MythicThe Maori Pouakai / Te Hokioi, giant divine birds
UBFandors and the Adamson-era memory of giant birds
Fandors and the Adamson-era memory of giant birds = The Maori Pouakai / Te Hokioi, giant divine birds
The Connection
Maori tradition preserves memory of the Pouakai or Te Hokioi, a giant bird capable of carrying off a man. Paleontology confirms the Haast's eagle, an eagle with a 3-meter wingspan that preyed on moa, persisted in New Zealand until roughly 1400 CE, recent enough for the incoming Maori to have encountered it directly. In the broader Pacific, memories of giant birds are general. The UB's fandors became extinct roughly 30,000 years ago, but the image of a rideable giant bird carried by Andite teachers into Polynesia would reinforce and be reinforced by the Haast's eagle encounter on arrival in New Zealand.
UB Citation
UB 66:5.6, 74:3.4, 77:5
Academic Source
Worthy & Holdaway, The Lost World of the Moa (2002); Tennyson & Martinson, Extinct Birds of New Zealand (2007)
Historical Evidence(Moderate evidence)
Trevor Worthy and Richard Holdaway documented the Haast's eagle (Hieraaetus moorei) as the largest eagle known in the geological record, with wingspan to 3 meters, extinct approximately 1400 CE. Maori oral tradition of the Pouakai preserves a clearly remembered experience of this animal. The fandor motif in the UB, already connected to Anzu (Sumerian), Garuda (Hindu), and Thunderbird (Indigenous American), finds a natural extension in Polynesian tradition: real giant birds existed, humans remembered them, and Andite-carried memories of fandors blended with direct local encounters.
Related Mappings
Andite sailors crossing "the Pacific by easy stages, tarrying on the many islands"
= The Polynesian voyaging ancestor-heroes
Universal Father, supreme creator
= Io, the Maori supreme being known only to the highest priestly caste
Sangik dispersion and long oral memory of pre-rebellion teachings
= Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime and the creator ancestors
Andite-reinforced culture-heroes remembered as the first Polynesian navigators
= Maui, Pan-Polynesian demigod who fishes up islands and establishes human arts