Posted on 03/22/2015 6:17:13 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Story has it that many hundreds of years ago, Tanovo, chief of the Fijian island Ono, was very partial to a late afternoon stroll. Each day he would walk along the beach, watch the sun go down and undoubtedly contemplate this paradise on Earth.
But one day Tanovo's rival, chief of the volcano Nabukelevu, pushed his mountain up and blocked Tanovo's view of the sunset. Enraged at this, and robbed of the pacifying effects of his daily meditation, Tanovo wove giant coconut-fibre baskets and began to remove earth from the mountain. His rival, however, caught Tanovo and chased him away. Tanovo, in his flight, dropped earth at the islands of Dravuni and Galoa.
When geologist Patrick Nunn first heard this myth, it made sense that it described the volcanic eruption of Nabukelevu, with the associated ash falls on other islands in the Kadavu group. But his scientific investigation of the region concluded that the volcano had not erupted for 50,000 years, long before the island was first inhabited around 2000 B.C. The myth, it seemed, was simply a story -- not a description of previous events.
Then, two years later, when diggers carved out a road near the base of the volcano, they uncovered pieces of ancient pottery buried underneath a metre-deep layer of volcanic ash. "This clearly demonstrated that the volcano had erupted within the last 3,000 years while humans lived here," says Nunn... The cultural memory was right, and our scientific surveys were wrong."
..."I think the creation of myths is essentially the human reaction to witnessing a natural process that you cannot explain, says Haraldur Sigurdsson, a volcanologist at the University of Rhode Island, US. "So you attribute it to supernatural forces and you say it is a battle between the giants and the gods."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
One of the indian villages in Alaska is on the other side of a large bay from a fjiord(Glacier Bay maybe?). The story was that the ice king wanted a bride and came into the village that used to be on the fjiord. So the villagers had to flee to their current homee.
Scientists have now found the remnants of the old village that had been covered by ice a thousand years or so ago.
IIRC the large subduction earthquakes in the Pacific NW from 400+ years ago can be found in the native stories.
At least we now know why the island was named “Ono”.
From pix I’ve seen, I’d be happy to visit there, or maybe even live there. :’)
We should follow up on stories of this sort and find out the geology of the myth. We would learn a lot, I think.
Sounds do loopy recursive.
I first read of Fiji in 1958 in a National Geographic. Among other things, the article highlighted:
An elderly Fijiian clutching the fork with which he dined at long pig banquets.
Breadfruit in Suva being harvested as food.
The worst insults in the Fijian language, including “Eat the boots of Mister Baker!”
Women summoning up giant sea turtles including Tinandi Thambonga, the “mother of turtles”.
The myth about Mt. Shasta is that God dwelled on its top. His wife, wanting a place of her own began to build a second peak. The wife’s peak started to get as tall as God’s. He yelled “stop” and all the people bringing dirt to the new peak dropped their baskets where they stood.
Mt Shasta is a shield volcano that flowed lava out over a broad valley. Small hills of rock actually floated on the lava. http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/tectonic/cascade/cas10.jpg
I think some of the Biblical archaeology looks at the various Biblical stories. I just learned (at church) that the town of Nazereth (Jesus’ hometown) was only mentioned in the Bible - no other sources (such as Joesephus, etc.) mention the name. But, archaelogy has found it (just south of Cana).
I’m not sure how much the scientists use the myths before hand, but they make sense afterwards.:
http://pnsn.org/outreach/native-american-stories/native-american-stories-overview
The 1980s was a decade of discovery of evidence for great earthquakes in the Cascadia Region. Tom Heaton and Hiroo Kanamori published a paper asserting the Cascadia Subduction Zone was indeed actively deforming and is likely to produce great Earthquakes.
Heaton followed this paper up with a paper about PNW Native American stories that inferred their people were impacted by tsunamis in the not too distant past. In the 1990s, PNSN Research Scientist Ruth Ludwin began collecting and organizing other Native American stories and traditions that seem to be related to earthquakes and their effects on the people of Cascadia before westerners arrived.
Brian Atwater, David Yamaguchi and others produced detailed evidence of abrupt land level changes and tsunami inundation along the coast of Washington state in the winter of 1699-1700.
Further work in the 1980s and 1990s refined our understanding of the great earthquake that occurred on January 26, 1700 at about 9 PM PST. The amazing specificity of date and time came through collaborations with Japanese scientists and historians who helped identify the Cascadia Subduction Zone as the source of a deadly “orphan tsunami” that flooded areas on the coast of Japan the following day.
Over the past 3,500 years these great earthquakes (~M9) have reoccurred 7 times with a average interval of 550 years though 4 of the events reoccurred between 200 and 400 years after the previous great quake. This research renewed interest in understanding how these events may have impacted the many thousands of Native Americans living here.
The science was settled, but then it was unsettled.
I don’t buy that it’s younger, I buy that people have been here a LOT longer than the academic crew wants to admit.
Kind of an anthropological version of Alfred Wegeners travails with continental drift.
Thanks. The story fits so well it sounds like the folklore had been one thing, then had to be adjusted when the first deity turned out to be just a volcano.
I agree that the idea of a central point of diffusion in the relatively recent past is bonkers, and until there’s a second form of dating on the artifacts found under the eruption layer am willing to kick back and wait, but there isn’t a pottery style anywhere in the world that kept a recognizable style for 50,000 years.
Modern researchers underestimate the ability of preliterate man to perfectly memorize and pass on important stories. People have been memorizing the ancient Hindu texts, and all the Koran for centuries. My own son, who is dyslexic, at age 10 or 11 memorized the entire monologue of “Why Is There Air?” by Bill Cosby by listening to it over and over again.
At least 25 years ago, I was sitting in a bar chatting with a middle aged woman from California. She was an anthropologist and had apparently suffered some academic political difficulties out there. She told me that there was a real controversy over human findings that some (apparently including her) believed to be over 200,000 years old. I always thought that Soddom and Gommorah might have been a meteor burst. Does anyone know exactly where they were located. Could they be in a valley that orients toward the meteor crater found in the Iraq marshes? I also read in National Geographic about a large iron meteor found in the “Empty Quarter” of Saudi Arabia. There were local stories that the meteor had destroyed a village of sinners. Is that another possible orientation?
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Amazing the conniptions people will go through in making up a story rather than taking God’s word as it is. Expanding the 6000 years that this creation has been here into millions or even billions of years, just to avoid the unavoidable.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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