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Excerpt from Chapter 1: "A Sacred Mountain"
Mauna Kea rises majestically from the depths of the Pacific Ocean as if Earth itself were reaching up to touch the heavens. Measured from its base to its peak, it is the tallest mountain in the world, towering fourteen thousand feet above sea level with another nineteen thousand feet hidden below the ocean's surface. To stand on the summit of Mauna Kea is to stand above almost half our planet's atmosphere.
Like all the volcanoes that make up the Hawaiian Islands, Mauna Kea was born of fire. Sometime in the distant past, roughly a million years ago, the mountain was created by a volcanic hot spot on the ocean floor that spewed molten lava from Earth's interior. As the newborn Mauna Kea grew, its crest slowly emerged from the ocean's watery womb and continued rising until it pierced the clouds. Carried along by Earth's constantly shifting crust, the massive mountain - which today is bigger than the entire islands of Oahu or Maui - gradually drifted away from its parental hotspot and grew no more. But although Mauna Kea's last volcanic eruption occurred some four thousand years ago, scientists cannot rule out the possibility that it might someday erupt again.
The realm of the gods
For most of its history, Mauna Kea existed in splendid isolation, shaped by numerous episodes of volcanic activity and ice ages to which no human was witness. The first people to behold Mauna Kea were Polynesians, whose legendary ability to sail across the Pacific Ocean by observing the stars, winds, waves, and cloud patterns brought them to Hawaii's shores nearly two thousand years ago. Mauna Kea's immense size and, sometimes, snowcapped peak - unknown sights elsewhere in the tropical Pacific - must surely have amazed them.
Perhaps for these reasons, Mauna Kea has long been a sacred place to the Hawaiian people. The mountain is revered as the embodiment of the piko, or umbilical cord, that connects Hawaiians back through time to their ancestral origin as descendents of the gods. It is the home of Poli'ahu, the goddess of snow, and her sister Lilinoe, the goddess of mist. Some say the white crown of snow that frequently covers its peak during winter months, from November to April, and occasionally during other times of the year gave the mountain its name: Mauna Kea means "White Mountain." Others suggest that Mauna Kea is a shortened form of Ka Mauna a Wakea, or "Wakea's Mountain," since, according to ancient lore, the island of Hawaii was the firstborn child of Wakea and Papa-hanau-moku, the Sky Father and Earth Mother.
Because of its sacred nature as wao akua - the region of the gods and goddesses - only the most elite members of ancient Hawaii's society were permitted to ascend to the summit of Mauna Kea. The many ancient stone shrines and altars sprinkled around Mauna Kea's slopes - nearly one hundred have been found so far - attest to the mountain's powerful cultural and spiritual significance. This holiest site in the Hawaiian Islands was also the final resting place of chiefs, priests, and other high-ranking members of society, whose remains were buried in hidden graves. Today, some native Hawaiians continue to worship on Mauna Kea and to honor their cultural heritage there, just as their ancestors did for centuries before them.
While Mauna Kea's summit was a spiritual realm to Hawaii's early inhabitants, Mauna Kea's lower elevations provided many practical benefits. One of the most important was the Keanakako'i adze quarry that stretched for several miles around the twelve thousand-foot level of Mauna Kea's slopes. Because metal was unknown in Hawaii, for centuries fragments of dense volcanic rock were harvested from the mountainside and shaped into stone tools used to cut down trees from which canoes, weapons and other items essential for survival were crafted. Although adze quarries were also found on other Hawaiian islands, Mauna Kea was prized for having the highest quality sone from which the finest tools could be made.
The realm of the stars
"The ancient Hawaiians were astronomers," wrote Hawaii's last reigning monarch, Queen Lili'uokalani, in 1897. Indeed, when Captain James Cook and his ships arrived on Hawaii's shores in 1778, he was met by a people with a long tradition of watching the heavens. The starry skies guided the Hawaiians not only as they sailed across the vast Pacific Ocean but also in their daily lives. Crops were planted, fish were caught, wars were fought, and religious festivals were celebrated according to the phases of the moon and the seasonal positions of the stars in the sky. Hawaiian astronomers, called kilo hoku, or "star watchers," were among the most esteemed members of society.
Sadly, much of the ancient Hawaiian knowledge of the heavens has been lost, a casualty of the cultural upheaval that followed European contact. With no written language, Hawaiians passed down their astronomical knowledge orally from generation to generation. Although the Hawaiians had names for hundreds of stars and constellations, the nineteenth-century missionaries who first transcribed the Hawaiian language had little or no knowledge of astronomy themselves, and so they often recorded Hawaiian star names without identifying which stars they represented. More than three hundred Hawaiian star names have survived to the present, but less than half are associated with specific stars.
No one knows for certain whether the ancient Hawaiians made astronomical observations from Mauna Kea. Perhaps the kilo hoku came to the tallest mountain in the Pacific to discern signs in the starry skies from its vantage point closest to the heavens. Or it may be that the summit was considered too divine for such human activity.
The first telescope in Hawaii arrived and departed with Captain Cook in 1778; his ships' logs listed four telescopes. A century would pass before Hawaii's King Kalakaua helped bring the first permanent telescope to the islands in 1883, and almost another century would pass before the first telescope was built on Mauna Kea.
Today, thirteen of the biggest and most sophisticated telescopes ever created stand near the summit of the White Mountain. In a sense they are modern testaments to the glory of Mauna Kea, built by astronomers who, like the Hawaiians who came here before them, revere the mountain as a gateway to the heavens. The same curiosity to learn what lies beyond the horizon that inspired the ancient Polynesians to set sail for new lands and brought them to Hawaii so long ago inspires astronomers today to search the cosmic ocean to learn about distant stars, distant galaxies, distant worlds.
From one of the youngest spots on Earth, a new generation of explorers looks up into the black night speckled with ancient starlight and wonders how this all came to be.
A Gentle Rain of Starlight: The Story of Astronomy on Mauna Kea by Michael J. West is available from Amazon.com, Island Heritage Publishing, Borders, Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaii, Hawaii Forest & Trail, and other booksellers.
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