its destruction by earthquakes, and submergence, recorded by Plato in his Timaeus, have been told and retold so many times that it is useless to encumber these pages with a repetition of it". (112) The name Solon is directly attached to Atlantis, who was Plato s source for his book Critias, which together with his other work, Tiamaeus, make up his epic two volume set on the subject, published in 360 BC. In Critias, Plato claims that his accounts of Atlantis stem from a visit to Egypt by a legendary Athenian lawgiver named Solon in the 6th century BC. In Egypt, Solon met a priest of Sais, who translated the history of ancient Atlantis, recorded on papyri in Egyptian hieroglyphs, into Greek. Another Churchward map of Mu; this one from 1927 Mu, as a lost Pacific Ocean continent, was later popularised by James Churchward ( ) in a series of books, beginning with Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Man (1926) and followed by The Children of Mu (1931), and The

129 Sacred Symbols of Mu (1933). Churchward claimed that while he was a soldier in India, he befriended a high-ranking temple priest who showed him a set of ancient "sunburnt" clay tablets, supposedly in a long lost "Naga-Maya language" which only two other people in India could read. Having mastered the language himself, Churchward found out that they originated from "the place where [man] first appeared Mu." Churchward gave a vivid description of Mu as the home of an advanced civilization, the Naacal, which flourished between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago, was dominated by a white race," and was "superior in many respects to our own." At the time of its demise, about 12,000 years ago, Mu had 64,000,000 inhabitants and many large cities, and colonies in the other continents. (113) He claimed that the landmass of Mu was located in the Pacific Ocean, and stretched east-west from the Marianas to Easter Island, and north-south from Hawaii to Mangaia. He claimed that according to the creation myth he read in the Indian tablets, Mu had been lifted above sea level by the expansion of underground volcanic gases. This last claim has been refuted and even laughed at by scientists, and does defy geological history. Churchward claimed that Mu was the common origin of the great civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Central America, India, Burma and others, including Easter Island, and was in particular the source of ancient megalithic architecture. This is part of what we have been exploring in this book. As evidence for his claims, he pointed to symbols from throughout the world, in which he saw common themes of birds, the relation of the Earth and the sky, and especially the Sun. He further claimed the king of Mu was Ra and he relates this to the Egyptian god of the sun, Ra, and the Rapanui word for Sun, ra a, which he incorrectly spells "raa." He found symbols of the Sun in Egypt, Babylonia, Peru and all ancient lands and countries it was a universal symbol. (114) However, this is hardly a great revelation; many cultures throughout history have recognized the sun as being the source of heat, light and its importance in agriculture. Churchward attributed all megalithic art in Polynesia to the people of Mu, especially the works on Easter Island. His belief was that the Polynesians were not responsible for the megalithic works, which is part of the thread that we have been following. This is in no way to say that the Polynesians were in any way inferior to anyone else, but that the megalithic works seem to predate their presence.

130 Do I believe that Mu existed? No. The evidence indicates, as we have seen, that continents do not rise or sink over less than millions of years, and humans, as we know ourselves to be, have been human for perhaps 200,000 to 250,000, depending upon the source you access. Genetic and fossil evidence is interpreted to show that archaic Homo sapiens evolved to anatomically modern humans solely in Africa, between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago, (115) that members of one branch of Homo sapiens left Africa by between 125,000 and 60,000 years ago, and that over time these humans replaced earlier human populations such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus. The date of the earliest successful "out of Africa" migration (earliest migrants with living descendents) has generally been placed at 60,000 years ago as suggested by genetics, although attempts at migration out of the continent may have taken place as early as 125,000 years ago according to Arabian archaeology finds of tools in the region. (116) This book is presented solely to present anomalies that through the use of science, archaeology, anthropology and oral traditions we have tried to explain. Is it the full picture of the past? Of course not. But it has been my honest attempt to solve, mainly for myself to be truthful, the enigma of the presence of red hair in a part of the world that has fascinated me all of my life. There are other stories of red haired people having been found, albeit as mummies, in places such as China, and the authorities there have supposedly taken any specimens on display in museums away from the eyes of the curious public. Are they afraid that people other than ethnic Han Chinese once lived on the same land that they inhabit, and that such a possibility undermines their own sense of self? Is this also the case in Peru and Pacific Islands? Maybe, but that is not why I wrote this, and, again, I stayed away from some of the more inflammatory theories, of which there are many, about Europeans having populated South America and the Pacific prior to the present, and known indigenous populations. I offer this information solely for you to make up your own mind, and honour all of the Native people of Peru, Rapanui, Tahiti, Hawaii and Aotearoa for their ancestral accomplishments, present day struggles for survival and advancement in a white dominated world, and the warmth and enlightenment that they have shared with me in my travels. We are all one human family in my mind, but who were these damn redheads!

131 Ha amonga Trilithon on Tonga Island; makers unknown