Posted on 12/13/2006 3:34:03 PM PST by blam
Field Museum scientists solve riddle of mysterious faces on South Pacific artifacts
Decipher their hidden meaning and religious significance
John Terrell, Regenstein Curator of Pacific Anthropology at the Field Museum, and Esther M. Schechter, a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the Field Museum, have pieced together...
CHICAGO—The strange faces drawn on the first pottery made in the South Pacific more than 3,000 years ago have always been a mystery to scientists. Now their riddle may have been solved by new research done by two Field Museum scientists to be published in the February 2007 issue of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
What archaeologists working in the Pacific call prehistoric "Lapita" pottery has been found at more than 180 different places on tropical islands located in a broad arc of the southwestern Pacific from Papua New Guinea to Samoa.
Experts have long viewed the faces sometimes sketched by ancient potters on this pottery ware as almost certainly human in appearance, and they have considered them to be a sign that Pacific Islanders long ago may have worshiped their ancestors.
John Terrell, Regenstein Curator of Pacific Anthropology at The Field Museum, and Esther M. Schechter, a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at The Field Museum, have pieced together evidence of several kinds leading to a radically different understanding of the religious life of people in the South Pacific 3,000 years ago. Most of these mysterious faces, they report, may represent sea turtles. Furthermore, these ceramic portraits may be showing us ideas held by early Pacific Islanders about the origins of humankind.
Terrell and Schechter say the evidence they have assembled also shows that these religious ideas did not die when people in the Pacific stopped making Lapita pottery about 2,500 years ago. They have not only identified this expressive symbolism on prehistoric pottery excavated several years ago by Terrell and other archaeologists at Aitape on the Sepik Coast of northern New Guinea, but they have also found this type of iconography on wooden bowls and platters collected at present-day villages on this coast that are now safeguarded in The Field Museum's rich anthropological collections.
Terrell and Schechter's discovery suggests that a folktale recorded by others on this coast in the early 1970s—a story about a great sea turtle (the mother of all sea turtles) and the origins long ago of the first island, the first man, and the first woman on earth—might be thousands of years old. This legend may once have been as spiritually important to Pacific Islanders as the Biblical story of Adam and Eve has been in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
"Nothing we had been doing in New Guinea for years had prepared us for this discovery," Terrell explained. "We have now been able to describe for the first time four kinds of prehistoric pottery from the Sepik coast that when considered in series fill the temporal gap between practices and beliefs in Lapita times and the present day.
"A plausible reason for the persistence of this iconography is that it has referenced ideas about the living and the dead, the human and the divine, and the individual and society that remained socially and spiritually profound and worthy of expression long after the demise of Lapita as a distinct ceramic style," Terrell added.
More research needed
Terrell and Schechter acknowledge that more work must be done to pin down their unexpected discovery. Nevertheless, it now looks like they have not only deciphered the ancient "Lapita code" inscribed on pottery vessels in the south Pacific thousands of yeas ago, but by so doing, may have rescued one of the oldest religious beliefs of Pacific Islanders from the brink of oblivion.
"I was skeptical for a long time about connecting these designs with sea turtles," Schechter said, "but then the conservation biologist Regina Woodrom Luna in Hawaii pointed out that some of the designs match the distinctive beach tracks that a Green sea turtle makes when she is coming ashore to lay her eggs.
"Everything made even more sense when we came across the creation story about a great sea turtle and the first man and woman on earth," she added. "This story comes from a village only 75 miles away from where The Field Museum is working on the same coast of Papua New Guinea."
And the island frogs back then "may" have had square @sses.
It's turtles all the way down
It's turtles all the way down
It's turtles all the way down
"More Research needed."
Gosh. Whodathunk?
I'm not tryna be harsh here. I find this stuff interesting... even though what they claim as "problem solving" is just inventing some theory. I just think this sort of research shouldn't be paid for by the taxpayers.
great site full of lapita photographs:
http://users.on.net/~mkfenn/page6.htm
Or the makers of the pottery just let their kids decorate them, much as some mothers will let their kids decorate cookies. It could have been a tradition akin to refrigerator art.
I'm surprised that Federated Department Stores hasn't figured out a way to have it renamed "Macy Museum".
However, archaeologists are still trying to decipher an image that appears to be a mid-20th century British police call box...
stutter much??? just kidding
It used to happen in the '60's a lot.
"Time is running backwards, Man."
(Long BEEeeeeeeep Tone) Watcha watching?"
I dunno..it's about Indians..It's BORING.."
"It's called a TEST PATTERN".
"In May 2006, a second expedition to Teouma in Vanuatu revealed more skeletons in burial urns some of which were sitting in the lotus position. Geneticist Lisa Matissoo-Smith successfully extracted DNA from the teeth and found that they did not contain any Polynesian or East Asian genes. To date she has not yet determined whether the DNA is Melanesian or from a forgotten civilization of Caucasian seafarers related to the Berber Bell beaker people."
"Lisa Matissoo-Smith in her interview on TV NZ said; "We were able to look to see whether the individual possessed a particular mutation that we see at a very high frequency in Polynesians. It is a 9based pair mutation of Mitichondrial DNA and we found that the Teouma material - the first samples that we analysed did not have that mutation, so they did not look like 98% of the people we see living in Polynesia today."
"The possibility that the Lapita people, a people remembered in legends as tall white bearded men or red men and in carvings - people with large pointy noses - not the flatter nose more characteristic of Pacific cultures these days. Some might say it is a genetic adaptation to drinking coconuts, but I suspect these people were part of a global seafaring culture associated with the obsidian trade before, during and after the Bronze Age. This age of globalization meant connections were made between people from Tamil Nadu, Harappa, The Maldives, Ethiopia, West Africa, Spain, Britain, Sardinia, Greece, Crete, Turkey, North America (Isle Royale) and the Pacific. They were tall Caucasian red heads that were a branch of the same gene pool that gave rise to many other seafaring cultures around the world such as the seafarers of Paracas, the Phoenicians and Celts."
The claims of a New Zealand archaeologist that he's found Celtic structures there don't seem so foreign now.
I was gonna say sea turtles.
;-)
Bad Wolf??
No more research needed. Its turtles all the way down.
Sea turtles?
Sounds like my last date...
3000 years ago?
It IS my last date!!
No, it's the Wal Mart lower prices happy face!!
It would be really interesting for those connections to be made.
In a decade or two we will have a lot better picture of the DNA patterns and migrations; they have only been doing these studies for about 15 years or so, and they are just starting to do some of the large-scale studies that should provide some real answers.
It an exciting field of research.
A Lakota Legend
There was another world before this one. But the people of that world did not behave themselves. Displeased, the Creating Power set out to make a new world. He sang several songs to bring rain, which poured stronger with each song.
As he sang the fourth song, the earth split apart and water gushed up through the many cracks, causing a flood. By the time the rain stopped, all of the people and nearly all of the animals had drowned. Only Kangi the crow survived.
Kangi pleaded with the Creating Power to make him a new place to rest. So the Creating Power decided the time had come to make his new world. From his huge pipe bag, which contained all types of animals and birds, the Creating Power selected four animals known for their ability to remain under water for a long time. He sent each in turn to retrieve a lump of mud from beneath the flood waters. First the loon dove deep into the dark waters, but it was unable to reach the bottom. The otter, even with its strong webbed feet, also failed. Next, the beaver used its large flat tail to propel itself deep under the water, but it too brought nothing back. Finally, the Creating Power took the turtle from his pipe bag and urged it to bring back some mud.
Turtle stayed under the water for so long that everyone was sure it had drowned. Then, with a splash, the turtle broke the water's surface! Mud filled its feet and claws and the cracks between its upper and lower shells. Singing, the Creating Power shaped the mud in his hands and spread it on the water, where it was just big enough for himself and the crow. He then shook two long eagle wing feathers over the mud until earth spread wide and varied, overcoming the waters. Feeling sadness for the dry land, the Creating Power cried tears that became oceans, streams, and lakes. He named the new land Turtle Continent in honor of the turtle who provided the mud from which it was formed.
The Creating Power then took many animals and birds from his great pipe bag and spread them across the earth. From red, white, black, and yellow earth, he made men and women. The Creating Power gave the people his sacred pipe and told them to live by it. He warned them about the fate of the people who came before them. He promised all would be well if all living things learned to live in harmony. But the world would be destroyed again if they made it bad and ugly.
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/LakotaCreationMyth-Lakota.html
Thanks for the link!
Anthropologists are often hypnotized by complex theories that miss the obvious. Margaret Mead neglected to consider that Samoans had a highly developed sense of humor, for example.
In the absence of a Rosetta Stone, they sometimes allow their conjectures to run away with them.
I remember reading the elaborate description of a New Mexico petroglyph, describing the various mythological things within, when all the anthropologist had to do was climb up the side of a hill it was on, perhaps 30 feet, to see that it was just a terrain map of the land on the other side.
Four out of perhaps 10 features were still there. Not bad for a thousand years after it was made.
But to my untrained eye, it was obvious.
If I was going to do a survey of ancient island pottery, instead of trying to figure it out myself, the first thing I would do is take it to a few local potters. If I didn't get any hits there, then I would make my theory about turtles, then ask the local potters to make me pots about turtles, to see if their stylizations are anything like the old ones.
Faintly familiar, huh?
"Opinions as discoveries". Have you not read any of the Evolutionists posting here? They seem to think that the word "theory" means there is a missing link.
Sorry to here about your split stones. Especially during the holidays. ;^)
I am one of the "evolutionists" posting here. One of the things I often post is some definitions of terms as used by scientists.
Here is the definition of "theory" (I see no reference to a missing link in these definitions). I could post the whole list if you like.
Definitions (from a google search, with additions from this thread):
Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses." Addendum: "Theories do not grow up to be laws. Theories explain laws." (Courtesy of VadeRetro.)
Theory: A scientifically testable general principle or body of principles offered to explain observed phenomena. In scientific usage, a theory is distinct from a hypothesis (or conjecture) that is proposed to explain previously observed phenomena. For a hypothesis to rise to the level of theory, it must predict the existence of new phenomena that are subsequently observed. A theory can be overturned if new phenomena are observed that directly contradict the theory. [Source]
When a scientific theory has a long history of being supported by verifiable evidence, it is appropriate to speak about "acceptance" of (not "belief" in) the theory; or we can say that we have "confidence" (not "faith") in the theory. It is the dependence on verifiable data and the capability of testing that distinguish scientific theories from matters of faith.
In the South Pacific? Why, that would change the entire theory of planetary migration. But, then again, I understand the primitive huts they used were made from torchwood . . .
I've seen pictures of the faces and there is a strong turtle like resemblance. I'm working on my own theory though.
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A newt?
LOL! Good one!
Interesting.
Thanks for once again showing lurkers that we do actually have folks on FR who aren't stuck on stupid.
Bears, chickens, ducks, frogs....whatever sells at the market place. Pretty easy to make a turtle out of a rock. Try making a chicken!!
Maybe, maybe not.
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