5: Tameana: Misinformation

If you are on this blog you will probably know about the story of Tameana and Hineana caves. What is on most sites has been copied and pasted many times.

Tame means male (Tane means male human and it could be that the name has been spelled incorrectly). Hine means woman. Hineana has a narrower opening - obvious when you see it.

It is said they are inassessable, and that a third cave holds many of the 'tall ones' dead. Tameana is very big and easily navigated to start with - and it is easy found. Hineana, the more beautiful cave, is smaller but opens up inside and is only slightly harder to find if you use your head. In the same area you may find a third cave with a smaller entrance. We will cover Hineana at a later date. There are two others with small entrances nearby. If one does hold the dead Urukehu then it can wait while we investigate the other sites further south.

Anyway, the story goes that they tried to open these caves up 3x but failed. They tried to put a road to them which caused a slip. Really? The big one is only 40 metres from the road!

It's this confusion of stories that creates unnecessary mystery. There is no mystery. The entrance is not difficult to find nor is access hard. There is no landslip that nearly covered them.

But, the stories are so fragmented, confused and co-joined, there could be another one 'packed with the dead' that is elsewhere waiting to be rediscovered?

The top photo shows where the Tameana cave is. If you do not know the vicinity, you will probably not find it. It lies behind the lump of limestone you can see near the bottom behind the trees. It is not a difficult access.

Here is the entrance. Just inside, the ceiling is about 7.5 metres high. It is even higher further in but the interior of the entrance is fairly boring. In fact most of the cave is fairly boring.

The point of showing these photos is that many have told stories about them, and other caves, and supposed stories of hidden skeletons. But few have showed any evidence of anything. This goes a small way to proving we know what we are on about and where things are.

A photo of Tameana to show interior scale. This was taken about 80m in from the entrance. Hineana is the best cave which we will post photos of another time.