Hello, this a two part assignment answer the questions I have listed below but please read the instructions below .. no plagiarism, I will check before I submit the work.. also please put down the page number you find your information for each question please from the etextbook.. I will give that info for the etextbook to whom i trust to do the assignment Chapter 02 20. What were the characteristics and accomplishments of Pelesets and Israelites? Explain, with examples. 21. What were the characteristics and accomplishments of the Mycenaeans? Explain, with examples. 22. What were the characteristics and accomplishments of the early Greeks? Explain, with examples. 23. What was the nature and importance of polytheism in the neolithic era? Explain, with examples. 2. unit 1 Essay topics Read below the instructions and the chapter 5 Research topics -Americas and Oceania (the chapter 5 research topics- Americas and Oceania is below so please read it) As described in the syllabus, there are several possible approaches for essays. Below are outlines for each approach for any chapter, drawing upon material was freely taken from the publisher website. 1. Write an essay of more than 1100 words 2. In your own words – if you must quote, count the cut-n-pasted word count of the quote AND ADD IT TO THE 1100 word minimum requirement. 350 words in quotes means the essay should total MORE than 1450 words. 3. Adhere to rules of English grammar, spelling and punctuation 4. Keep the phrasing in the THIRD PERSON and the tense in the past. (“One may conclude” not “I believe”, and “They WERE” not “They ARE” The first possible approach would see you answer one or more of the questions immediately following the document or document fragment in the attached pdfs, below. Answer the question(s) by reading the document(s). You are to answer the question, with reference to the chosen document and the textbook in the form of an essay to be submitted via Canvas Turnitin button at the bottom of this page. The second possible approach takes you to a list of three to five documents, as above. Choose one, and then answer the following ) You should present the answers IN THE FORM OF AN ESSAY and submit it via the button below With either approach, these document-based essays should provide a clearly articulated thesis, supported by relevant detail (names, dates, places, examples, etc.) A s the title of this chapter indicates, the story of the Americas and Oceania (also known as Polynesia or the Pacifi c Islands) are the story of people who are “apart.” Traditionally these cultures have been viewed by his- torians as “apart” from the larger, dominant narrative of Eurasia, both geographically and developmentally. Th is view uses the patt ern of development in Eurasia as a standard, or mode l, against which other cultures are assessed. Far too oft en that assessment has meant judgment. It is now clear that although the Americas and Oceania were separated from Eurasia geographically (Oceania less so), they followed the same basic patt erns of development, from foraging to sett led agriculture to increasingly complex social structures and methods for organizing popula- tions. In the Americas this latt er patt ern was made manifest in the city, typical of the Eurasian model. It this sense, the Americas and Oceania are not “apart” at all, but further examples of the patt erns exhibited elsewhere. It is also clear that in the Americas and Oceania there are deviations from those same patt erns, such as the lack of cities in Oceania (in spite of population sizes that w ould have supported urban centers), the lack of writing in most of the Americas and all of Ocean ia, and a few technological diff erences (the lack of the wheel limited or no metallurgy). However, even in this there is not a complete “apartness,” for although the Americas and Oceania developed diff erently from Eurasia, they developed a patt ern of their own and were very much connected to one another. Furthermore, the islands of Oceania were very much connected to Eurasia, as that was the point of origin for the original sett lers.Finally, one must acknowledge how very connected these societies were to one another, through trade in material goods as well as migration of people . storians are still trying to understand how these societies connect; the lack of writt en evidence has led many historians down paths of speculative dead-ends, as is refl ected in the excerpt in this chapter from Th or Heyerdahl, who had a controversial theory about how Oceania might have connected to the Americas. It is important to observe the process by which the theories of history change with new evidence or new interpretations of old evidence. Th is chapter introduces the mixed patt erns of the Americas and Oceania: the patt erns that are typical of all societies and the patt erns that are unique to their regions. It also explores the diversity with which those patt erns have materialized, from the large elevated monuments of the Americas to the rich oral tales in the Pacifi c Islands. Th e sources in this chapter explore that mixed patt ern and refl ect both the “apartness” of the Americas and Oceania and the connectedness of these cultures as well. A prominent historian’s description of a large urban center in Me- soamerica is followed by a selection of primary sources from a variety of American and Polynesian cultures. Some of the stories are foundation stories, such as how the fi rst people came to discover and sett le New Zealand. Other sources reveal the astounding ability of early Polynesians to sail across vast stretches of the Pacifi c Ocean without the assistance of any modern navigational technology . A common theme that is found in many of the sources involves how humans have adapted to, and interacted with, their environments. Several of these are modern retell- ings of tales that were only available orally for c enturies; that fact alone indicates something of the diffi culty in studying a society that was complex but non-literate. 5.1 The Wealth of La Venta Th is source is obviously not a primary source; it is an a ccount by one of the foremost arch aeologists and historians of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica of the wealth of La Venta. La Venta was the secondOlmec urban center. Founded c. 900 B.C.E., when the fi rst city of San Lorenzo was abandoned for reasons that are not yet understood, La Ven- taitself collapsed c. 600 B.C.E. for equally mysterious reasons. Origins Apart: The Americas and Oceania Chapter 5 64 Chapter 5 Although evidence of Olmec writing was very recently disc overed, it has not yet been translated and therefore we must for the moment treat the Olmec as a non-literate society. Coe’s description of the physical remains of La Venta gives us a glimpse of what was there as well as what is still there. Th is source should give you some idea of both the historical Olmec and the dilemmas faced by historians who are trying to re-create the history of non- literate societies. Coe emphasizes that the Olmec were wealthy and had a mature culture (as one would expect from a second city). Source: “Wealth of La Venta,” from America’s First Civilization, Michael Coe. (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1968), pp. 63-70. La Venta’s greatest wealth and power were reached during its two fi nal building phases. According to the most recent radiocarbon dates, this would have been after 800 B.C., but before its fi nal abandonment, perhaps around 400 B.C. To this stage in the history of La Venta belong some of the fi nest offerings and burials ever found in the New World. Many of these are either placed exactly on the center line running through the site, or in relation to it, and the offerings themselves are often laid out so that their own long axis conforms with this center line orientation. One of the very richest such deposits was Offering No. 2, found in 1955, which has no fewer than fi fty-one polished celts, mostly of jade or serpentine. Five of them are fi nely engraved with typically Olmec designs. Once more, we are reminded of the incredible waste that the burial of these laboriously manufactured articles must represent. Why did they do it? For the gods? or, more prosaically, as a display of the wealth that the Olmec lead- ers possessed? Apparently in certain cases they knew where these offering had been put. For this statement we have the testimony of Offering No. 4. The goddess of archaeological fortune in her usual capriciousness decreed that this would come to light in the late afternoon during the 1955 Drucker-Heizer expedition just before the regular shift ended. “It was necessary to expose, record, photograph, and remove the fi nd in the few hours of remain- ing daylight” because of fear of looting overnight. Offering No. 4 was hit upon under the fl oor of the Ceremonial Court. Sixteen fi gurines of jade or serpentine and six celts of the same materials had been arranged in a little group that is obviously meant to be a scene from real life. The fi gurines are typically Olmec, depicting men with loincloths and with bald or shaven heads that have been deformed in childhood by binding. One rather eroded fi gure stands with his back to a line of celts; the others are arranged about him and face him. As the excavators, Drucker and Heizer, say, “We can only wonder.” But this is not the end of the story. After the offering had been originally placed and covered up, a series of fl oors of brightly colored clays—orange, rose, yellow, and white—was laid down over the entire court. Then, no one knows how many years later, somebody dug a pit down through these fl oors as far as the tops of the fi gurines and celts; and then, just as mysteriously, fi lled the pit up again. Why did they do this? Clearly, they had kept some sort of record of where this offering was and had seemingly been rechecking to make sure it was still there. Burials have been mentioned. These might better be called “tombs,” for the rival in richness some of the famous tombs of Old World archaeology. Most of them were uncovered by the Stirling expeditions of 1942 and 1943, for they belong to the fi nal building phases of La Venta and thus lie near the surface. Unfortunately, the extremely acid soil of La Venta over the centuries has eaten away all traces of skeletons; nothing is left but the most imperishable of the loot buried with the deal Olmec lord. The three best-stocked sepulchers were in Mount A-2 on the north side of the Ceremonial Court and again naturally along the center line. The northernmost one is 65 Origins Apart: The Americas and Oceania indeed curious, for it was built of gigantic basalt columns that in their natural form imitate tombs of wooden logs. On the limestone-slab fl oor were found the bundled remains of what had probably been two infants, surrounded (as in all La Venta burials) with brilliant red pigment. When these children, who must have been princes among their own people, were laid to rest, they were accompanied by a treasure-trove in jade: four fi gurines (one a seated woman with a tiny hematite mirror fragment on her breast), a jade clamshell, beads, ear ornaments, an awl-like object that probably was used to draw sacrifi cial blood, a jade sting-ray spine, and a pair of jade hands. Also in the same tomb were put a magnetite mirror and the tooth of an extinct giant shark. Just to the south of this tomb was another, this time a sandstone sarcophagus. Again there was little or no trace of bones, but since it is big enough to contain an adult body and pigment covered its fl oor, it was surely a tomb. Its exterior was carved with a fearsome representation of a fl ame-browed werejaguar, while in its clay- fi lled cavity were found more beautiful jades: paper-thin ear spools (somewhat circular, outfl aring objects set into the ear lobe), a serpentine fi gurine, and another “awl” for ceremonial bloodletting. Then La Venta comes to an end. The cause and nature of its fate is lost in mystery, a mystery that we shall also see at the great Olmec center of San Lorenzo. All construction comes to a halt, no more tombs are built and stocked, no more offerings are made beneath its multi-colored fl oors. Its rulers and people are gone, and year after year the nortes come howling in from the coast, shrouding the ruins of La Venta in drift sands. Olmec civilization had died. Everything at La Venta is exotic, in the sense that it was brought from somewhere else. Even the brightly colored clays had been specially selected and brought to the island, for they are not indigenous. Likewise, the jade and serpentine (ton after ton of the latter) came from a distance and as yet unknown source. But the greatest wonder if that most of the volcanic basali used in their monuments can only have come from the Tuxtla Mountains, sixty miles due west of La Venta. Dr. Howell Williams is the leading expert on volcanoes. He has long been intrigued by the Olmec “problem” and in 1960 he began explorations and studies with Robert Heizer that have largely solved the mystery of the rock source of the Olmec carvings at La Venta. By making thin sections of small pieces of rock taken from these monuments, it is possible tocompare them under magnifi cation with samples from identifi ed lava fl ows in the Tuxtlas. It now seems thatmost of the La Venta carvings are made from basalt in the region of the Cerro Cinte- pee, an ancient cone among the many that make up the Tuxtla range. The lower slopes of these mountains are strewn with gigantic boulders of exactly the same kind of basalt. Apparently, the Olmec came here and either carved them on the spot or brought them to La Venta for working. Some are certainly large enough to make a fair-sized Colossal Head, and possibly their natural shape suggested the idea of the huge heads in the fi rst place. If this question has been answered, an even larger one remains. How did they ever get the stones to La Venta from the Tuxtlas? The engineering problems involved would be formidable even today. Certainly part of the jour- ney could have been on enormous rafts, fl oating down the westernmost feeder streams of the Coatzacoalcos River, then along the coast, east to the mouth of the Tonalá. But they would have had to have been dragged at least twenty-fi ve miles overland to reach navigable waters within the Coatzacoalcos drainage. Remember that the Colossal Heads, for instance, weigh an average of eighteen tons each. The problem was indeed formi- dable. During the fourth and last building stage at La Venta, the rulers suddenly hit upon a new architectural device: they surrounded the Ceremonial Court with a kind of fence made up of huge columns of prismatic basalt. We have also seen the use of such columns in the large tomb to its north. Where did they get these? As one fl ies along the jungle-covered coastline of the Tuxtla region, prismatic basalt can be seen in its natural state, the 66 Chapter 5 columns breaking off from the lava fi elds that once reached the sea. If this really was their source, the quarrying must have been a fearsome operation carried out from rafts, for this coast is often lashed by a heavy surf. One wonders how many great Olmec stones now rest on the bottom of the sea. Resding and Discussion Questions 1. Coe’s description of La Venta’s wealth focuses on burials found there, and the grave goods they contained. What are the limitations in using grave sites as evidence for how people of the past lived? 2. Noticeably missing from the gravesites were human remains, which did not survive the highly acidic soil of the area. Does that fact give us any possible clue about the ultimate failure of La Venta, and of San Lorenzo before it? 3. What evidence does Coe present about the nature of Olmec trade? 66 Chapter 5 columns breaking off from the lava fi elds that once reached the sea. If this really was their source, the quarrying must have been a fearsome operation carried out from rafts, for this coast is often lashed by a heavy surf. One wonders how many great Olmec stones now rest on the bottom of the sea. Resding and Discussion Questions 1. Coe’s description of La Venta’s wealth focuses on burials found there, and the grave goods they contained. What are the limitations in using grave sites as evidence for how people of the past lived?
2. Noticeably missing from the gravesites were human remains, which did not survive the highly acidic soil of the area. Does that fact give us any possible clue about the ultimate failure of La Venta, and of San Lorenzo before it? 3. What evidence does Coe present about the nature of Olmec trade? 5.2 The Mound Builder Cultures of North America: Poverty Point Th e following excerpt illustrates many of the issues involved in studying the mound builder cultures of the North American Midwest and East. Although the purpose of some mounds is clearly th at of gravesites, the purpose of other mounds is still unclear. Th e excerpt also off ers a glimpse at historians at work. Th e anthropologists men- tioned in this excerpt, working with the same evidence, present diff erent theories about the meaning of Poverty Point, Louisiana. Notice how they speak to one another through their theories. Source: “Poverty Point Mounds,” from Mound Builders of Ancient America: The Archaeology of a Myth, Robert Silverberg. (Green- wich, CT: New York Graphic Society Ltd., 1968), 256-260. Several ideas have been proposed by way of tracing the supposed Mexican intrusion into the Ohio Valley. One suggestion is that the puzzling Poverty Point site in northern Louisiana may have been a way station for migrants on their way from Mexico to Ohio. At Poverty Point, near the town of Floyd, in West Carroll Parish, a cluster of six mounds stands close to the banks of Bayou Mason. The largest mound is a fl at-topped T-shaped structure 70 feet in height; the other mounds are from 1 to 21 feet high, and the entire group is laid out in a vague semicircle. The Poverty Point mounds were fi rst mentioned by Samuel H. Lockett in the Smithsonian Institution Annual Report for 1872, and received their earliest detailed examination about fi fty years later when Clarence B. Moore spied them from his steamboat, Gopher . But little attention was paid to them until recent times, when aerial photographs of the group were taken for mapping purposes by the Mississippi River Commission of the U.S. Army Engineers. In 1953, these photographs were studied by James A. Ford, then on the staff of the American Museum of Natural story in New York. Ford was able to detect an unusual geometrical arrangement of the mounds that had eluded previous observers. It seemed to him that the worn ridges that arc today’s Poverty Point mounds once constituted a set of six concentric octagons, the outermost one three fourths of a mile across; at some distant time in the past, a shift in the channel of the Arkansas River had washed away the eastern half of the octagons. In the report that Ford and C. H. Webb published in 1956 as one of the Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural story, the speculation is offered that “if the concentric octagonal ridges were completed to the east in sym- metrical fashion, the total length of ridge constructed would approximate 11.2 miles. Six feet high by eighty feet across the base is a conservative estimate of the average original dimensions of the ridge cross-section. A simple calculation gives the fi gure of about 530,000 cubic yards of earth,” a mass “over thirty-fi ve times the cubage”’ of the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. The largest mound of this structure, Ford says, “is easily the most spectacular of the accomplishments of these people. It measures 700 by 800 feet at the base and rises to 70 feet above the surrounding plain … it can be estimated that the fi nished mound required something over three million man-hours of labor.” Yet Ford thinks the entire huge structure was constructed in a single concerted effort: “The few examples of chronological information that have been secured from excavations in various parts of the earthwork suggest that probably all of it was built and inhabited at about the same time. It is obvious that the fi gure was construct- ed according to an integrated plan that probably would not have prevailed if the town had grown by accretion over a long span of time.” He estimates a population of several thousand, and calculates that it must have taken twenty million 50-pound basket-loads of soil to build the earthworks. From this he draws the conclusion “that this community must have been rather strictly organized. While a religious motivation may ultimately explain the large amount of earth construction, this effort was obviously well-controlled. The geometrical arrangement of the town … [is clearly the result] of central planning and direction. It is diffi cult to visualize how in a loosely rganized society this quantity of essentially non-productive labor could have been expended.” Radiocarbon dates for Poverty Point fell between 1200 and 100 B.C. Ford and Webb, who thought that the site represented a southern colonial offshoot of the Adena or Hopewell mound-building cultures, preferred an 800-600 B.C. date for the fl ourishing of the community, which would place it several centuries after the emer- gence of Adena. Bur the artifacts found at Poverty Point arc mostly of Archaic type; the site would be pure Late Archaic but for the presence of those astonishing earthworks. No Adena or Hopewell material has been found. And, though it seems impossible that such vast works could have been constructed without the support of an agricultural economy, no traces of farming have been detected at Poverty Point; its inhabitants did not even have pots to cook in, but prepared their food by heating balls of baked clay and throwing them into baskets or other containers of water that could not be placed over a fi re. Several possibilities exist: that Poverty Point was an indigenous Louisiana nonagricultural community which somehow took to building immense earthworks, or that there was infl uence from Ohio, or that the site repre- sents a settlement of northward-bound migrants who eventually reached the Ohio Valley and established the Adena Culture. A more eccentric theory was propounded in 1930 by Henry Shetrone. Misinterpreting the baked clay balls used in cooking as “gambling cones” of a sort employed by certain Western Indian tribes, Shetrone suggested, possibly facetiously, that “considering the almost complete absence of potsherds and other ordinary domestic accumulations, perhaps the Poverty Point site is all that remains of an aboriginal Monte Carlo, curi- ously well named if prehistoric gambling led to the same fi nancial state as in modern times.” More likely, Poverty Point was a sacred ceremonial city-but for whom? And when? Another possible stopping-off place for Ohio-bound Mexicans has been pointed out in southern Louisiana on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. Here was the home of the Tchefuncte Culture, fi rst described by James A. Ford and George I. Quimby in 1945. They wrote at that time, “Tchefuncte and Adena are easily distinguishable by a majority of traits which they do not hold in common…. Indeed, it is surprising that there are any similarities between Tchefuncte and Adena, considering their spatial separation and environmental difference. We believe, however, that there is a fundamental similarity between the two cultures. But which way the infl uences fl owed- from north to south or south to north-remains unsettled. A substantial school of archaeologists fi nds the Mexican hypothesis, including suggested Louisiana way stations, unacceptable. Webb and Baby, advocates of a Mexican origin, note that “it should be obvious that the ancestral Adena people could come from one of two, and perhaps both, directions, i.e., south and north,” and a northern origin is now frequently postulated. Don Dragoo, whose excavation of the Cresap Mound armed 68 Chapter 5 him with such an extraordinary perspective on the whole range of Adena development, has pointed out that most of the “Mexican” traits found in Adena mounds come from late Adena mounds and are absent from those he has identifi ed as early ones. “If we are to fi nd the origin of Adena,” he asks, “must we not look at the early stages of this culture? How can we use traits that are present in the late stage of a culture, but not present in the early stage, as indicators of origin? Are we to believe that the Adena people had all these ideas with them when they arrived from Middle America but that they did not use them for several hundred years? On the basis of the evidence as I see it, those who have looked towards Middle America for the origin of Adena culture have done so with almost a complete disregard for the facts of the chronological development of Adena culture in the Ohio Valley.” He questions the resemblances Webb and his collaborators have seen between Adena practices and the burial and skull-deformation customs of early Mexico. He objects that the supposedly ancestral Mexican cul- tures had welldeveloped pottery techniques, using styles unlike any known for early Adena, and though he fi nds the Mexican theory “romantic and thought-provoking,” he declares that “the time has come for serious consideration of other possible sources for the roots of Adena.” Dragoo fi nds signs of prototypical Adena in certain Late Archaic sites in the Northeast and in the lower Great Lakes area. In this he bases much of his thinking on the work of the New York archaeologist William A. Ritchie, who had found evidence of a formalized burial cult at the Muskalonge Lake and Red Lakes sites in New York. At these Archaic settlements, burial of bundled bones, cremations, and fl exed bodies decorated with red ocher had been practiced in small sandy knolls. Although mound building itself was unknown among these people, Ritchie saw a “basic core of religiosity” in them, and “certain ideas possibly germinal to the development of the burial cult.” From New York, Dragoo traces the infl uence of this “basic core of religiosity” into Archaic cultures to the west, among them the Red Ocher Culture of Illinois and surrounding states, which practiced burial in low artifi – cial mounds on natural prominences, and the Glacial Kame Culture of north-estern Ohio, northeastern Indiana, and southern Michigan, which buried its dead in kames, or natural knolls of gravel and sand deposited by gla- ciers in Pleistocene times. He sees a “coalescence of ideas and practices concerning the disposal of the dead that had developed in several widely scattered Archaic populations.” Thus he regards Adena more as a case of spontaneous local generation than of open invasion from a distant land. This, Dragoo recognizes, is a radical ap- proach; he is forced to explain away the fact that Adena people had pottery, while the other burial-cult peoples of the East did not, by terming pottery an independent development among the Adenas, and he copes with the complication of the distinctive Adena physique by saying that “if, as Snow believes … the picture of Adena man is based upon the individuals of a selected group then our picture is not truly a representative cross-section of the Adena population.” He believes that when more skulls have been recovered from early Adena mounds, few of them will display the conspicuous chins and rounded crania of the “honored dead” of late Adena on which current physical assessments have been based. Reading and Discussion Questions 1. What evidence does Ford present to defend his theory that the Poverty Point mounds were built by one highly organized community? How do anthropologists “prove” such theories about non-literate societies? 2. Why is it important for historians to determine if Poverty Point represents an indigenous culture or one con- nected to Adena and Hopewell? What are the implications in either theory? 3. In addition to the mounds themselves, the author of this excerpt used another kind of historical evidence: writings by others historians from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. What are the complications in using other historians as history? 69 Origins Apart: The Americas and Oceania 5.3 A Polynesian Creation Myth Th e “Children of Heaven and Earth” is a Polynesian crea tions myth. As with many Polynesian myths, versions of it can be found throughout Oceania; this particular version is from the Maori of New Zealand. As New Zealand was one of the last of the Pacifi c Islands to be sett led, it might be tempting to read this as the “fi nal” version of the myth. Yet these myths are never fi nished; each island had their own versions of them, and as people migrated between islands, and continued to trade w ith one another, the versions were shared, passed back and forth, altered in subtle ways by time and experience. Mythology such as this is as alive as the culture that creates it. “Children of Heaven and Earth” begins with Rangi and Papa, Heaven and Earth, the “source from which, in the beginning, all things originated” and tells of how they came together to create all things. Creation results in the separation of Heaven and Earth by their off spring, who go on to fright with one another. Source: “Children of Heaven and Earth” from Polynesian Mythology: And Ancient Traditional story of the Maori as Told by Their Priests and Chiefs. Sir George Grey. (Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs., Ltd., 1854), 1-8, 9. Men had but one pair of primitive ancestors; they sprang from the vast heaven that exists above us, and from the earth which lies beneath us. According to the traditions of our race, Rangi and Papa, or Heaven and Earth, were the source from which, in the beginning, all things originated. Darkness then rested upon the heaven and upon the earth, and they still both clave together, for they had not yet been rent apart; and the children they had begotten were ever thinking amongst themselves what might be the difference between darkness and light; they knew that beings had multiplied and increased, and yet light had never broken upon them, but it ever continued dark. Hence these sayings are found in our ancient religious services: ‘There was darkness from the fi rst division of time, unto the tenth, to the hundredth, to the thousandth’, that is, for a vast space of time; and these divisions of times were considered as beings, and were each termed ‘a Po’; and on their account there was as yet no world with its bright light, but darkness only for the beings which existed. At last the beings who had been begotten by Heaven and Earth, worn out by the continued darkness, con- sulted amongst themselves, saying: ‘Let us now determine what we should do with Rangi and Papa, whether it would be better to slay them or to rend them apart.’ Then spoke Tu-matauenga, the fi ercest of the children of Heaven and Earth: ‘It is well, let us slay them.’ Then spake Tane-mahuta, the father of forests and of all things that inhabit them, or that are constructed from trees: ‘Nay, not so. It is better to rend them apart, and to let the heaven stand far above us, and the earth lie under our feet. Let the sky become as a stranger to us, but the earth remain close to us as our nursing mother.’ Hence, also, these sayings of old are found in our prayers: ‘Darkness, darkness, light, light, the seeking, the searching, in chaos, in chaos’; these signifi ed the way in which the offspring of heaven and earth sought for some mode of dealing with their parents, so that human beings might increase and live. So, also, these sayings of old time. ‘The multitude, the length’, signifi ed the multitude of the thoughts of the children of Heaven and Earth, and the length of time they considered whether they should slay their parents, that human beings might be called into existence; for it was in this manner that they talked and consulted amongst themselves. But at length their plans having been agreed on, lo, Rongo-ma-tane, the god and father of the cultivated food of man, rises up, that he may rend apart the heavens and the earth; he struggles, but he rends them not apart. Lo, next, Tangaroa, the god and father of fi sh and reptiles, rises up, that he may rend apart the heavens 70 Chapter 5 and the earth; he also struggles, but he rends them not apart. Lo, next, Haumia-tikitiki, the god and father of the food of man which springs without cultivation, rises up and struggles, but ineffectually. Lo, then, Tu-matauenga, the god and father of fi erce human beings, rises up and struggles, but he, too, fails in his efforts. Then, at last, slowly uprises Tane-ma