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Robin Wylie , is a doctorial candidate in vulcanology , atUniversity College London . He contributed this article toLiveScience’sExpert Voices : Op - Ed & Insights .
Hawaii ’s vibrant mythology is dwell by savage , excited gods . But behind the phantasy could lie clues to the catastrophic volcanic case that scientists now believe prompt those tale .
An aerial view of the erupting Pu’u O’o crater on Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano taken at dusk on 30 December 2024.
Ten centuries ago , the little chemical group of Polynesian navy man who first glimpsed theHawaiian Islandsmust have feel the providential ; a thousand miles from home , the Pacific had thrown them a lifeline . What they check when they landed , though , confirmed the supernatural : On this lonely outpost , in an unending ocean , the earth itself was alive .
The settlers had no save language , so we can only opine at the event that inspired early legends of a god who devoured woods . But some sights seem to have sparked such fear in the islanders that they left an invisible bull’s eye . lately , the robust oral history of the native Hawaiians has lead off to meet scientific care . It seems that , keep in the ancient tales of volcano gods , there could be something very real — relics of the two most incredible eruptions the Big Island has witnessed since humans first floated ashore .
In 1790 , Captain Cook became the first outsider to meet — and be bolt down by — the inhabitants of what he call the " Sandwich Islands . " Thirty years later on , another Englishman — William Ellis , a missionary — spoke to them in their own glossa . ( No hatchets this time . )
An aerial view of the erupting Pu’u O’o crater on Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano taken at dusk on 28 April 2025.
Instead , the islanders showed him their vent — the immense , lava - scarred pit ofMount Kilauea — and told Ellis story about a mythology revolving around the goddess Pele , who they revealed as envious , volatile and eruptive .
Scientists are n’t used to wad through poetical metaphor , but when Don Swanson , a former manager of the scientific observation tower which overlooks Kilauea , read Ellis ' accounts , he envision more than just superstitious notion — he run across a record .
His volcanologist ’s eye was drawn to one caption in particular . Pele had fall in love . Steaming in her pitfall atop Kilauea , she demanded that her sister , Hi’iaka , fetch the object of her affections from his island menage in the North . His name was Lohi’au , and he does n’t come out of this well . Hi’iaka hold , on one condition : that her sister keep her fires away from a grove of inflorescence tree that she valued above all else .
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Hi’iaka excelled in her task — first bringing Lohi’au back to life , and then back to Kilauea . But she had take too long . Pele ’s temper flared ( nobody said volcano were reasonable ) , and Hi’iaka returned to regain her treasured forest ablaze . But her sister was n’t done . The goddess then proceeded to murder Lohi’au , and cast his organic structure into the depths of her volcano . In reply , grief - smitten , Hi’iaka began to dig . Frantically . stone were flying out of the crater . She cut into so cryptical , she was discourage that if she did n’t stop , she would hit water , and put out Pele ’s fire .
Burning forests . skewer volcanic crater . People should write what they eff , I suppose — even if unwritten tradition takes the property of writing .
It does n’t take a huge leap to imagine , as Swanson did , that the story of Hi’iaka ’s burning forest might control echo of an ancient lava flow . But why would something as dull as a lava flow ( of all things ! ) have diffused into myth ? They ’re regular episodes above a volcanic hot spot , after all . Perhaps , though , there had been one worth remembering . [ In Images : Hawaii ’s Mount Kilauea Erupts ]
In the 1980s , a squad of geologist stumble across a flow that had been emitted from an nonextant outlet on Kilauea ’s east flank , sometime in the 15th C . It was Brobdingnagian — the lava had make the ocean , more than 25 miles ( 40 klick ) off . But its duration was n’t the only affair that catch Swanson ’s eye . Using carbon-14 analysis , he pinpointed the exact year that the stream had begin — 1410 . Almost unbelievably , the end escort was not year , but decade , later , in 1470 . This single , gigantic current of basalt had die hard for three generations . It would have shift the landscape eternally . Enough , perhaps , to etch itself into legend .
Incredibly , though , the last deed of this mythical quarrel could be veil something even bigger . Hi’iaka ’s furious digging , Swanson realized , might be draw the exclusive biggest volcanic upthrow at Hawaii since humans go far : It was the stark metaphor for a caldera collapse — the catastrophic slumping which turns a " traditional " volcanic crater into ahuge , blemish scar .
At the time of the megaflow , Kilauea had a relatively minuscule summit crater . By the clock time Cook landed , however , it had morphed into a cauldron : 2 miles ( 3 km ) all-embracing and 400 foot ( 122 meters ) deep .
Today , scientist can confidently say that the caldera formed due to the drainage of magma - filled chasm beneath the volcano . But if you ’re a fifteenth - one C Hawaiian , and all you know is that the Earth itself is sinking around you in a chorus of explosion , then a god excavation is n’t a bad dead reckoning .
It ’s an elysian musical composition of detective work ; but also a fascinating insight into how myths begin . Swanson ’s venerating discourse of the story of Pele allowed him to see it for what it partly was : a hypothesis . Formed by regular the great unwashed striving to explain the incredible — a in effect surmise at a time when the approachable Earth ended at the surface . Anything below , like the nameless void above the virtuoso , was pay over to the god .
The views utter are those of the writer and do not needs think over the views of the publishing company . This version of the article was originally issue onLiveScience .
