How outsiders ruined the cultural and archaeological wealth in Palau’s Southern Islands

Our Islands Our People By Raquel Bagnol

Hundreds of miles away from Palau’s popular tourist attractions lie six tiny islands that will take one back to the past. These islands, collectively known as the Southwest Islands, are out of reach for regular travelers. They are flat, surrounded by endless blue ocean and vulnerable to storms.

Before foreign invaders set foot on these islands, the inhabitants lived a peaceful and blissful life.

Every layer of soil in the islands of Tobi, Merir, Pulo Anna, Sonsorol and Fana carries a rich history of ancient villages, sacred mounds and stories of human settlement that go back hundreds or thousands of years. The sixth island, Helen Atoll, was just a new sandbar with no ancient sites. It was not included in the study.

Very little was known about these islands, other than the surveys done in the 1950s.

Anthropologist Rosalind L. Hunter-Anderson, in her published work, “Ethnographic and Archaeological Investigations in the Southwest Islands of Palau in 2000,” provided a glimpse of how people lived, farmed and adapted to life on these small, remote islands.

In 1992, Hunter-Anderson joined a “rapid ecological assessment” in Tobi, Merir, Pulo Anna, Sonsorol and Fana to document their cultures and histories and determine when they were first occupied.

Hunter-Anderson led a team that walked across the islands and did small test digs to collect samples for radiocarbon dating. They also collected charcoal samples from the kitchen refuse mounds, soil from old taro fields and sites where meeting houses for the chiefs were built.

The only other archaeological information about the Southwest Islands available at that time was from research by Douglas Osborne, who visited the islands briefly in 1953, and ethnographic reports from other researchers.

The team used Osborne’s photos, maps and notes as their guide. However, they did not find most of the features Osborne wrote about the islands, because some of them may have already sunk. They found traditional artifacts, such as carved wooden bowls, shell adzes, fishhooks and beads scattered around the islands. While some were still preserved, others were fragile.

Large earth mounds were among the most distinct features found on the islands. In Tobi, they were called “ypur.” In the early times, a mound was the site for seclusion houses for menstruating women, birth houses and children’s cemetery.

Over the years, storm waves and high tides flattened the mounds, washing away the soil along with several fragile artifacts, including fish hooks, shell beads and infant bones from the cemetery.  

Merir had a large high mound, where the early settlers lived. However, instead of traditional thatched-roof houses, Hunter-Anderson found a modern wood and tin house, a tin radio shack and a water catchment.

Andres Antonio, a resident of the island, told Hunter-Anderson that the large mound was sectioned off for different traditional activities and purposes. There was a spot for shark eating, a place for women to stay during menstruation, an area for childbirth and infant burials and spaces for chiefly and non-chiefly residences.

Taro patches in the northern part of the island showed evidence of cultivation as far back as 1,100 years ago, although it could not be determined when humans first settled the island.

On Pulo Anna, Hunter-Anderson found a 15-foot mound that once had structures for traditional activities similar to those in other islands, such as menstrual huts. It also had canoe houses and a “God’s House,” presumably a place for worship. Hunter-Anderson said none of the structures survived.  

Fana was uninhabited when Hunter-Anderson’s team arrived, but they found artifacts including seashells, fragments of Tridacna adzes and stone tools. Some areas had traces of house sites and sacred spaces. Radiocarbon dating suggests the island was occupied within the past 300 years, but deeper deposits may exist.

In Sonsorol, the team found several World War II Japanese defense structures that were still in good condition, including long coral tunnels and two concrete gun emplacements.

Tobi had only 27 remaining residents when Hunter-Anderson’s team visited the island. Most Tobians had moved to Palau's mainland to study or be near the hospital, abandoning their wood-and-thatch houses on the island.

Before the exodus, Tobi had a population of 1,000. It was one of the most densely populated islands in Micronesia at that time. A map created in 1909 showed an organized agricultural zone and taro patches. The residential zone had family houses, rest houses, canoe houses, spirit houses and houses for cooking taro, turtle and fish.

The Tobians harvested Tridacna clams in nearby Helen Reef. Clams provided food and raw materials for making tools, such as gouge adzes for hollowing out canoes.

The arrival of outsiders changed the peace and quiet of the Southern Islands. Spain claimed the region first, and Germany succeeded it later.

In the early 1900s, the Japanese took over and operated phosphate mining, which changed the landscapes of Sonsorol and Tobi. They built narrow railways across the islands, destroying parts of traditional villages and ruining traces of the early settlers' agricultural activities. The Japanese also built a channel through the reef, triggering erosion on the coastlines.

After WWII, U.S. forces occupied the islands and cleared parts of Pulo Anna for military use, destroying sections of ancient residential mounds and archaeological sites that might have revealed more about the islands’ early history.

Hunter-Anderson noted that all of the historic, modern and environmental disturbances have altered or destroyed parts of the archaeological record, especially on Sonsorol and Tobi.

The Southwest Islands may seem like "the edge of the world' to visitors now, but studies—though limited—have established that these islands had an independent civilization with its own rules, culture and traditions.

 Raquel Bagnol is a longtime journalist. She worked as a reporter for Marianas Variety on Saipan and Island Times in Palau. Send feedback to gukdako@yahoo.com

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