On the Trail of Lizard-Man in Polynesia

Abstract

For some years, a similarity in certain petroglyphs of the Polynesian area has been noted. What the petroglyphs have in common is a representation of a hybrid being: half man and half lizard. As a preface to this study, the reader will need to go along with a certain degree of subjectivity in admitting that, among the crews of emigrating outriggers that came to people the various Polynesian archipelagoes, there were no systematically literate carriers of the traditions that might have survived the rigors of the voyage; and this is the measure in which one found a happy end simply by arriving in a virgin land. Therefore, in the multitude of Polynesian islands and islets, the transmission of knowledge, initial and initiating was done in an uneven way. Once one has survived in a place, one can then develop and grow in an autonomous way. In a new environment, one would sanctify it with new representations coming from the schema of remembrances of the culture of origin. Furthermore, we should expect to encounter in Polynesia strong local variations, but with motifs based on a foundation of common knowledge and expressed by symbols dating back to great antiquity.