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?
The island of Nuku Hiva is part of the Northern group of the Marquesas Islands and is the largest of the islands of this archipelago. The island is approximately 365 sq. kilometers, it is the second largest of the islands of French Polynesia. Its name can be translated as "The Majestic Island". Indeed, the appearance of the island justifies such a name, since the basis of the island is two old volcanoes, among which a plateau has formed. The city of Taiohoae is located on the plateau, which is the capital of the island, the former volcano crater formed a deep bay in this place, and around it there is a wall of mountain peaks. The highest point of the island is Mount Tekao, which reaches 1224 meters. Just over 2,600 people live on the island in three main settlements.
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.
Previously, the atoll was known as Madison Island.
As a result of archaeological excavations carried out by an American expedition in the 60s of the last century, it was established that people appeared on the island in 150 AD. They were engaged in the processing of stone, from which they built housing, pottery. Beginning in 1100, many stone structures were built over three centuries. The famous tiki stone sculptures also date from this time. In 1913, there was an unsuccessful attempt to annex the island by the Americans. The appearance of the first Catholic missionaries on the island dates back to 1839, and already in 1842 the island passed into the possession of France.
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A decade later, a Catholic cathedral was founded in the capital of the island, but Christianity spread hard, inter-tribal wars hindered it. In addition to the wars, the population of the island began to die out due to diseases that the Europeans brought with them. Previously, such diseases were not known on the island, the inhabitants did not have immunity against them. The decline in the population was facilitated by the slave traders who also visited Nuku Khiva. As a result, the number of inhabitants in 1934 was only 634 people, although in 1842 about 12 thousand people lived on the 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.
Warrior of the island of Nuku Hiva, 1813
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.
Breadfruit
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.
Anyone who was supposed to become a victim of a sacred ritual was tied up and hung from a tree for a certain time, after which his brains were blown out with a baton. It is believed that women and children were engaged in cannibalism only for the sake of food, while male warriors sacrificed to deities and ate opponents defeated in battle in order to gain their power. For the same purpose, they kept the skulls of the defeated enemies.
Now the island of Nuku Hiva is visited mainly by tourists as part of sea cruises, combining exploring the island with other travels. However, there are tourists who prefer to be alone with nature, to feel like Robinsons, pioneers. For such people, the island of Nuku Hiva is a real paradise. You can get to it by plane from Haiti, or by water. Such a journey, although it will take more time, will allow you to enjoy the magnificent ocean views on the way. Although the island's population is small, the island itself is quite large, it takes two hours to get to the hotel from the airport, and the trip around the island takes a whole day.
You can stay at the hotel, which is a complex of twenty bungalows located on a hill stretching over the sandy beach. The bungalows offer stunning views of the bay. All bungalows are decorated by different designers, so the look of each is unique. All the necessary modern amenities, a restaurant, a bar and a swimming pool make your stay in this hotel complex very comfortable. There is no clearly expressed rainy season, there are no such natural disasters as tsunamis and typhoons. The average air temperature on the island is 26 degrees Celsius, which makes the rest very pleasant. For tourists there is everything for active recreation - you can ride a horse, take a walk on a motor boat, diving and deep-sea fishing are possible.
In addition, every traveler who arrives on the island of Nuku Hiva should definitely get acquainted with the local attractions. Among them is the Cathedral of Our Lady, which is built of stones of different colors of various shapes. The cathedral features statues that were made by sculptors living on the different islands of Marquesia. During a tour of the island, you will be shown the smallest Catholic church in the town of Anaho, taken to the beautiful Anaho valley, where there is a waterfall 350 meters high. And from the top of the Muake hill you can see at once the whole island of Nuku Hiva and the statue of the Virgin Mary, standing at the top of the peak, which rises above the Hatiheu Bay.
Such an excursion simply cannot leave any of the tourists indifferent to this exotic island.
Here is what the captain of the Russian military ship "Nadezhda" Ivan Kruzenshtern wrote about this island in his diary:
“In times of famine, a husband kills his wife, a father of children, an adult son of his aged parents; they bake and fry their meat and devour it with great pleasure. Even the most nukaghivs, in whose eyes lust flames, even they take part in these terrible feasts!.. One fear alone keeps them from killing and devouring the sailors who come to them."
True, a year ago the world community had a reason to doubt that the ugly diet was abandoned by local residents forever. A tourist from Germany mysteriously disappeared, and the newspapers immediately wrote that his own guide had eaten him.
By polling the Nukahiva population without using special methods of inquiry, I was able to establish: complete nonsense. Nobody ate a German. The Polynesian shot him while hunting goats, buried his body, and, according to the girlfriend of the murdered man, tried to abuse her, to which the gendarmes did not find any evidence. For two months the adversary was hiding in the woods, but then his dad told him: “Son, this is not good. Go and surrender to the gendarmes. Which he immediately did, proceeding after that to the prison in Tahiti.
The fact that you and I are indirectly related to the goats that played a tragic role in this story gives a special piquancy to what happened. The descendants of the cannibals are convinced that the very first goats on Nuka-Khiva were Russians! That they were supposedly left here as a gift by Ivan Fyodorovich Kruzenshtern, one of the first Europeans to visit the island. And then the goats bred to such an extent that now they have to be hunted with the help of the Germans.
I report: these are conjectures that are offensive to every Russian patriot. On the ninth month of the voyage, the crews of the ships "Neva" and "Nadezhda" experienced an acute need for meat, and would never have given scarce goats to some cannibals there. Moreover, precisely because of the lack of meat, Russian sailors quarreled with a civilian "jacket" - chamberlain Nikolai Rezanov, everyone known from the opera "Juno" and "Avos", who turned out to be not a hero-lover, but a licentious narcissist, oh than I will be forced to tell without concealment in my saga about the First Russian circumnavigation of the world, the work on which is nearing its end.