since i've been so remiss in sharing what i've learned so far about hawaiian culture, and since i need to take my mind off the whole will-i-ever-see-those-irreplaceable-books-again thing, I'm going to make this Fun Fact Friday! Whee!
have you heard of the menehune, or little people? Legend has it that when the Tahitians arrived on Hawai'i, these people were already here. some think they are akin to Brownies or Leprechauns, but others think they were descendents of ancient Jewish peoples.
wtf? if they're real, how'd they get here? nobody knows.
Hawaiian mythology (up to the second arrival of polynesians) is very similar to judaism. There is a creation, an adam and eve, a cain and abel, and lots of very literal parallels. (there are also co-existing mythologies, about three separate ones, that interweave, contradict each other, and generally make hawaiian religious history difficult to categorize.)
No one has ever found any menehune skeletons, though census results in the early 1800s show 65 people identified as menehune on Kaua'i, where it is thought they were driven by the influx of polynesians on the southernmost islands in the chain. "menehune" also means "slave".
when things go wrong, especially on kaua'i, the menehune get blamed. if you lose your wallet, it was the menehune. flat tire? menehune. crops fail? and so on.
whatchathink? little jews, faeries, or what? cryptozoologists want to know.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment