The Polynesian set the distance records
Camakau: single hull 45 feet long!
Drug: double hule 50 men
Tabetebete 118 feet long 21 feet across 200 men
Text: A C5 transport
tabua: whale tooth –> chief –> elders –>
shipwrights
matalfi (Psychotria insularum) cures the vessel.
Today these (canoes) craft are a lost skill even the navigation skills
are gone.
text: Mau Pilag brought navigation back to Hawaii.
Ethnobotanist Sandra Banack documented building of camakau
Wood was the key to kabara’s ship building power: vesi (Intsia
bijuga)
Women cannot work on a canoe, women cannot sail on opening voyage
if menstruating.
Women do make the sails
Pandanus vesi strong but dense, so other woods used in other parts (page 107)
Polynesian migration to NZ
-obstinacy of Potaru
-legend of Ni: "Fruit the site of a child’s head but they
never grow." A crushing blow to the colonists when their precious
tree of life would not grow.
but…sweet potatoes grew
But sweet potatoes are from South America...
Kon tiki: a raft that sailed from Peru to Easter Island, easternmost island in Polynesia. Kon tiki not a navigatable raft: wind blown. Possibility is that some other craft was used. Possibly the Polynesians themselves made the contact.
arrow poisons
Body as canvas: tattoos
Aleurites moluccana: nuts baked, burned.
4-6 weeks
first mark: on the back
last mark: line over navel
-no obligation to start
-obligation to finish if you start or pe’a mutu: tattoo coward
A boy starts because he wants to look good, a man endures the pain and finishes because of consequences of not finishing: a social obligation. Like babies: conceived in pleasure, born with pain, a living symbol of social obligations for the husband and wife. A man who is not tattooed cannot understand the pain of childbirth. Tattooing begins as a quest for pleasure and ends as a sacrifice of love made for one's family.
20020314.0921 4.4
Tapa cloth: plants as clothing
Indigenous "plant" categories theorized to often be 5
levels
(1) implicit: plant or animal
(2) tree shrub liana (vine)
3 (genus)
4 (species)
5 (variety)
"sex"
P113 nutmeg story
Myristica fragrans near the value of gold but source unknown: Bands
Neira Moloccas
Banda –> Indonesia –> India –> Arabia ->Europe
Arabs charged high prices
Portugese circumnavigated Africa to buy direct from India
Venice monopoly broker.
1512 Banda found by Portugese wealthy for life.
Magellen: Spain and the need to go the other way.
Columbus had failed, but Magellan would go South.
5 ships, 270 men 1 lost, 1 returned in Atlantic 3 enter Pacific.
1521: Phillipines: Magellan + 40 men killed. one ship abandoned
Found Banda, overloaded one ship and lost it.
One ship and only 17 men returned. All 17 retired wealthy. Despite
the loss of 253 men (would go with 270 guys knowing 253 of you would
die?)
Yet others would go.
Dutch would later take Banda by force to central trade from source.
Nutmeg oil used in massage
mace used for insomnia, stress
hot nutmeg grated in warm milk helps babies sleep.