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ypochris
Lokahi
USA
398 Posts |
 Posted - 02/25/2008 : 2:40:12 PM
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Samoa- "Talofa". Not sure as to the roots here, but this is highly indicative that "aloha" predates the settlement of Hawai'i- lending creedance to the argument by Leilehua's grandfather that "It just means what it means. It didn't need to come from another word."
Fiji- pronounced "Mbula" (Fiji actually has a large number of languages, with some more Melanesian and some more Polynesian. While this is the common greeting, I'm not sure it was originally consistent across the islands). This word clearly has Melanesian rather than Polynesian roots, so is not helpful to the discussion.
Anyone spent time on other Polynesian islands?
Chris
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thumbstruck
Ahonui
USA
2168 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 3:56:08 PM
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| When I was a kid, an old electrician my Dad knew told me that "hello" was a contraction of "hail you". That would've worked for hailing a group, "thou" is singular, "you" is plural. I like to think that folks hadn't happened upon "howzit". |
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Pua Kai
Ha`aha`a
USA
1007 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 5:25:51 PM
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| Do pigs pre-date the Europeans in Hawaii? |
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ypochris
Lokahi
USA
398 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 6:13:41 PM
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Polynesians brought the pigs. They were a very different pig than the ones we have today, though, which are a hybrid between the Polynesian pig and the European wild boar, with whatever domestic pigs have in them thrown into the mix.
Captain Cook said the largest pigs in Hawai'i when he arrived were no more than 40 pounds. I have seen thousand pound pigs in the remote Kohalas. Now here I go again with one of my "when I was a wild boy, living in Waimanu" stories...
My brother had moved to Waimanu; he had never hunted but he figured it couldn't be that hard. So he borrowed my old .22 (that was my father's and grandfather's, and now is my son's)and went for a walk one morning. Soon he was back, wondering what to do next. He had walked around a corner and this fat sow just stood there looking at him, so he shot her between the eyes but he couldn't move her.
I grabbed my knife and went to check it out. Nice one! Big and fat. I thought hey, lets take this down to the beach and emu da bugger, plenny wahine stay down there. So I gutted and skinned it, cut off the head, and tied the legs front and back together so I could carry it backpack style, which is messy but convenient. But I just couldn't get it off the ground, even with my brother's help.
O.K., next clever idea- we tie a bamboo pole between the legs and both carry it, bwana style- show up at the beach like we were on safari. Problem was, the two of us together couldn't lift it. We tried lifting one end together, putting it in a crotch, then lifting the other end onto my shoulder- we got it up, took two steps, and fell over. Eventually we quartered it and tied the quarters onto pack frames, and still had trouble carrying them.
Now my brother and I are both big guys- I guess back then I was six foot one, 180 pounds, and no fat. I could pick up and carry my brother, and he could pick me up and carry me. So let's call this gutted, skinned, and beheaded pig that we couldn't pick up both together(Hawaiian style, like 3 foot surf)a 400 pounder, live.
O.K., a week or so later I am a bit bored and decide to climb the pali on the far side of Waimanu, see what is up on top. This is a 1600 foot pali, and I couldn't find anyone who had been up there at the time. Certainly no one had hunted there in many years, if ever. So up I go. Get to the top, just beautiful- broad ridges covered with old ohia. I head mauka and pretty soon the waiawi gets real thick- hard to even pass through it. But there is a nice broad pig trail I am following.
I walk a ways, and here comes this huge sow- way bigger than the one my brother shot. I would say twice as big, so Hawaiian style let's call it 600 pounds. This was the biggest wild pig I had seen by far- I've seen thousand pound farm pigs, but this thing looked huge. Now this pig couldn't turn around in the thick waiawi, and it didn't think some puny human was going to get in it's way. But that human was not thrilled at the thought of walking a quarter mile or so with this 600 pound pig at his back, and besides he was a renowned pig killer in his own mind. So I yelled at the pig but it ignored me, kept coming. I frantically looked around for something and grabbed a two inch thick stick, and started beating on the pig's head with it. Luckily she was a sow. She didn't like that much, started trying to back and turn but the waiawi was too thick and she was too big- and just then my stick broke! Well, she was pissed and started pushing me backwards down the trail. I grabbed another stick and started whacking her right on the snout- she backed and bucked and I guess the waiawi was a little thinner there because she managed to turn around, and up the trial she trotted.
Well, I was a bit shaken by such a huge and fearless pig, so I waited a minute and let her get a head start, then up the trail I went. Not far ahead it suddenly opened onto a surprising and beautiful scene- what appeared to be a perfectly round old crater, with fairly steep walls about 50 feet deep. The bottom was a meadow, and some springs on one side fed a little stream that wound through the meadow to a slot on one side, where it appeared to drop into a gulch. One of the most beautiful spots I have ever seen.
Then I refocused from the broad beauty to the specific. There was the pig I had just beat off, the biggest wild pig I had ever seen (remember I had been living in Waimanu for over a year, hunting almost every day), 600 pounds if it weighed an ounce. It was trotting towards a herd of pigs in the meadow, and it looked like a KEIKI compared to all the other pigs! "Daddy", she squealed, "this mean little two legged beast was beating on me!" At least that was my fear in that paranoid moment. I quickly turned around and headed back down the mountain, my exploring over for the day.
So when some old hunter says he has seen thousand pound pigs on the mountain, I don't laugh or talk about the one that got away. I just nod and say "yah, I know..."
Chris
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Edited by - ypochris on 02/28/2008 6:21:56 PM |
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Retro
Ahonui
USA
2368 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2008 : 7:24:35 PM
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| From the March 2008 National Geographic article about ancient Pacific seafarers, primarily talking about the Lapita, ancestors of the Polynesians: "Their language - variants of which are still spoken across the Pacific - came from Taiwan." |
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ypochris
Lokahi
USA
398 Posts |
Posted - 02/29/2008 : 02:57:51 AM
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Seems like it would be difficult to know what language the Lapita spoke, as the culture ended over a thousand years ago. I know some of the wares were transported to Samoa, but don't know of any Polynesian islands with ceramic grade clay except Atearoa, where I don't think there was a Lapita influence. Where I have seen Lapita material is in Fiji and New Caledonia, both primarily Melanesian except for some Polynesian areas on the outer (clayless) islands.
I have a basket full of Lapita pottery fragnemts I picked up from the Sigatoka Dunes on Viti Levi, Fiji, 30 years ago before I knew better. The dunes are covered with pottery fragments. Very interesting how they decorated, pressing rope and fabric into the clay or incising designs. Never worked out glazing or the wheel, though- it is all handbuilt. My mother is a potter and I do a bit myself, so this was very interesting to me. |
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RWD
`Olu`olu
USA
850 Posts |
Posted - 02/29/2008 : 06:38:17 AM
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Chris
There have been a few curious things writen on two different threads. Swooping Hawaiian cliff jumpers, ti plant stopping a 50+ ft fall, and a pua'a taken with a .22.
Yes, I am skeptical. |
Bob |
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Retro
Ahonui
USA
2368 Posts |
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ypochris
Lokahi
USA
398 Posts |
Posted - 02/29/2008 : 11:25:20 AM
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Retro,
Thanks for the link.
Warning- graphic! Do not read about hunting if you are squeamish!
Haole Boy- I don't know about the cliff jumping, I've just read about it in several accounts from the early 1800's. Those other stories about myself when I was a kid living in Waimanu in the mid 1970's are 100% fact, 0% B.S. Next time you go to Waipi'o, stop by the "table of knowledge" (where everyone knows everything about everything) by the Hi'ilawe crossing with a six pack just before dark and ask some of the residents if they have ever done anything crazy with me. Then you'll get some real stories!
About hunting with a .22- there are huge advantages. For one thing, you don't scare every animal for miles when you shoot- they just think it is a branch breaking or a falling kukui or something. Heart shots work on sows, but you can't get through a boar's puna. Look at a pig skull some time- you will find that if you draw a line from each ear to the opposite eye, the center of the "x" is a very thin spot in the skull. This is your target- you have to hit within about one square inch. Right in the ear works too. The eye is a luck shot- pretty well armored but if it hits just right it will go in. Important thing is that you use a jacketed or at least solid bullet- hollow point will mushroom and won't penetrate.
Hunting with a .22 is a matter of skill. You need a long barrel for power and accuracy- mine was a Winchester Model 69 pump with a 22" long octagon barrel, a "star" barrel- serial number 3839. Used it for years on deer, like my father before me, before I came to Hawai'i. I guess it wasn't legal, but hungry Indians don't care much about the white man's laws and the statuate of limitations is long past. That .22 has killed thousands of animals in the four generations it has been in my family.
I had a .30-06 too when I first came over, but I gave it away. Too loud, too heavy, too much damage, kept jamming, couldn't afford bullets at 50 cents each- I was poor, living on $20 a month, and .22 rounds only cost pennies. Dangerous, too- bullet would go right through a foot thick kukui. .22 bullets stop when they hit something.
When I first brought that .30-06 to the island the scope got knocked off the front mount in the plane. I headed straight to Waimanu the day I arrived, and as we walked up to my brother's camp there was a pig standing right in front of it. I whipped up the .30-06 and squeezed off a quick shot, but the scope was pointing high. The bullet just grazed the pig's chest and belly. It was still standing there and it's guts fell out on the trail. Easiest pig gutting ever! And a nice welcome home. Like I said, big guns do too much damage. Another true story to doubt.
Anyway, hunting with a gun at all is high tech, even a .22 seems too easy after a while. I sort of devolved after a couple years living in the jungle. First I stopped using a gun at all- just jump on the pig's back and cut it's throat. I've used a machete when that was all I had, drowned them in streams, suffocated them by shoving their snouts into the mud, and most gruesome beat their brains out with rocks.
The last pig I got was with a machete. My wife and I were up on the upper part of our ahupua'a clearing a trail through thick waiawi. The machete was sharp enough to shave with in the morning, but after over eight hours of chopping waiawi it wasn't any more. We had be distressing all day about the pig damage, wondering what we could do. Just then our two Rottweilers (pets, not pig dogs!)started barking a pig. I was going to call them off, but my wife was so pissed at the pigs she yelled "get it!" and that was that- nothing was going to stop that pair then.
I ran in to rescue the dogs- they had this huge boar. I could hear it sharpening it's tusks; if you want sound effects for this story imagine two frantically barking Rotts and the snick, snick, snick of the boar sharpening his tusks all the way through. The boar was backed into an uluhe patch, kind of thin because of all the waiawi. I snuck around behind while the dogs distracted it, and gave it a mighty whack across the back of the neck with my machete- which really pissed it off but didn't do much because it was so dull. The boar forgot the dogs and decided I was the enemy. It charges and took a swipe at me, but I jumped back and it just cut my levi's and not my leg.
Just then my wife ran up so the boar retreated into some thick waiawi shoots and uluhe. She yelled "get it! Get it" again and the dogs rushed in. I jumped in behind and grabbed it's hind legs and lifted them, and called to her for help. She took the legs and I jumped on it's back, grabbing an ear with one hand and sawing on it's neck with the machete with the other. The dogs grabbed it's face to help. This boar was so srong that only with it's front legs it drug my wife and 200 pounds of rottweiler, with my 220 pounds on it's back, quite a ways before I was finally able to saw through it's jugular with my dull machete.
Only after it was dead did we discover that I had lost a tooth, my dog's throat was cut almost to the wind pipe, her dog had a slice on the leg- but my wife was unscratched. The pig was an easy 350 pounds. Two days walk to the nearest road- my poor dog! He wasn't even interested in eating the pig. He has a big lumpy scar on his throat but eventually he did recover.
(O.K. there was a bit of B.S. in this one- it wasn't really my last pig, that was couple years ago...)
Chris
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 02/29/2008 : 12:10:32 PM
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| Chris - great stories. You need to write a book. Just the kind of stuff I like. Like sitting around down home and listening to the old pawpaws and uncles tell stories after they have a belly full of moonshine. But the mostly talk about coon hunting. Those silly guys call it hunting, but all they do is sit around a fire and listen to the hounds howling. I don't get it. Must be a man thing. |
Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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ypochris
Lokahi
USA
398 Posts |
Posted - 02/29/2008 : 2:37:16 PM
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On that National Geographic article- I can't believe people are still arguing that the Polynesians were blown by chance to every island in the Pacific. How do you survive an unplanned voyage for thousands of miles, and just happen to arrive with taro huli, ulu trees, banana keiki, yam and sweet potato tops, arrowroot, awapuhi and tumeric shoots, coconuts, hala, dogs, chickens, pigs, and enough men and women to establish a viable gene pool? A totally absurd supposition by people who cannot accept that some people were sailing across the greatest ocean in the world when Europeans were afraid to get out of sight of land and burned people at the stake for witchcraft if they sailed upwind.
Chris
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Lawrence
Ha`aha`a
USA
1597 Posts |
Posted - 02/29/2008 : 3:57:27 PM
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A totally absurd supposition by people who cannot accept that some people were sailing across the greatest ocean in the world when Europeans were afraid to get out of sight of land and burned people at the stake for witchcraft if they sailed upwind.
Couldn't agree more. Modern people seem to assume the folks were much more "stupid" in previous ages because some technologies might have been simpler. It seems to me that modern man is actually getting dumber and dumber (on a per-capita basis) even if, in the aggregate, there is more and more knowledge.
It is quite obvious that many ancient peoples traveled a lot more than is currently assumed (and mostly knew, at least to a general extent, where they were going), over sea as well as land.
A tremendous amount of historical knowledge was destroyed (mostly by the Church) during the dark ages. For instance, if it weren't for the documents stored in the Library at Alexandria (cared for by Arabic peoples), we would know essentially NOTHING about the ancient Greeks (including such things as the concept of Democracy, or Plato, Socrates & all the rest). I am sure that many other historical records, including those documenting ancient travels, were destroyed during this period. The stories of Homer (Iliad, Odyssey) were among the texts recovered from the library at Alexandria and had been completely destroyed in Europe. I am sure Homer was not the only one writing about ancient voyages, but most all of that is lost.
Another way of saying this is that (at lest for Europeans and their descendants) all science and history was destroyed and ended during the dark ages, and people are still recovering even now. The pity is that we seem to be rapidly moving toward another dark age.
China, of course, has historical records that are much older, but there were "political purges" there too, and so even their history is spotty. For instance, the records of those gigantic sailing ships (that may have made it to the America's) are almost entirely destroyed.
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Mahope Kākou...
...El Lorenzo de Ondas Sonoras |
Edited by - Lawrence on 02/29/2008 4:04:33 PM |
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Retro
Ahonui
USA
2368 Posts |
Posted - 02/29/2008 : 5:24:09 PM
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European-oriented scientists might come to their research with a bias towards a Western background in early exploration, because those are the "historical records" they grew up understanding.
Polynesian scientists might have a similar bias, because they grew up understanding a different way of "record-keeping" in their past generations.
The same archaeological artifacts can and will be interpreted in multiple ways - and we're not likely to ever learn what really occurred; we can only listen to the speculation from the different perspectives. It's foolish for anyone, scientifically trained or otherwise, to assume they "know" accurately what happened millennia in the past. |
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ypochris
Lokahi
USA
398 Posts |
Posted - 03/01/2008 : 04:20:50 AM
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Actually pretty much all of this work is being done by European scholars. Only in recent years have Polynesians become interested in becoming archaeologists, and none have yet made enough of a name for themselves that I have heard of them.
Incidentally I have studied archaeology at U.H. Hilo (Peter Mills, the head of the department, is great!) and put in some weeks of field work on our property with Dr. Mills and students. So I think I have a pretty good understanding of the depth of study that goes into these conclusions- archaeology is pretty high tech these days, generating data that is impossible to refute. Dr. Mills pushed us to look at every preconceived idea we had and ask "how do I know that?". Anything without hard data supporting it went out the window.
From that background I can confidently state that any archaeologist who argues that the Pacific was settled by chance would be ridiculed by almost any expert in the Pacific. Which is why I have such a hard time with National Geographic printing such nonsense.
It is possible that some islands were discovered by chance, but the odds of colonizers arriving with the full suite of plants and animals- especially considering that the plants were all clones, not seeds- and in a large enough group to form a viable gene pool is infintesimally small.
When Europeans first arrived in the Pacific, the reported that on some islands a person who wished to be chief had to prove his leadership ability by mounting an expedition. The hopeful prospect would load a canoe with months of supplies and sail off into unknown seas- heading in one direction for perhaps six weeks before turning around and heading home. Six weeks of sailing can cover thousands of miles. Presumably, if an uninhabited island was discovered, he would return, gather together a group, and become chief of that island. If an inhabited but previously unknown island was found again, that was a great thing. And even if nothing was found, the young man had proven his ability to lead men out into the unknown and bring them home safely. Expeditions like this setting out from hundreds of islands for a couple thousand years is a far more likely scenario of how the Pacific was settled than large parties on canoes carrying everything needed to recreate a civilization happening to get blown off course and into a new island.
Another absurd part of the story starts with this:
"Anderson also questions conventional wisdom about Polynesian seamanship, citing a later explorer, Captain Cook. While Cook was impressed with the speed of the Polynesian canoes—they could literally sail circles around his ships—he came to question the islanders' ability to make long, intentional sea voyages."
Anderson goes on to argue that there is no proof that Polynesians could sail upwind, and that El Nino's blew them across the ocean. All I can say is how does a canoe "literally sail circles around his ships" without sailing upwind? It is pretty hard to sail in a circle without going upwind!
Enough said-
Chris |
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thumbstruck
Ahonui
USA
2168 Posts |
Posted - 03/01/2008 : 6:34:25 PM
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| Cahill's "How the Irish Saved Civilization" shows how at least some learning was preserved in Christendom. Also check the works of Rodney Starke about the so called "Dark Ages". Humans have always been in ferment, the strong taking unfair advantage of the weak. Even in good times, plenty info is lost. Just think of what your grandparents never told you. In my family, we have lost 2 languages (aside from some colorful "impolite" expressions) and countless details about life experience just in the last 3 generations, not to mention tunes and recipes. |
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