Myths
According to legend, Samoa shares the common Polynesian ancestor of Tagaloa; according to many legends, Samoa was Tagaloa's first creation. Oral traditions trace Samoan ancestry back to pre-history.
Samoa is recognized as the center of Polynesia, from where people migrated eastward to the Marquesas, southward to Niue and the Pukapuka islands of Rarotonga, and northward to the Tokelau and Tuvalu island groups; in all these islands, oral tradition is maintained of ancestral voyages from the Samoan islands. These migrations reflect the extraordinary courage of these seafaring people in navigating without instruments to sail throughout the vast Pacific Ocean.
Read more about this topic: History Of Samoa
Famous quotes containing the word myths:
“The myths have always condemned those who “looked back.” Condemned them, whatever the paradise may have been which they were leaving. Hence this shadow over each departure from your decision.”
—Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961)
“Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have “really happened,” or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)
“The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawmakers had sanctioned them as a useful expedient.... They needed to control the people by superstitious fears, and these cannot be aroused without myths and marvels.”
—Strabo (c. 58 B.C.–c. 24 A.D., Greek geographer. Geographia, bk. 1, sct. 2, subsct. 8.