69: Giants of the Pacific (2)

Terje Dahl once sailed and lived in the Pacific in the 1980’s. He complied stories from the old men about the legends concerning giants, many with six toes. Every island had the same type of stories. The islanders actually believed the legends were true. But there was never any evidence of tall skeletons....

An old chief Tei Tetua on Fatu Hiva told him that his ancestors; white skinned people that had come from a dry, hot country in the east. This was the very start of Heyerdahl theories of migration in the Pacific.

Many statues (tiki) depict figures with 6 fingers as the Paul Gauguin museum in the capital Papeete in Tahiti. The statue is similar to those of Marquesas Islands. It is also about 2.50 meter tall and has six fingers. I later learned that it came from the island of Raivavae in the Austral Islands and that the men that were ordered to move the statue to Tahiti had been terrified the spirit of the God should harm them (some are said to have died)!

In American Samoa at Huahine there were ancient fish traps and platforms/walls of stone. They were supposed to have been built by a previous race.

On the outer island of Sawaii in Samoa I heard the legend about a giant called Moso; and I saw it on the north-west coast of the island. A tribe of giants, the Hiti, is said to have lived in Samoa before a great flood.

At the outer atoll of Nanumea in the small Polynesian country of Tuvalu. The people showed me the "footprints" after a giant in the shallow water close to the beach in the lagoon: They all had six toes. The largest footprint was about one and a half meter long and an early missionary had planted a coconut palm in the middle of the footprint to try to make the people forget their old un-Christian believes. The kids were not afraid but just played on top of them and had great fun showing them to the white man. A few years earlier nobody would have dared gone near the footprint, they were considered to be sacred and taboo.

On the small outer atoll of Lae in Marshall Islands I was told an old legend of a huge, hollow cylinder of timber that came drifting across the ocean a long, long, long time ago. The cylinder drifted ashore on Lae and there were giants inside. They islanders were very afraid of them, but since the giants were weak from drifting across the ocean the villagers managed to kill them.

On the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia there are some very interesting ruins called Nan Madol. This "ancient city of stone" is built on nearly 100 artificial islets with tidal canals between them; situated on the south-eastern side of the island. Bones of giants have supposedly been found both inside the ruins and also in the dense forest on the adjacent larger island. One legend says that it was two young twins, Olsihpa and Olsohpa, that had made Nan Modol. Olisihpa and Olosohpa were said to have come from far away across the ocean and they were much taller than native islanders. Their offspring with the local women became the chiefs of the island, the Saudeleur. One day a father and son archaeological team from Japan came to Nukulaelae at Tevalu. They wanted to dig in the middle of the main village but I told them that in the old days the village was on one of the other islets, Niuoko. Nobody was living on Niuoko anymore, but in the bush the Japanese were shown a overgrown grave in the dense bush. It was very large; about 3.5 meters long and 1.5 meter wide. The islanders agreed that it had to be the grave of Tevalu (Te Valu). A very old legend (as told by my father-in-law and another old man on Nukulaelae) said that he had been a giant that had lived on this islet. Tevalu was a bad giant, he used to snatch children playing on the beach; kill and eat them. The islanders first wanted the archaeologists to open the grave, but then changed their minds: It was too dangerous! And a violent storm the same evening convinced them that they in the future should not make any attempt to disturb the grave of Tevalu!

On the main island of Tongatapu in Tonga is a large structure constructed from three coral limestone blocks. It is about 5 meters high, almost 1.5 meters wide and almost 6 meters long. The legends say that it was made by the demigod Maui because no ordinary islander would be able to carry and construct a kind of gate of such heavy stones. One legend says the stones are from the from Wallis Island about 600 kilometers away and that Maui brought them to Tonga in a giant canoe. The royal family of Tonga used to be proud of descending from the giant gods, and they kept their blood by marrying within the family. They are still very tall; king Tupou IV who died in 1996 was 2 meters tall and his mother Queen Salote just ten centimeters shorter!

Many of the chiefly families of the South Pacific can trace their family back to the giants and some have reddish hair as the giants supposedly had. They are often very tall and it also seems common that they are more European looking with lighter skin, even if they can trace their families back to long before the explorers arrived.

The Maori of New Zealand refute that there were anybody living in New Zealand before they arrived - even if many of their legends tells about the people that was there before them like the tribe of giants called Te Kahui Tipua. The reason is agreed that it would affect the traditional ownership of the land. (I disagree - Maori owned the land by conquest when European arrived but they were not the first here. Ownership doesn't change but status does)

Easter Island has giant statues there. some of them had six fingers. Strange because some of the similar looking stone statues he took pictures of in San Augustin in Colombia in South America also had six fingers! Well, I thought it was very strange that old stone statues should have six fingers, and guess what I discovered; so did many ancient statues all over the world! One legend on Easter Island is telling that the first people on the island had come over the ocean from west while another is telling that they had come from a hot and dry land in the east. They should have been 7 ½ to 8 ½ feet tall (2.30 to 2.60 meters) - survivors after a worldwide catastrophe. Jacob Roggeveen, the Dutch explorer, was the first European to sight and visit the island; on Easter Sunday in 1722. He wrote that there were three distinct groups of people on the island; dark skinned, red skinned, and very pale skinned people with red hair. British explorer captain James Cook visited Easter Island in 1774, and his seamen described that some of the people on the islands were so tall that they could walk upright between their legs. On Easter Island because the mysteries of the statues and the legends might give a clue to who these tall people where, no large bones has, as far as I know, ever been found on the island, and just a few Caucasian-looking old skulls.

Not the Pacific but just across the narrow divide of Chile is Patagonia, where in the 1520s, Ferdinand Magellan met a very tall race. Patagonia means 'Big Feet'.

Giants and Six Fingers

All over the Pacific I had heard legends of giants and was surprised that the islanders always claimed them to be true stories and not fairy-tales. But I did not try to figure out if there could be any truth to the legends before I discovered that so many ancient statues had six fingers! And that the very often depicted local Gods and that also were very tall - what we can call giants!

Where are the bones?

But the legends in the Pacific about giants cannot be that old, can they? And where are the proof - where are the bones after the giants on the islands? Well, Rotuma is an isolated island far north of the main islands in Fiji, and during the Second World War coast watchers shall have uncovered shin bones over 1 meter long, and other soldiers shall also have found caves filled with giant human bones. No bones remain today, but two bones after one giant shall have been kept for people to see until quite resent time. You can see what is said to be graves of giants, looking like dolmen; made with large stones.

Several books tell that giant bones were found in Nan Madol of Pohnpei, but no bones are on display. The story goes that the German governor Victor Berg in 1907 defied a royal ban, opened a sealed tomb of former rulers and found skeletons two to three meters tall. A wild storm ensued and the next morning the governor died.

In Kiribati and Tuvalu there are some very large and old graves after what is said to be giants but the people are afraid and will not let anybody open them.

In Tonga you can see the large pyramidal tombs of ancient kings/gods, so called "lagi" ("heaven") but they are not allowed to be touched/excavated.

Many of the pyramidal structures and standing stones that you could/can see on Tahiti, Raiatea, Huahine and so many of the islands in the Pacific are connected to legends of giants: Often they are said to have been their graves or temples. But again: No bones.

The same goes for New Zealand. It has been written that some people living less than three hundred years ago were very tall and it is a fact that people in the families of these giant Gods are tall still today. According to the local newspaper, a very large skeleton was found about 7 feet below the surface on the Saltwater Creek spit, Timaru south of Christchurch, in 1875. But - the bones are gone.

Did catastrophe end the giants reign on earth?

More and more often the archaeologists discover that the places and event described in legends in fact did exist. You just have to understand that the stories have been changed over time, that they had a different view of the world than we have today and that they used other words to describe what they saw and experienced! And of course, the world might have changed too! We humans might have gone extinct almost to the last man, one or several times. And he wondered if we could have been the culprits ourselves, as so many legends and religious scriptures say. And many places, like old Mesopotamia, the time before the catastrophe is called "Golden Age". This was a time of peace and prosperity, with food enough for all without farming. It was a time when the Gods walked among the people. And these Gods were giants.

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None of these stories have ever been verified. Either they are fabricated or they are true and some cover-ups have taken place. Maybe some are true and others are fabricated. One thing I do believe is that all legends have some element of truth within them. IF some evidence can be shown and sent out via every mainstream and underground channel in an organized sudden and mass distribution in a single day, then authorities would find it very difficult to shut it down. However, no such find has ever been secreted long enough for that to happen. Not yet anyway.

The internet in that regard, may be the one tool that will prevent a new discovery from being shut down and hidden away again, even if the finders were threatened, lost their jobs (like a few archaeologists who have spoken out) or have, (even in NZ), been paid handsomely to shut up about things they find (isn't that right Paul?)