HAWAI'IKI


Meaning of HAWAI'IKI in English

[Polynesian] Hawai'iki is the fabled original homeland of the Hawaiians and probably of all Polynesians. The unifying mystery is how the various folklores speak of one land-of-long-ago, where everyone's ancestors lived in bliss. Hawai'iki, Havai'i, Ra'iatea, Kahiki, and many more names, are all the same place. It is the language of the people which changed, as they moved and started new social groups who forgot how to speak in the old tongue. There is no question that massive migrations of merging cultures actually occurred, mostly from west to east, across the Pacific Ocean. But pin-pointing exactly who, came from where, first, is a jig-saw puzzle that may never be solved. Because Polynesians had no organized written language before the intervention of Europeans, such stories of origin were transmitted by word-of-mouth, and thus gathered mossy vagueness, contradicting elements, and even a different name for the original land. It would not be improbable to imagine that all of the names constituted ...

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Encyclopedia Mythica English dictionary.      Английский энциклопедический словарь греческой мифологии.