Erich Von Daniken - The Gold Of The Gods

4 - Temuen, The Island They Call Nan Madol
the god got into a rage and cut and hacked the fish to bits ... and that is why New Zealand is
in pieces the way it is.
Today the Maoris still call the North Island Te Ika-A-Maaui, the fish of Maaui, after the
traditional legend of their forefathers, while the South Island (Stewart Island) is the god's
boat to them. The Mahia peninsula, Te Matau a Maaui, is the fishhook, the Wellington
region, Te Upoko O Te Ika, the head, and the North Auckland peninsula, Te Hiku O Te Ika,
the fish's tail.
That is a story that bears thinking about. When the god Maaui caught land, there were no
maps in existence. But one look at the atlas confirms how accurately this legend outlines the
shapes of New Zealand. You can see the ray-like fish with its open mouth in the south, and
the long tail in the north with one fin on the hook.
From time immemorial the Polynesians have been fishermen themselves, they have caught
the "fruits of the sea" of all lands on hooks or in nets, and probably like fishermen
everywhere they told tall stories about their catches. But they always knew that it was
impossible to angle or fish for land. Nevertheless, legends on all the islands claim that the
god Maaui was the "fisher of land."
With a touch of our magic wand let us turn the god Maaui into that valiant aviator Charles
Lindbergh who flew the 3,750 miles from New York to Paris in 33 hours on May 20 and 21,
1927. Alone in the wind lashed, one-engined machine, all he could see below him was
water, water, water. One and a half days all alone high above the water-a nightmare! Way
down below Lindbergh saw a dark spot. A big fish? An island? A shoal of fish? An
archipelago? Lindberg slowly reduced altitude until he recognized that the dark spot in the
Atlantic consisted of islands. The lone aviator's tension relaxed; he had "fished" a bit of
land. Very funny, I shall be told, because the Polynesians in the remote past had not
mastered the art of flying.
I am convinced with a probability bordering on certainty that the earliest Polynesians could
fly.
The objects cataloged as masks (Fig. 50) will easily be recognized as poor copies of
one-man flying machines by anyone who does not obstinately claim in the face of all
prehistoric evidence that they are "religious masks," "ritual garments" or "ritual requisites"
(whichever suits the anthropologists best) and who is also prepared to interpret the finds on
Polynesian islands (and elsewhere) from the modern point of view. The "masks" were
pulled over the head from above; the movable flat wooden side pieces were nothing more or
less than wings. One can see the holes for fitting the arms through at the other end. Even the
arm and leg supports, yes, the whole "corset" into which the aviator had to squeeze himself,
have remained a memory to Polynesian folk artists for millennia. Obviously they no longer
know why they decorate and equip their gods and kings with such complicated apparatuses.
No one has been able to fly with this gear for many, many thousands of years. But in the
remote times when Maaui "fished" the islands, certain specialists among the population