ʻAta

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'Ata (Pylstaart)
Landsat satellite image of ʻAta
Landsat satellite image of ʻAta
Waters Pacific Ocean
Archipelago Tonga
Geographical location 22 ° 20 ′ 0 ″  S , 176 ° 12 ′ 20 ″  W Coordinates: 22 ° 20 ′ 0 ″  S , 176 ° 12 ′ 20 ″  W
ʻAta (Tonga)
ʻAta
length 1.7 km
width 1.6 km
surface 2.3 km²
Highest elevation 355  m
Residents uninhabited
main place Kolomaile (historical)
Map of the island of ʻAta
Map of the island of ʻAta

'Ata is a small, uninhabited island in the south of Tonga - archipelago , which also Pylstaart is called. This island should not be confused with the also uninhabited ʻAtā , one of the flat coral islands along the Piha Passage , 9.4 km northeast of Tongatapu . ʻAta is also a traditional leader's title in Kolovai , one of the oldest settlements on the western tip of Tonga.

geography

Map of Tonga with ʻAta

ʻAta is located 157 km southwest of the main Tongatapu island and 163 km southwest of the island of ʻEua , where most of the descendants of the former population of ʻAta now live. 900 kilometers south-southwest of ʻAta is the island of Raoul Island ( Kermadec Islands ), which is already part of New Zealand . There are several submarine volcanoes between ʻAta and Raoul, which continue in a chain over the Kermadec Islands to New Zealand.

With the exception of the atoll-shaped Minerva reefs located 200 kilometers further south-west , which often fall dry, but have no actual islands and therefore no mainland, ʻAta is the southernmost island of Tonga.

The island is around 1.7 km long from north to south and 1.6 km wide. The area is 2.3 km², according to other sources only 1.5 km². ʻAta is a maximum of 355 meters high and mostly forested.

fauna

The only mammal on the island is the Polynesian rat .

history

There are legends that the island was inhabited by short people before the Polynesians arrived . Excavations in Kolomaile were carried out by Atholl Anderson, he reported about it in the bulletin of the Royal Society of New Zealand . During a brief field inspection , the Canadian archaeologist David Burley of Simon Fraser University found shards of Polynesian Plainware in Kolomaile , the production of which in Tonga around 400 BC. BC ended.

Abel Tasman discovered ʻAta on January 19, 1643. Because of the many tropical birds he saw near the island, he called them Pylstaert Eylant , in today's Dutch Pijlstaart , which means horseshoe , which is a name for the deep sea cod and a tropical bird. Unfavorable winds prevented him from landing. There were also no locals to be seen. The rock formations reminded Tasman of a woman's breast.

In June 1863, about 350 people lived on ʻAta in the village of Kolomaile in the northeast of the island. A good hundred years later, traces of the village were still visible. Feral chickens still live on the island, as do some crops such as papaya and casuarina litorea .

In 1862 the Peruvian government decided to recruit foreign workers for the Guano Islands. A small fleet of ships crossed the Pacific Ocean . Instead of hiring workers, Tongan islanders were kidnapped. Like two other Tongan islands, ʻAta was invaded in 1862 and 1864. Several shiploads of men were carried off by ʻAta, a total of 144 people. After the events of King George Tupou I became known, the remaining 200 residents, mostly women and children, were brought to safety with three schooners from ʻAta to ʻEua , where they founded a colony named after their former home village. The descendants of the evacuated residents of ʻAta still live in Kolomaile on ʻEua. According to the 2006 census, it had 511 residents, including Haʻatuʻa. Until the middle of the 20th century, the resettlers planned to return to Kolomaile. The return failed because the island has no port. Since the island is surrounded by coral reefs , there is also no safe anchorage.

In 1965 six Tongan youths stranded on ʻAta for 15 months. They survived on the island without spring water until they were rescued by an Australian crab fisherman and adventurer, Captain Peter Warner, son of Arthur Warner of Electronic Industries .

ʻAta is still part of the Kingdom of Tonga, but it is no longer populated.

literature

  • Lorimer Fison : Tales from Old Fiji . Moring Books, London 1907.
  • Edward Winslow Gifford: Tongan myths and tales . Kraus Reprint, New York 1971 (unaltered reprint of the Honolulu 1924 edition).
  • Henry Evans Maude : Slavers in paradise. The Peruvian slave trade in Polynesia 1862–1864 . ANU Press, Canberra 1981, ISBN 0-7081-1607-8 .
  • Keith Willey: Naked Island and other sea tales . Hodder and Stoughton, Sydney 1970, ISBN 0-340-12603-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b UNEP Islands. Ata ('Ata) .
  2. ↑ PDF at www.notornis.org.nz ( Memento from October 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Dieter R. Rinke, Birds of 'Ata And Late, and additional Notes on the Avifauna of Niuafo' Ou, Kingdom of Tonga. Notornis 38, 1991, 132.
  4. ^ Archaeological explorations on Ata Island, Tonga, in Lau-Tonga 1977. Royal Society of New Zealand Bulletin 17, 1979, 1–21, cited from the English Wikipedia.
  5. ^ David V. Burley, 'Ata and its archeology. Matangi April 16, 2020, https://matangitonga.to/2020/04/16/ata-archaeology
  6. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
  7. ↑ Dieter R. Rinke, Birds of 'Ata and Late, and additional Notes on the Avifauna of Niuafo' Ou, Kingdom of Tonga. Notornis 38, 1991, 123.
  8. ↑ According to Peter Raymond Warner, Ocean of Light: 30 years in Tonga and the Pacific, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018, 6 (partly online with Amazon Preview), however, the island has no coral reefs.
  9. ↑ cf. Article: The real Lord of the Flies in The Guardian, May 9, 2020. Author: Rutger Bregman . Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  10. ↑ "Lord of the Flies" in real life - how 6 boys survived 15 months on a tiny island In: Watson from May 31, 2020.