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Tapu (Polynesian Culture)
Tapu is a Polynesian traditional concept denoting something holy or sacred, with " spiritual restriction" or "implied prohibition"; it involves rules and prohibitions. The English word ''taboo'' derives from this later meaning and dates from Captain James Cook's visit to Tonga in 1777. The concept exists in many societies, including traditional Māori, Samoan, Kiribati, Rapanui, Tahitian, Hawaiian, and Tongan cultures, in most cases using a recognisably similar word (from Proto-Polynesian '' *tapu''), though the Rotuman term for this concept is "ha'a". In Hawaii, a similar concept is known as "kapu". Outside Polynesian The root also exists outside Polynesian languages, in the broader Austronesian family: e.g. Fijian ''tabu'', Hiw (Vanuatu) ''toq'' ‘holy, sacred’, Mwotlap ''ne-teq'' ‘cemetery’… François (2022). Whether Polynesian or not, all modern forms go back to a Proto-Oceanic etymon reconstructed as *''tabu'' . As for cognates outside Oceanic, they seem to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kapu (Hawaiian Culture)
''Kapu'' is the ancient Hawaiian code of conduct of laws and regulations. The ''kapu'' system was universal in lifestyle, gender roles, politics and religion. An offense that was ''kapu'' was often a capital offense, but also often denoted a threat to spiritual power, or theft of ''mana''. ''Kapus'' were strictly enforced. Breaking one, even unintentionally, often meant immediate death, ''Koʻo kapu''. The concept is related to taboo and the '' tapu'' or ''tabu'' found in other Polynesian cultures. The Hawaiian word ''kapu'' is usually translated to English as "forbidden", though it also carries the meanings of "keep out", "no trespassing", "sacred", "consecrated", or "holy". The opposite of kapu is ''noa'', meaning "common" or "free". Kahili The ''Kahili'' were restrictions placed upon contact with chiefs (kings), but these also apply to all people of known spiritual power. ''Kapu Kū mamao'' means prohibited from a place of the chief, while ''Kalu noho'' was to assemble befor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Over-exploitation
Overexploitation, also called overharvesting, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns. Continued overexploitation can lead to the destruction of the resource, as it will be unable to replenish. The term applies to natural resources such as water aquifers, grazing pastures and forests, wild medicinal plants, fish stocks and other wildlife. In ecology, overexploitation describes one of the five main activities threatening global biodiversity. Ecologists use the term to describe populations that are harvested at an unsustainable rate, given their natural rates of mortality and capacities for reproduction. This can result in extinction at the population level and even extinction of whole species. In conservation biology, the term is usually used in the context of human economic activity that involves the taking of biological resources, or organisms, in larger numbers than their populations can withstand. The term is also used and defined some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Priest
A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities. Their office or position is the 'priesthood', a term which also may apply to such persons collectively. A priest may have the duty to hear confessions periodically, give marriage counseling, provide prenuptial counseling, give spiritual direction, teach catechism, or visit those confined indoors, such as the sick in hospitals and nursing homes. Description According to the trifunctional hypothesis of prehistoric Proto-Indo-European society, priests have existed since the earliest of times and in the simplest societies, most likely as a result of agricultural surplus and consequent social stratification. The necessity to read sacred texts and keep temple or church rec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tohunga
In the culture of the Māori of New Zealand, a tohunga (tōhuka in Southern Māori dialect) is an expert practitioner of any skill or art, either religious or otherwise. Tohunga include expert priests, healers, navigators, carvers, builders, teachers and advisors. "A tohunga may have also been the head of a whanau but quite often was also a rangatira and an ariki".Mead, S. M. (1997). ''Landmarks, bridges and visions: Essays''. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press. (p. 197). The equivalent and cognate in Hawaiian culture is ''kahuna'', tahu'a in Tahitian. Callings and practices There are many classes of tohunga (Best 1924:166) including: *Tohunga ahurewa: highest class of priest *Tohunga matakite: foretellers of the future * Tohunga whakairo: expert carvers *Tohunga raranga: expert weavers *Tohunga tātai arorangi: experts at reading the stars *Tohunga kōkōrangi: expert in the study of celestial bodies (astronomer) *Tohunga tārai waka: expert canoe builders *Tohu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Blust
Robert A. Blust (; ; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Blust specialized in the Austronesian languages and made major contributions to the field of Austronesian linguistics. Early life and career Blust was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 9, 1940, and raised in California. He received both a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology in 1967 and a PhD in linguistics in 1974 from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. He taught at Leiden University in The Netherlands from 1976 to 1984, after which he returned to the Department of Linguistics at Mānoa for the rest of his career, serving as department chair from 2005 to 2008. He was a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. Austronesian languages Until 2018, he served as the review editor for ''Oceanic Linguistics'', an academic journal that covers the A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Languages
The Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (CEMP) languages form a proposed branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages consisting of over 700 languages (Blust 1993). Distribution The Central Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken in the Lesser Sunda and Maluku Islands of the Banda Sea, in an area corresponding closely to the Indonesian provinces of East Nusa Tenggara and Maluku and the nation of East Timor (excepting the Papuan languages of Timor and nearby islands), but with the Bima language extending to the eastern half of Sumbawa Island in the province of West Nusa Tenggara and the Sula languages of the Sula Islands in the southwest corner of the province of North Maluku. The principal islands in this region are Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores, Timor, Buru, and Seram. The numerically most important languages are Nggahi Mbojo ( Bimanese), Manggarai of western Flores, Uab Meto of West Timor, and Tetum, the national language of East Timor. Subgrouping In the original proposal, CEMP is d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Etymon
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words and, by extension, the origin and evolution of their semantic meaning across time. It is a subfield of historical linguistics, and draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, semiotics, and phonetics. For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts, and texts about the language, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form, or when and how they entered the language. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about forms that are too old for any direct information to be available. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their sha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Oceanic Language
Proto-Oceanic (abbr. ''POc'') is a proto-language that historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Oceanic is a descendant of the Proto-Austronesian language (PAN), the common ancestor of the Austronesian languages. Proto-Oceanic was probably spoken around the late 3rd millennium BCE in the Bismarck Archipelago, east of Papua New Guinea. Archaeologists and linguists currently agree that its community more or less coincides with the Lapita culture. Linguistic characteristics The methodology of comparative linguistics, together with the relative homogeneity of Oceanic languages, make it possible to reconstruct with reasonable certainty the principal linguistic properties of their common ancestor, Proto-Oceanic. Like all scientific hypotheses, these reconstructions must be understood as obviously reflecting the state of science at a particular moment in time; t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tabu
Tabu may refer to: Cultural and legal concepts *Taboo (spelled ''tabu'' in earlier historical records), something that is unacceptable in society *Tapu (Polynesian culture) (also spelled ''tabu''), a Polynesian cultural concept from which the word taboo derives * Tapu (Ottoman law) (also tabu), a permanent lease of state-owned arable land to a peasant family in the Ottoman Empire *Toubou people of Africa People *Tabu (actress) (born 1971), Indian actress *Tabu Ley Rochereau (1937–2013), Congolese musician *Tabu Taid (born 1942), Indian educationist, writer and scholar * Tabu Abdallah, Burundian politician and former finance minister for Burundi Film and television * ''Tabu'' (1931 film), a 1931 award-winning film directed by F. W. Murnau * ''Tabu'' (2012 film), a 2012 Portuguese film * ''Tabu'' (TV series), a Finnish dark comedic show *Tabu the Jungle Wizard, a superpowered jungle hero comic book character created by Fletcher Hanks Music *''Tabu'', a 2017 album by Timotei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mwotlap
Mwotlap (pronounced ; formerly known as ''Motlav'') is an Oceanic language spoken by about 2,100 people in Vanuatu. The majority of speakers are found on the island of Motalava in the Banks Islands, with smaller communities in the islands of Ra (or ''Aya'') and Vanua Lava, as well as migrant groups in the two main cities of the country, Santo and Port Vila. Mwotlap was first described in any detail in 2001, by the linguist Alexandre François. Volow, which used to be spoken on the same island, may be considered a dialect or a separate language. The language Name The language is named after the island. Geographic distribution Mwotlap is spoken by about 2,100 people in the Banks Islands, in the North of Vanuatu. Among them, 1,640 live on the island of Mota Lava and its neighbor island, Ra. It is also spoken by a few hundred people living elsewhere in Vanuatu: * Vanua Lava, particularly in the northeast * Several other northern Vanuatu islands including Ureparapara, Gaua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
