标题: The Globe's Greatest Explorers [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 3-20-2019 15:23 标题: The Globe's Greatest Explorers Yesterday at 三角地, I published a posting whose title was 美以「友邦」相稱挺台灣. Today in Note (b), I explain 公使; the two sets of brackets are inserted today.
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(b) photo caption in this news report: "美方十八日主動公布白宮國安會資深主任博明（右四）與我外交部次長徐斯儉（右三）在索羅門群島的合照：右一及右二分別為我駐索羅門公使廖文哲、大使羅添宏。（圖：取自美駐巴布亞紐幾內亞大使館臉書）
美方十八日主動公布白宮國安會資深主任博明（右四）與我外交部次長徐斯儉（右三）在索羅門群島的合照：右一及右二分別為我駐索羅門公使廖文哲 [Minister Counselor Oliver Liao; in Taiwan's embassy, this position ranks right beneath ambassadorship; in America's the rank is ambassador> deputy chief of mission (DCM; a career diplomat from Foreign Service). Minister Counselor (often there are several in charge of different areas]、大使羅添宏 [Ambassador Roger Luo]。（圖：取自美駐巴布亞紐幾內亞大使館臉書）"
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Richard Conniff, The Globe's Greatest Explorers; A vast realm of scattered islands was settled by a people with a single language and distinctive customs -- but no maps, compasses or writing system. Wall Street Journal, Mar 16, 2019 (in the Review section) https://www.wsj.com/articles/sea ... plorers-11552659111
(book review on Christina Thompson, Sea People; The puzzle of Polynesia. Harper, 2019)
the first six paragraphs:
"As HMS Endeavour was preparing to leave Tahiti in July 1769, after a tropical sojourn of four months, a celebrated Polynesian priest and navigator named Tupaia announced that he wished to join the British in their travels. James Cook, commander of the expedition, demurred at first. But with a nudge from the expedition's naturalist Joseph Banks, he relented, allowing that Tupaia 'was the likeliest person to answer our purpose.'
"This soon proved to be the case at sea, where the new passenger’s navigational guidance through the intricacies of Society Islands proved extraordinarily precise. But Tupaia's real value only became evident on land, three months later, as Cook struggled to make peaceful contact with the Māori. The Endeavour had by then traveled 3,500 miles from Tahiti, Christina Thompson writes in 'Sea People; The puzzle of Polynesia,' and 'there was nothing in the geography of New Zealand to suggest that the people who lived there might have anything in common with the people in the tropical islands they [people in Endeavour] had left behind.' " (quoting the book).
"The first encounter at Poverty Bay had ended with bloodshed on the Māori side. 'The following day, Cook tried again, this time taking two additional precautions,' Ms Thompson continues. 'First, he landed with a party of marines, and second, he took Tupaia with him.' Again, the situation deteriorated, with about a hundred Māori brandishing their weapons and staging a haka, their ferocious war dance. The marines advanced in turn, with the Union Jack in front. 'The stage was set for a confrontation -- and then something unexpected occurred. Tupaia stepped forward and addressed the warriors in fluent Tahitian and, to the surprise of everyone present, he was immediately understood.'
"The violence suddenly drained out of the scene, and the strangeness and immensity of the Polynesian accomplishment became apparent. 'It is extraordinary,' Cook would later write, 'that the same Nation should have spread themselves over all the isles in this Vast Ocean * * * which is almost a fourth part of the circumference of the Globe.' What's now called 'the Polynesian triangle' encompasses 10 million square miles of water, with the northern apex at Hawaii and the base stretching from New Zealand in the southwest to Easter island in the southeast.
"Let's put that extraordinary expanse in terms that might make it a little more meaningful for landbound readers: New Zealand is of course southeast of Australia. But Easter Island is some 4,000 miles further east, on about the same longitude as Salt Lake City. For the north-south extent, think Mexico City down to southern Argentina. The Polynesian Triangle is not only unfathomably vast but also contains so little habitable land that, as Ms Thompson puts it, the surprise is that 'anyone ever found anything at all.'
"And yet somehow, she writes, 'all the islands inside this triangle were originally settled by clearly identifiable group of voyagers: a people with a single language and set of customs, a particular body of myths , a distinctive arsenal of tools and skills, and a ‘portmanteau biota’ of plants and animals that they carried with them wherever they went. They had no knowledge of writing or mental tools -- no maps or compasses -- and yet they succeeded in colonizing the largest ocean on the planet, occupying every habitable rock between New Guinea and the Galapagos, and establishing what was until the modern era the largest single culture area in the world.
My comment:
(a)
(i) The review is locked behind paywall.
(ii) There is no need to read the rest, as the topic is under active investigation by scientists of various disciplines (linguists, geneticists, anthropologists etc). The review fails to mention that an aborigine tribe in Taiwan has no difficulty communicating with Maori of New Zealand.
(b) Tupaia (navigator) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupaia_(navigator)
(c 1725 – 1770; born in present-day Tahiti and died in Batavia; a photo whose caption is "Tupaia's map, c 1769")
(i) Batavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia
(may refer to: Historical places: "Batavia, Dutch East Indies, present-day Jakarta, the former capital of the Dutch East Indies (1619–1949)")
(ii) Batavia, Dutch East Indies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia,_Dutch_East_Indies
("It was named after the Germanic tribe of the Batavi [name of the tribe] — the inhabitants of the Batavian region [in present-day the Netherlands] during the Roman period; at that time it was believed that the tribe's members were the ancestors of the Dutch people")
Batavia was a Dutch name, whereas Jakarta is of Indonesian language. See Jakarta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakarta
(section 1 History, section 1.1 Name and etymology)
(c) the first part of paragraph 3: "The first encounter at Poverty Bay had ended with bloodshed on the Māori side. 'The following day, Cook tried again, this time taking two additional precautions,' Ms Thompson continues. 'First, he landed with a party of marines, and second, he took Tupaia with him.' Again, the situation deteriorated, with about a hundred Māori brandishing their weapons and staging a haka, their ferocious war dance. The marines advanced in turn, with the Union Jack in front."
(i) Poverty Bay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_Bay
("The first European known to have set foot in New Zealand, Captain James Cook, did so here on Oct 7, 1769 * * * This first meeting led to the deaths of 6 local Māori during skirmishes with the crew. Although he was able to obtain some herbs to ward off scurvy,[1] Cook was unable to gain many of the provisions he and his crew needed at the bay, and for this reason gave it the name Poverty Bay")
(ii)
(A) haka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haka
(B) Original Maori Haka Dance. YouTube.com, published by Dagich on July 22, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI851yJUQQw
(iii)
(A) Union Jack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Jack
(section 1 Terminology: "Whether the term Union Jack applies only when used as a jack flag on a ship is a matter of debate")
(B) jack https://www.etymonline.com/word/jack
("The jack of Union Jack is a nautical term for 'small flag at the bow of a ship' (1630s) and perhaps is from the word's secondary sense of 'smaller than normal size' ")
, whose map of Polynesian Triangle shows New Zealand, Society Islands and Rapa Nui (west to to east, in that order; Rapa Nui is aboriginal language for Easter Island). Tahiti is not marked in this map.
(e) Tahiti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahiti
(The island is located in the archipelago of the Society Islands * * * and is divided into two parts * * * The population is 189,517 inhabitants (2017 census), making it the most populous island of French Polynesia and accounting for 68.7% of its total population. Tahiti is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia * * * The island was part of the Kingdom of Tahiti until its annexation by France in 1880, when it was proclaimed a colony of France, and the inhabitants became French citizens. French is the only official language, although the Tahitian language (Reo Tahiti) is widely spoken. * * * The first European to have visited Tahiti according to existing records was lieutenant Samuel Wallis, who was circumnavigating the globe in HMS Dolphin, sighting the island on June 18, 1767
(i)
(A) Tahiti "was the name the natives gave their island," according to www.encyclopedia.com.
(B) Tahiti https://www.etymonline.com/word/tahiti
("from native Polynesian Otahiti, of uncertain meaning")
(ii) Wallis was born in Cornwall (a county south of Wales), England.
The English surname Wallis is "from Anglo-Norman French waleis Welsh or Welshman. The Scottish surname Wallace descended from the same waleis, and means the same.
(iii) Society Islands (part of French Polynesia; James "Cook stated in his journal that he called the islands Society 'as they lay contiguous to one another' ") en.wikipedia.org fot Society Islands.
(iv) "French Polynesia is divided into five groups of islands: the Society Islands archipelago * * * the Tuamotu Archipelago; the Gambier Islands; the Marquesas Islands; and the Austral Islands. Among its 118 islands and atolls, 67 are inhabited." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Polynesia
(f) In paragraph 5: "Easter Island is some 4,000 miles further east, on about the same longitude as Salt Lake City."
(i) Easter Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island
(table: Population (2017 census) 7,750, Time zone UTC−6 + Summer (DST [daylight saving time]) UTC−5; Chile annexed Easter Island in 1888 [before that, no European nation had claimed it]; "Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. The nearest inhabited land (around 50 residents in 2013) is Pitcairn Island, 2,075 kilometres (1,289 mi) away" (west of Easter Island) / section 1 Etymology)
(ii) time zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone
(section 3 UTC offsets worldwide: view the top world map, which, from west to east, marks Pitcairn Island [['was named after midshipman Robert Pitcairn, a fifteen-year-old crew member who was the first to sight the island' aboard HMS Swallow on July 3, 1767: Wikipedia], Easter Island, and Isla Sala y Gomez [Chile; uninhabited])
(g) "portmanteau biota" in paragraph 6
(i) biota (n; "New Latin, from Greek biotē life; akin to [Ancient] Greek [noun masculine] bios [life]"/ First Known Use 1901): "the flora and fauna of a region" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biota
(ii) Chapter 1 What Is Environmental History. In Major Problems in American Environmental History. 1st ed (1993) Study Guide and 2nd ed (2005) Study Guide. https://nature.berkeley.edu/depa ... tudyguide/chap1.htm
("Alfred Crosby, 'Ecological Imperialism': Ecological imperialism is the biology of invasions of Europeans and their 'portmanteau biota'--domestic animals, plants, pathogens, varmints, and weeds into the temperate regions of the world")