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Peering into
Lavongai's dark past
By TUKUL WALLA KAIKU
Unlike the Israelites who can trace
their descendants, genealogies and generations as far back past
the time of Christ to the time of Abraham and even beyond that,
today only some Tungaks or Lovongais of Lavongai-New Hanover
Island in the New Ireland province can trace their descendants,
genealogies and generations to as far back as the 1800s.
As a people they literally have no historical accounts of their
past except for certain portions and aspects of oral traditions
and knowledge. For instance, according to their oral traditions,
at some undated time in the distant past their ancestors had lived
in clan groups at a communal inland settlement known as
Rina-I-Atukul-Kapung and due to a skirmish had disbanded and
migrated and settled at different locations on the island.
Anything else to do with the past according to elders is
attributed to the existence and works of mythical beings and gods
and a very dark and unwritten past aptly referred to as 'taun vong'
literally translated as 'time of darkness' or 'the dark ages'. And
despite what Lavongai elders have led us to think, there was a
past as can be traced through the following links.
A recent link would have to be references in books of voyages by
European explorers who sailed by the island from round about the
1600s. For instance, the Dutch navigators Schouten and le Marie
sailed past New Ireland including New Hanover in 1616. Then in
1700, the English navigator William Dampier sailed past the north
coast. Carteret in 1767 charted New Ireland and sailed by the
south coast and named the strait that separates New Hanover from
New Ireland, the Byron Strait. Richard Parkinson in his book,
Thirty Years in the South Seas has recounted how Carteret sailed
by New Ireland naming islands and passages as he went by. Carteret
in fact named Lavongai, New Hanover.
Two French navigators also sailed past the island: Bougainville
past the north coast in 1768 and D'Entrrecasteaux, the south coast
sailing past the island on the 24th of July 1792 via the St.
George's Channel and the Duke of York Islands.
A link that goes beyond the 1600s to the time of Christ and even
further back to about 5,000-6,000 years ago is the Tungak language
spoken by the Lavongais. The Tungak language is a stock of the
Austronesian language, which according to linguists originated
some 5,000-6,000 years ago, with Aboriginal Taiwanese in Taiwan
and was carried southwards and westwards as people migrated, and
spread throughout Oceania. The Austronesian language is very
widespread with variants spoken on Madagascar Island in the Indian
Ocean, all of south East Asia and the coastal regions and islands
of Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and all of the Pacific islands as
far as Hawaii and the Easter Islands.
Closely associated with the Austronesian language is that of a
host of myths and legends and mythical beings and heroes and even
the mythical 'Luan', the islands 'siva pukpukis', all features of
precontact Lavongai culture.
On the island also are stone works in the form of standing stones,
stonewall enclosures, boulders with designs or motifs and stone
altars. It is not known how old those stone works are but older
Lavongai's associate them with creative works of the gods.
Then there is the Lapita pottery and its associated weapon, the
obsidian blade and New Hanover's geographical location in the
Bismarck Sea area and the Austronesian language. The Lapita
pottery and obsidian are littered on Mussau Island west of
Lavongai and in West New Britain to the south. The obsidian blade
is found extensively on Manus Island to the west of Lavongai.
According to archaeologist Patrick Kirch, who conducted recent
excavation studies on three lapita sites in the Mussau Islands
'the Lapita Cultural Complex, ranging 5,000 km from the Bismarck
Archipelago to Western Polynesia and spanning the period 3600 to
2500 B. P., represents the initial colonization of the SW Pacific
by Austronesian peoples'. His view is that, the Mussau Island
sites and indeed the Bismarck islands could well have been a
lapita 'community of culture' and the original homeland of Lapita
with an ancient economy and long-distance exchange networks.
Given that there would have been sea faring voyages between West
New Britain, Mussau and Manus and even mainland New Ireland, there
was no way the Argonauts of those times would have missed Lavongai,
a huge mountainous hump in that region. Lavongai definitely had to
be part of that ancient economy and long-distance exchange network
Another of the undated links is that of the social organization of
the Lavongai's. The people are socially grouped into twelve
matrilineal clans, symbolized by bird totems known as Pat-mani.
One of these, Uk or Dove clan has no members. The surviving eleven
clans with members include; Mani (Fish Hawk), Kanai (Seagull),
Ianga (Parrot), Valus (Pigeon), Nguma (Crow), Kikiu (Woodpecker),
Venge-venge (Hornbill), Sui (Kingfisher), Silau (Bush Fowl), Tien
(Starling) and Gila (Parrakeet). Marriage within the clan is
forbidden. Each clan is distinct from the other. What is
intriguing about the Lavongai clan system is that it is very
similar to that of the Nakanai's of West New Britain. On the other
hand, the Mussau clan system is similar to mainland New Ireland
clan arrangements where the clans are exogamous, that is, there
are two main clans known as big pisin and small pisin respectively
and members of the big pisin clan can only marry members from the
small pisin clan and vise a versa. The clans are also bird totems.
So how far back can Lovongais trace their past? Although a number
of links exist, for now, the most distant they can go back would
have to be about 5,000 to 6,000 years ago when an Austronesian-speaking
people would have been on the island.
The author is a lecturer with the School
of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Papua New Guinea.
 
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