170
10 Studying the History of Spice Island Migration Through Cultural Diffusion
currents from the Spice Islands. Fornander stresses that second-wave explorers such
as Wakea found the descendants of earlier Polynesian migrants already living in
the lands they re-discovered. New Zealand traditions record that the second-wave
explorer Maui the Navigator met with the descendants of first-wave settlers in New
Zealand.
Turning from traditional to material evidence, Fornander supplies appropriately
stratified skeletal evidence for the existence of very early settlers in Hawaii:
Geologically speaking, the leeward islands are the oldest of the group, but both on Oahu and
on Molokai human remains have been found imbedded in lava flows of undoubted antiquity,
and of whose occurrence no vestige of remembrance remains in the Hawaiian folklore.
In 1822 the first wells were dug in the city of Honolulu. They passed through some eight
or ten feet of surface loam and underlying volcanic sand, when a coral bed of some eight
feet of thickness was encountered and cut through, under which the fresh water was reached.
In this coral formation were found embedded a human skull and sundry human bones.
In 1858, in dredging the harbour of Honolulu, island of Oahu, near the new Esplanade,
after scooping up and removing the mud and sand at the bottom of the harbour, it was
found that underneath this sand and mud was a pan of coral rock which it was necessary
to break up and remove in order to obtain the required depth of water. This pan was of an
average thickness of two feet, and beneath it was a thick couch of black volcanic sand, such
as is found some four or five feet beneath the surface throughout the city, and evidently
thrown out by the extinct crater of Punch-bowl-hill in some pre-traditional time. Embedded
in this black sand, underneath the coral bed, was found the lower part or pointed end of an
ancient spear or Oo, about three feet long; and near to it a rounded small stone, the size of
a hen’s egg and nearly its shape, of a red, close-grained, compact and heavy lava, such as
is not found in the Punch-bowl-hill formation or its vicinity. The broken spear speaks for
itself, and shows that man passed over that spot by water or by land before the formation
of that coral pan which now covers the bottom of the harbour and the adjoining reefs. What
purposes the stone had subserved I am not prepared to say, unless it had been used for slings
and dropped by the same hand or the same generation that dropped the spear. It bears no
geological relation to the black sand around it, to the coral-rock above it, or to the extinct
crater one and a quarter mile inland.
In 1859 Mr. R. W. Meyer of Kalae, Molokai, found in the side of a canyon on his estate –
some seventy feet below the surface rim of the upper level country, and among a stratum of
volcanic mud, Creccia, clay and ashes of several feet in thickness – a human skull, whose
every cavity was fully and completely filled with the volcanic deposit surrounding it, as
if it had been cast in a mould, evidently showing that the skull had been filled while the
deposit was yet in a fluid state. As that stratum spreads over a considerable tract of land in
the neighbourhood, at a varying depth beneath the surface of from ten to four hundred feet,
and the valleys and gulches, which now intersect it in numerous places, were manifestly
formed by erosion – perhaps in some measure also by subsequent earthquake shocks – the
great age of that human vestige may be reasonably inferred [11].
Given the association between migrations and global warm periods, evidence of
a severe cold period between 1000 and 400 BC and traditional evidence that secondwave explorers found the descendants of earlier peoples already settled in Hawaii as
in New Zealand, it is clear that these peoples must have settled there prior to 1000
BC and that the skulls buried under coral and volcanic deposits in several locations
may have belonged to Lapita age or, given the stratigraphy, to even earlier explorers
or migrants or accidental voyagers.
10 Studying the History of Spice Island Migration Through Cultural Diffusion
currents from the Spice Islands. Fornander stresses that second-wave explorers such
as Wakea found the descendants of earlier Polynesian migrants already living in
the lands they re-discovered. New Zealand traditions record that the second-wave
explorer Maui the Navigator met with the descendants of first-wave settlers in New
Zealand.
Turning from traditional to material evidence, Fornander supplies appropriately
stratified skeletal evidence for the existence of very early settlers in Hawaii:
Geologically speaking, the leeward islands are the oldest of the group, but both on Oahu and
on Molokai human remains have been found imbedded in lava flows of undoubted antiquity,
and of whose occurrence no vestige of remembrance remains in the Hawaiian folklore.
In 1822 the first wells were dug in the city of Honolulu. They passed through some eight
or ten feet of surface loam and underlying volcanic sand, when a coral bed of some eight
feet of thickness was encountered and cut through, under which the fresh water was reached.
In this coral formation were found embedded a human skull and sundry human bones.
In 1858, in dredging the harbour of Honolulu, island of Oahu, near the new Esplanade,
after scooping up and removing the mud and sand at the bottom of the harbour, it was
found that underneath this sand and mud was a pan of coral rock which it was necessary
to break up and remove in order to obtain the required depth of water. This pan was of an
average thickness of two feet, and beneath it was a thick couch of black volcanic sand, such
as is found some four or five feet beneath the surface throughout the city, and evidently
thrown out by the extinct crater of Punch-bowl-hill in some pre-traditional time. Embedded
in this black sand, underneath the coral bed, was found the lower part or pointed end of an
ancient spear or Oo, about three feet long; and near to it a rounded small stone, the size of
a hen’s egg and nearly its shape, of a red, close-grained, compact and heavy lava, such as
is not found in the Punch-bowl-hill formation or its vicinity. The broken spear speaks for
itself, and shows that man passed over that spot by water or by land before the formation
of that coral pan which now covers the bottom of the harbour and the adjoining reefs. What
purposes the stone had subserved I am not prepared to say, unless it had been used for slings
and dropped by the same hand or the same generation that dropped the spear. It bears no
geological relation to the black sand around it, to the coral-rock above it, or to the extinct
crater one and a quarter mile inland.
In 1859 Mr. R. W. Meyer of Kalae, Molokai, found in the side of a canyon on his estate –
some seventy feet below the surface rim of the upper level country, and among a stratum of
volcanic mud, Creccia, clay and ashes of several feet in thickness – a human skull, whose
every cavity was fully and completely filled with the volcanic deposit surrounding it, as
if it had been cast in a mould, evidently showing that the skull had been filled while the
deposit was yet in a fluid state. As that stratum spreads over a considerable tract of land in
the neighbourhood, at a varying depth beneath the surface of from ten to four hundred feet,
and the valleys and gulches, which now intersect it in numerous places, were manifestly
formed by erosion – perhaps in some measure also by subsequent earthquake shocks – the
great age of that human vestige may be reasonably inferred [11].
Given the association between migrations and global warm periods, evidence of
a severe cold period between 1000 and 400 BC and traditional evidence that secondwave explorers found the descendants of earlier peoples already settled in Hawaii as
in New Zealand, it is clear that these peoples must have settled there prior to 1000
BC and that the skulls buried under coral and volcanic deposits in several locations
may have belonged to Lapita age or, given the stratigraphy, to even earlier explorers
or migrants or accidental voyagers.