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Typee
Typee:A Peep at Polynesian Life, by Herman Melville, was the first source of a definitive feeling I ever had about what means ahupua'a.
Having lived years in several ahupua'a two of which are defined by ridgelines extending from the highest peaks in the island's center, leading to impassable cliff promotories at the ocean's waterline, it is easy to accept (whether it is true or not) Melville's depiction that pre-colonial times Polynesian residents (Melville was depicting Marquesas more than Hawaii) of adjoining ahupua'a would not even speak the same language sometimes.
In another case, two ahupua'a are delienated from one another by "a stream" that amounts to little more than a tidal ditch which descends to the ocean about three feet in a quarter mile, from a usually pondless lowground at the base of a 200' "mountain" which runs parallel to the shoreline.
Not yet having inquired of elders about some answers to your question, but having asked the not so elder, I confimed what I had thought: that there were/are markers. Rock walls do not seem to be among such markers, as much as do more natural markers. Since each ahupua'a is unique, so too is that which defines each one; although, strictly speaking, apart from each ahupua'a shoreline, that which defines one ahupua'a simultaneously defines its adjacent ahupua'a.
"I've got a somewhat related question that I hope someone who understands the ahupua'a concept can explain: how did the families on the ahupua'a know what the boundaries of their ahupua'a was, since it ran mauka to makai and covered a whole swath of land? Was it through the construction of stone walls?" ---Miulang
Typee:A Peep at Polynesian Life, by Herman Melville, was the first source of a definitive feeling I ever had about what means ahupua'a.
Having lived years in several ahupua'a two of which are defined by ridgelines extending from the highest peaks in the island's center, leading to impassable cliff promotories at the ocean's waterline, it is easy to accept (whether it is true or not) Melville's depiction that pre-colonial times Polynesian residents (Melville was depicting Marquesas more than Hawaii) of adjoining ahupua'a would not even speak the same language sometimes.
In another case, two ahupua'a are delienated from one another by "a stream" that amounts to little more than a tidal ditch which descends to the ocean about three feet in a quarter mile, from a usually pondless lowground at the base of a 200' "mountain" which runs parallel to the shoreline.
Not yet having inquired of elders about some answers to your question, but having asked the not so elder, I confimed what I had thought: that there were/are markers. Rock walls do not seem to be among such markers, as much as do more natural markers. Since each ahupua'a is unique, so too is that which defines each one; although, strictly speaking, apart from each ahupua'a shoreline, that which defines one ahupua'a simultaneously defines its adjacent ahupua'a.
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