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Maori and Polynesian: their origin, history and culture

There are Explanations of the Origin of Megalithic — Monuments that differ in every Locality

There are Explanations of the Origin of Megalithic
Monuments that differ in every Locality

(1) At most points along the megalithic tracks there is a local explanation of the singular monuments. Now it is the gods or the fairies who have erected them; again it is the giants. Here they are the work of a long-vanished people, like the Tchudes along the Northern Asiatic track; there they are the work of a people still existent, like the Kelts in Britain and Brittany, or the Polynesians in Tonga. Sometimes they are recognised as tombs; again they are taken as altars and temples; in one place they are for marking the seasons, in another they commemorate some event in history; at Ateamuri, in New Zealand, one tribe take them as memorials of a cannibal feast in which fifty chiefs of a hostile tribe were eaten; the other tribe tell the same story, but interchange the banqueters and the banquet. There is no limit to what imagination can do with such a mystery to explain. The mythmaking faculty could not rest in presence of such striking memorials of the past.