Post #169546 by bigbrotiki on Sun, Jul 3, 2005 9:58 PM

You will probably find the highest number of "real" Tikis in Museums in Europe and America. The Bishop Museum in Honululu is well stacked.

The largest amount of ancient Tiki still "in Situ" is probably to be found in the Marquesan Islands, because they made many of them in stone. Any wooden ones from pre-contact times that were not collected have rotted away by now. Even the Marquesan Temple Tikis, though made in stone, have lost a lot of definition to the tooth of time.

Both of the Tikis in your photos are Polynesian pop, because they were made in the 20th century. Just because they were carved on the islands doesn't make them any more "real", who knows if the carvers even were Polynesians.
Carving Tikis for tourist trade started very soon after contact with Western explorers, in the 1800s, when Polynesians ran out of "real" ones because the missionairies had destroyed or taken them all, and the natives realized they could trade them for the desired Western products.