p The giant Uwoke appears in the folklore of the Marquesas Islands, where he is called Woke. Tracing the "creators of the world"—the mythical deities and the elements that were the forefathers of the rulers of the islands of the Marquesas Archipelago—ancient genealogies speak of the Woke who created the islands. In language and culture the inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands are very close to the Easter Islanders. Most ethnographers and archeologists agree that Easter Island was settled by people from the Marquesas Archipelago; traces of man on the Marquesas date back to the 2nd century B.C., which means they were settled a good 500 years before Easter Island. (Incidentally, one of the myths about the creation of the Navel of the Universe says that the first settlers arrived there while it was still being destroyed by Uwoke and only magic persuaded the ocean to stop flooding the land and broke the giant’s staff.)

p According to numerous legends taken down on the Society Islands, the Cook Islands and other East Pacific islands, enormous masses of water flooded all the land, and the islands now remaining are only the peaks of former mountains. (Oceanographers say the same thing, but they cannot agree that anyone could have witnessed this since the land subsidence took place over many thousands of years and long before man appeared on earth.)

p Those acquainted with Polynesian folklore and ethnography know that the most archaic ways of life and the oldest traditions and myths are found among the dwellers of the Tuamotu coral archipelago, the group of Polynesian islands least influenced by European civilisation. Here is a legend about their ancestors, recorded on Hao Island in the Tuamotu Archipelago at the beginning of our century and translated from the Tuamotu dialect by the present writer.

p “In the beginning there were three gods: Watea Nuku, Tane and Tangaroa. Watea created the earth and the sky and everything on the earth and in the sky. Watea created flat land. Tane raised it, and Tangaroa held it up. The name of this land was Hawaiiki.

p “Next, Watea created a man named Tiki and his wife Hina. fie created Hina out of the side of Tiki. They lived together and children were born to them.

p “People began to do evil things on this land. Watea grew angry at them for this. He ordered a man by the name of Rata to build a boat in which to take shelter. The boat was named Papapapa i Henua (’Flat Land’). It was to shelter Rata and his wife Te Putura i te Tai, and also their three sons with their wives.

p “Rain fell from the sky above, and our land was flooded. Watea’s wrath smashed the gates of the sky, the wind was let off its chain, the rain fell in floods, and the land was destroyed and covered by the sea. Rata, his wife and his three sons with their wives took shelter in the boat and emerged from it only after 600 epochs, when the waters subsided. They were saved, as were the beasts and the birds, as the creatures that crawl over the earth and fly in the space above it were saved, and as were their young. Time passed and the earth became populated with human beings.”

p All the names in this Tuamotu myth are strictly Polynesian. Watea (or Atea), Tane and Tangaroa are in the pantheon of the highest gods of the Polynesians. The story, however, is curiously like the Biblical legend of the flood visited upon man for his sins, and the boat of Rata, also a well-known personage in Polynesian folklore, closely resembles Noah’s ark. The Tuamotu text might well have been influenced by the Bible, which the missionaries so zealously spread throughout almost all Oceania. The French scholar Cailleux, however, who recorded the text on Hao Island, says in his book on Polynesia that he heard very similar legends on other islands of the Tuamotu Archipelago. The legends, according to the local inhabitants, were very old and had been recounted by their forefathers before the arrival of Europeans. Cailleux notes that the Hao Atoll legend and other legends of the flood contain many archaic words that the natives no longer understand.

p Probably the most acceptable explanation is that the islanders did have some old legends about a great flood. When the priests, who formed 85 an exclusive caste on the Tuamotu Islands and other islands of Polynesia, were introduced to Christianity they incorporated the Biblical myth into their legends. The purpose was to show the islanders that since the Bible and the ancestral legends dealt with the same subject the missionaries were merely confirming the legends.

p Did a Polynesian continent, or separate islands, which sank, ever exist? There is an enormous shallow region in the neighbourhood of the Tokelau Islands that obviously must have been dry land at one time. The Tuamotu coral archipelago is actually only a “cap” on top of the great Tuamotu Ridge. Many peaks of this ridge were once above water. The guyots near the Tubuai Islands and the Tuamotu Archipelago also indicate the existence of dry land at one time. Although some of the guyots lie at depths of up to one kilometre, they were once at sea level. From the top of one of the guyots of the Tuamotu Ridge, now submerged to 1,000 metres below sea level, oceanographers have brought up fragments of coral reefs. Yet corals cannot live at a depth of more than 60 metres! At one time corals evidently made an unsuccessful attempt to found a colony there. The innumerable coral reefs, atolls and islets in the Tuamotu Archipelago are eloquent evidence of successful attempts.

p The only fundamental disagreement between the old Polynesian legends and oceanographic findings is on the question of when. The legends claim that the land sank quickly and in human times. But this does not fit into the framework of marine geology, which regards a millennium and even one hundred millennia, as merely a tiny segment of time.

p Comparatively recently oceanographer 86 Cronwell reported that coal had been found on the islet of Rapa Iti (Little Rapa, as the Polynesians call it to distinguish it from Rapa Nui, or Big Rapa, Easter Island, from which people had probably migrated to Rapa Iti), in the South-East Pacific. This is another sign there was once a continent in this part of the Pacific. A study of the island’s flora has also shown that it could have developed only in contact with a continent, or that it is the remnants of continental flora. From this Cronwell concluded that a large land mass, now submerged, once existeu in the Polynesian area and to the south of it. Judging by the latest oceanographic and geological findings, the greater part of the hypothetical Polynesian continent, the volcanic islands and the coral atolls, both those that now exist and those that have disappeared, developed between 60 million and 100 million years ago. That is a tremendous span of time, quite incommensurate with the spans of human history. It has been estimated that man first appeared in Polynesia 4,000 to 6,000 years ago at the earliest. But even these figures are exaggerated, for the earliest known traces of man on the Marquesas Islands and the Samoa Islands are shown by the carbon dating method to go back only to the 2nd century B.C. It is quite possible that earlier human traces will be found in Polynesia in future, but it is unlikely they will be older than 3,000 to 4,000 years. The last big changes in our planet took place between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, after the glacial epoch ended. At that time the Polynesian islands were uninhabited, and the Polynesians themselves did not yet exist as a cultural and language community. This community took shape no more than 4,000 years ago. 87 Yet Ihe periods of time with which geology deals are measured in millions and lens of millions of yearsl

p Can the enormous time gap between geological time and historical time be bridged to any extent? Underwater exploration in the Polynesian area should answer this question. If traces of human habitation are discovered on the Pacific floor in that area it will mean that Polynesian myths are based on fact. If no traces are found it will mean that the amazing concurrence between oceanographic findings and the mythology of the islanders is purely accidental. Instead of rushing to draw conclusions let us wait and see what underwater archeology tells us.

p One place in the Pacific where underwater archeological surveys would undoubtedly produce interesting results is the offshore area of Pitcairn, an isolated little island in the East Pacific that is inhabited by descendants of the Bounty mutineers.

p There is no need to retell the dramatic story of the mutiny on the Bounty and the discovery of Pitcairn Island. The point is that when the mutineers landed on Pitcairn they found it deserted, although breadfruit trees and the remains of ancient temples clearly showed the island had once been inhabited. In the largest temple, on a cliff, were stone statues which, like the famous giants of Easter Island, stood with their backs to the sea. The mutineers took a dislike to the "pagan idols”, and threw them into the ocean. They set fire to and then sank the Bounty to prevent anyone from yielding to the temptation to flee the little island.

p One hundred and fifty years later scuba divers came to Pitcairn Island. The very first day’s 88 diving in the bay where the Bounty was sunk yielded a rudder bolt. This find was made so quickly because a Pitcairn inhabitant had found the rudder itself in that place in 1933. Nothing more was found until the end of the sixth week of underwater exploration, when the grave of the Bounty was discovered.

If future exploration brings to light stone statues at the bottom of the ocean, scholars will be able to solve yet another riddle of the Pacific, for stone statues were made on the Marquesas Islands, on Raivavai Island and on Pitcairn Island, as well as on Easter Island. A comparison of the style of the Pitcairn images with the style of the statues on Easter Island and other East Polynesian islands will help to explain how and where stone-carving, an art that is practically unknown to other inhabitants of Oceania, originated.