17.2 The People-Creating Tree or Tree of Life
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of the people-creating tree to be at least 4,000 years old, depicted on Mesopotamian
cylinder seals dated to 4,100 BP. In the Spice Islands this myth later evolved. Other
totemic elements were added: a snake at the base of the tree, a bird in its branches.
These later elements diffused to the Middle East, giving us, for example, the serpent
tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis. The snake in the Garden of Eden
is associated with the Tree of Life, which in Genesis has been transformed into the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Oppenheimer notes that the later motifs of
bird and snake passed also to China where both bird and serpent and tree appear in
sophisticated, finely wrought metal sculptures dated to 3,000 BP [4].
There is evidence from the oldest indigenous traditions in New Zealand and in the
Chatham Islands that it was the 4,000-year-old form, the myth of the people-creating
tree, sourced to the Moluccas, that travelled to New Zealand with the earliest settlers.
It is this version of the myth that is preserved in the genealogies of the Urewera tribe
of the North Island and preserved also in the myths and rituals of the Moriori of the
Chatham Islands. This reinforces the possibility that the homeland of the first New
Zealanders was in the Spice Islands where the myth has it origin. It also suggests that
the first New Zealanders migrated from the Spice Islands after 4,100 BP, when we
have the primitive people-creating tree myth represented on Mesopotamian cylinder
seals and before 3,000 BP when the later mythical elements of snake and bird –
absent from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands – are represented in Chinese
metal sculpture. The chronological margins are appropriate for a Lapita-age first
settlement of New Zealand.
Use of the Benjamin tree as a focus for tree worship in Island Melanesia and
Western Polynesia and the significant matching of its physical distribution with
the distribution of Lapita artefacts emphasize both the Spice Island origin and
the Lapita diffusion for the tree worship that is rooted in the totemic myth of the
people-creating tree.
Oppenheimer sees Wallacea as possessing the greatest diversity of ancient
Creation myths and flood myths. And he sees the Spice Islands as the source for
a diffusion of these myths stretching not only to the Middle East but as far into
Europe as Germany and Finland, into India and Asia, possibly into Australia and
even the Americas, and from Madagascar to Easter Island.
The great diversity of flood myths in the Moluccas is hardly surprising given the
catastrophic floods of 11,500 BP and 7,500 BP which drowned Sundaland and parts
of Sahul. The great diversity of ancient Creation myths, on the other hand, possibly
stems from Sundaland’s role over 1.2 million years as a major Ice Age refuge for
early hominid species and countless animal and bird species as well as eventually
for Homo sapiens. The slow aggregation in the Spice Islands over time of creation
myths from very different sources may be collectively represented by these myths.
For example, the distribution of myths about a hero “snaring the sun” in order to
slow it down, attributed in Polynesia to the demi-god Maui, ranges from tribal central Africa to the Inuits of the Canadian Arctic to tribes in central North America [5],
suggesting just how ancient the myth might be: possibly tens of thousands of years
older than the more locally derived deluge myths.
287
of the people-creating tree to be at least 4,000 years old, depicted on Mesopotamian
cylinder seals dated to 4,100 BP. In the Spice Islands this myth later evolved. Other
totemic elements were added: a snake at the base of the tree, a bird in its branches.
These later elements diffused to the Middle East, giving us, for example, the serpent
tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis. The snake in the Garden of Eden
is associated with the Tree of Life, which in Genesis has been transformed into the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Oppenheimer notes that the later motifs of
bird and snake passed also to China where both bird and serpent and tree appear in
sophisticated, finely wrought metal sculptures dated to 3,000 BP [4].
There is evidence from the oldest indigenous traditions in New Zealand and in the
Chatham Islands that it was the 4,000-year-old form, the myth of the people-creating
tree, sourced to the Moluccas, that travelled to New Zealand with the earliest settlers.
It is this version of the myth that is preserved in the genealogies of the Urewera tribe
of the North Island and preserved also in the myths and rituals of the Moriori of the
Chatham Islands. This reinforces the possibility that the homeland of the first New
Zealanders was in the Spice Islands where the myth has it origin. It also suggests that
the first New Zealanders migrated from the Spice Islands after 4,100 BP, when we
have the primitive people-creating tree myth represented on Mesopotamian cylinder
seals and before 3,000 BP when the later mythical elements of snake and bird –
absent from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands – are represented in Chinese
metal sculpture. The chronological margins are appropriate for a Lapita-age first
settlement of New Zealand.
Use of the Benjamin tree as a focus for tree worship in Island Melanesia and
Western Polynesia and the significant matching of its physical distribution with
the distribution of Lapita artefacts emphasize both the Spice Island origin and
the Lapita diffusion for the tree worship that is rooted in the totemic myth of the
people-creating tree.
Oppenheimer sees Wallacea as possessing the greatest diversity of ancient
Creation myths and flood myths. And he sees the Spice Islands as the source for
a diffusion of these myths stretching not only to the Middle East but as far into
Europe as Germany and Finland, into India and Asia, possibly into Australia and
even the Americas, and from Madagascar to Easter Island.
The great diversity of flood myths in the Moluccas is hardly surprising given the
catastrophic floods of 11,500 BP and 7,500 BP which drowned Sundaland and parts
of Sahul. The great diversity of ancient Creation myths, on the other hand, possibly
stems from Sundaland’s role over 1.2 million years as a major Ice Age refuge for
early hominid species and countless animal and bird species as well as eventually
for Homo sapiens. The slow aggregation in the Spice Islands over time of creation
myths from very different sources may be collectively represented by these myths.
For example, the distribution of myths about a hero “snaring the sun” in order to
slow it down, attributed in Polynesia to the demi-god Maui, ranges from tribal central Africa to the Inuits of the Canadian Arctic to tribes in central North America [5],
suggesting just how ancient the myth might be: possibly tens of thousands of years
older than the more locally derived deluge myths.