Sidestep: Malden Island - Poly, Mela or Micronesian?
Malden Island (Terapukatea) is at the eastern end of the Line Islands part of Kiribati. The island is part of Micronesia bordering Polynesia.
There are 40 stone temples on Malden Island similar in design to the buildings of Nan Madol on Phonpei some 5500 kms away. Scientists have determined it as an old Polynesian culture of unknown origin. The trouble is they have nothing to show for their ‘determinations’ as the tools found were like those of Melanesia (below), with just a few of Polynesian influence. This island was a cross over point, and probably for religious reasons - but none can say for sure.
The ancient stone structures on Terapukatea are located around the beach ridges, principally on the north and south sides. A total of 21 archaeological sites have been discovered, three of which (on the island's northwest side) are larger than the others. These sites include temple platforms, called marae, house sites, and graves. Comparisons with stone structures on Tuamotu atolls show that a population of between 100 and 200 natives could have produced all of the Malden structures. Maraes of a similar type are found on Raivavae, one of the Austral Islands. Various wells used by these ancients were found by later settlers to be dry or brackish.
Malden Island is a small uninhabited Pacific island discovered in 1825. Among its unexplained mysteries are its many stone ceremonial ruins, and paved "roads" that lead to the sea. These appear to be centuries old and their purpose unknown. How these stones were fashioned is also unclear since adzes with only shell blades were found. Other far-flung islands in the Pacific have similar findings indicating a likely connection, which many believe is the sunken continent of Mu or Lemuria. It seems these beliefs won't go away!
Malden was rediscovered on 30 July 1825 by Captain The 7th Lord Byron (a cousin of the famous poet). Byron, commanding the British warship HMS Blonde, was returning to London from a special mission to Honolulu to repatriate the remains of the young king and queen of Hawaii, who had died of measles during a visit to Britain. The island was named for Lt. Charles Robert Malden, navigator of the Blonde, who sighted the island and briefly explored it. Andrew Bloxam, naturalist of the Blonde, and James Macrae, a botanist travelling for the Royal Horticultural Society, joined in exploring the island and recorded their observations. Malden may have been the island sighted by another whaling captain William Clark in 1823, aboard the Winslow.
At the time of its discovery by Europeans, Malden was found to be unoccupied, but the remains of ruined temples and other structures indicated that the island had at one time been inhabited. At various times these remains have been speculatively attributed to "wrecked seamen", "buccaneers", "South American Incas", "early Chinese navigators", etc. In 1924, the Malden ruins were examined by an archaeologist from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Kenneth Emory, who concluded that they were the creation of a small Polynesian population which had resided there for perhaps several generations some centuries earlier. The ancient stone structures are located around the beach ridges, principally on the north and south sides. A total of 21 archaeological sites have been discovered, three of which are larger than the others. These sites include temple platforms, called marae, house sites, and graves. Comparisons with stone structures on Tuamotu atolls show that a population of between 100 and 200 natives could have produced all of the Malden structures. Maraes of a similar type are found on Raivavae, one of the Austral Islands. Various wells used by these ancients were found by later settlers to be dry or brackish.
The Tridacna shell, particularly the thick part near the hinge, was in former times highly and widely esteemed for this purpose, as is recorded by Keate from the Pelews, by Finsch from the Carolines, Marshalls, and Gilberts, by Guppy from the Solomons, by Dixon from Malden Island, by Wilkes from the Paumotus, by Moseley from the Admiralties; and from Nanomea in the Ellice itself Finsch obtained a specimen of a Tridacna (shell) axe. A very melanesian impliment.
It would hardly have been anticipated that natives, like the Solomon and Pelew Islanders, in the possession of hard volcanic rock would have thus used this material, but Finsch repeatedly remarks that the greater toughness of the shell gives it an advantage over the more brittle stone. In the Carolines the same author found the Tridacna blades to assume various shapes, of which he figures a broad deltoid and a narrow chisel form. Some of these attain an immense size, reaching twenty inches in length and ten pounds in weight; such, he says, were common property. Describing relics of the race who formerly inhabited Malden Island, Mr. W. A. Dixon writes:—"In the grave was a hatchet head with polished edge made from the shell of a tridacna… In many places there were numerous axe heads chipped roughly out of tridacna shells. These are tolerably easily made, the shell being first broken transversely, when a blow on the fractured surface breaks out from the interior of the shell an adze-shaped piece which seems to me to be the pattern on which many of the South Sea stone adzes are formed."
When first visited by European ships, the Equatorial Islands were uninhabited. There are no myths or legends which might connect them with other phases of the great Polynesian adventure. So their brief history must be reconstructed from material traces of human occupancy. On lone islands the outstanding signs of previous habitation are the presence of coconut trees and coral temples erected to their gods by Polynesian navigators after landing. One or both of these traces have been found on all the Equatorial Islands except Howland, Baker, and Jarvis.
The earth oven, with its heated coral or shells, did not require water for cooking purposes. The beverage required by man was supplied by the coconut. However, on atolls without a luxuriant growth of coconuts, water was a necessity. It was obtained by digging shallow wells. Even though the water on the lower rock stratum was brackish, it was not unpalatable to those who had become accustomed to it. In post-European times, those on Malden Island preferred the well water to rain water caught in tanks because they attributed medicinal properties to it. On this island, there are a number of shallow wells lined with coral limestone slabs. At the bottom of the wells, shells were found that had been used as dippers.
In both Christmas and Malden Islands, there are raised rectangular platforms with walls defined by coral slabs 2 to 3.5 feet high and with the interior filled with coral rocks. The platforms of Malden Island are definitely associated with curved rectangular courts. These platforms resemble the maraes described for Tongareva and were used for religious purposes.
The story of Malden Island is as simple as that of any atoll. Some Polynesians settled upon it, made temples for the worship of their gods, buried their dead, made paths to the sea, dug wells, and made implements of tridacna shell. They lived on the native plants and animals and perhaps after a drought or a bad storm, they migrated elsewhere.
Stone cutting in Polynesia is rather puzzling in its distribution. In Tonga it seems to have been highly developed, but in closely related Samoa the only known example is the Fale 0 le Fe'e. I find no record of it in Niue or the Cook Islands and it is rare in the Austral Islands. In New Zealand cut stone seems not to have been used structurally, but the art of stone cutting was familiar to the Maori of Lake Rotorua. In Hawaii the use of cut stone was exceedingly rare, but the few examples known show that its neglect was not due to lack of skill in the mason's art. Extensive structures of cut stone are recorded from Malden and Fanning islands, although these were uninhabited at the time of their discovery and are too small to have ever supported a large population . In the Marquesas, Easter Island , and the Society Islands cut stone was extensively used; also to some extent in Mangareva.
Emory reports marae, tombs, rectangular platforms, mounds, trails, paved house sites and numerous artifacts on Tabuaeran, Kiritimati and Malden islands.
Malden is of considerable historical importance with 21 archaeological sites. Several marae (Polynesian shrines) are located on the island - three on the NW part of the island are larger than the others. These are the best preserved relics from the pre-European period and appear to have escaped disturbance during the guano collecting years (1860-1927). The island is thought to have had 100-200 people living on it during the time of these relics. Also present on the island are graves, but they have not helped determine the origin of Malden islanders. Graves from the guano era (1860-1927) are located in a different area from the pre-European marae, viz, southwest coast south of the landing. They have Western-style headstones, with miners’ names engraved on some of them. One is even of a little two-year toddler, son of a guano manager of the time, who was “taken by the waves”. Western discovery was in 1825 by the H.M.S. Blonde, named after Lieutenant C.R. Malden, the ship’s navigating officer who landed and made observations on shore (Bryan, 1942). From 1860 to 1927 Malden was heavily exploited for guano and phosphate deposits. This was one of the most commercially successful of the Central Pacific guano islands; nearby Starbuck was also so rich it was dubbed “Coral Queen (Guano) Island.” From 1956 to 1959 the British occupied Kiritimati Atoll to the north of Malden to test and monitor atmospheric nuclear bomb tests at Malden in 1957and similar tests at Kiritimati in 1958.88
The marae were first recorded by Kenneth Emory in the 1930s. Simple in form and often battered about by storms, they are recognisably similar to other marae in central Polynesia from the Tuamotu Archipelago to the Cook Islands. But the style of stacking is identical to Nan Madol in Micronesia. Basalt adzes have been found also and maybe this was a meeting place for the trade or transport of basalt for adzes from sources in the Marquesas and Society Islands (Polynésie Française) and Aitutaki (Cook Islands, New Zealand) and possibly Hawaii - all sources 2000-3000 km distant from the Line Islands.
