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I

     “…. too many .... have held the view that all good things come from a very few areas and that most of these areas were inhabited by Caucasoids .... The people of Oceania deserve the credit for their achievements.” So writes Peter Bellwood in MAN’S CONQUEST OF THE PACIFIC, and I agree wholeheartedly. Of course, Bellwood should have kept what he wrote in mind before saying precisely what he decries, when he agrees with Steven Fischer that Rongorongo was not an indigenous achievement.

     It does not call Polynesian achievement into question to say that the red-haired (cf. the red topknots of the Moai and the locks of plaited red hair cut each generation from the lineal descendants of Ororoina, last of the original tribe of Long Ears, a sole survivor who was allowed to live and procreate with the Short Ears) fairer-skinned inhabitants of te pito o te henua (‘the navel of the world”), the island the Polynesians named Rapa Nui (perhaps to distinguish it from Rapa, a small island in the Australs), were early settlers, perhaps the initial settlers, and that they came from the pre-Inca civilization in Peru, Tiahumaco, to be exact, Lake Titicaca. Before that, we don’t know where they come from. Heyerdahl has speculated Egypt. There are Stars of David (Jewish Star) on a Lunar Calendar of Rongorongo board. Who is to say? The Polynesians were there, came there, perhaps they weren’t the first, perhaps they allied with the tribe of Long Ears, perhaps they were the Short Ears, who knows? Many anthropologists today take the position that there was migration to Rapa Nui then onwards to the coast of South America and then back to some more central group of islands, like the Tuamotus. (Note Roger C. Green’s essay in the September 2000 issue of RAPA NUI JOURNAL for example.) This conveniently explains the problems Heyerdahl, and now others, raise concerning evidence for several American plants on Easter Island and the wild cotton of American origin in Hawaii. It also provides an explanation for the linguistic problems such as the Polynesian word kumara (sweet potato) being paralleled by the word cumar which is used for sweet potato in the highlands north-west of Cuzco (vide Bellwoood, p.140). Rather than a prehistoric link, it allows the academics an out to invent this position that the Polynesians went to South America and then back. Every time the Heyerdahl position presents a new piece of evidence, the vested interests have proposed a counter-theory not previously offered, in an attempt to further substantiate. Finally however, they have had to admit to migration both ways while continuing to challenge the possibility that the original settlers were not from the West but from the East.

     In point of fact, Thor Heyerdahl could lust as well have speculated that the original settlers were Welsh or Irish or Cornish or from Brittany and that the settling of Easter Island (and the Marquesas and the other easternmost groups of Polynesian islands) was the final thrust of Celtic migration, it would have aroused the same ire.

     Yet, despite attack after attack for over fifty years by the anthropological establishment with their own vested academic interests in reifying the received majority opinion that Polynesians originated from the Malay Peninsula or Taiwan, and all are Asian in origin, Heyerdahl alone and oft-disdained for many years, now seems to have if not prevailed, at least managed to wrench a “well …. okay …. maybe” wary kind of respect, which has continued to open and widen and deepen the field of inquiry, finally, simply because he marshalls so much evidence from so many fields, not just anthropology and archaeology but, for example, astronomy.

     In FATU-HIVA, Heyerdahl writes: “How strange, with this endless myriad of stars to choose from, that the Polynesians on all of their far flung islands in both hemispheres, should start their new year the first day the insignificant Plelades appear above the horizon. Just as the people did on the coast of Peru and among some ancient Mediterranean civilizations.” Of course it was the finding of pottery shards of South American origin In the Galapagos which forced the archaeological / anthropological academicians to acknowledge that migration (even if only of a limited kind) into the Pacific from South America did exist.

     This is not really to affirm Heyerdahl’s position, only to affirm again it is possible, and to note that Heyerdahl does not ever say that all Polynesian migration was from South America, only Raps Nui, Pitcairn, the Marquesas and perhaps Rata Iti. In a way it is quite extraordinary that such a nest of Eumenides emerged to pursue Heyerdahl.

II

     Even authors who are, like myself, not anthropologists, have been glad to jump in and stomp the old Viking. Paul Theroux, for example, in his rather cold and nasty tome, THE HAPPY ISLES OF OCEANIA, says of Heyerdahl that he is “shrill but mistaken made something of a fool of himself .... an amateur .... a popularizer .... silly.” The easy psychological explanation is envy, the need to try to destroy father-figures, any man who has “been there first” - vide Theroux’s book on Naipaul.

     Alfred Metraux, whom Theroux notes he read before making his own journey to Rapa Nui, and whose support he claims In his attempted denigration, treats Heyerdahl with great respect and does not deny the possibility of evidence coming to light which might validate what Heyerdahl has speculated upon. Metraux, epitome of scholar and gentleman, disagrees with Heyerdahl; nevertheless, he calls Heyerdahl’s large scholarly work, now perhaps slightly dated in terms of DNA evidence / arguments, “fascinating, erudite, outrageous, intellectually brilliant and convincing”.

     Anyone who committed himself in HAPPY ISLES OF OCEANIA to opposition to French nuclear testing in the South Pacific, and who came Out against Pinochet’s Fascist thugs can’t, like they say, be all bad, even though he hides other emotions behind layers of cognitive irony. I reckon the time he spent in Polynesia saved Theroux’s life and he was too proud to admit it. His marriage had disintegrated and he no longer knew how to go on, as he himself admits. Maybe he didn’t have sex in Tahiti (or maybe he did despite the bitter tone of his book), but how could he complain about the price of a cabbage he buys (!) except as a way of not permitting himself to swoon out into the loveliness of a Polynesian lagoon?

     Sadly, Theroux didn’t even appreciate his expensive cruise through the Tuamotus and the Marquesas on the Aranui because he had trouble coping with the straights on board.

     He says little of Moorea, where it appears he was for a month. He says he wants a tattoo but cannot find a native place, only Papeete tattoo parlours. This is quite unbelievable to me since there are and were at the time of Theroux’s visit, tattoo men on Moorea who have come to be regarded as among the world’s finest. He could have asked ANY native on the island and he would have been directed to one of these guys. And he could have gone to Tiki village for a maohi tattoo even if all tattoo artists were for some reason all off island at the same time.

     Theroux’s book is, in short, weird. It is the coldest work I have ever read on Oceania, French Polynesia in particular. He says there are no good restaurants in Papeete! It’s like he were visiting a place quite unlike the islands I know and love. There are innumerable restaurants of ALL categories and ambiences and variety in Papeete (except at time of writing, Indian): Italian, Chinese, Japanese, as well as French. True, to get Tahitian food you have to know where to go, but anyone could and would say, and any hotel could have directed him to traditional fare. It is almost unimaginable that he could trash the quality of the food. And there are the working-class “Lea Roulettes” at the Papeete harbour every night where you can always get a good and inexpensive meal and chat with friendly people if you are so inclined.

     If he had wanted to find out more about the possibility of Independence, he could have spoken with supporters of the Independence Party, who would have told him quite clearly that the People do have the consciousness necessary for a return to indigenous self-government.

     But it’s also a matter of sensibility: I did not find, as Theroux did, Rape Nui “downtrodden …. hopeless.” If people were wearing dirty clothes (what a thing to complain about!) it was because washing and drying in the rainy season is a problem there. Hawaii, PT likes. It is clean. People speak English. He stays at §500+ a night deluxe resorts. The American military is there to protect him, just in case .... There is, after all, the Sovereignty Movement, the first secessionist movement since the Civil War. Theroux is untouched by this of course.

III

     Heyerdahl is a poet-explorer, no matter that his “rock-&-roll” theory (as it is called on Rapa Nui) of the moving of the Moai is probably incorrect. Sure the Polynesians could have made contact with the coasts, and even the forests and rivers and mountains of South America, and the Amazon, and could have gone as far as the Caribbean, where, on the island of Grenada, I purchased a small coral tiki immediately recognized as a local raingod on Rapa Nui. They could have brought back the sweet potato. But whichever the direction the canoes went in the old days, and I think they went both ways, I am convinced that some of the people I met casually in Amazonas: the young woman standing with the taxi driver who gave me directions in Manaus; the canoe-man taking tourists up an iguare; and the young woman bedecked in local Indian finery and traditional garb for dancing; ----these people, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind, would have provided genetic evidence for blood relation between Polynesians and people of the Amazon.

     Okay, if you are or are not a scientist, there is no reason you need to regard this perception as truth. Yet I am convinced of its truth. And the Reine du Nuit, the flower which opens to bloom with such a soft and almost imperceptibly fragrant odour only at night, how did it get to Polynesia from the Amazon?