F. Thor Heyerdahl

In his Kon-Tiki adventure, Thor and some companions set off to find out if the balsa boats that were commonly used by Peruvian natives were sufficient to carry people to the remote islands of Polynesia located more than 4000 nautical miles from the South American shore. Equipped with a basic sail, the crude barge was driven by wind and current westward, with its hosts, and arrived several weeks later on a Polynesian island in the Tuamotu group. Even though I'm unfamiliar with the languages and cultures of Eastern Polynesia, I can readily see similarities in some words and traditions to the Samoans in central Pacific. Aside from Heyerdahl's sentiments that fill his books, I'm profoundly interested in what he presented. While many professional researchers discredit his views, I think that a lot of what he said pertaining to the Polynesians is correct and would be vindicated someday. I'll highlight some of his observations to help illustrate my point.

1. "Kon-Tiki"   - Rand McNally & Company, 1950

"The third and last name of the key island is Mata-Kite-Rani, which means "the eye (which) looks (toward) heaven." At first glance this is puzzling, for the relatively low Easter Island does not look toward heaven any more than the other loftier islands - for example, Tahiti, the Marquesas, or Hawaii. But Rani, heaven, had a double meaning to the Polynesians. It was also their ancestors' original homeland, the holy land of the sun-god, Tiki's forsaken mountain kingdom. And it is very significant that they should be called just their easternmost island, of all the thousands of islands in the ocean, "the eye which looks toward heaven." It is all the more striking seeing that the kindred name Mata-Rani, which means in Polynesian "the eye of heaven," is and old Peruvian place name, that of a spot on the Pacific coast of Peru opposite Easter Island and right at the foot of Kon-Tiki's old ruined city in the Andes." (Heyeradahl, p.185)

The words "mata" (eye) and "lagi" (sky; pronounced 'langi') are equivalent Samoan words to the story above. The phrase "Mata-Kite-Rani" could be, in Samoan, "Mata-ile-Lagi". Could the Samoan word amata ("start" or "begin") provide some clue to the origin of the Polynesians? The Samoan creation story also conveys similar concepts, "Then Immensity and Space brought forth offspring; they brought forth Po and Ao, 'Night and Day,' and this couple was ordained by Tangaloa to produce the 'Eye of Sky,' [the Sun]." (Fraser, Tala: Samoan creation story; Appendix D)

"Whence had the Polynesians obtained their vast astronomical knowledge and their calendar, which was calculated with astonishing thoroughness? Certainly not from Melanesian or Malayan peoples to the westward. But the same old vanished civilized race, the "white and bearded men," who had taught Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas their amazing culture in America, had evolved a curiously similar calendar and similar astronomical knowledge which Europe in those times could not match." (p.198) ...philologists have pointed out that on all the widely scattered South Sea islands the name of the sweet potato is kumara, and kumara is just what the sweet potato was called among the old Indians in Peru. The name followed the plant across the sea." "The Polynesian name for the bottle gourd, kimi, is found again among the Indians in Central America, where Peruvian civilization has its deepest roots." (Heyerdahl, p.135) My grandmother, in Manu'a, hung coconuts filled with sea water outside to ferment. The smelly concoction was called kimi. 2. "American Indians in the Pacific"   - Rand McNally & Compay, 1952 p.722: "In New Zealand and Samoa, Tu was above all the god of war, in some Maori myths even identified with supreme god who created Tiki. (Best, p.230) If we turn to circum-Pacific area in search of this pan-Polynesian ancestor-god Tu or Ku, we find that observers pass right through Indonesia and South Asia to point to what they consider a unique analogy in the myths of antipodal Egypt and Assyria. Best (Ibid, pp. 58, 109, 110) and many with him compare this Polynesian Tu or Ku with the Assyrian "god of death" Tu, or the Egyptian "setting sun" Tum. We need not go so far as that. Due east of Polynesia, we may first of all note that Ku is the name, title, or suffix of the principle Maya god. In fact Thomas (1898, p.104) pointed out, as already briefly mentioned, that the Polynesian term Ku reappears with an identical meaning in the Maya word "Ku, a deity; holy, divine." p.731: "Handy (1927, p.106) writes: "It is said that the sun was venerated in New Zealand as a god named Ra, but evidently this deity was accorded little if any actual worship. In Mangaia, Ra was the sun god in mythology as in New Zealand, and the same is true of La, called usually Tangaloa La, in Samoa. Only in the Society Islands does Ra or Raa, seem to have an actual cult....We have seen in Part II that while Kane-Akwea was the sun-god of the Northwest American Kwakiutl, na-la was their name for "the sun," while lah was also the word for "sun" in the Kulanapo (Pomo) language of northwestern California. And with la meaning "sun" on the nearest islands down-stream - Hawaii - we find a direct importation of the term into Polynesia from Egypt less convincing, and quite unnecessary. If Egypt is involved, America is at least there to form a practicable stepping-stone. Heyerdahl's remark regarding the direction of these words might equally support colonization from Polynesia on the western American coast. Professor David V. Burley of the Simon Fraser University suggested this to me when he commented about this manuscript. Basically, Professor Burley strongly rejects any suggestion of Polynesia been colonized from the Americas. Initially, the direction of these words should be secondary in importance to the fact of their existence.

p.754: "If the Polynesians had come through Papua-Melanesia, they would have reached western Samoa from Fiji, but we have seen already that the Polynesian elements in Fiji came the opposite way - from Samoa. If, again, the Polynesians had reached their islands from northwest, from Micronesia, they would have reach Samoa from the Ellis Islands. But the Ellis Islands traditions state that their own ancestors came the opposite way - from Samoa. (St. Johnston 1921, p.125) South-southwest of Samoa is the Tonga Group. Both Tonga and Samoa traditions agree in naming Samoa as the ancestral home of the Tongans. (McKern 1929, p.121) The Tongans even specify Manu'a island in Samoa as the particular point of departure from which the mythical island-fisher Maui-Tikitiki (in Tongan dialect Maui-Kisikisi) and his family set out to discover the Tongan group. (Buck 1938, p.290) Thus in the western margin of Polynesia Samoa takes the shape of a westerly directed spreading centre, from which Polynesian elements came west to Fiji, northwest to the Ellis Islands, and southwest to the Tonga Group. But local traditions in Samoa itself state that their own long string of islands were originally discovered from the eastward. They are most specific in maintaining that Savai'i, their main and wester-most island, was peopled from Upolu, which is further east, that Upolu in turn was peopled from Tutuila, which is still further east, and that Tutuila before that had been peopled from the Manu'a Islands, which is furthest east of all. (Fraser 1897, p.20) On Ta'u, of Manu'a to the far east, tradition states, the first chiefly house was built and named Fale-ula ('House of red dawn'). Buck (1938, p.287) states: "Owing to the first settlement of the Tagaloa (Tangaroa) family in Manu'a, those small islands have enjoyed honor out of all proportion to their size and population...Nothing annoys the people of the larger island of Tutuila more than to be reminded of the Manu'a myth that Tagaloa made Tutuila as an afterthought to provide a stepping stone between Manu'a and western Samoa....The Samoan account of their long string of islands having discovered from east to west is repeated also by the Hawaiians with regards to their own northerly group."

3. "Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature"   - Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY, 1975

"To our suprise, the reliefs of two human figures with hands above their heads appeared, and between them, two large quadrupeds in profile, each with an eye, a mouth, erected ears, and a tail. Two quadrupeds!...A cat?...Felines yes, but not rats. (p.173)

"To the present day, Andean peasants consider the hail-cat, ccoa -" seen with hail running out of his eyes" - a beast to be reckoned with. "(Sullivan, "The Secret Of The Incas", p.139)

The "ccoa" was an important figure in the Andean cultures. In the Mayan language, "toh" is the name for the puma. That might have inspired the Polynesia "toa" (brave). Cats are not native to Polynesia and were introduced to the islands by Europeans, but somehow feline icons are found in their primitive sculptures and figures. We don't know what names ancient polynesians had for cats, but the modern name in Fatu-Hiva, "poto" (a Samoan word for knowledge or intelligent), was probably derived from the fact that cats seem to display a sense intellect.

"From where?" I asked, and was curious to hear the old man's reply. "From Te Fiti [The East]", answered the old man and nodded toward that part of the horizon where the sun rose, the direction in which there was no other land except South America. (p.217)

Heyerdahl asked his friend, Tei Tetua, where his people originated from and his reply was "the East." The Samoan prefix "le" means both as either the adverb "not" or the adjective "the." The Samoan ali'i (royal) title of LeFiti then literally means "not Fijian", or "the Fijian." The following Samoan words illustrate how the prefix "le" is used: bad - "leaga" ("aga" is "useful" or "talented"), lost - "leiloa" ("iloa" is "to know"). I claim that the "Te Fiti" or "The East" in Fatu-Hiva also means "not Fijian", and is definitely a navigational reference. The "te" of eastern Polynesia could be a variation of the Samoan "le".

The village of Omoa on Fatu-Hiva could also point to a connection between Samoa and eastern islands. The Samoan "sa" has a dual usage: it means sacred, and it's also a prefix indicating family association. The prefix "o" has the same meaning as the prefix "sa". For example, the village of Omoa on Fatu-Hiva could be translated to mean "Of Moa" - belonging to Moa. In that respect, Omoa and Samoa are synonymous. The name of the island that Heyerdahl wrote about, Fatu-Hiva, could mean "Nine Hearts" or "Nine Stars," and a possible reference to the Nine Heavens of the Polynesian creation story.

"Along the Peruvian coast, mummies had been found of people far taller than the Inca and with the same long head form as in Polynesia. Some of these mummies even had wavy red hair and confirmed the Inca traditions that blond and fair-skinned people with long beards had lived among the Quechua and Aymara Indians of Peru long before the Spaniards came. When Francisco Pizzarro discovered and conquered Peru, his cousin, Pedro Pizarro, recorded that some of the people they saw were as white and as blond as Europeans, and that these were said by the Incas to be the children of their main god, Viracocha, and the people who followed him into the Pacific were white and bearded, like the Spaniards." (p.219)

4. "Early Man and the Ocean"   - Doubleday & Company, 1979

"The difficult art of common practice of trepanation, unknown anywhere in Asia except in the Middle East, is one valid example; the ceremonial drinking of "kava", already referred to, is another factor continuously distributed from Central and South America through Polynesia and ending abruptly where betel chewing comes in from Asia. The sling as a fighting weapon is unknown in Indonesia, and yet there are three specialized South Sea types, the band sling, the pocket sling, and the slit sling, all of which are direct repetitions of the three Peruvian types. (p.182)