Across every tale passed down through Tongan generations, one remains unchanged: the Polynesian kingdom’s creation story. The beginning was the ocean; and from the ocean, the islands’ first ancestors emerged.
In one creation story, there were two ancestors: Limu, the seaweed, and Kele, the sea sediment or sea mud. Limu and Kele lived in the ancestral land of Pulotu. They gave rise to a rock called Touia’o Futuna, which produced four sets of twins who gave birth to the ancestors of Tonga’s most important deities, including Maui, the god who hauled some of Tonga’s coral islands out of the ocean with his famous fishhook.
Original Article: Tonga Could Soon Become the First Country to Recognize Whale Rights
