Marae
A marae, malaʻe, meʻae, malae is a communal or sacred place that serves religious and social purposes in Polynesian societies. In all these languages, the term means "cleared, free of weeds, etc". Marae consist of an area of cleared land rectangular, bordered with stones or wooden posts with paepae which were traditionally used for ceremonial purposes. In the Rapa Nui culture of Easter Island, the term ahu has become a synonym for the whole marae complex. In some modern Polynesian societies, notably that of the Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand, the marae is still a vital part of everyday life. In tropical Polynesia, most marae were destroyed or abandoned with the arrival of Christianity in the 19th century, some have become an attraction for tourists or archaeologists; the place where these marae were built are still considered tapu in most of these cultures. The word has been reconstructed by linguists to Eastern Oceanic *malaqe with the meaning "open, cleared space used as meeting-place or ceremonial place".
In Māori society, the marae is a place where the culture can be celebrated, where the Māori language can be spoken, where intertribal obligations can be met, where customs can be explored and debated, where family occasions such as birthdays can be held, where important ceremonies, such as welcoming visitors or farewelling the dead, can be performed. Like the related institutions of old Polynesia, the marae is a wāhi tapu, a'sacred place' which carries great cultural meaning. In Māori usage, the marae ātea is the open space in front of the wharenui; the term marae is used to refer to the whole complex, including the buildings and the ātea. This area is used for pōwhiri featuring oratory; some iwi and hapū do not allow women to perform oratory on their marae. The wharenui is the locale for important meetings and craft and other cultural activities; the wharekai is used for communal meals, but other activities may be carried out there. Many of the words associated with marae in tropical Polynesia are retained in the Māori context.
For example, the word paepae refers to the bench. Marae vary in size, with some wharenui being a bit bigger than a double garage, some being larger than a typical town hall. A marae is a meeting place registered as a reserve under the Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993; each marae has a group of trustees. The Act governs the regulation of marae as reservations and sets out the responsibilities of the trustees in relation to the beneficiaries; each marae has a charter which the trustees have negotiated with the beneficiaries of the marae. The charter details matters such as: the name of the marae, a description of it; the methods used to select trustees. The New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute Act 1963 was passed and the institute built to maintain the tradition of whakairo; the Institute is responsible for the restoration of over 40 marae around the country. Most iwi, hapū, many small settlements have their own marae. An example of such a small settlement with its own marae is at Hongoeka Bay, the home of renowned writer Patricia Grace.
Since the second half of the 20th century, Māori in urban areas have been establishing intertribal marae such as Maraeroa in eastern Porirua. For many Māori, the marae is just as important to them as their own homes; some New Zealand churches operate marae of their own, in which all of the functions of a traditional marae are carried out. Churches operating marae include the Anglican and Catholic churches. In recent years, it has become common for educational institutions, including primary and secondary schools, technical colleges, universities, to build marae for the use of the students and for the teaching of Māori culture; these marae may serve as a venue for the performance of official ceremonies relating to the school. The marae of the University of Auckland, for instance, is used for graduation ceremonies of the Māori Department, as well as welcoming ceremonies for new staff of the university as a whole, its primary function is to serve as a venue for the teaching of whaikōrero, Māori language and culture, important ceremonies for distinguished guests of the university.
Two spectacular secondary-school marae are located in the Waikato at Te Awamutu College and Fairfield College. The latter was designed by a Māori architect with a detailed knowledge of weaving. In addition to school activities it is used for weddings; as in pre-European times, marae continue to be the location of many ceremonial events, including birthdays and anniversaries. The most important event located at marae is the tangih
Cook Islands mythology
Cook Islands mythology comprises historical myths and folklore passed down by the ancient Cook Islanders over many generations. Many of the Cook Islands legends were recited through ancient chants; the Cook Islands myths and legends have similarities to general Polynesian mythology, which developed over the centuries into its own unique character. In Cook Islands creation myth, the universe was conceived of as being like the hollow of a vast coconut shell, the interior of this imaginary shell being Avaiki, the under world, the outer side of the shell as the upper world of mortals. At various depths there are floors of different levels, or lands. At the bottom of this coconut is a thick stem tapering to a point, which represents the beginning of all things; this point is the dwelling of a spirit without human form called Te aka ia Roe. The entire fabric of the universe is sustained by this primary being. Above this extreme point is Te tangaengae or Te vaerua this being is stout and stronger than the former one.
The thickest part of the stem is Te manava roa the third and last of the primary, ever-stationary, sentient spirits, who together form the foundation and well-being of the rest of the universe. We now advance into the interior of the supposed coconut shell, the lowest part of Avaiki, where the sides of the shell meet, there lives a goddess of flesh and blood called Varima te takere, her territory is narrow, so much so that her knees touch her chin, no other position being possible. Varima te takere was anxious for progeny. One day she plucked off part of her right side, like a fruit from a tree, it became the first human being, the first man Avatea, he became the father of gods and men, having the right half of a man and the left half a fish, split down the middle. The land assigned by the Great Mother to Avatea was called Te paparairai. Varima te takere continued to pluck from her body more pieces of flesh, from which more children were created, the right side of her body created gods, from her left side of her body she created goddesses.
Avaiki, the land of the gods and ancestors. Avatea, the first man, a sky and moon god. Auparu, a stream, bathing place for nature spirit Ina, the lover of the moon god Marama. Marama, the god of the Moon. Nganaoa, a myth hero from Aitutaki. Papa, the goddess of the Earth Rongo, the god of vegetation. Tamangori, a cannibal giant Tangaroa, the god of the sea. Vaitakere, the father of Ina, father-in-law of Tangaroa. Varima te takere, the primordial mother goddess. Vatea, similar to Avatea, a god of Mangaia. William Wyatt Gill, preface by F. Max Müller. Myths and Songs from the South Pacific. London: Henry S. King & Co. William Wyatt Gill. Historical sketches of savage life in Polynesia. Wellington: George Didsbury, Government Printer. Jon Jonassen. Cook Islands Legends. Cook Islands: The Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. ISBN 982-02-0171-3. Shona Hopkins. Legends of the Cook Islands. Bruce Potter. New Zealand: Penguin Group Limited. ISBN 014350407X. Robert D. Craig. Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology.
United States of America: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-25890-2. Jukka Siikala. ʻAkatokamanāva: myth and society in the Southern Cook Islands. Auckland: Polynesian Society in association with the Finnish Anthropological Society. ISBN 0473011336. Cook Islands Mythology, Cook Islands Legends, Cook Islands Gods Characters and Legends from Rarotonga to Tahiti and beyond Collected songs and legends from the southern Cook Islands Religion and gods in pre-1823 Southern Cook Islands society
Underworld
The underworld is the world of the dead in various religious traditions, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld; the concept of an underworld is found in every civilization, "may be as old as humanity itself". Common features of underworld myths are accounts of living people making journeys to the underworld for some heroic purpose. Other myths reinforce traditions that entrance of souls to the underworld requires a proper observation of ceremony, such as the ancient Greek story of the dead Patroclus haunting Achilles until his body could be properly buried for this purpose. Persons having social status were equipped in order to better navigate the underworld. A number of mythologies incorporate the concept of the soul of the deceased making its own journey to the underworld, with the dead needing to be taken across a defining obstacle such as a lake or a river to reach this destination. Imagery of such journeys can be found in both modern art.
The descent to the underworld has been described as "the single most important myth for Modernist authors". This list includes underworlds in various mythology, with links to corresponding articles; this list includes rulers or guardians of the underworld in various mythologies, with links to corresponding articles. Afterlife Hollow Earth Otherworld World Tree–A tree that connects the heavens, the earth, the underworld in a number of spiritual belief systems
Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room
Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room is an attraction located in Disneyland at the Disneyland Resort, in Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, in Tokyo Disneyland at Tokyo Disney Resort. Opened in 1963 at the Disneyland Resort, the attraction is a pseudo-Polynesian themed musical animatronic show drawing from American tiki culture; the attraction opened June 23, 1963, was the first to feature Audio-Animatronics technology, a WED Enterprises patented invention. The attraction was sponsored by United Airlines for its first 12 years. Dole provides the unique Dole Whip soft-serve frozen dessert sold at a snack bar near the entrance; the show was going to be a restaurant featuring Audio-Animatronics birds serenading guests as they dined. The "magic fountain" at the room's center was planned as a coffee station and the restaurant would have shared its kitchen with the now-defunct Tahitian Terrace in Adventureland and the Plaza Pavilion restaurant at the corner of Main Street, U. S. A. since all three are part of the same building.
Since ownership of the attraction was separate from the rest of the park, a nominal admission charge of $0.75 was levied. Because computers have played a central role in the attraction since its inception, Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room was Disneyland's first air-conditioned building, it houses a Hawaiian-themed musical show "hosted" by four lifelike macaws whose plumage matches the flags of their implied countries of origin. "José" is red and green and speaks with a Mexican accent voiced by Wally Boag. "Michael" is green with an Irish brogue voiced by Fulton Burley. "Pierre" is blue and red and has a French accent voiced by Ernie Newton. Red and white "Fritz" has a German accent provided by Thurl Ravenscroft; the main birds have changed color over the years. In 1965, the four host birds had identical plumage of white, green and blue; the four macaws as well as all the other birds are plumed with real feathers with the exception of chest plumage. The chests are covered in custom-woven cashmere which allows the figures to "breathe" in a lifelike manner.
The choice came quite by accident. The presentation features a "cast" of over 150 talking and dancing birds, the aforementioned magic fountain, tiki drummers and tiki totem poles that perform the attraction's signature tunes, "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room" by the Sherman Brothers and "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing"; the finale has every Audio-Animatronics figure performing a rousing version of "Hawaiian War Chant". The exit music diverges from the quasi-tropical theme, namely an arrangement of "Heigh-Ho" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with lyrics thanking guests for watching the show and hurrying them to the exit. So innovative was the technology by 1963 standards that an Audio-Animatronics talking "barker" bird once located near the walkway to beckon visitors inside, caused enormous traffic jams of visitors trying to catch a glimpse of it. While waiting outside in a lanai area for the show to start, visitors are serenaded by Hawaiian music which at one time included that of Martin Denny and Bud Tutmarc.
Polynesian gods are represented as well around the perimeter of the lanai and each has a rhyming legend to tell via Audio-Animatronics technology. Some of the gods depicted are goddess of rain. A brief documentary of the history of the pineapple is presented as well; the story, filmed in the early 1960s and updated at the end with a Macromedia Flash presentation of a parade of Dole products, is shown on a screen on the rear of the roof of the Dole snack bar at the entrance to the lanai. In the main show, one chorus of "Let's All Sing Like The Birdies Sing" has José crooning like Bing Crosby, Fritz scat-singing in a gravelly voice like that of Louis Armstrong and Pierre singing like Maurice Chevalier. After this, the birds cue a sing-along from the audience, a whistle-along, set to a wild can-can setting of the tune. By the mid-1990s the Enchanted Tiki Room audio system was enhanced. Subwoofers were placed in the back rows. Modern mid-range speakers and high-range tweeters were placed throughout the room.
For the first time, every instrument played in the 1963 recording came in loud, crystal clear. Not long after, the Enchanted Tiki Room received another alteration: the original 17-minute show was trimmed. Nearly four minutes of the show were cut. A verse of "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room", a whistling verse of "Let's All Sing Like The Birdies Sing", the "Barcarolle" number from Offenbach's opera Tales of Hoffmann were all removed from the show. Another renovation came to the show in the following decade; the Enchanted Tiki Room reopened in March 2005, after a seven-month refurbishment, commissioned by new Disneyland management as part of its effort to restore the park for its 50th birthday. Prior to this renovation, feathers were falling out of the Audio-Animatronics bi
Sandstone
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed of sand-sized mineral particles or rock fragments. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar because they are the most resistant minerals to weathering processes at the Earth's surface, as seen in Bowen's reaction series. Like uncemented sand, sandstone may be any color due to impurities within the minerals, but the most common colors are tan, yellow, grey, pink and black. Since sandstone beds form visible cliffs and other topographic features, certain colors of sandstone have been identified with certain regions. Rock formations that are composed of sandstone allow the percolation of water and other fluids and are porous enough to store large quantities, making them valuable aquifers and petroleum reservoirs. Fine-grained aquifers, such as sandstones, are better able to filter out pollutants from the surface than are rocks with cracks and crevices, such as limestone or other rocks fractured by seismic activity. Quartz-bearing sandstone can be changed into quartzite through metamorphism related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts.
Sandstones are clastic in origin. They are formed from cemented grains that may either be fragments of a pre-existing rock or be mono-minerallic crystals; the cements binding these grains together are calcite and silica. Grain sizes in sands are defined within the range of 0.0625 mm to 2 mm. Clays and sediments with smaller grain sizes not visible with the naked eye, including siltstones and shales, are called argillaceous sediments; the formation of sandstone involves two principal stages. First, a layer or layers of sand accumulates as the result of sedimentation, either from water or from air. Sedimentation occurs by the sand settling out from suspension. Once it has accumulated, the sand becomes sandstone when it is compacted by the pressure of overlying deposits and cemented by the precipitation of minerals within the pore spaces between sand grains; the most common cementing materials are silica and calcium carbonate, which are derived either from dissolution or from alteration of the sand after it was buried.
Colors will be tan or yellow. A predominant additional colourant in the southwestern United States is iron oxide, which imparts reddish tints ranging from pink to dark red, with additional manganese imparting a purplish hue. Red sandstones are seen in the Southwest and West of Britain, as well as central Europe and Mongolia; the regularity of the latter favours use as a source for masonry, either as a primary building material or as a facing stone, over other forms of construction. The environment where it is deposited is crucial in determining the characteristics of the resulting sandstone, which, in finer detail, include its grain size and composition and, in more general detail, include the rock geometry and sedimentary structures. Principal environments of deposition may be split between terrestrial and marine, as illustrated by the following broad groupings: Terrestrial environmentsRivers Alluvial fans Glacial outwash Lakes Deserts Marine environmentsDeltas Beach and shoreface sands Tidal flats Offshore bars and sand waves Storm deposits Turbidites Framework grains are sand-sized detrital fragments that make up the bulk of a sandstone.
These grains can be classified into several different categories based on their mineral composition: Quartz framework grains are the dominant minerals in most clastic sedimentary rocks. These physical properties allow the quartz grains to survive multiple recycling events, while allowing the grains to display some degree of rounding. Quartz grains evolve from plutonic rock, which are felsic in origin and from older sandstones that have been recycled. Feldspathic framework grains are the second most abundant mineral in sandstones. Feldspar can be divided into two smaller subdivisions: plagioclase feldspars; the different types of feldspar can be distinguished under a petrographic microscope. Below is a description of the different types of feldspar. Alkali feldspar is a group of minerals in which the chemical composition of the mineral can range from KAlSi3O8 to NaAlSi3O8, this represents a complete solid solution. Plagioclase feldspar is a complex group of solid solution minerals that range in composition from NaAlSi3O8 to CaAl2Si2O8.
Lithic framework grains are pieces of ancient source rock that have yet to weather away to individual mineral grains, called lithic fragments or clasts. Lithic fragments can be any fine-grained or coarse-grained igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary rock, although the most common lithic fragments found in sedimentary rocks are clasts of volcanic rocks. Accessory minerals are all other mineral grains in a sandstone. Common accessory minerals include micas, olivine and corundum. Many of these accessory grains are more dense than the silicates that
Calabash
A calabash, bottle gourd, or white-flowered gourd, Lagenaria siceraria known by many other names, including long melon, New Guinea bean and Tasmania bean, is a vine grown for its fruit, which can be either harvested young to be consumed as a vegetable, or harvested mature to be dried and used as a utensil. When it is fresh, the fruit has white flesh. Calabash fruits have a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded and bottle shaped, or slim and serpentine, they can grow to be over a metre long. Rounder varieties are called calabash gourds; the gourd was one of the world's first cultivated plants grown not for food, but for use as containers. The bottle gourd may have been carried from Africa to Asia and the Americas in the course of human migration, or by seeds floating across the oceans inside the gourd, it has been proven to have existed in the New World prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Because bottle gourds are called "calabashes", they are sometimes confused with the hard, hollow fruits of the unrelated calabash tree, Crescentia cujete, whose fruits are used to make utensils and musical instruments.
The bottle gourd is a cultivated plant in tropical and subtropical areas of the world, now believed by some to have spread or originated from wild populations in southern Africa. Stands of L. siceraria, which may be source plants and not domesticated stands, were reported in Zimbabwe in 2004. This apparent domestication source plant produces thinner-walled fruit that, when dried, would not endure the rigors of use on long journeys as a water container. Today's gourd may owe its tough, waterproof wall to selection pressures over its long history of domestication. Gourds were cultivated in Africa, Asia and the Americas for thousands of years before Columbus' discovery of the Americas. In Europe Walahfrid Strabo and poet from Reichenau and advisor to the Carolingian kings, discussed the gourd in his Hortulus as one of the 23 plants of an ideal garden. Recent research indicates that some gourds have an African origin and that there were at least two unrelated domestications: one is thought to have occurred 8,000-9,000 years ago, based on the analysis of archeological samples found in Asia.
The second domestication is believed to have occurred 4,000 years ago, has been traced from archeological discoveries in Egypt. The mystery of the bottle gourd —– namely that this African or Eurasian species was being grown in the Americas over 8,000 years ago —– comes from the difficulty in understanding how it arrived in the Americas; the bottle gourd was thought to have drifted across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to North and South America, but genetic research on archeological samples published by the National Academy of Sciences in December 2005 suggested that it may have been domesticated earlier than food crops and livestock and, like dogs, was brought into the New World at the end of the ice age by the native Paleo-Indians. This study showed that gourds in American archaeological finds appeared to be closer to Asian variants than to African ones. In February 2014, the original hypothesis was revived based on a more thorough genetic study. Researchers more examined the plastid genomes of a broad sample of bottle gourds, concluded that North and South American specimens were most related to wild African variants and could have drifted over the ocean several or many times, as long as 10,000 years ago.
Nowadays, bottle gourds are grown by direct sowing of seeds or transplanting 15- to 20-day-old seedlings. The plant prefers well-drained, rich soil, it requires plenty of moisture in the growing season and a warm, sunny position, sheltered from the wind. It can be cultivated in small places such as in a pot, allowed to spread on a trellis or roof. In rural areas, many houses with thatched roofs are covered with the gourd vines. Bottle gourds grow rapidly and their stems can reach a length of 9 m in the summer, so they need a solid support along the stem if they are to climb a pole or trellis. If planted under a tall tree, the vine may grow up to the top of the tree. To obtain more fruit, farmers sometimes cut off the tip of the vine when it has grown to 6–8 feet in length; this forces the plant to yield more fruit. The plant produces white flowers; the male flowers have long peduncles and the females have short ones with an ovary in the shape of the fruit. Sometimes the female flowers drop off without growing into a gourd due to the failure of pollination if there is no bee activity in the garden area.
Hand pollination can be used to solve the problem. Crops are ready for harvest within two months. Like other members of the Cucurbitaceae family, gourds contain cucurbitacins that are known to be cytotoxic at a high concentration; the tetracyclic triterpenoid cucurbitacins present in fruits and vegetables of the cucumber family are responsible for the bitter taste, could cause stomach ulcers. In extreme cases, people have died from drinking the juice of gourds; the toxic cases are due to the gourd being used to make juice, which the drinkers described as being unusually bitter. In three of the lethal cases, the victims were all diabetics in their 60s. However, in June 2018 a healthy woman in her early 40s was hospitalized for severe reactions after consuming the juice and died three days from complications. However, the plant is not toxic when eaten and is safe to consume; the excessively bitter gourds are due to improper over-ripening. To avoid poisoning, it is advised to: Taste a small piece of the gourd
Rongorongo
Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment none successfully. Although some calendrical and what might prove to be genealogical information has been identified, none of these glyphs can be read. If rongorongo does prove to be writing and proves to be an independent invention, it would be one of few independent inventions of writing in human history. Two dozen wooden objects bearing rongorongo inscriptions, some weathered, burned, or otherwise damaged, were collected in the late 19th century and are now scattered in museums and private collections. None remain on Easter Island; the objects are tablets shaped from irregular pieces of wood, sometimes driftwood, but include a chieftain's staff, a bird-man statuette, two reimiro ornaments. There are a few petroglyphs which may include short rongorongo inscriptions. Oral history suggests that only a small elite was literate and that the tablets were sacred.
Authentic rongorongo texts are written in alternating directions, a system called reverse boustrophedon. In a third of the tablets, the lines of text are inscribed in shallow fluting carved into the wood; the glyphs themselves are outlines of human, plant and geometric forms. Many of the human and animal figures, such as glyphs 200 and 280, have characteristic protuberances on each side of the head representing eyes. Individual texts are conventionally known by a single uppercase letter and a name, such as Tablet C, the Mamari Tablet; the somewhat variable names may be descriptive or indicate where the object is kept, as in the Oar, the Snuffbox, the Small Santiago Tablet, the Santiago Staff. Rongorongo is the modern name for the inscriptions. In the Rapa Nui language it means "to recite, to declaim, to chant out"; the original name—or description—of the script is said to have been kohau motu mo rongorongo, "lines incised for chanting out", shortened to kohau rongorongo or "lines chanting out".
There are said to have been more specific names for the texts based on their topic. For example, the kohau ta‘u were annals, the kohau îka were lists of persons killed in war, the kohau ranga "lines of fugitives" were lists of war refugees; some authors have understood the ta‘u in kohau ta‘u to refer to a separate form of writing distinct from rongorongo. Barthel recorded that, "The Islanders had another writing which recorded their annals and other secular matters, but this has disappeared." However, Fischer writes that "the ta‘u was a type of rongorongo inscription. In the 1880s, a group of elders invented a derivative'script' called ta‘u with which to decorate carvings in order to increase their trading value, it is a primitive imitation of rongorongo." An alleged third script, the mama or va‘eva‘e described in some mid-twentieth-century publications, was "an early twentieth-century geometric invention". The forms of the glyphs are standardized contours of living organisms and geometric designs about one centimeter high.
The wooden tablets are irregular in shape and, in many instances, with the glyphs carved in shallow channels running the length of the tablets, as can be seen in the image of tablet G at right. It is thought that irregular and blemished pieces of wood were used in their entirety rather than squared off due to the scarcity of wood on the island. Except for a few possible glyphs cut in stone, all surviving texts are inscribed in wood. According to tradition, the tablets were made of toromiro wood. However, Orliac examined seven objects with stereo optical and scanning electron microscopes and determined that all were instead made from Pacific rosewood; this 15-meter tree, known as "Pacific rosewood" for its color and called mako‘i in Rapanui, is used for sacred groves and carvings throughout eastern Polynesia and was evidently brought to Easter Island by the first settlers. However, not all the wood was native: Orliac established that tablets N, P, S were made of South African Yellowwood and therefore that the wood had arrived with Western contact.
Fischer describes P as "a damaged and reshapen European or American oar", as are A and V. Several texts, including O, are carved on gnarled driftwood; the fact that the islanders were reduced to inscribing driftwood, were regardless economical in their use of wood, may have had consequences for the structure of the script, such as the abundance of ligatures and a telegraphic style of writing that would complicate textual analysis. Oral tradition holds that, because of the great value of wood, only expert scribes used it, while pupils wrote on banana leaves. German ethnologist Thomas Barthel believed that carving on wood was a secondary development in the evolution of the script based on an earlier stage of incising banana leaves or the sheaths of the banana trunk with a bone stylus, that the medium of leaves was retained not only for lessons but to plan and compose the texts of the wooden tablets, he found experimentally that the glyphs were quite vi
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