- IJ
Sidestep: Rotuma's Giants
First of all, note that the natives of this island of Rotuma do have plenty of old stories of giants. Maori have none oddly, but this small island does. The locals even know know they exist somewhere and the odd bone is found by accident.
by Jonathan Gray
Do you like surprises? Big ones. Talk about giant surprises. Yes, I must tell you what happened when I went ashore on a tiny island in the South Pacific ocean. One of the most beautiful, remote and unspoiled of the Pacific islands is Rotuma. You won’t find it in most atlases. And on the best of atlases it it would be just a speck. A mere 9 miles (14 kilometers) long, and off the usual shipping routes, this once volcanic island remains unexploited and unspoiled. And my wish is, may it stay that way!
On my first visit to the island, I went cycling with one of the men, Fatiaki Tui. On the outskirts of each village, or in the center of a few, was a large cemetery containing hundreds of stone memorials of different shapes and sizes. Fatiaki explained that the islanders call the cemeteries “tumuras”, and that the mourners spend much time by the graves, some even sleeping there for weeks after the death of a relative. You see, because of a shortage of burial ground, many are buried above ground level in coffins placed on top of huge stone slabs.
About 20 years after a burial, when the villagers think that the corpse has sufficiently decomposed, the coffin is opened and a newly deceased body added to the contents. Anyway, I just stopped and scanned the spot. “What a large area those burial grounds cover!” I said to Fatiaki. “You have not seen anything yet,” he grinned, “not until you have seen the graves of the giants. Come on. It’s only a short distance. I will show you.”
ENORMOUS STONES OVER GRAVES
We walked through the village of Motusa to an ancient tumura filled with huge graves built above the ground. Each grave was an enclosure of four upright slabs weighing several tons each, set in a rectangle with a roof made from another impressive stone. “Where did these slabs come from? How could anyone have carried them here?” I asked in amazement. “The only possible place they could have come from is the hillsides near Losa. People must have levered them off the hills and then dragged or carried them the mile between Losa and this spot.” “Wow!” I exclaimed. “What strength that must have required! These rocks are huge. You were not jesting when you called this the grave of giants.” “No, I certainly wasn’t,” said Fatiaki. “And there is much more evidence which suggests that a race of giants once lived on this island.
GIANT SKELETONS
“You remember the road you cycled on today? When it was built in 1927, the labourers uncovered an old cemetery containing bones of a size that indicated they belonged to bodies at least 12 feet tall. “They quickly and fearfully re-buried all the bones and changed the course of the road. So those giant bones still rest in the cemetery today.” A few weeks later I had the opportunity to climb Mount Sororoa, a high peak at the western end of the island. As my climbing partner Bola and I reached the summit, he stopped and looked straight at me.
“Jonathan,” he said, “during the second world war, coast watchers climbed up here and began to build a watch house. As they dug holes for the corner posts, they uncovered shin bones over 3 feet (1 meter) long.” You can figure this outside for yourself. Again, only a 12 foot man would have leg bones that size. “They also found human teeth which they described as big like a horse’s teeth. And in this same general area, while searching for places to hide in case of Japanese invasion, the people found caves filled with giant human bones.”
AND THERE’S MORE
Then, in 1984, Kijian Taksas (whom I have personally met) was supervising the digging of a new grave. The workers unearthed an ancient shin bone. Kijian placed one end of it on the ground and measured to her hip – that ancient shin bone was almost 3 feet long. All of this, then, points to an early race of great stature before the Micronesian and Polynesian people arrived. A race of giants. Whatever happened to them is a mystery. But that’s only one place in the world. Evidence of giants surfaces – it seems – almost everywhere.
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Rotuma's stories are not backed up by what is left that is visual... ie graves. Only the stories of what was found in caves gives any life to giants being on this small island.
