As a New Zealander I thought it was high time I posted some archaeology a bit closer to home.

A very important Pacific archaeological site located on the south eastern coast of Raiatea, French Polynesia -the Taputapuatea Marae.

For those of you who don’t know, a marae is a sacred religious gathering place in Polynesian societies. This particular marae was already established by 1000 AD, and was once known as the religious centre and central temple of Eastern Polynesia. Here, people such as priests and navigators would meet to share knowledge and preform sacrifices to the gods.

Member of the Moari iwi Te Rangi Hīroa (anthropologist, politician), upon visiting the site in 1929 was overcome with grief due to the state of the once great marae, and consequently wrote:

Fortunately, as of 1994, the archaeological remains of Taputapuatea has been restored, and is currently being pushed to become a recognized United Nations World Heritage site.

Photos courtesy & taken by Pierre Lesage.

Clues to Prehistoric Human Exploration Found in Sweet Potato Genome

Europeans raced across oceans and continents during the Age of Exploration in search of territory and riches. But when they reached the South Pacific, they found they had been beaten there by a more humble traveler: the sweet potato. Now, a new study suggests that the plant’s genetics may be the key to unraveling another great age of exploration, one that predated European expansion by several hundred years and remains an anthropological enigma.

Humans domesticated the sweet potato in the Peruvian highlands about 8000 years ago, and previous generations of scholars believed that Spanish and Portuguese explorers introduced the crop to Southeast Asia and the Pacific beginning in the 16th century. But in recent years, archaeologists and linguists have accumulated evidence supporting another hypothesis: Pre Modern Polynesian sailors navigated their sophisticated ships all the way to the west coast of South America and brought the sweet potato back home with them. Read more.

On Pacific Societies and Language

Several words in common usage or recognised in English today were originally used by islanders of the pacific. Some of these words of Polynesian origin are: 

Tattoo - tatau - which means ‘to hit’ or ‘to strike’ and is a reference to the original form tattooing used to take which was incredibly painful and took many hours to complete. Tattooing the word and the practice were brought over to the west from this region by way of whalers who were in the pacific hunting sperm whales. At first the sailors copied designs used by the islanders, but after a while they developed their own patterns and tattoo designs. 

Bikini - this origin is a bit of a mystery. The swimsuit is supposedly named after the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, but the reasons why this would be are uncertain. The islands were used by the Americans for Nuclear testing in the 1950’s, after their inhabitants were forcibly relocated for this purpose. One of the islands was almost completely destroyed in the process, and to this day, humans still cannot live in the area. 

Taboo - tabu - Another word brought back by sailors from the pacific. Its polynesian meaning is similar, though more complex than what it has come to mean in English. In English it simply means something forbidden, but in Polynesian it carries further connotations of forbidden because the thing or person is more sacred/powerful/pure than other things or people. In other words it can be seen as a ranking term. 

Wiki - as in Wikipedia. Wiki-wiki means fast, which was probably the intention of the makers of the website. An information site that expands itself quickly. 

Mana - this word is most well known to the gamer culture. In the western gamer scene mana is usually the charge or points used when performing spells or other kinds of magic in-game. It should delight gamers then, to know that the word mana is from the Solomans and although anthropologists are still in argument about its precise definition, it is loosely a type of spiritual power.