Mysterious statues of the island of nuku hiva. Mysterious island nuku hiva nuku hiva french polynesia
Temehea Tohua is located on the island of Nuku Hiva, which is the largest atoll in the Marquesas Islands archipelago in French Polynesia.
On this unique island are perhaps the most outlandish statues ever seen by man. Some ancient sculptures depict creatures that appear to be extraterrestrial aliens. And everyone who has landed on this earth wants to solve the riddle: who are they - the fruit of the sculptor's wild imagination or something that really descended from the distant space wastelands to this island?
At first glance, they seem to be just “big statues”, but upon closer inspection, you notice more and more interesting features: unusually large eyes, massive oblong heads, frail / huge bodies and other attributes, the presence of which causes bewilderment as to the origin of the “models” that inspired the creator of these statues.
Nuku Hiva is the largest island of the Marquesas archipelago in French Polynesia and an overseas territory of France in the area Pacific Ocean. The atoll was previously known as Madison Island.
Herman Melville wrote the book Typee, which is based on his experience in the Taipivai Valley in the eastern part of the island of Nuku Hiva. Robert Louis Stevenson's first landing on the Casco expedition in 1888 was at Hatihoy, located in the northern part of Nuku Hiva. Also, Nuku Hiva became another location for filming the 4th season of the American reality show “Survivors”, which took place throughout the archipelago of the Marquesas Islands.
Warrior of the island of Nuku Hiva, 1813
In ancient times, Nuku Hiva was divided into two regions: more than 2/3 of the island was occupied by the province of Te Lyi, and the rest of the territory belonged to the Tai Pi community.
Recent studies show that the first settlers appeared here 2000 years ago, arriving from the island of Samoa, and then colonized Tahiti in Hawaii, the Cook Islands and New Zealand. The legends say that the all-creating deity It promised a wife to the one who builds a house in a day, and by gathering together the earth, he created the islands, calling them parts of the house.
So, the island of Nuku Hiva is considered a “roof”. And all that remained unused, he piled into a heap, forming the hill of Ua Huka. For centuries, the population of this island has increased, and at such a pace that by the time the first European arrived on this earth, it ranged from 50 to 100 thousand inhabitants on this small piece of land in the middle of the ocean.
Of course, food was of paramount importance here. The basis of the diet was breadfruit, as well as taro, bananas and cassava. As for protein products, fish dominated here, although their quantity was limited, given the number of people that she had to feed. Pigs, chickens, dogs were also the object of culinary passions of the inhabitants of the island.
Breadfruit
There is still scientific debate about why so many Polynesian tribes practiced cannibalism. According to one theory, eating their own kind was more likely to compensate for the lack of protein in the diet than served for ritual ceremonies. However, cannibalism played a large role in ritual purposes. So, the sacrifice brought to the sea deity Ika was “caught” in the same way as a fish, and hung by a hook above the altar like an underwater inhabitant.
The one who was supposed to become a victim of a sacred ritual was tied up and hung on a tree for a certain time, after which he was brainwashed with a club. It is believed that women and children engaged in cannibalism only for food, while male warriors sacrificed to deities and ate opponents defeated in battle in order to get their strength. For the same purpose, they also kept the skulls of defeated enemies.
DK2AMM, DL6JGN, GM4FDM, PA3EWP will be active from Nuku Hiva, Marquesas Islands (IOTA OC-027) 3 - 15 March 2016 as TX7EU.
They will operate on 40 - 10m CW, SSB, RTTY.
QSL via DK2AMM.
Address for QSL direct:
Ernö Ogonovszky, Am Steinbruch 4, 09123 Chemnitz, Germany.
News TX7EU March 3, 2016
The team arrived on the island of Nuku Hiva. They installed the first antenna. Activity is scheduled to start on March 4, 2016.
Nuku Hiva island
For any historian or traveler, the name Nuku Hiva is immediately associated with something mysterious, or rather even supernatural. And everything is unusual in Nuku Hiva: from the origin of the island and its attractions, to modern stories associated with it.
Hatiheu Bay, Nuku Hiva Island, Marquesas Islands. Author of the photo - Steve Berardi.
The foundation of the island is a real masterpiece
The island of Nuku Hiva is two huge ancient volcanoes, as if nested into each other by some kind of Master. This giant "matryoshka" has formed two vast basins with amazingly beautiful basalt slopes. One of the basins surrounds the capital of the island, and the crater of the extinct volcano itself has turned into a deep bay with mountain peaks of impressive size on the shore.
Cliffs, immersed in the waters of the vast Pacific Ocean, cause dumb delight in everyone who admires this unearthly beauty that came to us from antiquity. It is not for nothing that the island used to be called “Majestic” - this is felt in any piece of island landscapes.
Nuku Hiva island, Marquesas Islands. Author of the photo - Rita Willaert.
Inhabitants of an island with eccentric tastes
The population of a small piece of land, at first not numerous (aboriginal people lived here already in 150 AD), by the 18th century grew to about 100 thousand people, and then began to gradually decrease. The reason for this was the wars between representatives of different tribes, as well as various infections and viruses brought to the island by Europeans, and to which the islanders had no immunity (up to a thousand people could die during an epidemic). Well, the Chinese opium brought to Nuku Hiva at the end of the 19th century completely “put things in order” with demography: in the 30s of the 20th century, only a little more than five hundred people lived here. Now the population of the island has increased slightly and has about 2 thousand inhabitants.
But it is not such jumps in population that are unnatural, but a wild custom, or a terrible need for aborigines to ... eat their own kind.
Until now, it is difficult to draw a correct conclusion about the reasons for such an exotic "product" included in the diet of the islanders. Perhaps, the densely populated small piece of land with the presence of mainly plant foods on it and, as a result, a lack of protein. Apparently, such a number of people could not fill the need for protein with fish, or living creatures, which there was also no particular opportunity to breed in sufficient quantities.
But there is another version of the cause of cannibalism: the rituals of sacrifice. The inhabitants of Nuku Hiva thus cajoled the deities in whom they believed and feared their wrath, and the men of the tribe, having eaten the defeated enemy, appropriated his power and strength. The skulls of eaten people were carefully kept for the same purpose.
One could attribute this to the manifestations of wild ancient customs, if not for one extraordinary circumstance.
More recently, in 2011, in pursuit of extreme adventures, a 40-year-old German man came to the island with his companion to hunt goats. Taking a guide from the locals with him, he went to the mountains, and after a while the islander returned and told the hunter's girlfriend that he was wounded and remained in the mountains. When the woman decided to go to the rescue of her friend, the conductor tied her up and did not let her go anywhere. When the German woman managed to free herself, she reported the incident to the police. The search led the police to an extinct fire, which contained the remains of a man with all the signs of a cannibal meal. And the unfortunate guide from the island simply ran away.
Apparently, cannibals are never former...
True, there is another, older, but more optimistic story. This is the story of the navigator Melville, who once escaped from the ship and secretly landed on Nuku Hiva. The natives not only did not eat the sailor - they accepted him as a friend. Later, becoming a writer, he described the history of his stay in the society of the islanders in the book "Taipi". There is even a monument on the island in memory of the sailor.
So the tastes and preferences of cannibals are incomprehensible and it is worth delving into them. Moreover, there are more interesting puzzles on Nuku Hava.
Hikokua, Nuku Hiva island, Marquesas Islands. Author of the photo - Rita Willaert.
Statues without analogues or monuments to the other world
Unique statues of tiki idols, which have no analogues anywhere in the world - main riddle islands. No one knows who is carved in stone and the history of what creatures is depicted in these statues.
Outlandish figures of two types, very often carved by groups (or families?), suggest that it was here that aliens stopped, or maybe even lived at all, about which there are so many disputes among earthlings.
Huge, wide-set eyes of a round shape, similar to portholes, a flattened large nose and stretched full lips do not make a very pleasant impression and evoke a certain feeling of uncertainty and fear.
The largest tiki sculpture is 2.5 meters high. No idol repeats another. Their number and diversity eloquently testifies to the completely incomprehensible religion and culture of the island.
At one time, Christian missionaries tried to bring elements of their faith into the life of the islanders. Nuku Hiva even has a small Catholic church, the Notre Dame Catholic Cathedral, built from stones of various colors and shapes, and a statue of the Virgin Mary on a mountain peak above the bay. But Christianity was difficult to spread and accepted with reluctance. Local beliefs and attitudes are deeply embedded in the minds of the inhabitants. Many of them are convinced that each idol carries a different power: help in battles, salvation from various troubles, growing crops, and more. What kind of God is here?
But no one knows for sure what tics carry in themselves, just as it is not known how they appeared on the island.
Only one thing can be said with complete certainty: our planet is filled with miracles and mysteries, and it is not known when the secret of the idols of the mysterious island of Nuku Hiva will be unraveled.
In the South Pacific Ocean there is an archipelago of volcanic origin - the Marquesas Islands, the largest island of which is Nuku Hiva - the "Majestic Island".
In the very center of Nuku Hiva is the sacred valley of Temehea Tohuana, where there are outlandish statues of Tiki - stone sculptures depicting deities worshiped by the ancient Polynesians. It would seem that nothing unusual, because they found stone idols in other places on the Earth.
Photo: Rita Willaert/flickr
But the peculiarity of these idols is their strange appearance. One gets the impression that alien creatures posed for the sculptors, such as we imagine aliens, based on individual facts of meetings with guests from distant space, supposedly happening with our contemporaries. But how did the ancient natives of Nuku Hiva know about them?
It is unlikely that this is the fruit of the wild imagination of the sculptor. Perhaps the ancient inhabitants of Nuku Hiva saw these strange big-eyed creatures, who obviously had some kind of magical power over the inhabitants, since they recognized them as their deities and worshiped them.
Archaeologists have determined that the first people settled on the island of Nuku Hiva in the first century AD. Their main occupation was stone processing, they also built stone houses, which is not surprising for an island of volcanic origin, which has a lot of building material. Most of the buildings that have come down to us date back to the 11th-14th centuries, at the same time the world-famous stone idols of Tiki were created.
Photo: Tran Quility/flickr
The largest statue is almost 2.5 meters high. Tiki differ from each other, each of them is the personification of a particular deity and, according to the Polynesians, keeps the magical power of this god. One idol helps in the war, the other protects from troubles and misfortunes, the third gives a big harvest, and so on.
The opinions of scientists about the originals from which the Tiki statues were carved differed, however, almost everyone agrees that they depict some kind of aliens and there is nothing human in them.
Some researchers believe that the Tiki idols were sculpted from two completely different groups of aliens. According to ufologists, reptilians, the most ancient people in the entire universe, “posed” for some sculptures. This is very highly developed civilization with evil inhabitants capable of commanding people.
Photo: Rita Willaert/flickr
Other Tiki statues were carved from other aliens - "gray aliens". Their appearance is more like a human, however, the body is frail, thin arms, a large head with a nose, mouth and huge "inhuman" eyes.
Moreover, ufologists believe that some of the recurring features found on all Tiki sculptures indicate that the masters saw with their own eyes those from whom the statues were made.
It is believed that the reptilian race appeared on Nuku Hiva earlier, having won the worship of people and becoming deities for them. Then the humanoids created the "gray aliens" - an inferior race of slaves. And all this is just assumptions, fantasies and conjectures. But there is always hope that the mystery of the Tiki sculptures on the island of Nuku Hiva will be solved.
Site materials used
Some places on our planet keep the secrets of ancient civilizations that amaze scientists from all over the world. For example, on the island of Nuku Hiva there is an inexplicable mystery - the oldest statues of certain creatures that ufologists compare with reptilians. Analogues of these statues could not be found anywhere else. In appearance, they resemble certain creatures that vaguely resemble an alien, or a person in a spacesuit.
A little background
The island has the shape of a quadrangle with an area of 330 sq. kilometers. Its length is equal to 30 kilometers, and its width is 15 km. This island was recognized as the largest in the entire Marquesas archipelago of French Polynesia. Previously, it was called Madison Island.
If you translate the current name of the island, you get the "Great Island". Perhaps this name is really justified, since this corner of the planet may contain clues to the universal mysteries that have been of interest to scientists for many decades. The island itself is very picturesque: it is full of lush greenery, among which you can see hills in the form of rocks and mountains. It is washed by warm ocean waters rich in fish. In addition, there are two main natural attractions on the island of Nuku Hiva - extinct volcanoes, surrounded by sharp rocks. The crater of one of the volcanoes was flooded with water in ancient times. Such a phenomenon is rarely seen anywhere, so tourists often come to Nuku Hiva. Despite the island's profitability, it remains sparsely populated. The number of its permanent residents never exceeded 2,000.
Nuku Hiva interest of archaeologists
In the middle of the twentieth century, massive archaeological excavations were carried out on the territory of Nuku Hiva. The results of these excavations helped to determine that the indigenous people lived there from 150 BC. The first people who settled there were the inhabitants neighboring island Samoa. In the future, the population of Nuku Hiva developed and increased. His main activity was pottery and stone processing.
The first stone houses appeared on Nuku Hiva quite early - in 1100 AD. In addition to them, there were stone statues and sculptures. The Americans periodically tried to capture the island, but they failed, since the inhabitants of Nuku Hiva had excellent military skills.
Nuku Hiva has belonged to France since 1842. This year, the French tried to build a Catholic cathedral there and introduce their religion into the settlements there. They failed to do this: Catholics took root very poorly, they were constantly expelled by local residents. Since then, the population of the island began to decrease until it reached its current population.
Legends about the origin of Nuku Hiva
Local residents often told those interested in an interesting legend about the origin of their island. The legend said that the main god Ono once boasted to his wife that he would be able to build an excellent house in just a day. To do this, Ono collected the necessary amount of earth and stone, from which he built the islands. Each island corresponded to the purpose of a certain room in the house. The island of Nuku Hiva was supposed to serve as the roof of the house of the god Ono.
Where did the reptilian statues come from on the island?
On the territory of Nuku Hiva there is a small settlement of Temehea Tohua, near which scientists once found unique statues. The researchers suggested that these statues were images of the deities of Nuku Hiva. They were built in the 11th-14th centuries, but despite this, they were preserved in excellent condition.
The creatures depicted as statues on the island of Nuku Hiva have a very unusual appearance: a humanoid silhouette, a large head with huge eyes, short limbs, and a disproportionate body. When looking at them, one gets the impression that their creators were looking at extraterrestrial beings while working. Almost all idols were depicted in the same clothes, similar to modern astronaut spacesuits. Scientists still continue to puzzle over who created these statues, and what he wanted to show. It is only known that there is nothing human in these statues of idols.
Ufologists compared the statues of the island of Nuku Hiva with reptilians - mythical aliens
Some researchers have said that the statues of Nuku Hiva represent reptilian aliens, which are often talked about by fans of UFOs and the paranormal. Perhaps the first inhabitants of the aforementioned island really met with aliens who could be considered gods, which is why they wished to be immortalized in stone.
The height of the largest masterpiece of Nuku Hiva is equal to two and a half meters. Each statue is unique - each depicts a separate creature that differs in appearance from others. The general external features of all the statues are the same. The locals call these creatures "ticks", worship them and believe that they can grant wishes if they are treated with respect. Each idol has its purpose. One helps in love affairs, the other heals the sick, the third helps to fight enemy tribes, and so on.
Ufologists believe that on the island of Nuku Hiva there are images of various types of alien deities. For example, some of the statues are reptilians - powerful ancient sinister creatures in the universe. They supposedly at one time preferred to control people, considered them an underdeveloped race and forced them to worship themselves.
Another type of idol, according to ufologists, depicts "gray aliens" - the most famous, which are distinguished by a large head and eyes, as well as small limbs and body, short stature.
Thus, it can be assumed that alien creatures that were seen by the locals once really flew to the island of Nuku Hiva. Perhaps they taught the wild natives the basics of survival, and therefore became gods. It should be noted in advance that all this is only the assumptions of the researchers. It is very difficult to say whether a person will ever be able to unravel the mysteries of the island of Nuku Hiva.
Geography
Highest point - Mount Tekao(1224 m). Nuku Hiva is shaped like a quadrangle, 30 km long and 15 km wide. Administrative center Marquesas Islands, the city of Taioahae ( Taiohae), is located on the southern coast of the island near the bay of the same name.
Space image of the island
Story
The main archaeological work on the island was carried out in the 1960s by an American expedition near the settlements of Waa ( Wow) And taipivai. As a result, it was established that the first people sailed to the island in 150 AD. e. One of the main occupations of the locals at that time was pottery, which was also practiced on the islands of Samoa and Tonga. The period of development on Nuku Hiva lasted until 1100 AD. e. During this time, residents were able to fine-tune the technique of stone processing, which was used in the construction of housing. A large number of stone structures were built on the island between 1400 AD and 1400 AD. e. including famous sculptures tics.
The first Westerner, American explorer Joseph Ingram, landed on Nuku Hiva in April 1791. Subsequently, many other ships sailed to the island, replenishing their ship supplies on Nuku Hiva. The first European to land on the island was Frenchman Etienne Marchand (July 1791). In 1804, a Russian traveler, Admiral Ivan Fedorovich Kruzenshtern, visited Nuku Hiva. In 1826, when landing on the island from the Russian expeditionary sloop Krotkiy local population midshipman A. L. von Deibner and two unknown sailors were killed and eaten.
The island, its indigenous people and their customs were described in his work "Taipi" (Thuree,) Herman Melville, who, having fled from a whaling ship, lived on the island.
Subsequently, many sandalwood traders, whalers and adventurers sailed to the island. In 1813, the Americans, namely David Porter, tried to annex Nuku Hiva, but the attempt failed. In 1839, the first Catholic missionaries appeared on the island, and in 1842 Nuku Hiva was annexed by France, whose authorities immediately built a fort in Taiohae Bay. The Christianization of the inhabitants took place with great difficulty, since local tribes constantly fought on Nuku Hiva. In 1854, the first Catholic cathedral was laid in Taiohae. The Europeans who appeared on the island brought many diseases to Nuku Hiva, against which the locals had no immunity. In 1863, a smallpox epidemic broke out on the island, killing over 1,000 people. Part of the population of the island during this period was taken away by Peruvian slave traders, in 1883 opium was brought by the Chinese. As a result, by 1934 the population of Nuku Hiva was only 635 people compared to about 12 thousand in 1842. At the beginning of the 20th century, Czech settlers appeared on the island, who soon moved to the island of Tahiti.
Administrative division
The islands of Nuku Hiva, Motu Iti, Motu One, Hatutu and Eiao form the commune of Nuku Hiva, which is part of the Marquesas Islands administrative division.
| Island or reef | land area, km² |
lagoon area, km² |
Population, people (2007) |
Administrative center |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nuku Hiva | 387 | - | 2660 | Hatiheu |
| Motu-Ichi | 0,2 | - | - | - |
| Motu One | 1 | - | - | - |
| 6,4 | - | - | - | |
| eiao | 43,8 | - | - | - |
| Municipality of Nuku Hiva | 438,4 | - | 2660 |