If you think that artificial islands could only be found in Dubai, then you are wrong.
Apparently, you could also find artificial islands in the Solomon Islands that existed many generations before.
Malaita Province is known to be the most populous island in the Solomon Islands. Because of this, Malaita also caters for a large number of artificial islands especially found on the LangaLanga and Lau lagoon.
According to some people, artificial islands were built by outcasts of inland villages or some were said to have been built because of the growing population
It was said that villagers usually collect or dive for boulders or stones to throw on top of the raised reefs, depending on how high and wide they want the island to be. The activity is usually supervised by the elders of the village.
According to some people from Malaita, these artificial islands were skills from their ancestors which had been passed down through generations.
Over time, more artificial islands were built and even expanded to cater for the growing population. Surprisingly, trees also grow on these islands.
“We have direct fresh air when we are on the island and it is also easier to catch sea food and although we have to travel to the mainland for water, living on the artificial island is what we are used to and prefer,” said Mr. Matthew Kaonia from Malaita province.
It has been estimated that almost 12,000 Malaita people in the Langalanga and Lau Lagoon live on the artificial islands.
And over time, the artificial islands have become an icon for the Solomon Islands just like that of the Bamboo Bands, Kennedy Island in Western Province, the Marovo Lagoon and Lake Tengano in the Rennell Bellona Province.
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Some Lau historians remember the beginning this way:
The ancestors, who were descended from worms, lived on a mountain above the jungled folds of Malaita. One day, a hero named Golo’au ventured forth from the mountain to discover the promised land, which was not land at all but a vast, reef-protected lagoon fringing the island’s northwest coast. Golo’au and his kin built rafts from bamboo and they paddled out onto that calm water. They pulled hunks of coral rock from the shallow bottom and piled them upon each other until they had created islands on which they could build thatch houses. The Lau raised their children on the water, safe from the headhunters and mosquitoes that populated the bush. Fish filled their nets. Life was good. When the ancestors died, their spirits did not leave the lagoon. Instead, they inhabited the bodies of sharks and birds and, together with other spirit creatures, they were able to protect their descendants with their magic.
For centuries the Lau people honoured the spirits by following their edicts and killing pigs for them. The priests of the Rere clan offered regular blood sacrifices to the speckled octopus that inhabited the reef near the island of Foueda, ensuring the octopus would protect them from the dangers of the sea. “The octopus took care of people,” the man with the scarified cheeks told me. “If they were lost at sea, he would bring them home. If they were drowning, he would save them.” Sometimes the octopus would crawl right up out of the sea into a priest’s canoe to let him know it was time for a sacrifice. It would crawl onto land, too. If you left a basket of food outside your door, the octopus would plunk himself down on top of it and engulf it. He preferred pork to fruit.
The Rere priests had kept the octopus’s name a secret so that lay people, fools, and enemies could not abuse its power.
You could call this story a myth, which is to say that historical accuracy is irrelevant to its truths. The archipelago that surrounds the Lau Lagoon has gained a reputation as a veritable Disneyland for anthropologists interested in this kind of narrative. The big guns of early twentieth century anthropology—Bronisaw Malinowski, W. H. Rivers, Maurice Leenhardt, and others—were convinced by their time in Melanesia that the real function of mythic stories was not to entertain but to serve as vehicles for moral and existential truths. They carried rules for living, values, messages from the ancestors. They told islanders about the most essential parts of themselves. They were metaphors, yes, but they were always sustained by lived experience. And as far as the islanders were concerned, whenever they obeyed the rules set out by their ancestors, they prospered.
But in an era of global cultural convergence, myths can shift as fluidly as the tides that push in and out of the Lau Lagoon. Waves of Christian evangelists have now convinced most Pacific islanders, including the Lau, to trade their guiding myths for those of the Bible.
The Lau had a complex and dangerous relationship with the spirit world. Life was governed by strict taboos handed down by the ancestors. Women were associated with the earth and fertility; life-giving power flowed from their vaginas. Men were associated with the sky, and they were careful not to violate the cosmic order by coming into contact with menstrual blood or by placing themselves below a woman’s pelvis. The people built walls in their villages to protect the most sacred aspects of life. Women retreated to their sanctuaries to menstruate and give birth. Male priests made their sacrifices at rock shrines and skull pits in their own enclosures.
