The Mysterious Ruins of the Trobriands

A LITTLE less than two miles north \ ward of the village of Omarakana, two separate heaps of coral slabs tand, either in symmetrical array, or umbled carelessly as if a giant had ung his playthings fretfully aside.

This is the village in which lives Mita ata, paramount chief of the Trobriand slands, in what contentment his thirteen dves may bring him. But no one in )marakana could care less than Mitakata bout relics of a forgotten civilisation, /hich swept across the Pacific before be dawn of history. There is no one i the Trobriands, or elsewhere, with a lue to who these ancient peoples were; diere they came from, or what prompted tie erection of the monuments they left ehind.

It Was the late F. E. Williams who first ild me about the standing stones of firiwina. He and his wife, who acted s unpaid secretary to their little luseum in Port Moresby, had made a :ip to the Trobriands to examine them, nd, in his official capacity of Papuan Government Anthropologist, “F.E.’s” re larks upon these curious megalithic re lains may be read in the Papuan Annual Report of 1936-37.

Not until 1939 was I able to see them ir myself, and, with the aid of com ass, surveyor’s tape and several bored ,nd lethargic assistants from Omara ana, plot the lay-out of the principal roup of stones. rHEY are not so notable as the stone faced burial mounds of Tonga; nor so well designed as the temples of lalden Is. They have little in com mon, either, with the fabulous city of 1 square miles in area, which is said i lie hidden in the jungles of Palau, i the Carolines. Nothing in common, bat is, except perhaps a common origin, t can be claimed, however, that the

Kiriwina relics are the only link con necting Australian territory with this lost age, and, for that reason, they possess an interest all their own.

It was in 1930 that the remains of stone structures were first reported from the island of Kitava, in the Trobriand group. Five years later, more elaborate remains were found on Kiriwina; but not until Mr. Leo Austen, the ARM of the day, had cleared the low tangled scrub surrounding them, was the full significance of the discovery realised.

The largest collection of stones covers about three-quarters of an acre. A

By Basil Hall

short distance away is a second site, which, if not giving the same impression of size, shows even more clearly the wall structure of a building 40 ft. in length.

In both positions, the axis of design is due east and west.

THE first group is the one which ap pears to offer the best field for in vestigation. If any trace of the builders is to be found, this is the spot to look for it. Here is the distinct ground plan of a large house, flanked at either end with what seems remarkably like crazy pavement.

In this case, what remains of the walls is now a low, irregular parapet, in which it is still possible to see a care ful fitting together of the upright stones, that are even chinked with smaller ones to make the outline whole.

But, long before the implications of this have been considered, the eye is drawn to the other end of the clearing, where a huge monolith stands more than 14 ft. above ground, and, quoting “F.E.’s” measurements, is embedded 4 ft. in the

earth. This slab is 7 ft. 3 ins. at its widest, and a good 12 in. thick.

Around the monolith, which someone has named “Jumbo,” lie slightly smaller slabs of the same cement-like coral, roughly rectangular in shape, and hav ing a smooth dressed appearance, which might easily be taken to be the result of the mason’s chisel. From their po sition, it is impossible to guess whether they have been erected, or simply carted to a job, which, for some reason or other, had remained unfinished.

And that poses the question of where they came from.

THERE is no sign of a quarry on Kiri wina. The island itself is no more than a few feet above sea level, and the chance of prehistoric stone workings such as are found on Easter Is. may be dis counted. It is far more likely that the material lay ready to the builder’s hand, which theory is strengthened by “F.E.’s” discovery of a coral formation naturally fissured into slabs of the same size, lying along the shore line under a foot or two of water.

I am not sure as to what particular example he refers, but there is such a one a short distance from the coastal village of Kaibola, and that would be about three miles from the present site.

But what is quite a reasonable suppo sition still leaves the method of trans portation to be accounted for.

To move stones the size and weight of those at Kiriwina, would require the efforts of men with some knowledge of mechanics of the lever and roller type.

It would also mean the presence of some compelling impulse, which by no stretch of imagination can be associated with the Trobriand islanders’ conception of a working day.

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"Jumbo,” the largest of the standing stones.

Coral slabs in wall formation.

THIS is not to infer that the local in habitants are bone-lazy. Left to their own devices, the men will fish, dive for beche-de-mer or pearls in the three-fathoms lagoon from a canoe of their own construction. From the region of Boitala comes the most intricate wood carving, and, in general, the form and finish of common articles such as lime spatulas, shows an artistic sense that is very rare indeed.

Their gardens are justly famous for yams, grown in sufficient quantities to give the group an exportable surplus.

Add to all this, the time the ordinary man spends playing with his children, and it will be seen that little remains for the indecorous string games of the cat’s cradle order, with which my so called assistants were now amusing themselves in the shade.

They had long since exhausted the antics of measurement, and it remained for me to try photography. This is still a tender memory, for a colony of ferocious ants drove me yelping from the only tree high enough to make a bird’s eye picture possible. There was a moral here, if only I could have spoken the Trobriand tongue!

Yet even those who could meet the people on the common ground of language, were never told about the standing stones of Kiriwina. Brontislaw Malinowski, whose fascinating books have given the people of the group a place in literature * never learned about them, though he spoke the language well.

Neither did Charley Lumley, the late Rafael Brudo, or any other of the old hands receive a hint of their existence, and nowhere in song or story do these relics find a place in Trobriand folk lore.

These are the facts as my note books record them. But for the tragic fate of F. E. Williams in a wartime air-crash in New Guinea, there might have been something more to add. As it is, the standing stones of Kiriwina are “done finish” until research takes up the chal lenge. —“Argonauts of the Western Pacific,” etc.