Evidence of the Gods (3 page)

Before the Second World War, Japanese divers are said to have discovered sarcophagi with platinum bars in the depths under Nan Madol. Tall tales? It has not, to date, been possible to solve the riddle of Pohnpei with the ruins of Nan Madol. And there is a connection with legends and structures on various islands in the South Pacific. (“South Pacific” is used here only as a collective term; it refers to the gigantic area of the Pacific south of the equator.)

As long ago as 1880, the ethnologist John White collected traditions from the South Pacific, which take on a completely new meaning when looked at from a modern perspective. Thus the Rongomai legend refers to a tribe called Ngati Haua, which sought protection against attack in a fortified village. Finally, they asked for help from their god Rongomai: “His appearance was like a shining star, like a fiery flame, like a sun.”
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Rongomai descended to the village square: “The earth was churned up, clouds of dust obscured the view, the noise was like thunder, then like the murmur of a sea shell.”
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Compare that with a legend from a completely different geographical area:

…strike down the enemy before you in the briefest time. Thereupon Hor-Hut flew up to the sun in the form of a sun disc with wings attached…when he saw the enemy from heavenly heights…he charged down upon them with such might that they neither saw with their eyes nor heard with their ears…Hor-Hut, shining in many different colors, returned to the ship Ra Harmachis in his shape as a large, winged sun disc.
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Is that allowed? To compare an ancient Egyptian account with a legend from the distant South Pacific? We have to! We no longer live in an age of isolation.

On the island of Raivavae in French Polynesia, the ancient temple of Te Mahara is still today deemed to be the point at which the mythological god Maui landed after his space flight.
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The same applies to the original inhabitants of Atuona, a small island in the Marquesas group. There, mount Kei Ani is considered to be a temple, although there are no buildings at the site. The original Polynesians called the mountain Tautini Etua, literally, “mountain on which the gods landed.”
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It is said about the creator god Ta’aroa of the Society Islands in the Pacific: “Ta’aroa sat in his sea shell, in the darkness for all eternity. The sea shell was like an egg which drifted in endless space. There was no heaven, no land, no sea, no moon, no sun, no stars. All was darkness.”
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And on the Samoan islands this is reported about the original god Tagaloa: “God Tagaloa swam in the void; he created everything. Before him there was no heaven, no land, he was all alone and slept in the expanses of space. Neither was there any sea, nor was the earth at that time. His name was Tagaloa-fa’atutupu-nu’u, which means ‘Origin of Growth.’”
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Does the Bible say anything different? Genesis 1:1–3 says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light…”
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Later the Biblical god created plants, animals, and the human being. Growth only came after the landing. No different from Tagaloa-fa’atutupu-nu’u.

The originator of Melanesian culture, Suganainoni by name, is said to have descended from heaven in “smoke and fire”
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and to have disappeared again in an equally spectacular fashion. At the time, giants are said to have tried to build a giant stairway to heaven, an endeavor that was thwarted by the god Suganainoni. Is this a parallel to the Tower of Babel?

The South Pacific Islands are full of similar legends, and it is always possible to find a connection with the traditions in other parts of the world. Such a job was actually undertaken several decades ago. In an extensive tome, the ethnologist Karl Kohlenberg published hundreds of mythological links spanning the world.
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No discipline in ethnology has ever shown any interest in this. Ethnology appears to have become stuck in the century before last.

Thirty years ago, I spent some weeks on Kiribati, a group of 16 islands which, until 1977, were part of the British crown colony of the Gilbert Islands. Then the islands became independent and changed their name. Even today, the native inhabitants mostly live in simple straw huts with roofs made of palm leaves. (
Image 22
) At only about 973 km
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, the Kiribati islands ride the Pacific and provide solid ground underfoot for about 60,000 Micronesians. According to the latest research, Kiribati has been inhabited for at least 3,000 years. Three thousand years without written records is a long time. In Tarawa, the main city of the islands, I immersed myself in the legends. They were not collected and published until the last century by indigenous researchers. And once again, it all started in space.
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A long, long time ago, there was the god Nareau. No one knows from whence he came or who his parents were,
because Nareau flew alone and sleeping through space
. In sleep he heard his name being called three times, but the caller was “nobody.” Nareau woke up and looked around. There was nothing but emptiness, but when he looked down, he saw a large object. It was Te Bomatemaki, meaning “Earth and sky together.” Nareau’s curiosity led him to descend and carefully set foot on Te Bomatemaki. There were no living beings there, no animals, no humans. Just him, the creator. Four times he circumnavigated the world he had found from north to south, east to west, and he was alone. Finally Nareau dug a hole in Te Bomatemaki, filled it with water and sand, mixed both into rock, and ordered the
rock and the void to give birth to Nareau Tekikiteia. Thereupon Nareau created the plants, animals, and human beings, whom he taught language. Then he decided to separate heaven from earth.

The ethnologist Arthur Grimble provided an important addition: “And when the work was done, Nareau, the creator, said: ‘Enough! It has been done! I go, never to return!’ So he went, never to return, and no one knows where he has been since then.”
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The first beings endowed with reason had to memorize words, which give us food for thought:

• Nabawe
meaning “the essence of age.”

• Karitoro
meaning “the essence of energy.”

• Kanaweawe
meaning “the essence of dimension.”

• Ngkoangkoa
meaning “the essence of time.”

• Auriaria
meaning “the essence of light.”

• Nei Tewenei
meaning “comet” or “movement in the sky.”

I keep hearing arrogant critics who don’t know anything—or at best might have studied a few semesters of ethnology, and then only in relation to a restricted geographical area—say that common features are of no significance. They can be explained psychologically. Here Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) is always cited to lend support. He saw the myths of ancient civilizations as “archetypical developments of consciousness” in which the “collective unconscious” found its correspondence of good and evil, joy and punishment, life and death. For his theories of “individuation” and the “archetype,” Jung has to fall back on innate behaviors. Human beings had always wanted to be like birds. So the legends about flying had arisen.

What age are we living in? These psychological explanations not only stick in my craw, they are also totally divorced from reality. They attempt to destroy the common narrative of ancient peoples with the drip of psychological acid. All that remains is meaningless smugness.

On the basis of the knowledge we have today, the pattern associated with the creator Nareau (and others!) makes sense. Imagine a spaceship in which the pilot (presumably with the whole crew) lies in deep sleep. This option of deep sleep to keep astronauts alive over long distances has long been the subject of discussion in space medicine. At some point, the ship’s sensors determine that a solar system has been reached and the on-board computer wakes the pilot.
Nareau flew alone and sleeping through space, in sleep he heard his name being called three times, but the caller was nobody.