This story points out an interesting triangle of power between three species. Strange creatures from outer space, unusual creatures on earth and human beings interact in a life and death struggle. In the face of battle one group sacrifices for another and in the end they all sacrifice for each other. In real life we make enemies and friends and switch them around. This merry-go-round besets our politics and sometimes our personal lives. Don't be surprised if you see yourself in the mirror of Kunata.
For thousands of years before documented history chronicled the achievements of the great Asian and European seafaring explorers, the world’s largest geographical attribute, the Pacific Ocean, was being navigated, explored, and colonized by the intrepid and heroic peoples of the South Seas. For millennia, their migrations eastward and northward from their origins in Asia, allowed them to discover and populate most of the 20,000 islands considered to be one of the last and final frontiers of habitable earth. For reasons of famine, religion, overpopulation, war or just the overwhelming human desire for exploration, these passionate and resourceful people set out on perilous voyages in wooden canoes to find new homes and better lives. During this period in Polynesian history, countless adventures, myths and legends of tragedy, conquest, cataclysmic natural disasters and exploration were told and retold through oral tradition by the memory keepers down through the generations. In approximately 1000 AD, one such story details the spiritually guided unparalleled epic voyages of a double hulled deep sea sailing canoe and its crew of fourteen courageous loyal men. Lead by a young western Polynesian mariner/warrior who is inspired by his discovery of a piece of driftwood, a wooden tablet containing undecipherable but somewhat recognizable hieroglyphic script known to these primitive people as Rongo. In order to seek out and discover the meaning of the Rongo, the gods directed the creation of a great seagoing canoe appropriately named Malolo, (the Flying Fish). Built with great care and quality by expert craftsmen and artisans, this beautiful sleek craft was special in every way, built to withstand everything known and unknown that it could ultimately experience once it began its journey. With a crew of skilled, handpicked loyal men they set sail eastward on their momentous quest which takes them completely across the South Pacific to the seemingly endless land mass of South America then northward guided by their myths, legends and visions of those they encounter along the way. Their heroic adventures including their escape from sacrifice island, their survival of a Tsunami, the revenge of Pele (the fire goddess) and others, describe in historically based detail the wonders, experiences, tragedies, triumphs and discoveries by the men of Malolo during every phase of their voyage including their long and arduous time at sea. For this intrepid crew of ancient mariners the questions remain; will they ever discover the hidden meaning of the wooden tablet according to the will of their gods, will their journey return them once again to their tiny Western Pacific island, and will their epic adventure be worth all their suffering and loss?
One of the most beautiful maps to survive the Great Age of Discoveries, the 1513 world map drawn by Ottoman admiral Piri Reis is also one of the most mysterious. Gregory McIntosh has uncovered new evidence in the map that shows it to be among the most important ever made. This detailed study offers new commentary and explication of a major milestone in cartography. Correcting earlier work of Paul Kahle and pointing out the traps that have caught subsequent scholars, McIntosh disproves the dubious conclusion that the Reis map embodied Columbus's Third Voyage map of 1498, showing that it draws instead on the Second Voyage of 1493-1496. He also refutes the popular misinterpretation that Reis's depictions of Antarctica are evidence of either ancient civilizations or extraterrestrial visitation. McIntosh brings together all that has been previously known about the map and also assembles for the first time the translations of all inscriptions on the map and analyzes all place-names given for New World and Atlantic islands. His work clarifies long-standing mysteries and opens up new ways of looking at the history of exploration.
This is the revised, updated and enlarged second edition of the first detailed descriptive grammar in English dedicated to the Western Old Japanese. The grammar is divided into two volumes, with the first volume dealing with sources, script, phonology, lexicon, nominals and adjectives. The second volume focuses on verbs, adverbs, particles, conjunctions and interjections.
Short subject films have a long history in American cinemas. These could be anywhere from 2 to 40 minutes long and were used as a "filler" in a picture show that would include a cartoon, a newsreel, possibly a serial and a short before launching into the feature film. Shorts could tackle any topic of interest: an unusual travelogue, a comedy, musical revues, sports, nature or popular vaudeville acts. With the advent of sound-on-film in the mid-to-late 1920s, makers of earlier silent short subjects began experimenting with the short films, using them as a testing ground for the use of sound in feature movies. After the Second World War, and the rising popularity of television, short subject films became far too expensive to produce and they had mostly disappeared from the screens by the late 1950s. This encyclopedia offers comprehensive listings of American short subject films from the 1920s through the 1950s.
