E. Just The Facts, Jack

The discussion about Polynesian migration, with or without religious references, will be inevitably mired in controversies. Did Polynesians traveled to the islands in the middle Pacific from the East or West? Did they arrived there by accident or planned migration? Did they drifted haphazardly or used masterful navigation? The various views that exist to try to answer those questions are narrowed down to a few theories.

How the Polynesians came into the middle Pacific could be explained by examining these different views. More importantly, I think we have to give the Polynesians credit for their seafaring abilities; they were able to traverse the Pacific Ocean in all directions. With that ability, the Polynesians were able to interact with people at the extreme ends of the Pacific very successfully. A westward movement of people along the equatorial region from the Americas would be natural considering the ocean environment and the importance of mysticism and religion to ancient people. Those things were influenced by the movement of the stars and the planets.

Any Polynesian migration theory must involve traditions as well as scientific facts. In any serious investigation, we should not dismiss things because they seem fantastic. We must explore all areas and scrutinize all information. A theory involving primitive sailors, using simple wooden rafts and little knowledge of navigation, traveling from South America to the eastern pacific islands can be made without any need for elaborate presuppositions. Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated that people can travel from South America to eastern Polynesia with his floating Kon-Tiki. However, they found pieces of evidence proving that Polynesians were capable for doing much more than floating. Polynesians were capable of traversing great distances in all directions between the great landmasses encircling the Pacific Ocean. This fact makes me think that the Polynesian story should not be confine to neatly fitted course of events, but instead should involve other factors that may seem unrelated.

3. Language - Similar Words

"Archaeologists, linguists, and geneticists have been struggling to understand the origins of the bold seafarers who settled the remote Pacific Islands. Now some scientists are converging on a model that involves mingling between Austronesian speakers, perhaps from Taiwan or nearby areas, and the indigenous people of Melanesian islands such as Papua New Guinea. The fusion of these cultures created a people that swept out into the remote Pacific islands, exploring 4500 kilometers in outrigger canoes and leaving a trail... " (Ann Gibbons, Peopling of the Pacific)

"Others see no evidence either for such connections or for any points of mainland origin. Whichever the case, all present signs are that the Austronesian dispersal was from some area in the Pacific itself, and no specific Asiatic homeland for speech or people pointed to by what is known." (William Howells, p. 104)

The languages and cultures of Melanesia (5) and Southeast Asia had great influence on the Polynesians. This influence was brought through trade and normal human traffic. They traded more than just pigs. It is true the Samoan language has many common words with languages of places west of Samoa. But, the Samoan language also has words that are uniquely local to Samoa.

To explain my point in the modern sense, the Samoan language is a unique language that is affected in a big way by the English language. Our modern Samoan language is filled with words derived from English words to express and explain new experiences and objects; words and names like eletise, Ioane, televise, sima, kamapiuta, atomika, telefoni, paresitene, paremia, novema, setema, govana, etc. The Samoan language is in danger of being overwhelmed with these English derivatives.

Linguists call the process that leads to language death, "language shift," Some linguists believe that language shift just happens as a potential natural consequence of people coming together. To some extent this is true, especially when on of the contact languages assumes a dominating role in the contact, and if there is no concious effort to reverse the language shifting or moving toward the dominating language. Unfortunately, eventually lead to the loss of the Samoan language. (Dr. William G. Eggington, Professor, Brigham Young University, "Reversing Samoan Language Shift", International Samoan Language Commission Conference held in Carson, California on December 11, 2003)

Considering the Periodic Table, except for "auro" (gold), the Samoan names (6) for the atomic elements were derived from English names. We understand why these words are similar, but we would differ on a connection between the Samoan "auro" and the Quechuan (South America) word for gold - "yuari." The Latin word for gold can not explain the close similarity between the words for gold in Samoan and Quenchen, unless Latin is the source for these words. This change in language, as Dr. Eggington alluded to in his talk, makes it a challenge to correlate a one-to-one relationship between language and race. This lack of information do not allow us to know for sure how certain words shifted unless we know an external factor such as colonization as in the case of European influence in Polynesia. The English language, as an example, contains many Latin words that were introduced by the conquering Romans. Since the written history of Europe is well known, we have a better understanding of the culture dynamics that affected Britain. Without a clear understanding of a history, as in the case of pre-European Polynesia, we don't have a sure way to know how words shifted within the Polynesian languages. Nevertheless, we might still be able to approximate how some words traveled using myths and legends.

"Language is not a Platonic idea abiding in a realm of archetypal truths. Rather it is a system we infer from the sounds that come out of the mouths of speakers and the marks that come from the hands of writers." (Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition, Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, 1988

Words are rooted in human experiences, of senses and emotions, not in planning committees. There is a strong indication that some Polynesian words are rooted in the folklores and sky charts of ancient pre-Columbian America. Similarly, many of our modern scientific words are rooted in ancient folklores and experiences of places like Greece and Rome. Likewise, I surmise that the Samoan word "ula" (in used for necklace, the color red, and lobster) is originated from the movement of the closest planets to the Sun (Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, Mercury) and is rooted in the planetary deities of American natives. The Samoan words "uli" (dog) and "uli'uli" (the color black) are also rooted in the native Americans celestial Fox and Llama - the dark formations in the Milky Way where the fox always chases the llama. That also, I believe, is the root to another Samoan word "lama", which means "entrapment."

We also find the word "malae" in Samoan ("marae" in other parts of Polynesia) and Southeast Asian languages. In Polynesia it is a sacred place, while in Southeast Asia (East Temori), it means foreigner. In the hills of South America, however, the word "maray" is an astrological concept that represents a "celestial earth." I would think therefore, that the most likely source of the word "malae" is pre-Columbian America. The word "manu" is found in some South American indigenous languages as well as in Polynesia and Southeast Asia. The usage of the word "manu" is similar in both these areas.

Even within Polynesia itself, the deterioration of a root language happened. I received the following comment from Mr. Bruce Sutton, the author of "Lehi, Father of Polynesia".

"Probably the biggest challenge in dealing with the genealogies was caused by the "white man" in the 1820's to the 1880's when we had Spanish, German, English, Dutch, French, etc in the islands, and they all wanted to create a written language. The problem was, that they had different accents and pronunciations for words, and so when the genealogies were written down, one island's ancestor who was the same ancestor of another island had different names. There were fluctuations in use of letters such as i's and o's, l's and r's, o's and u's, k's and t's. E.g. Fale, whale, and whare, all mean house. A great ancestor may have been Tiki, Ti'i, Ki'i, or Kiki. Understanding the old language was necessary. The "white man" in effect, took one language covering the whole of Polynesia and made many different dialects and languages from it. The other chanllenge is identifying the legends and traditions from different islands and then making sure they are in harmony with the genealogies. This was important in identifying travel paths and time frames of events."

Using various sources, including library books and online resources, I compiled a short list of words (Appendix B) from the Americas, Southeast Asia, and Polynesia, as well as Egypt. I've attempted to collect as many words that are similar in spelling and meaning to Samoan words for sight comparison. I was surprise by the number of words that fits this criteria. The traditional view that the Samoan language is part of a proto-Asiatic language mostly ignores any relationship of it to the Native American languages that I think exists. Besides their similarity in spellings, these words seem to share similar meanings as well. Some of these words are found in very familiar stories and expressions of common ideas.

Before I leave this topic, I want to address an issue that was brought to my attention from someone who questioned the comparison of languages in this modern setting. Firstly, we do not have time machines to return to previous ages to make these studies, and I am sure the experts also make word associations in their studies. There is a need for these comparisons, and, as in the case of the geographical areas I cover, I believe that we can to a degree place restrictions using some methods.

For example, in our case, we can use the European factor as a technique to categorize certain word associations as either coincidental, borrowed from modern contacts, or to be truly common from ancient contacts. The English language, for instance, adopted native American words such as tobacco, cocoa, manioc, etc. When the Europeans reached the middle-Pacific, some of these things were then introduced with the 'now' English names. You will find these objects in Samoa as topa'a, koko, manioka, which are words borned from modern European contacts. I have tried to exclude many of these kinds of similar-sounding words that I think were developed this way.

On the other hand, there are words like 'umala' (sweet potato), 'aulo' (gold) and 'tanoa' (canoe), which I think can't be explained from the European contacts. The word 'tanoa' is the least persuasive one of these three words. Nevertheless, considering the fact that the word 'tanoa' is inherently an important part of Samoan traditions and used differently from the object with that familiar name in the Americas, I feel strongly that these words have a common root. My opinion is that the shape of the two objects is what ties these two words. In Samoa, a 'tanoa' is a bowl used to prepare food and kava, and 'canoe' is a rudderless boat used by some native American people.

6. Accidental versus Carefully Plan Migration

On the National Geographic Channel program "Naked Science: First to Cross the Ocean", Professor Jim O'Connell of the University of Utah explains how Australia was colonized by a group of people from Southeast Asia some 50,000 years ago. The program was based on 30-plus years of research by professor O'Connell. One of the highlights of the show is when professor O'Connell visited Professor John Moore of the University of Florida to learn about a computer program Moore designed to predict the survivability of a colonizing group on another planet. Results generated by the computer program demostrated that a random accidental colonization of Australia could not have occurred. It takes a certain number of couples, men and women, to make a colony survive.

If we apply that standard to the colonization of the Polynesian islands, the accidental theory that some anthropologists advocate can not be correct. Whether Polynesia was colonized from the East or West, an accidental colonization by a few people could not have servived after so many generations.

7. A Growing Field

a. Raw facts alone are not enough to tell the story.

There are many professional books presenting careful assumptions that are mistakenly construed as facts. The evolving nature of scientific knowledge makes it necessary to make best-educated conclusions, but some practitioners of science seem to use their positions, and not their facts, as a way to promote their ideas. This might be the case in archeology, which makes nonprofessionals, like myself, who read these works, get lost in piles of disconnected information. What caused these people to venture out to islands hundreds and even thousands of miles into the vast ocean? Why do they have a different DNA makeup compare to their supposed parents? Why do traditions and legends tell of different stories compare to what the artifacts reveal?

It's this uncertainty that results in many remarks, such as the following, being said without any clear and definite explanation. "Thus in Western Polynesia the 'end' of Lapita is the 'beginning' of Polynesian culture." (Kirch, p.68) And maybe in these instances, hard facts are not enough. Even Professor Kirch admitted that it is sometimes necessary to look beyond the artifacts - something I am trying to do here.

"Thus in Western Polynesia the 'end' of Lapita is the 'beginning' of Polynesian culture. Eastern Lapita was gradually transformed through processes of culture change and adaptation to new island environments to something recognizably different, yet retaining many of the ancestral culture patterns. In terms of formal archaeological taxonomy, we cease to label the ceramic and artifact assemblages found in the Western Polynesian region after about 500 BC as 'Lapita,' and now label them...'Polynesian Plain Ware'." (Kirch, p.68)

"Conservative prehistorians may argue that I have gone too far in my interpretation of Lapita as a 'house society', urging that we stick closely to the archaeological data of post molds and fire pits. But I - like my colleagues Roger Green, Jim Fox, and Andrew Pawley - am convinced that a cultural history that draws not only upon the material evidence of archaeology, but also on careful lexical and semantic reconstructions, and on comparative ethnology, has far greater power to inform us about the social lives of Lapita and other ancient peoples. Certainly our current vision of this social world is a fuzzy and incomplete one, for our methods need refinements and our databases enlarging. Only by daring to envision this world, however, can we ever bring it to light." (Kirch, p.191)

Kirch's book, "The Lapita Peoples", (9) and Spriggs' book, "The Island Melanesians", interesting enough, can also be use to show that there was a collision between the cultures of Melanesia and Polynesia that is observable with the Lapita artifacts and language similarities. Kirch's book estimated the start of the Polynesian identity, in Samoa and Tonga, to around 300 AD to 1000 AD. Interestingly, that is about the time other pacific islands, thousands of miles due east were colonized.

Can it be positively proven that Polynesians were responsible for the Polynesian Plain Ware, or are they remains of the work of a people who preceded the Polynesians? Maybe the two products are distinct designs? Pottery making is still done in some places in the far west Pacific, but it is nowhere found practiced in Polynesia.

b. Reading between the lines.

Gorge Forster (quoted in Beaglehole 1969:461) records that the Malakulans who visited Cook's ship in Port Sandwich when it first anchored kept repeating the word 'Tommar or Tomarro' which he took to mean friend, but which may have been temar or ancestor. Although the initial reaction of ni-Vanuatu may have been ascribe supernatural status of Cook and his ships, it seems that where contact was continued for some time, as at the next stop after Erromongo, Port Resolution on Tanna, it was quickly realized that the visitors were human, if it had been in doubt. On islands with long experience of Polynesian contact, the white color of the Europeans was as likely to have suggested Polynesian voyagers as returned ancestors." (Spriggs, p.249)

The above quote from Spriggs' "The Island Melanesians" suggested that some people within the Melanesian region consider Polynesians their ancestors.

"What historical linguistics on its own cannot convincingly achieve is a chronology for the spread of a language group or for the dating of a particular language state or proto-language" (Spriggs, p.96)

The Polynesians share many common words with Melanesians and other Southeast Asian peoples. However, to use this to prove that Polynesians originated from there, to me, is just an assumption. I have compiled words common between Samoan and languages of the Americas that show that there are just as many common words between Samoan to those languages. Peter gave me some information that says 30 percent of Samoan and Quechuen words are identical. The list of words I compiled (Appendix B) seems to confirm that number. The trouble, I see, in the linguistic field is the emphasis toward the western Asiatic languages and the exclusion of any relationship between the Samoan language and Native American languages.

8. Coming to America

The traditional view about the peopling of the Americas is based on the notion that a primitive people crossed over to the Americas from Asia over a land bridge when the sea level was low as a result of ice formation during the Ice Age. (10) An article in the journal Science suggested that a people might have moved from Siberia to America long before such a land bridge existed. The new finding "makes it plausible that the first peopling of the Americas occurred prior to the last glacial maximum," Daniel Mann of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, said in Science. It is now known from research findings that there were people in the Americas long before the supposed land bridge existed (around 11,000 years ago). The utilization of floating devices (logs) is fairly within the abilities of primitive minds to create and use in coastal areas when the need arise.

As recently as November 2004, CNN reported that a University of South Carolina archaeologist, Albert Goodyear, found evidence to suggest the Americas were settled 50,000 years ago. That is at least 25,000 years before other known human sites on the continent, CNN reports. "It poses some real problems trying to explain how you have people (arriving) in Central Asia almost at the same time as people in the Eastern United States," said Theodore Schurr at the University of Pennsylvania.

It was suggested on the television program "Journey to 10,000 BC" that people from pre-historic Europe migrated to the Americas. The program highlighted Dennis Stanford, the Director of the Paleo-Indian Program at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution who advocates the notion that people from Europe migrated to the Americas in what is known as the Solutrean hypothesis. According to Stanford, the stone tool technology of the Solutrean culture in prehistoric Europe may have influenced the development of the Clovis tool-making in the Americas.

Once they make it to the New World, what would prevent some from venturing out into the seas? Some Native American communities made a living out of hunting large sea animals. The ability to doing that, I think, is enough to make long sea voyages possible. Even an accidental drifting by some unfortunate fishermen would find themselves in the remote easterly islands of Polynesia, as demonstrated by Heyerdahl with his raft, the Kon-Tiki.

11. The Three Stones of Creation Myth

Previously I said that the Native American astronomical ideas are the sources for some of the Samoan traditions. I think that the Samoans fashioned new ideas from some basic knowledge they acquired. A process similar to how some modern Christian traditions were acquired. For example, the Christians have ideas that are not found in the Bible, but were derived from it. The concept of the Rapture for instance, which is an acceptable fact to Christians, is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. The ideas of the nine heavens and three supporting pillars in Samoan myths are directly tie to the observations of pre-Columbian astronomers.

"This is just one of several accounts of the three throne stones that were placed by the gods at the time of creation. After this act, the gods separate the sky from the earth and erected the world tree at the center of the universe" (Merging Myth and Politics, p.170-171)

"The concept of the three stones was a core component of Mesoamerican myth. I want to stress that this is Mesoamerican myth. It is not limited to one of the many cultures of Mesoamerica, for it appears, at the very least, among the Olmec, Maya, Mixtec, and Aztec." (p.172)

Elements of this myth is found in the Samoan creation story.

"Then Tangaloa said to Tui-te'e-langi, 'Come here now; that you may prop up the sky.' Then it was propped up; it reached up on high. But it fell down because he was not able for it. Then Tui-te'e-langi went to Masoa and Teve; he brought them and used them as props; then he was able. (The masoa and the teve were the first plants that grew, and other plants came afterwards)." (Tala, Samoan creation story)

The Samoan "taualuga" dance (taua: war; luga: above; translates as 'war in a higher place') reveals the importance of the number three in the Samoan culture. In the taualuga, a "taupou" (village maid or virgin) does a slow and dedicate dance. Surrounding her are others doing animated dances to distract the taupou from doing her slow dance, taunting her to move faster, and to copy the way they dance. The "taupou" should continue with her slow dance despite the distraction. The taupou wears a "tuiga" - a headdress made of flowers, shells, human hair, and three recognizable spikes. This is the basic form of the taualuga, which is demonstrated in a variety of ways by different performers. Also in a 'taualuga', a male person would drop and lay flat down on the floor, which invites the 'taupou' dancer to step on him. Most of the Samoan festivities that I attended culminated with a 'taualuga' performance where anyone can join, makes lots of noise, and contribute money. This dance ends most Samoan fiafias (festivities), and is mostly used today to collect money. All Taualugas involve three roles - a central character who is encircled by other dancers making lots of noice, and someone laying on the floor to be stepped on.