The Land Divers of Pentecost The People of Paradise

Specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.

For this Collection, Sir David Attenborough has chosen documentaries

from the start of his career.

More programmes on this theme and other BBC Four Collections

are available on BBC iPlayer.

DRUMMING AND CHANTING

Those men were dancing in an island in the South Seas, and we were

watching them on our way to another island, the island of Tonga.

We were going to Tonga because we were being given permission

by Queen Salote to film one of the most ancient, important

and sacred ceremonies of Tonga.

A ceremony which few Europeans had been permitted to see before,

and which had never been filmed before.

I suppose most of us think of the South Sea Islands

as a sort of paradise on Earth, with their coral reefs,

their blue lagoons and their waving palms, but if they are a paradise,

well, they're changing very fast, for the 20th century

is invading the Pacific

and many of the ancient customs and rituals are disappearing.

So we decided not to go straight to Tonga,

but to make our way through the south-west Pacific

calling at lots of different islands and trying to find and film

some of the ancient rituals and ways of life which are fast disappearing.

Tonga lies way out in the Pacific, here.

And here is Fiji, and here,

1,000 miles closer to Australia and New Guinea

are the islands of the New Hebrides.

We had seen that dance in a small island called Val,

which lay off the coast of this island, Malekula.

Malekula and Val was the home of some very interesting

and fascinating ceremonies many years ago,

but impressive though the dance we had seen,

you may have noticed those men were wearing khaki trousers.

We made our way farther inside the island to see

if we could find anything else that was less changed.

By the side of one of the main dancing grounds stood

a row of immense wooden gongs.

The faces carved at the top represent ancestors of the tribe,

and it used to be believed that when these gongs were beaten,

they spoke with the voices of the tribe's forefathers.

But there were no new gongs, and many of those that were still standing

were badly weathered and broken.

Some even had orchids growing over the sculptured faces.

It seemed clear that here at least, the elaborate ceremonies and rituals,

of which these gongs are a symbol, were largely dead.

So we didn't stay long on the island of Val.

We sailed southwards for 50 miles

through the blue waters of the Pacific,

along the coast of Malekula, down to the neighbouring island of Ambrym.

Within ten minutes of walking ashore in Ambrym

I found, standing alone in the forest, the most impressive piece

of sculpture that I had seen so far in the New Hebrides.

This, too, was a gong,

a tree trunk slit along its length and hollowed out.

Yet the head was in a quite different style from those of Val.

And what was more, it was obviously relatively new.

Here, surely, the ancient rituals and sacrifices must still survive.

So I followed the track which led towards the interior of the island.

Within 100 yards,

shrouded by an elaborate construction of palm leaves,

I came across something even more fearsome and eerie.

This idol, ten feet high, had been carved

from the fibrous trunk of a tree fern

and it was painted in vivid blue and scarlet.

From what I had read of the customs of the Ambrym people,

the setting up of a figure like this must have been accompanied

by the ceremonial slaughter of several hundred pigs.

In front of it, men and women, heavily painted and wearing masks,

would have danced for a day and a night,

and the chief and his attendants would have run up the ramp

on the left to stamp and posture on the platform above the idol's head.

With increasing excitement, I went on and soon I arrived at the hamlet.

The villagers had obviously been fully aware of our approach

for they had assembled to receive us.

These people were well accustomed to Europeans

for they earned good livings by growing coconuts

and selling copra, the dried coconut flesh, to visiting traders.

So a handshake was a recognised greeting.

But, of course, it would have been rude

to have missed out the chief's little son.

The chief himself spoke pidgin English quite fluently

and after our formal greetings, the first thing I asked him about

were these spirals of ivory which he wore on his wrists.

An even more complete spiral hung as a pendant from his neck.

These were the tusks of pigs, he said.

And he offered to show me

the remarkable creatures which could produce such odd tusks.

On the way to see them, we passed this hut

with elaborate pennants of young yellow palm leaves

dangling like banners outside.

It belonged to the chief and it was sacred - "tambu".

Only he was allowed to enter it.

He told me that this magnificent dancing mask

had been used during the festivals which took place during

the setting up of the great idol

which I'd seen on the outskirts of the village.

Its crest was of chicken feathers, its face was made of soft, pithy wood

and it was painted with dots of white and pink, scarlet, blue,

green and yellow.

And close by the hut, I saw the pigs.

The chief explained how it was that they grew such odd tusks.

The animals had had a tooth knocked out from each side of their upper jaw

so that the lower tusk, instead of being worn away,

grows freely into a spiral.

Eventually, the tusk will grow round in a complete circle

until it pierces the flesh of the lower jaw and re-enters the jaw bone.

A pig with re-entering tusks like that is incredibly valuable

and the chief's was carefully tethered.

This was his prized possession,

for tusks like these make it worth at least £200.

And this is the lower jaw of just such a pig.

It's difficult to over-emphasise the value of a pig

which has a jaw like this.

If you wanted to buy one,

it would cost you at least 40 ordinary pigs to barter it.

If you kept this pig then for another seven years,

and it takes seven years for this spiral to go round once again,

and if you managed to keep it alive during that time,

which wouldn't be easy because pigs with jaws like these

are sickly creatures,

then you would have something which is so valuable

that you could charge one pig

for someone just to look at it.

These pigs are needed by the Ambrym people to buy wives,

to sacrifice in many of the ceremonies through which

you as an islander and an Ambrym man must pass.

But the most important ceremony of all

is a ceremony to do with social position,

for there's a sort of caste system in Ambrym.

If you want to be a social climber, you must save

and pay in pigs to climb and attain a higher rank.

So for maybe 10, 20 years, a man will save and work and borrow

and beg, until he has accumulated as many as 1,000 ordinary pigs

and maybe 10 or 15 of these tusked pigs.

And then he takes all his pigs

to the main ceremonial ground of the village

and he tethers them in rows.

And he calls the rest of the community,

and when they are all there

to witness what he is going to do, he kills them all.

And in killing them, he destroys all his wealth.

For a dead pig, to an Ambrym man,

whether it has these tusks or not, is worth nothing.

But in destroying all the wealth of 10 or 15 years' work,

you have acquired a new rank.

You have been given a new name.

You have been allowed to wear special feathers in your hair.

And you are, in the eyes of the community, a great man.

And during these ceremonies, which are made to give you this new rank,

huge idols and gongs are set up like this one.

And as we walked through the islands of Ambrym and saw these gongs,

the men said to us, "Oh, yes,

"that gong was set up when so-and-so became a great man."

But just north of Ambrym is another island called Pentecost.

And we heard that on that island,

an even more spectacular ceremony was to take place,

one of the most spectacular of all ceremonies of the South Seas.

So we sailed across the narrow strait in a canoe

and came to a long silver-sand beach, and there we camped.

We had no difficulty in finding out where the ceremony was to take place

because people who were preparing for it

passed us all day long carrying bundles of vines.

All we had to do was to follow them.

Only half a mile from the coast, we came to a clearing in the forest.

It was on a steep hillside

and there at the head of it stood the half-built tower.

Already, it was over 60 feet high

and several more storeys were yet to be added to the top.

The men had been working on it for nearly a fortnight

and it would take another three days of work before it would be complete.

At the base of the tower, the clearing was being enlarged

to provide a landing ground for the jumpers.

The stumps, too, had to be dug up

so that a falling diver wouldn't brain himself on them.

The tower was now so high that although it had been built

around a lopped tree which had been left standing, the top parts of it

had to be guyed with vines to stop the whole construction from toppling.

CHANTING AND SINGING

Each jumper will dive from a separate platform

which has to be built projecting from the front of the tower.

I had imagined that every man who was going to jump would supervise

the construction of his own platform to make sure that it was built

correctly and safely, but, in fact, this wasn't the case.

Everybody helped with the work.

When the platforms were complete, each one of them

was carefully covered with banana leaves

to prevent it from becoming wet and slippery

if there were a rainstorm before the time for the ceremony arrived.

Looking down from the topmost point of the tower,

the tiny, doll-like figures on the ground

seemed a very, very long way away.

Now came the last stage of the preparations,

the cutting of the vines

which would be tied around the ankles of each diver.

These vines dangle from the branches of almost every tree,

as they do in all tropical forests,

but the Pentecost men were very particular

as to which sort they'd cut,

for only one kind are sufficiently strong

and sufficiently pliable to be used in the ceremony.

This particular vine is too thick at the base to serve as a jumping rope

but the man has cut it for the sake of the thinner top section.

The vines must be cut exactly one day before the ceremony takes place.

If they're cut earlier, they dry out, lose their natural elasticity

and strength, and may break when they are finally used in the jumping.

Nearly all the men who had been working on the tower

were in the forest occupied with this task,

for there were to be 25 jumpers, each of whom would require two vines,

one for each ankle,

so that, all in all, 5,000 feet of vine had to be gathered.

They were hung in pairs from each platform

so that they dangled freely down the front of the tower.

CHANTING AND SINGING

They had to be accurately measured for length,

for if they were too long,

then the diver would hit the ground at full speed

and probably kill himself.

And if they were too short, then he would be left suspended in mid-air.

But the assessment of their length is not easy,

for not only will the twisted, curling vines stretch considerably

under the strain of the jump, but the platforms

are so made that they will collapse and hinge downwards

as the vines tighten, thereby acting as additional shock absorbers.

All this must be allowed for in measuring them.

Lastly, the ends of the vines were frayed to make them pliable

so that they could be securely tied around the divers' ankles.

The ground at the base of the tower was given a final digging

to make it soft.

When the men went home that evening, all was complete.

The tasselled ends of the vines

had been carefully bundled in a wrapping of leaves.

Soft stems of banana palms

had been tied to the bottom timbers of the tower to cushion them

in case a diver should swing and crash against them.

The vines hung free like a monstrous shock of hair

and the tower stood deserted and silent in the forest, 100 feet high.

After a fortnight of preparation, all was ready.

The ceremony would start the next morning.

Soon after dawn the following day, the festival began.

CHANTING AND SINGING

Many of these people had come from the interior of the island,

many hours' march distant.

At least 20 of them will jump before the end of the day.

All of them danced back and forth

on a specially cleared space behind the tower,

some carrying the scarlet leaves of the sacred croton plant.

Almost immediately, a young boy, together with his two assistants,

climbed into the tower to take up his position for the first dive.

He was going to jump from one of the lowest platforms, yet, even so,

he would be over 40 feet from the ground.

His helpers pulled up the vines

that were to be fastened around his ankles.

Clutching the red croton leaves in his hand,

he walked forward to face his trial of courage.

Without a pause, a second diver left the ranks of the dancers.

One after another they dived,

each man jumping from a platform higher up the tower.

Every diver takes with him a relative, who carries

a sprig of leaves which give an extremely painful sting.

Should the courage of the diver show signs of failing,

his relative, standing behind him,

will thrash himself with the stinging leaves, crying out with pain

until the man is shamed into jumping.

By midday, men were diving from over 70 feet,

but with each successive jump, the strain on the vines becomes greater

and the danger of their breaking more likely.

Both the vines had broken, yet, miraculously,

the jumper himself was uninjured.

If a man, having undertaken to jump, refuses to do so at the last moment,

the shame on him and his family is immense, and he will have to pay

the community a fine of many pigs to remove the blot from his character.

And now at last, the climax of the whole festival approached.

This man, climbing the tower,

will jump from the topmost platform 100 feet above the ground.

One rope has broken, but still the man is unhurt,

and the people rush down to circle round him

in one final dance of triumph.

After the ceremony was over, I asked several of the men why they did that.

One of them said he did so because his father had done so.

Another one said that he did it because it made him feel better,

which I must say I found a fairly extraordinary reason.

A third one said he did it,

and I think he was probably the most truthful of all,

because he enjoyed it, but the plain fact of the matter is

that they don't really know why they do it.

They have as little idea of why they perform that ceremony

as we have of, let us say,

the reasons why we light a bonfire and burn a guy on November 5th.

You may say that we do so because of Guy Fawkes, but, in fact,

people were lighting bonfires and burning guys long before Guy Fawkes

and it's probably a relic of the ancient pagan religion of Europe.

But just as we've got a nice story

to explain why we have bonfires on November 5th,

so the Pentecost people have a nice story

as to why they do that ceremony.

They say it all started when a man had a wife who was unfaithful to him.

And he ran after her to punish her,

and she ran up and climbed a coconut tree.

"Come down," he said.

"If you want me," she said, "you'll have to come up and fetch me."

So, the man climbed up the tree and he said,

"Why have you gone away with another man?"

And she said, "Because you're not very much of a tough man."

And he said, "I am!"

And she said, "Well, if you're as tough as all that,

"you jump off the tree headfirst onto the ground."

And he said, "Well, I'll do it if you'll do it."

So she said, "All right," and they both jumped headfirst.

But the woman had taken the precaution of tying

the ends of the palm leaves to her ankles, and she survived.

The man was killed.

And ever since, the people of Pentecost - the men -

have been jumping from much higher heights than a palm tree

to prove to their women how tough they are.

That's the story,

but I don't really think the Pentecost people believe it.

There was one clue as to what the whole ceremony meant.

I noticed one of the women among the dancers,

who was nursing what I took at first to be a baby.

Her son was going to jump.

He climbed up into the tower, and as he jumped she cast away

the baby that she'd been cradling in her arms,

and I found that wasn't a baby at all, but a piece of cloth.

It was a symbolic baby.

In other words, as that boy dived, he no longer became her baby,

he became a man.

And I rather suspect that the whole ceremony is, in fact,

an initiation ceremony, which in the past the young boys of Pentecost

had to go through as an ordeal to prove, at last,

that they had become men.

But all the ceremonies of the South Seas

aren't centuries old - some are only 20 years old,

and in an island in the southern part of the New Hebrides

there's an incredible ceremony,

where people build imitation radio masts and worship...

..all sorts of machines, and cars,

and dress themselves up in extraordinary uniforms.

We went down there to have a look at it, and to find out what

exactly went on there, and I'll tell you about it next time.

SINGING