The tribe of baby brides
QUESTION Why are the girls of the Tiwi tribe in the South Pacific married at birth? The Tiwi Islands of Bathurst and Melville are part of Australia’s Northern Territory. They are 50 miles north of Darwin, where the Arafura Sea joins the Timor Sea.
The Tiwi tribe (which means We People) once had a culture based on their unique view of marriage.
Believing spirits were in control of impregnation and babies were conceived during ‘The Dreaming’, they disregarded the role of the man in conception.
however, they did not want any mother to give birth to a baby who didn’t have a father, so they made sure a female was married at all times throughout her life. Tiwi were promised in marriage before they were born and widows had to remarry at the burials of their husbands.
however, as polygamy — having more than one husband or wife at a time — was the norm, these were loose arrangements. This approach to marriage ensured the Tiwi had an illegitimacy rate of zero.
In 1911, a Catholic mission was established on the Tiwi Islands and this eventually resulted in the traditional culture being abandoned.
After landing on Bathurst Island in 1911, Francis Xavier Gsell, decided to win over the Tiwi by buying the rights to marry the girls himself. he paid their fiancees and fathers in cloth, flour and tobacco, and later married off the girls to a baptised Tiwi man of their choice.
he became known as the ‘bishop’ with 150 wives and his memoir was titled The Polygamist Priest. The mission educated a generation of women in the Catholic faith and the tribe’s view of marriage moved in line with western norms.
Today, the islands are a vibrant place known for a love of Aussie Rules Football rather than unusual marriage practices.
Tom Davies, Sydney. QUESTION Why did the Romans build the Fosse Way from Devon to Lincoln? MOST of the Fosse Way, which linked exeter to Lincoln via Ilchester, Bath, Cirencester and Leicester, was constructed by AD 47 and this led to the suggestion it was a frontier marking the limits of the Roman advance in Britain.
however, the many forts further west show the Fosse Way was a vital route to support the Roman military conquest of Britain, which began in AD 43 and continued to AD 410, when the country was abandoned.
Roman roads were built to allow legions to march quickly around their new province in order to deal with trouble and provided safe routes for merchants, helping to expand trade.
however, some have questioned whether the Fosse Way was built by the Romans. The theory is that the Druids, the Celtic scientific and spiritual leaders, built straight roads hundreds of years before the Romans came to Britain.
They were the most intellectually advanced thinkers of their age, with mapmaking skills that historians previously believed were discovered centuries later. historian Graham Robb says in his book The Ancient Paths: ‘It has often been wondered how the Romans managed to build the Fosse Way. They must have known what the finishing point would be, but they didn’t conquer that part of Britain until decades later. how did they manage to do that if they didn’t follow a Celtic road?’
While planning to cycle the Via heraklea, an ancient route that runs 1,000 miles in a line from the tip of the Iberian Peninsula to the Alps, Robb mapped the position of hundreds of towns and cities in France, Britain and Ireland.
he discovered the Celts had mirrored the paths of their sun god to create a network of tracks following the solstice lines across swathes of the Continent.
It’s possible that the Druids created the earliest accurate map of the world and the Fosse Way could be part of this instead of a Roman achievement.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts. QUESTION Did Florence Nightingale have a pet owl? FuRTheR to the answer regarding her pet owl Athena, Florence Nightingale spent time at Claydon house in Buckinghamshire, now a National Trust property, where her sister Parthenope had married into the wealthy Verney family.
The sisters had been born in Italy: Florence in the city after which she was named, and Parthenope in Naples, the Greek name for which is Parthenope.
Parthenope’s book, Life And Death Of Athena: An Owlet From The Parthenon, can be seen digitally on the Wren Digital Library at Trinity College, Cambridge.
John Hockey, Edlesborough, Bucks.
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