334
19 Correlation of Significant Voyaging Activity with Rare Extreme Climate Events
In Chapter 12 we told the story of Kai-tangata and the first appearance of cannibalism in Polynesia. We used the story to stress the connection between starvation
and cannibalism, for the story mentions a severe famine at the time of Hema’s birth.
The story has other elements significant for Polynesians. Centrally the story explains
how Hema inherited supernatural powers from his demoness mother, Whaitiri, and
passed these on to his sons, Tawhaki and Kahiri, and to his grandson Rata. A cycle
of hero tales is woven around the four, the recurring motif of which is a son’s rescuing a defeated and humiliated father, restoring his mana and sometimes his life.
The power of the four heroes to move between the lower world and upper worlds is
stressed and linked to the power of Hema’s demoness mother whose origin lay in
the upper worlds. Abandoning husband and infant to return to her home, Whaitiri
nevertheless passed on to Hema and his descendants powers that enabled them to
perform deeds outside the scope of normal men. The powers that the four heroes and
their descendants inherited from the demoness establish them as important ancestors
in prized lines of descent.
Fornander mentions several lines linking Hema and his brother Puna to
Paumakua, typically six to nine generations later. We have a secure date for
Paumakua who, Fornander tells us, played a central role in the southern incursions
in Hawaii which we have dated to 1096. With the mean and standard error derived
for a whakapapa generation in Section 18.5, six generations corresponds to an estimated date for Hema achieving manhood of AD 943 ± 35. For nine generations,
we derive correspondingly AD 874 ± 43. For a severe drought to be remembered
in tradition, linked both to the birth of Hema and to the beginning of cannibalism, it
is likely that a severe El Niño was involved. The highest level El Niño that accords
with the dating range for Hema is the level 5 El Niño of 903. The 903 El Niño was
the strongest El Niño in the 125-year period from 842 to 967.
Traditional evidence suggests that the drought at the birth of Hema was extreme:
the link of this drought to the first appearance of cannibalism suggests severe famine.
There is new evidence that independently confirms the severity of drought at this
time. In 2007 Gergana Yancheva et al. published a paper studying the influence of
the intertropical convergence zone on the east Asian monsoon. In their own words,
the authors
present high resolution records of the magnetic properties and the titanium content of the
sediments of Lake Huguang Maar in coastal southeast China over the past 16,000 years,
which we use as proxies for the strength of the winter monsoon winds [12].
The palaeoclimatic evidence they present supports the generally accepted conclusion that the Asian summer monsoon is weaker “during cold phases in the Northern
Hemisphere, when the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) tends to move southward, as it does during El Niño years”. Using sediments from Lake Huguang Maar,
Yancheva et al. document climate changes inducing severe drought. They note a very
severe drought which they date to AD 907 which had Pacific-wide consequences.
Comparing titanium records from Lake Huguang Maar and from the Cariaco basin
in the southern Caribbean off Venezuela, they conclude that in AD 907 “major
19 Correlation of Significant Voyaging Activity with Rare Extreme Climate Events
In Chapter 12 we told the story of Kai-tangata and the first appearance of cannibalism in Polynesia. We used the story to stress the connection between starvation
and cannibalism, for the story mentions a severe famine at the time of Hema’s birth.
The story has other elements significant for Polynesians. Centrally the story explains
how Hema inherited supernatural powers from his demoness mother, Whaitiri, and
passed these on to his sons, Tawhaki and Kahiri, and to his grandson Rata. A cycle
of hero tales is woven around the four, the recurring motif of which is a son’s rescuing a defeated and humiliated father, restoring his mana and sometimes his life.
The power of the four heroes to move between the lower world and upper worlds is
stressed and linked to the power of Hema’s demoness mother whose origin lay in
the upper worlds. Abandoning husband and infant to return to her home, Whaitiri
nevertheless passed on to Hema and his descendants powers that enabled them to
perform deeds outside the scope of normal men. The powers that the four heroes and
their descendants inherited from the demoness establish them as important ancestors
in prized lines of descent.
Fornander mentions several lines linking Hema and his brother Puna to
Paumakua, typically six to nine generations later. We have a secure date for
Paumakua who, Fornander tells us, played a central role in the southern incursions
in Hawaii which we have dated to 1096. With the mean and standard error derived
for a whakapapa generation in Section 18.5, six generations corresponds to an estimated date for Hema achieving manhood of AD 943 ± 35. For nine generations,
we derive correspondingly AD 874 ± 43. For a severe drought to be remembered
in tradition, linked both to the birth of Hema and to the beginning of cannibalism, it
is likely that a severe El Niño was involved. The highest level El Niño that accords
with the dating range for Hema is the level 5 El Niño of 903. The 903 El Niño was
the strongest El Niño in the 125-year period from 842 to 967.
Traditional evidence suggests that the drought at the birth of Hema was extreme:
the link of this drought to the first appearance of cannibalism suggests severe famine.
There is new evidence that independently confirms the severity of drought at this
time. In 2007 Gergana Yancheva et al. published a paper studying the influence of
the intertropical convergence zone on the east Asian monsoon. In their own words,
the authors
present high resolution records of the magnetic properties and the titanium content of the
sediments of Lake Huguang Maar in coastal southeast China over the past 16,000 years,
which we use as proxies for the strength of the winter monsoon winds [12].
The palaeoclimatic evidence they present supports the generally accepted conclusion that the Asian summer monsoon is weaker “during cold phases in the Northern
Hemisphere, when the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) tends to move southward, as it does during El Niño years”. Using sediments from Lake Huguang Maar,
Yancheva et al. document climate changes inducing severe drought. They note a very
severe drought which they date to AD 907 which had Pacific-wide consequences.
Comparing titanium records from Lake Huguang Maar and from the Cariaco basin
in the southern Caribbean off Venezuela, they conclude that in AD 907 “major