Lizards on rafts

 

- Not sure if the journey was worth it, tbh...

"Iguanas sailed on rafts 34 million years ago". LOL, no, they didn´t. But the headline does sound funny. I mean, for a moment I hoped peer-reviewed Science (TM) had proved the Silurian hypothesis?! 

Alas, it´s an article about perfectly normal lizards clinging to masses of vegetation drifting with the ocean currents all the way from North America to the Fiji islands. The longest journey ever made by a non-human terrestrial animal, apparently. Somewhat ironically, the ancestors of the Fijian iguanas may have been desert-dwelling ditto in America. 

I assume their evolutionary adaptations to a desert environment (think extreme heat, almost no water) may have helped them survive on the "raft" in scorching tropical heat with no fresh water until they reached the land of milk and honey in the middle of the Pacific...

Iguanas on rafts

Custom and cargo

 

“Waiting for John”, retitled “Waiting for John Frum: Cargo Cult of the South Pacific. When God is an American Soldier” by this YouTube account, is a low-budget documentary about the John Frum Movement at Tanna, an island in the New Hebrides. Previously a joint (!) British-French colony, since 1980 the New Hebrides are independent under the name Vanuatu. The film crew spent some time in the small settlement of Lamakara, the last hold out of the Movement. There, a couple of hundred people led by one Chief Isak still await the return of their mysterious savior figure. They also interviewed members of a breakaway faction at Sulphur Bay (the quitters are actually the larger group) and Christian missionaries from Port Resolution.

The beliefs of the John Frum Movement are an eclectic mix of pro-American “modernism” and Melanesian traditionalism. Indeed, the cult members seem to live a more traditional lifestyle than many other people in Vanuatu. Frankly, the Movement comes across as very weird. The inhabitants of Lamakara are self-sufficient, grow their own food, raise pigs and try to stay out of the money economy (not entirely successfully). Ecstatic dances and kava drinking also form part of Custom, as they call their traditional ways. Apparently, Christian missionaries and the colonial authorities attempted to stamp out Custom.

At the same time, the Movement has quasi-apocalyptic expectations and hopes that America will bring them “cargo” (modern products). The main rituals of the cult include the hoisting of an American flag and a mock US army drill, during which Chief Isak dress in fancy uniform. John Frum himself is a composite character. On the one hand, he is seen as an American soldier, neither White nor Black, who speaks all languages in the world. He supposedly appeared in 1940 and prophesized the coming of the US military to the New Hebrides. On the other hand, John is seen as a spirit-being who can be contacted through visionary trances. Isak “spoke” to John in a cave at the top of a high hill. The documentary doesn´t say, but it´s easy to suspect a connection to native shamanic practices.

Like virtually all other religious movements, the John Frum Movement has experienced at least one split, perhaps due to the delay of the Parousia. When based at Sulphur Bay, most adherents decided to follow a certain Prophet Fred, who claimed new revelations from the spirits. His movement, called Unity, no longer believes in the return of John Frum in the flesh, instead preaching concord between cargo cultists and Christians. The few remaining stalwarts were forced to leave Sulphur Bay and build the new village of Lamakara in the hinterland, Lamakara meaning “outcast”. The Movement is also under pressure from Christian missionaries (who are ethnically Melanesian) and modernity in the form of the national capital Vila and its money economy.

I can well understand why cargo cultists have fascinated Western anthropologists and scholars of religion. The parallels to Christianity are obvious. The Christians at Port Resolution resolutely proclaim the return of Jesus, who rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven, while insisting that John Frum is dead and won´t return. But, of course, the John Frum-ites insist that John is very much alive in mint spirit condition. The eagerly awaited American aid is clearly the apocalypse of the cargo cultists, and even the peculiar combination of nativist traditionalism and modernity could be a subconscious Christian borrowing. Think this-worldly asceticism leading to a pie-in-the-sky reward in the afterlife. The crisis when the Messiah doesn´t show up on schedule is a classic. To a Christian, this simply means that the John Frum Movement are a bunch of Anti-Christs, but from a more secular viewpoint, the Melanesian cargo cult raises questions about Christianity itself. Isn´t it strange that the sociological dynamic of both “true” and “false” religions are remarkably similar?

With that reflection, I end this little review. 

Waiting for Tom Navy

 

The above is AI:s take on the arrival of John Frum and Tom Navy to New Guinea. The century seems to be wrong, though.

It struck me that perhaps our own predicament isn´t so far off from that of a cargo cult. Our rituals include demanding more money for CERN and fusion power research, building windmills, avoiding certain "offensive" words and symbols, and (I suppose) make dank memes about trans-humanism. Some of us probably worship AI in secret!

If we do this, it seems, a "Tom Navy situation" (or is it singularity) will apparently manifest itself and then...everything will go back to normal again. As in perpetual progress, and then some. 

Nothing like those stupid Melanesian Natives, naaah.  

Upplopp i paradiset

 

Kanaker och fransmän har ju aldrig gillat varandra, men den senaste tidens våldsamheter på Nya Kaledonien verkar vara orsakade av Kina, Ryssland och Azerbaijan (sic). 

Kina expanderar i Söderhavet. Ryssland expanderar på Frankrikes bekostnad i Västafrika. Och Azerbaijan är sura på Frankrikes stöd till Armenien. Eftersom Ryssland för närvarande har dåliga relationer med Armenien (annars en traditionell allierad), så kan man väl inte utesluta något slags rysk koppling även här.

Frankrikes president Macron har åtminstone retoriskt intagit en offensiv hållning i konflikten i Ukraina. Säkerligen p.g.a. de geopolitiska spänningarna med Ryssland. Kinas expansion i Stilla Havs-regionen kolliderar givetvis också med franska intressen. Har för mig att vissa småländer i regionen faktiskt varit pro-ryska tidigare, men jag antar att Kina är huvudaktören där.

Återstår att se om detta bara är en försöksballong, eller ett allvarligt menat försök att öppna en ny anti-västlig front från Rysslands och Kinas sida.    

Totalt kaos på paradisön

Undantagstillstånd i paradiset

The body found

 

It´s actually quite funny that the media creates a panic (or is it a silly season) everytime some carcass of a sea animal washes ashore. The term "globster" for seemingly mysterious carcasses was apparently coined by notorious sensationalist Ivan T Sanderson. I assumed it was Charles Hoy Fort (who was definitely on the same wave length, LOL). 

This week, the unidentified fishy object is a "mermaid globster" (no less) from Papua New Guinea. Or strictly speaking the small Simberi Island a bit north of the PNG mainland. The experts are *baffled*, baffled I say, except of course they really aren´t, with guesses ranging from a whale of a tale to the pudgy dugong, but alas, nobody guessed a plump mermaid on a suicide mission.

The natives of the volcanic island, who presumably have better things to do, didn´t take any DNA samples and promptly buried the rottening mass of ectoplasm at an undisclosed location. Well, at least the media spared us the details!

So it seems we have to wait a few months until the next globster comes onland, hopefully with its monstrous mer-squid-megalodon DNA intact...  

Mermaid globster found in New Guinea

The AI cargo cult

Melanesian cargo cultists
Credit: Christopher Hogue Thompson

Probably kind of true...

ChatGPT could create a new religion

AI can create religious texts, inspire new cults

None dare call it geopolitics

I assumed RT had been blocked? The Putinista news outfit has some fun with Australia´s supposed "invasion threats" against the Solomon Islands, which recently signed a security pact with China. The idea of Chinese military bases close to Australian territory is intolerable to Canberra. A bit like Ukraine joining NATO is intolerable to Russia, perhaps? At least, that seems to be RT´s implication. 

Always a bit awkward when two great power alliances poke a finger at each other. See also: Donbass versus Kosovo. Or Donbass versus Chechnya. 

But sure, maybe Oz really should invade the Solomon Islands... 

Australia reacts to "invasion" threat claim

Australia accused of double standards

Another world

“Wild Pacific” (also called “South Pacific” in some jurisdictions) is a fascinating documentary series about animal and plant life in the South Pacific and Hawaii. New Guinea, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Polynesia are featured (including Easter Island).

If you like weird stuff, this is definitely for you! How about real footage of large sharks gathered to eat young albatrosses which are learning how to fly? Apparently an annual spectacle on a certain reef in the Pacific. Meanwhile on New Zealand, you can run into penguins in the forest. Another island features enormous crabs living in the palm trees. The poor cat Tibbles, who supposedly exterminated an entire species of songbird, is mentioned in one episode, although it seems feral cats had decimated the population of Lyall´s Wren already before his arrival at Stephens Island. Also featured are underwater volcanoes and above-water ones at Hawaii. Somewhat surprisingly, “Wild Pacific” promotes the idea that the culture at Easter Island might have been destroyed by rats.

One problem with this series is that most episodes tend to depict the Pacific as some kind of pristine paradise, which it definitely isn´t. This is particularly galling when discussing Hawaii, “the most isolated island chain in the world”. Yeah, except for Honolulu and the little detail that Hawaii is the 50^th state of the Union! Nothing about the civil war at Bougainville, the near-civil war at New Caledonia, the nuclear tests at Mururoa, the military coup at Fiji, you get the picture. Instead, we are shown happy natives living in fundamental harmony with nature. Only in the last episode do we get some insight into the environmental problems besetting the region, such as overfishing, coral death and climate change threatening to wipe out entire island nations.

That being said, “Wild (or South) Pacific” is well worth watching, and I therefore give it five stars out of five. And yes, I´m still eating tuna…

I remember Lemuria

“Eden in the East” is a 500+ pages tour de force by British author Stephen Oppenheimer, a former doctor who used to work in Southeast Asia and New Guinea, immersing himself in the local cultures. In his book, Oppenheimer proposes that some of the roots of “Western”, Indian and Chinese civilization are Southeast Asian in origin. He postulates the existence of a relatively advanced founder culture in Sundaland, an ancient landmass connecting the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo and Java. Sundaland was flooded at the end of the last Ice Age.

Oppenheimer believes that the ancestors of modern Austronesians and Austro-Asiatics lived in Sundaland (most archeologists place the origins of Austronesians in China). The survivors of the catastrophic floods migrated to present-day Indonesia, the Philippines, parts of New Guinea and the Pacific Islands, but also to Southeast Asia and India. They influenced the budding high cultures in India, Tibet, Sumeria and Egypt through their long-distance trading networks. Indirectly, they also influenced the Uralic peoples, whose languages are distantly related to Asiatic ones. Oppenheimer's scenario entails that most of Southeast Asian and Pacific history/archaeology has to be backdated thousands of years, including the Polynesian expansion, and he spends considerable time attempting to prove his point. In general, Oppenheimer holds that Southeast Asia was more advanced during the Neolithic and the Bronze Age than traditionally assumed, and that these cultures were connected to other high cultures in southern China and Japan (Jomon).

To Oppenheimer, the Deluge legends are about an actual historical event (or events), the previously mentioned floods at the end of the last Ice Age, which affected the whole world. Even more controversially, the author argues that the Biblical narratives of creation and Eden are ultimately derived from Southeast Asian myths, and so are the well-known legends of “world trees” and “the dying and rising gods”. Cain and Abel is also originally a Southeast Asian story. The author doesn't believe that Christian missionary influence can account for all the similarities – some legends were written down by baffled Westerners (including missionaries!) before Christian influence became pervasive. Many of the “Western” legends are most diverse at the Moluccas in Indonesia, suggesting they originated there.

It's interesting to note that the Sumerians had a peculiar legend about “amphibious” culture-heroes who came by sea from the East. Could they have been Austronesian sea-fearers from the lost Sundaland culture? Both Eden and Nod were said to be in the east. In India, there are legends about an ancestral homeland in the east. By contrast, Polynesians have legends about an ancestral homeland in the West, which is no longer accessible to mortals! At the Tonga islands, the homeland is said to be in the northwest specifically. All these geographical references point to Sundaland, east of India (and Mesopotamia) but west or northwest of the Pacific Islands. Apparently, Tongans also believed in a large landmass further east of their islands. America?

To students of occultism, the concept of Sundaland should sound familiar. Yes, it's Lemuria or Mu! Oppenheimer does have a soft spot for “forbidden knowledge”, referencing Graham Hancock, Charles Hapgood and Immanuel Velikovsky. He probably stands in the proud alternative tradition of neo-catastrophism. However, his arguments are not based on occult or alternative sources. Instead, the author tries to argue scientifically on the basis of archaeology, linguistics, genetics and comparative mythology. I admit that I only skimmed most chapters – they are filled with incredible amounts of detailed information! Ironically, this large door-stopper of a book nevertheless feels only half-done. Among subjects *not* touched upon are: the mysterious culture of Easter Island, possible connections between East Asia/Polynesia and America during the Bronze Age, the origin of the Dravidian and Sumerian peoples, and the exact relation between Indo-European mythology (which also includes the World Tree) and that of Southeast Asia. Nor does the author say much about “Lemurian” influence on China. He also seems to have problems with Atlantis, regarding it as a peculiarly erroneous myth, since the real founder culture was in the East. The Atlantis story, of course, places it in the West! But why should this be a problem? Many landmasses were flooded after the Ice Age…

Oppenheimer is mildly uncomfortable with some aspects of the rich mythology he has unearthed. In New Guinea and Tonga, the aliens from across the sea are often depicted as light-skinned, while the natives are dark-skinned. To the author, this suggests relative differences in skin tone, Austronesians being less dark than Papuans (presumably, the Austronesian Tongans were pitted against even less dark Austronesians from a later migration). Even so, it's certainly weird that a negative view of Black skin existed already during this early period! The author believes that the sea-farers from Sundaland were pitted against Austroloids and Negritos in New Guinea, the Malay Peninsula and perhaps India. The identification between fairer skin and higher status was later applied to the White Europeans, for instance in cargo cults.

I was surprised by “Eden in the East”. Oppenheimer may not be a “real” scholar, and he has a tendency to take an idea and run with it, but his ideas certainly deserve a hearing. The book may be “fringe”, but it's not crazy, conspiracist or unduly fanatic. After reading it, I'm convinced that “Lemuria” actually existed, although I can't vouch for every concrete detail in this voluminous work. Even so, four stars!

Gonzo mysteries

“Solomon Islands Mysteries” is a book taken seriously by some crypto-zoologists, but it's actually a very extreme work. The author, Marius Boirayon, has ideas similar to those of David Icke and has previously published his work in Nexus, an Australian magazine devoted to various conspiracy theories. Boirayon is an Australian pilot, explorer and businessman. He spent a large portion of his life in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

In his book, Boirayon argues that the Solomon Islands are home to several races of giants and aliens. He recounts local folklore about the giants, a kind of ape-men who seem to be much larger, more human-like and far more dangerous than Bigfoot. While Boirayon hasn't observed any giant himself, he has made a number of UFO observations. The Solomon Islands UFOs are associated with the sea and certain mountain lakes, and are regularly observed by the locals. So far, nothing out of the ordinary: “giants” and UFOs are seen all over the world, especially the latter!

Unfortunately, Boirayon then spins a web of conspiracy theories around these stories and observations, making the book progressively less believable as it unfolds. He claims that the mysterious lights seen at the islands are mechanical craft manned by an alien civilization, the denizens of which has lived in bases below the Earth's surface for millennia. The “aliens” aren't really from outer space, but represent an intelligent species evolving here on Earth, which for various reasons have gone literally underground. They have a vast network of tunnels and secret bases all around the world. Some of these creatures are reptilian in shape. The giants, by contrast, are surface-dwelling primates, but at some point, they became subjected to the “alien” power. The Australian intervention at the Solomon Islands in 2003, ostensibly to stop ethnic violence at the main island of Guadalcanal, was really a move by the secret One World Government cabal to stop the author from exposing the truth about the aliens and giants! Boirayon also claims to have discovered that the islands have such large quantities of oil, gas and precious gemstones that the world market prices would collapse in the event of commercial extraction. Therefore, the Cabal has to take control of these resources and stop them from being exploited until such a time that they can become profitable. Above all, they have to stop the whistle-blower, Marius Boirayon himself. According to the author, all his evidence (including UFO photos) was forcibly taken from him by Australian secret agents…

I admit that Boirayon is a good writer and that “Solomon Islands Mysteries” does give you an interesting (and frequently absurd) look at the life in this small nation. The book is eclectic and contains folkloristic material, UFO conspiracy speculations and personal anecdotes about everything from corrupt local politicians to tribal ceremonies. Indeed, Boirayon is something of a “gonzo journalist”, since he frequently inserts himself into the story. If you like Jon Ronson, you may find this to your liking.

That being said, as a reader interested in crypto-zoology and the occult, I obviously want to know how much of this material is really true? That is, how much is based on actual reports about paranormal activity, and how much is the product of the author's own fertile imagination. Some claims are manifestly bogus. Thus, Boirayon claims that the Japanese war memorial at Guadalcanal shows a reptile-like creature with a ray gun, and cites this as evidence for the Japan knowing the truth about the “aliens”. However, a quick search on the web reveals that the statue (and it is the old statue, not the recent replacement) shows a completely ordinary human fisherman. In another chapter, Boirayon retells a story about an abandoned woman and her two sons confronting a giant, an event which supposedly happened during the 19th century. However, the same story is known from all over Melanesia in slightly different versions and is really a mythological motif. At New Ireland, north of the Solomon Islands, the “giant” killed by the two brothers is a monstrous pig! I get the impression that the author may have misinterpreted a myth as a real historical event. The underground civilization is another common myth, but also surfaces in science fiction (compare “The Shaver Mysteries”). Boirayon wonders why the natives refer to the subterranean world as “Mu Mu”, which sounds much like Mu, the lost continent in the Pacific proposed by James Churchward. Unfortunately, it sounds even closer to the trolling British pop band the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, inspired by the Discordian Illuminatus Trilogy! While none of this necessarily disproves Boirayon's claims (legends can be based on true events, after all), it does raise some red flags.

The part of the story dealing with “UFOs” or orbs is easiest to accept, at least for me. Weird phenomena of this kind have been observed all over the world (most famously in Hessdalen, Norway). The giants are more difficult to accept, since they are supposedly ubiquitous and extremely large. Why haven't they been seen, caught or killed by outsiders? But the “hard to believe award” surely goes to the claim about a worldwide conspiracy directed at one single individual, the gonzo journalist himself. By all means, read this book. It's not bad. However, I don't think it reveals the truth about the Solomon Islands mysteries…

Don´t blame the National Science Foundation

"Endodontoid land snails from Pacific islands. Part I. Endodontidae". Such is the title of the rather large, hardcover volume under review. This monograph begins with a curious disclaimer. It was prepared with the support of National Science Foundation grant No. DEB75-14048. It seems the foundation doesn't just attack creationists! They are also interested in endodontoid land snails, particularly those of the family Endodontidae. However, the foundation sternly warns that any and all opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and don't necessarily reflect the view of NSF.

Presumably, this includes the computer-generated phylogeny of Thaumatodon, Zyzzyxdonta and Aaadonta. Not to mention the distribution of Opanara in the Mt. Perahu region. And what about the frequency of distribution of whorl counts in adult Libera fratercula? Don't blame the NSF if the authors got it all wrong! Incidentally, I didn't misspell "Zyzzyxdonta" and "Aaadonta". Something tells me whoever named these snails in Latin was a great fan of the Guinness Book of World Records! It's good to know that at least snail-collectors have a certain sense of humor, I know from previous experience at Amazon that bug-collectors and bird-watchers have none...

;-)

This is the first of two monographs on the endodontoid land snails of Polynesia, Micronesia and Fiji. The authors claim to have analyzed 26,000 specimens belonging to 285 species-level taxa in 215 genera. Hawaii have been mostly excluded from this study, however, since nobody has had the time, guts or inclination to go through the 58,000 Hawaiian specimens available in various collections. Why not? I've heard the Big Pineapple is a really nice place for a vacation trip. For the morbidly small sum of 2500 dollars per month (excluding taxes), I'm prepared to print out the specimen labels. Deal? Otherwise, I must say that snail research seems to be great fun. The author reveals that just a few hours of collecting on the Fijian islands led to the discovery of two entirely new species of land snails, previously unknown to science! Indeed, it's possible that many unknown snails have already been driven to extinction by invasive species from the mainland, including ants and...other snails!

The monograph contains the following chapters: Previous studies, Materials studied, Methods of analysis, Patterns of Morphological Variation, Phylogeny and Classification, and a systematic review with the actual species presentations. The drawings are extremely boring (as in "I was bored to death"). To a layman, one snail shell really does look like any other snail shell.

Perhaps I don't want that job, after all...

Besides, I probably would misspell Zyzzyxdonta, anyway.

Well, it´s a reference work, what did you expect, hula-hula dancers?

I know, it´s from the wrong ocean

This is the second, last but probably not least volume in the two-volume series "Endodontoid land snails from Pacific islands". It covers the families Punctidae and Charopidae. I noticed that many of them were scientifically described for the first time by the author himself. He must have spent a considerable time - and a considerable amount of NSF money - collecting snail shells on the islands of the Pacific. The book covers Fiji, Micronesia and Polynesia (except Hawaii). I'm not sure who would be interested in a work of this sort, but then, it's not a popularized book for the general reader. Indeed, you might get distinctly *un*popular telling your peers that their tax money goes to your pet hobby - collecting snails surrounded by females in hula-hula outfits that would make Captain Cook blush. Still, a reference work is a reference work is a reference work, and since I'm sure it really does work (as a reference, at least), I'll give it three stars.

The author of this book should be extradited

"How to start your own country" is written by Erwin S. Strauss. The publisher is Paladin Press, some kind of martial arts outlet. The book contains short descriptions of various attempts to create new countries. Groups covered include right-wing militia groups, libertarian idealists, role-playing game enthusiasts, illegal radio broadcasters (one in Sweden) and fake nations with their own stamps and currency. You may already be familiar with Occussi-Ambeno and New Atlantis, but what about Castellania or Kingdom of West Antarctica? Or "Atlantis kaj Lemuria", presumably a fictitious Esperanto nation?

Unfortunately, the book is badly edited and contains a number of factual errors and deliberate distortions. Thus, the author claims that the Paris Commune was a local affair in a bohemian district of Paris! Since it's common knowledge that the Commune was a massive popular uprising in all of Paris, I can only conclude that Strauss is distorting the facts deliberately. Further, he claims that Karl Marx was a bank robber. Nor does he know that the Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus is a real independent nation - albeit only recognized by Turkey (and for a short period, Bangladesh).

Among all the worthless information, there is really only one interesting section: the one about Michael J. Oliver, a mercenary type with libertarian ideas whose attempts to create an independent nation went from the farcical to the sinister. He attempted to create "the republic of Minerva" on a reef in the South Pacific. The Minerva reefs were submerged under water, but Oliver had them filled with sand and thus created an entirely new island, only to be unceremoniously ousted by a warship from nearby Tonga. Later, the entire island was destroyed by tides. In contrast to many other enthusiasts for new countries, Oliver actually learned something from his failure, and his new activities were directed at aiding right-wing separatists fighting left-wing governments. When the New Hebrides became independent in 1980, a separatist movement at the island of Espiritu Santu staged an armed rebellion, apparently with the support of French planters and...Oliver's Phoenix Foundation! In the end, the rebels turned out to have little support, and the insurgency was squashed by troops from Papua New Guinea. (It seems Oliver cannot even hold out against such "great powers" as Tonga and the PNG!)

Interesting.

But the rest of the book isn't. Frankly, the author should be extradited somewhere. To a new country, perhaps?