#Maluku Island

[malbecmusings]

Maluku Island, Indonesia

[postcard-from-the-past]

Bride and groom from the Ambon Island, Maluku Islands of Indonesia

Dutch vintage postcard, mailed in 1905 to the Netherlands

[googlemapsrandomplaces]

mesiang, south central aru, aru islands regency, maluku, indonesia

by khafid sofyan

[tle13]

[southeastasianarchaeology]

[Paper] Moluccan Fighting Craft on Australian Shores: Contact Rock Art from Awunbarna, Arnhem Land

via Historical Archaeology, 02 May 2023: Earlier this week we had a few stories about Indonesian boats depicted in Australian rock art; this is the Open Access paper by Ruyter et al.

via Historical Archaeology, 02 May 2023: Earlier this week we had a few stories about Indonesian boats depicted in Australian rock art; this is the Open Access paper by Ruyter et al. Two similar watercraft depicted in rock art at Awunbarna, Arnhem Land, Australia, are unlike the Macassan prahus and Western craft shown at other contact sites in northern Australia, but are sufficiently detailed to…

[kul-tiras-the-gales-home]

Captured by the whaling ship Woodlark on April 7, 1843 and now in the National Museum of Scotland:

scrish

[herpsandbirds]

Moluccan Eclectus Parrot (Eclectus roratus), female, family Psittaculidae, order Psittaciformes, found in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia

The females are more brightly colored than the males, which are green, with bright orange beaks.

photograph by Kow Hao Rui

[todaysbird]

the mistletoebird, also known as the mistletoe flowerpecker, is a member of the flowerpecker family native to the majority of australia as well as the eastern portion of the maluku islands of indonesia. these frugivorous birds are intensely specialized feeders that solely consume mistletoe berries, and are primarily responsible for spread of mistletoe seeds through their droppings. males have a dark blue upperside and a scarlet chest, while females are primarily soft gray. these swift fliers are often shy and tend to keep limited to pairs or small groups.

[themakeupbrush]

Puteri Indonesia Maluku 2023 Regional Costume

Larat Orchids are a species of orchids native to Pulau Larat in Tanimbar Islands, Maluku Province. This plant is eleveatrd to be the identity Flora of Maluku Province. In local language, this Orchid is commonly called Lelemuku. The flowers are purple neatly arranged on the stem. This orchids are vulnerable and protected in their native location.

[death-mothblog]

Cowrie or cowry is the common name for a group of small to large sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Cypraeidae, the cowries.

The term porcelain derives from the old Italian term for the cowrie shell (porcellana) due to their similar appearance.

Cowrie shells have held cultural, economic, and ornamental significance in various cultures. The cowrie was the shell most widely used worldwide as shell money. It is most abundant in the Indian Ocean, and was collected in the Maldive Islands, in Sri Lanka, along the Indian Malabar coast, in Borneo and on other East Indian islands, in Maluku in the Pacific, and in various parts of the African coast from Ras Hafun to Mozambique. Cowrie shell money was important in the trade networks of Africa, South Asia, and East Asia.

In the United States and Mexico, cowrie species inhabit the waters off Central California to Baja California (the chestnut cowrie is the only cowrie species native to the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of the United States; further south, off the coast of Mexico, Central America and Peru, Little Deer Cowrie habitat can be found; and further into the Pacific from Central America, the Pacific habitat range of Money Cowrie can be reached) as well as the waters south of the Southeastern United States.

Some species in the family Ovulidae are also often referred to as cowries. In the British Isles the local Trivia species (family Triviidae, species Trivia monacha and Trivia arctica) are sometimes called cowries. The Ovulidae and the Triviidae are other families within Cypraeoidea, the superfamily of cowries and their close relatives.

The shells of cowries are usually smooth and shiny and more or less egg-shaped. The round side of the shell is called the Dorsal Face, whereas the flat under side is called the Ventral Face, which shows a long, narrow, slit-like opening (aperture), which is often toothed at the edges. The narrower end of the egg-shaped cowrie shell is the anterior end, and the broader end of the shell is called the posterior. The spire of the shell is not visible in the adult shell of most species, but is visible in juveniles, which have a different shape from the adults.

Nearly all cowries have a porcelain-like shine, with some exceptions such as Hawaii's granulated cowrie, Nucleolaria granulata. Many have colorful patterns. Lengths range from 5 mm (0.2 in) for some species up to 19 cm (7.5 in) for the Atlantic deer cowrie, Macrocypraea cervus.

[vintagrafica]

Moluccan eclectus or Eclectus roratus

The Moluccan eclectus is a parrot native to the Maluku Islands. Their bright feathers are also used by native tribespeople in New Guinea as decorations.

Available now on Redbubble

[beardedmrbean]

The remains of an American woman have been discovered inside the stomach of a shark after she disappeared on vacation in Indonesia while on a diving trip, according to a friend of the woman.

Colleen Monfore, 68, was diving with friends near the Pulau Reong island off the coast of Indonesia’s Southwest Maluku Regency on Sept. 26 when she did not resurface, Asia Pacific Press reported.

Two weeks after Monfore disappeared in the tropical waters, a fisherman spotted a shark in distress and killed the creature. Upon cutting open the shark’s stomach, the fisherman uncovered what were believed to be Monfore’s remains along with her wetsuit and bathing suit.

Initial reports indicated the shark had attacked and eaten Monfore, but a friend of the Michigan woman says that the evidence so far suggests this is likely false.

Kim Sass, who wrote that Monfore was her "very good friend" in a Facebook post, listed what is known about the case, and how it appears likely that Monfore died of a medical issue during a dive.

Sass wrote that the fisherman captured the shark around Oct. 4 near Timor-Leste, a southeast Asian country which is 70 miles away from the dive site where Monfore vanished over a week earlier.

Monfore’s remains were identifiable, according to Sass, which would not have been had the shark eaten her at the time she went missing.

While it can take days for sharks to fully digest a meal, the stomach of a shark "produces an acid that is strong enough to dissolve metal," while "large bones and other indigestible objects are prevented from going past the stomach due to the small size of the opening to the intestine," according to the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Sass believes that the nearly eight-day timeframe from when Monfore disappeared to when the shark was found suggests that the shark consumed Monfore after she was already dead.

"Colleen's body was identifiable. Her fingerprints (again identifiable) are being used by our US Embassy and the local government for proof of death," Sass wrote. "This would not be possible if the shark had attacked her weeks ago."

Sass said that dive information, photos and witness accounts from two other divers and the group’s dive master show that Monfore was in 24 feet of water when the group turned around due to a change in the current. Sass added that Monfore likely had half a tank of air at that time.

"There was a down current at the turn around site, but it was manageable," she wrote. "I've easily done 1000+ dive with this gracious woman; she was an excellent diver. I don't believe it was the environment and certainly not a shark that ended her life."

It remains unclear how exactly Monfore died. 

Indonesian authorities are continuing to investigate.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Folklore dance in Ambon, Maluku islands, Indonesia

Dutch vintage postcard

[freesimsshit]

if you have benefited from this blog please donate to Neveen and her beautiful family so they can escape! i also have charity links and more fundraisers for Tigray, Gaza, Gambia, Mongolia, Armenia, Congo, Sudan on my linktree. You can also find some educational stuff about reproductive rights in Brazil, Indonesia's crimes in West Papua and something about Maluku Islands. If you choose to refrain from buying new electronics for Congo and you don't buy new jewellery because of Sudan, you're also doing your bit to reduce demand for nickel which is in everything and hurts people in the Maluku Islands who just want to be left alone.

[fatehbaz]

In 1678, a Chaldean priest from Baghdad reached the Imperial Villa of Potosí, the world’s richest silver-mining camp and at the time the world’s highest city at more than 4,000 metres (13,100 feet) above sea level. A regional capital in the heart of the Bolivian Andes, Potosí remains – more than three and a half centuries later – a mining city today. [...] The great red Cerro Rico or ‘Rich Hill’ towered over the city of Potosí. It had been mined since 1545 [...]. When Don Elias arrived [...], the great boom of 1575-1635 – when Potosí alone produced nearly half the world’s silver – was over, but the mines were still yielding the precious metal. [...]

On Potosí’s main market plaza, indigenous and African women served up maize beer, hot soup and yerba mate. Shops displayed the world’s finest silk and linen fabrics, Chinese porcelain, Venetian glassware, Russian leather goods, Japanese lacquerware, Flemish paintings and bestselling books in a dozen languages. [...]

Pious or otherwise, wealthy women clicked Potosí’s cobbled streets in silver-heeled platform shoes, their gold earrings, chokers and bracelets studded with Indian diamonds and Burmese rubies. Colombian emeralds and Caribbean pearls were almost too common. Peninsular Spanish ‘foodies’ could savour imported almonds, capers, olives, arborio rice, saffron, and sweet and dry Castilian wines. Black pepper arrived from Sumatra and southwest India, cinnamon from Sri Lanka, cloves from Maluku and nutmeg from the Banda Islands. Jamaica provided allspice. Overloaded galleons spent months transporting these luxuries across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. Plodding mule and llama trains carried them up to the lofty Imperial Villa.

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Potosi supplied the world with silver, the lifeblood of trade and sinews of war [...]. In turn, the city consumed the world’s top commodities and manufactures. [...] The city’s dozen-plus notaries worked non-stop inventorying silver bars and sacks of pesos [...]. Mule trains returning from the Pacific brought merchandise and mercury, the essential ingredient for silver refining. [...] From Buenos Aires came slavers with captive Africans from Congo and Angola, transshipped via Rio de Janeiro. Many of the enslaved were children branded with marks mirroring those, including the royal crown, inscribed on silver bars.

Soon after its 1545 discovery, Potosí gained world renown [...]. Mexico’s many mining camps [...] peaked only after 1690. [...] Even in the Andes of South America there were other silver cities [...]. But no silver deposit in the world matched the Cerro Rico, and no other mining-refining conglomeration grew so large. Potosí was unique: a mining metropolis.

Thus Don Elias, like others, made the pilgrimage to the silver mountain. It was a divine prodigy, a hierophany. In 1580, Ottoman artists depicted Potosí as a slice of earthly paradise, the Cerro Rico lush and green, the city surrounded by crenellated walls. Potosí, as Don Quixote proclaimed, was the stuff of dreams. Another alms seeker, in 1600, declared the Cerro Rico the Eighth Wonder of the World. A [...] visitor in 1615 gushed: ‘Thanks to its mines, Castile is Castile, Rome is Rome, the pope is the pope, and the king is monarch of the world.’ [...]

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For all its glory, Potosí was also the stuff of nightmares [...].

Almost a century before Don Elias visited Potosí, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo revolutionised world silver production. Toledo was a hard-driving bureaucrat of the Spanish empire [...]. Toledo reached Potosí in 1572, anxious to flip it into the empire’s motor of commerce and war. By 1575, the viceroy had organised a sweeping labour draft, launched a ‘high-tech’ mill-building campaign, and overseen construction of a web of dams and canals to supply the Imperial Villa with year-round hydraulic power, all in the high Andes at the nadir of the Little Ice Age. Toledo also oversaw construction of the Potosí mint, staffed full-time with enslaved Africans. [...] Toledo’s successes came with a steep price. Thanks to the viceroy’s ‘reforms’, hundreds of thousands of Andeans became virtual refugees (those who survived) and, in the search for timber and fuel, colonists denuded hundreds of miles of fragile, high-altitude land. [...] The city’s smelteries belched lead and zinc-rich smoke [...].

The Habsburg kings of Spain cared little about Potosí’s social and environmental horrors. [...] For more than a century, the Cerro Rico fuelled the world’s first global military-industrial complex, granting Spain the means to prosecute decades-long wars on a dozen fronts – on land and at sea. No one else could do all this and still afford to lose. [...]

By [...] 1909 [...], mineral rushes had helped to produce cities such as San Francisco and Johannesburg, but nothing quite compared for sheer audacity with the Imperial Villa of Potosí, a neo-medieval mining metropolis perched in the Andes of South America.

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Text by: Kris Lane. “Potosi: the mountain of silver that was the first global city.” Aeon. 30 July 2019. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[skullhaver]

Indonesian islands! My family hosted an exchange student from Maluku and spent a year looking at at every map with him to see if it included his home island or not (mostly not). Thank you for sparking that particular fond memory

Aww, thank you so much for sharing this story! Poor Indonesia is always getting short-changed when it comes to globes and maps of the whole earth. There are so many small islands with fine details that don't convey well on the scale of full continents.

I wasn't familiar with Maluku so I just had the fun of looking it up and learning a little more. This region has 1.9 million people who predominantly speak seven local languages, plus lots of people who speak the official language Indonesian. I'm always astounded by the linguistic diversity of SE Asia.

Also it looks like there's some absolutely gorgeous national park on the biggest and most central island, Seram.