This page groups sacred sites by whether UNESCO has formally recognized them. Wikipedia notes elsewhere that cultural traditions can be "recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity," the same kind of international listing that applies to World Heritage sites. Browsing by UNESCO status lets a visitor see which sacred sites carry that international recognition and which do not.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingMarae, heiau, meae and ahu: walled open-air courts with a raised stone platform, the characteristic ritual structure of East Polynesia. Ritual authority was physically transmissible, a new marae being founded by carrying a stone from an older one, so the sites form a traceable network. 2 Peoples and Traditions CoveredA cover term across the Polynesian triangle: Maori, Kanaka Maoli, Maohi of the Society Islands, Rapa Nui, Samoans, Tongans, Marquesans, Cook Islanders and others. They share an ancestral language and a common repertoire, and they are distinct peoples in what are now several separate states. 2 Origins
Whose Classification This IsThe division of the Pacific into Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia was proposed by Jules Dumont d'Urville in 1832 and rested in part on judgements about race. Polynesia has outlived that origin as a sound linguistic and genealogical grouping; the threefold scheme as a whole has not. 2 Learn More
Polynesian sacred sites
This small group gathers a sacred site of the wider Polynesian world, a marae, temple platform or sacred place of the island peoples of the Pacific, where the gods and ancestors were honoured.
The browser will find the site the atlas classes here. The entry describes its religious significance within Polynesian tradition.
UNESCO World Heritage Status
Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Sites grouped for the Polynesian tradition.
Source On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact, 2nd editionPatrick Vinton Kirch
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact, 2nd edition
Patrick Vinton Kirch, University of California Press, 2017on East Polynesian ritual architecture
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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