Eiao
| Eiao | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Waters | Pacific Ocean | |
| Archipelago | Marquesas | |
| Geographical location | 8 ° 0 ′ S , 140 ° 42 ′ W | |
|
||
| length | 13 km | |
| width | 3.5 km | |
| surface | 43.8 km² | |
| Highest elevation | Moukatiketike 578 m |
|
| Residents | uninhabited | |
 |
||
Eiao (marques. ʻEiao , old names: Hiau ( Krusenstern ), Knox ( Ingraham ), Masse ( Marchand ), Roberts ( Hergest ), New York ( Fanning )) is an uninhabited island in the northern group of the Marquesas in the southeastern Pacific Ocean . Politically, it belongs to French Polynesia .
Geography and geology
Eiao is the rest of the crater rim of a long sunken volcano, as can be seen from the air by the crescent-shaped shape of the island. The igneous rocks are between 6.33 and 4.99 million years old.
The island is 13 kilometers long and 3.5 kilometers wide and is traversed from northeast to southwest by a ridge that rises to 576 m above sea level. The largest part of the island's surface consists of a sparsely vegetated plateau, the Tohuanui Plateau, on which the erosion damage cannot be overlooked. The highest peak is the Moukatiketike at 578 meters. Another peak is the Tohuanui at 550 meters.
The coast, which is particularly rugged in the north, is characterized by steep cliffs that rise directly from the sea and drop vertically over 200 m in places. Access is only granted to Vaituha Bay in the north. A protective coral reef and a coastal plain are missing. Eiao has no continuously flowing surface water. Although the island is one of the poorest in rain in the Marquesas - Eiao is too low to benefit significantly from the humidity of the trade winds - torrential streams form in numerous places during heavy rain, which pour into the bays and carry away the remains of fertile soil.
The closest island is only five kilometers away, also uninhabited Hatutu . The next inhabited island is Nuku Hiva , around 100 kilometers to the southeast.
flora
Sheep, goats and pigs abandoned by Europeans in the early 20th century and now feral have wreaked havoc on the island's flora. In addition, attempts have been made - with little success - to plant coconut plantations. Hardly anything has been preserved from the original forest cover on the plateau. The once dense mixed forest probably consisted of pisonia , hibiscus , pandanus , thespesia and large ficus . Although the wild animals have meanwhile been greatly reduced, only small groups of trees and bushes or individual trees of Pisonia grandis and Pandanus grow on the high plateau . Most of the plateau is either arid or covered with robust grass. Low-growing soap trees ( Sapindus saponaria ), Cordia subcordata , coral trees ( Erythrina variegata ) and Premna have settled in the slightly more humid gorges and crevices that are difficult for animals to reach . The steep cliffs are only partially covered with helitropen and sweet grasses of the genus Leptochloa .
fauna
There are hardly any publications about the fauna of the rarely visited Eiao, most zoological research on the Marquesas excludes the species-poor island. In 1929/30 a total of fifteen month expedition of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum examined the land fauna of the Marquesas Islands and also visited Eiao. The main focus of research was on invertebrates . Even then, the vegetation was largely destroyed, which is likely to have resulted in the extinction of a large part of the native fauna.
Locusts the type Patanga pinchoti came in large numbers and two species of endemic cicadas have been found. There were several species of the weevils (Curculionidae) widespread in the Marquesas . It is noteworthy that on Eiao, which has only a few, small and seasonally dry waterholes , the blood-sucking Nono flies belonging to the black flies (Simuliidae) also occur, albeit in far fewer numbers than on the tropical, humid Nukuhiva.
Only two endemic land bird species are known of Eiao. The Eiao spot monarch ( Pomarea fluxa ) was still observed in 1929/30, but is now extinct. The reed warbler ( Acrocephalus mendanae aquilonis ) is extremely threatened or also already extinct.
history
As can be seen from numerous archaeological finds, Eiao was not always uninhabited. In contrast to the other islands of the Marquesas, however, the island seems to have been settled by only one tribe in pre-European times, the Tuametaki, described as very warlike, a sideline of a tribe from the island of Nuku Hiva.
In 1929, the American anthropologist Ralph Linton visited the island and carried out an archaeological exploration of the surface. He found clear traces of human settlement. Apparently there was a village in the bay of Vaitahu in prehistoric times, as can be seen from the remains of several residential platforms (paepae). Linton found more residential platforms and earth ovens on the northern part of the high plateau. On the south side he discovered - directly on the cliff with a view of the sea - the remains of a paved ceremonial platform with a large, hollowed stone in the middle.
The French archaeologist Michel Charleux has been working with Eiao since 1987. During several excavation campaigns, he found real workshops for the manufacture of stone tools all over the high plateau. The fine-grained, very hard basalt from Eiao was particularly suitable for the production of axes and dexels , which the Polynesian natives exported to other islands, some of them far away, according to the latest findings. Tools from the basalt of Eiao reached the island of Moorea 1,400 kilometers away and Mangareva 2,000 kilometers away in the 12th to 15th centuries AD . Apparently the trade was conducted through the large and densely populated island of Nukuhiva.
During excavations in 2008, Charleux found carefully polished, biconvex stone disks 5 to 8 cm in diameter. They resembled the pieces for the team game " ulu maika ", a sporting competition that was reserved for members of the aristocracy, which is very popular with the native Hawaiians . Since these stones have not yet been found on any other Polynesian archipelago , they could be considered evidence of a direct sea connection in pre-European times between Eiao and the Hawaiian archipelago, which is over 4,000 km away.
In 1791, the American captain and long-distance trader Joseph Ingraham discovered Eiao for the western world. On September 17, 1790, he sailed with his Brigantine Hope from Boston on a trade trip to Canton in China . In January 1791 he went ashore on the southern group of the Marquesas, which Alvaro de Mendaña de Neyra had discovered in 1595. On April 19, 1791, he sailed from Hiva Oa in a north-northwest direction and on April 21 saw the island of Eiao, which he named "Knox Island" after General Henry Knox , who came from Boston . Ingraham did not explore the island further and did not go ashore.
Eiao was probably already uninhabited then. Lieutenant Richard Hergest , the captain of the supply ship Daedalus of the Vancouver expedition , landed on Eiao a year later, in early April 1792, but found no more residents, only an abandoned hut and a burial place.
Eiao became a French protectorate on June 2, 1842, when Rear Admiral Abel Aubert Dupetit-Thouars took possession of the islands of the northern group of the Marquesas in Taiohae on Nuku Hiva for France.
With the law of June 8, 1850 on the deportation of political prisoners, between 1850 and 1854 people were deported to the Marquesas who had committed “attacks” on the emperor and the French state. However, there were only three convicts on Eiao, and only for a short time.
From 1962 to 1963, the French television journalist Georges de Caunes lived with his dog Eder in a self-chosen Robinsonade on Eiao and philosophized on the radio about his thoughts and experiences.
For the French nuclear tests on Mururoa and Fangataufa , the military set up observation stations on several peripheral islands, including one on Eiao. The remains of the "Sophie" military base, which was only temporarily manned between 1996 and 1998, are still on the Tuhuanui Plateau today.
Today the island belongs politically to French Polynesia and belongs to the commune associée Taiohae of the municipality of Nuku Hiva . Eiao has been a nature reserve since 1992 and can only be entered with official permission.
Picture gallery
West coast of Eiao
erosion
Vaituha Bay, in the foreground erosion damage on the high plateau
Individual evidence
- ↑ V. Clouard and A. Bonneville: Ages of seamounts, islands and plateaus on the Pacific plate , Paris 2004, p 15
- ↑ Viatges Rovira: Eiao
- ^ Dieter Mueller-Dombois & F. Raymond Fosberg: Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands , New York 1998, pp. 457-458
- ^ Alastair Martin Adamson: Review of the Fauna of the Marquesas Islands and Discussion of its Origin , Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin No. 159, Honolulu 1939
- ^ FW Christian: Eastern Pacific Lands - Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands , Robert Scott London 1910, p. 204
- ↑ Ralph Linton: Archeology of the Marquesas Islands, Honolulu 1925, pp. 106-107
- ^ Marshall Weisler: Hard evidence for prehistoric interaction in Polynesia; in: Current Anthropology 39, Chicago 1998, pp. 521-532
- ↑ L'Agence Tahitienne de Presse (ATP) of June 29, 2008
- ↑ Michel Charleux: Les disques de pierre de Eiao. Présence d'éléments d'un ancien jeu hawai'ien dans le nord de l'archipel des Marquises, une preuve de relations inter-archipelago à l'époque pré-européenne? Le Journal de la Société des Océanistes, No. 128, 2009, pp. 117-132
- ^ A b Karl von den Steinen: The Marquesans and their art , Dietrich Reimers Berlin, 1925–1928, facsimile reprint from Fines Mundi, Saarbrücken 2006, volume 1
- ↑ Les Nouvelles de Tahiti (regional French-language daily newspaper in Tahiti), edition of July 11, 1998: Le démantèlement des sites d'essais n'a pas eu lieu
