Talk:Menehune

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Menehune article.

Article policies
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Hawaiʻi, a WikiProject related to the U.S. state of Hawaiʻi. Please participate by editing the article Menehune, or visit the project page for more details.
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the Project's quality scale.
(If you rated the article please give a brief summary at comments to explain the ratings.)

Contents

[edit] Menehune folklore

I would like to add folklore items, such as the the respects paid to Menehune by locals when driving through a tunnel on Maui. They beep their horn and lift their feet.--Thomas Veil 18:25, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Theory on origin of legend

Could the Homo_floresiensis be the origin of this legend?

I've added some links including one to Loren Coleman's discussion on the subject - suggesting they could be. I'm not so onvinced but... (Emperor 22:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC))
Emperor, I've removed the paranormal tag. Menehune aren't paranormal. They're just Hawaiian folklore. If I recall correctly (IIRC), historians believe that menehune myths "explain" large building projects of past times whose history is no longer remembered, such as a Kaua'i irrigation ditch, fishpond, etc. No one but gullible mainland visitors believes in menehune. Locals believe in Pele and night marchers, but this is supernatural pure and simple, not paranormal. Zora 02:46, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
No relation to Homo floresiensis. Time is not a factor (there are some Native American tales which appear to refer to mammoth hunts and Central Asian legends of what seems to be Ice Age rhinos, suggesting that mythology can conserve events for 15.000 years), but place is: any modern humans that would have encountered floresiensis were not ancestral to the Polynesians. Dysmorodrepanis 22:28, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Skeletons of miniature hominids that lived between 1,400 and 3,000 years ago found on the South Pacific island of Palau. This has to raise the question of whether or not the Tahitians ever encountered these folk. Whether or not it was on Hawaii they could still be the source of the legend. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080312/sc_afp/safricascienceanthropologyhobbit;_ylt=AjMTrXN10xPdG25pWd2xrI0PLBIF —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.109.144.216 (talk) 02:20, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Major revision

I removed all the "cryptozoology" references; there is no reason to believe that this is anything but a myth. The text seemed to be taken from the Encyclopedia Mythica entry, which is unreferenced and just plain bad. I rewrote according to Beckwith and Luomala. Zora 02:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Homo floresiensis

Added a see also link to the article on the species of extinct hominids recently discovered in the PI, Homo floresiensis.Trilobitealive 12:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)