Temehea Tohua is located on the island of Nuku Hiva, which is the largest atoll in the Marquesas archipelago in French Polynesia.
This unique island is home to some of the most outlandish statues ever seen by man. Some ancient sculptures depict creatures that appear to be aliens. And everyone who comes to this land wants to solve the riddle: who are they - the fruit of the sculptor's wild imagination or something that really descended from the distant space wastelands to this island?
At first glance, they seem to be just "big statues", but upon closer inspection, you notice more and more interesting features: unusually large eyes, massive oblong heads, puny / huge bodies and other attributes, the presence of which raises confusion about the origin of the "models" that inspired the creator of these statues.
Nuku Hiva is the largest island of the Marquesas archipelago in French Polynesia and the overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean. Previously, the atoll was known as Madison Island.
Herman Melville wrote the book "Typee" based on his experience in the Taipeiwai Valley in the eastern part of Nuku Hiva Island. The first landfall of Robert Louis Stevenson during his Casco expedition in 1888 took place in the Hatihoi area, located in the northern part of Nuku Hiva. Also, Nuku Hiva became the next stage for filming the 4th season of the American reality show "Survivors", which took place throughout the archipelago of the Marquesas Islands.
Promotional video:
In ancient times, Nuku Hiva was divided into two areas: more than 2/3 of the island was occupied by the province of Te Lii, and the rest of the territory belonged to the Tai Pi community.
Recent research shows that the first settlers arrived 2000 years ago from Samoa and then colonized Tahiti in Hawaii, Cook Islands and New Zealand. Legends say that the all-creating deity It promised a wife to the one who would build a house in a day, and having gathered together the earth, he created the islands, calling them parts of the house.
Thus, the island of Nuku-Hiva is considered a "roof". And all that remained unused, he dumped in a heap, forming the hill of Wa Huka. Over the centuries, the population of this island has increased, and at such a rate that by the time the first European arrived on this land, it ranged from 50 to 100 thousand inhabitants on this small piece of land in the middle of the ocean.
Of course, food was of prime importance here. The basis of the diet was made up of breadfruit, as well as taro, bananas and cassava. As for protein products, fish predominated here, although its quantity was limited, given the number of people that it needed to feed. Pigs, chickens, dogs were also the object of culinary preferences of the inhabitants of the island.
There is still a scientific debate about why so many Polynesian tribes practiced cannibalism. According to one theory, eating their own kind was more likely to compensate for the lack of protein in the diet, rather than serve for ritual ceremonies. However, cannibalism played a large role for ritual purposes. Thus, the sacrifice brought to the sea deity Ica was "caught" in the same way as a fish, and was suspended by a hook above the altar like an underwater inhabitant.