Caves of Nanumanga

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In 1986, off the northern shore of Nanumanga island in western Polynesia's Tuvalu group, two scuba divers found an underwater cave more than 40 metres down the wall of a coral cliff. Dark patches on the roof and walls and blackened coral fragments on its floor suggest the use of fire by ancient occupants.

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[edit] Legend

The discovery of the Caves of Nanumanga was made because of interest aroused by a local legend. According to this legend, there existed "a large house under the sea". The existence of this legend led to the scuba diving expedition in 1986, during which the caves were discovered. These are sometimes referred to as the Fire Caves of Nanumanga.

[edit] Historical interpretations

Scientifically, the last time people who could possibly have occupied the cave was during a time of low sea level more than 8000 years ago, a date sharply at odds with the view that the Pacific was settled just 6000 years ago.

Pacific archeological evidence was questioned after the discovery, in that a vital piece of climatic evidence was missing - a massive and continuous rise in sea level that began 18,000 years ago and stopped 4000 years ago and possibly drowned most of the evidence of much earlier human migrations into the Pacific.

In the Journal of Pacific History, Dr. John Gibbons of the University of the South Pacific in Fiji wrote: “…trying to make sense of Pacific prehistory may have been somewhat akin to the efforts of someone who arrives in time for the second act of a play, and then attempts to work out the plot without even realizing that the first act has already taken place.

"Dr Gibbons and his. co-author, Dr. Fergus Clunie, believe the Pacific including the Tuvalu islands was colonised by waves of "boat people”, driven from their ancestral coastal homelands in Indonesia and South-East Asia by rising oceans. The known world of Pacific archaeology ends abruptly at a temporal horizon 6000 years ago, the earliest date of distinctive shards of Lapita Pottery. The pottery is found in coastal regions throughout the south-west Pacific, from the Marquesas in the east, to New Caledonia in the south and the Carolines in the north.

[edit] Sea level debates

The caves are currently submerged over 120 feet underneath the ocean, illustrating the profound change in sea level over time. Public controversies regarding sea level changes in contemporary Tuvalu are thus set against this background.

[edit] External links and sources