Bellona Island is an island of the

Rennell and Bellona Rennell and Bellona is one of the nine provinces of Solomon Islands, comprising two inhabited atolls, Rennell and Bellona, or and respectively in Rennellese (a Polynesian language), as well as the uninhabited Indispensable Reef. Rennell and B ...

Province, in the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...

. Its length is about and its average width . Its area is about . It is almost totally surrounded by high cliffs, consisting primarily of raised coral

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

Population

Bellona Island is densely populated and its interior is lush and fertile. There are three districts namely Matangi, Ghongau and Ngango. Each district has manaha (tribes) except for Ghongau district, which has two sub-districts; Nguutuanga Bangitakungu and Ngutuanga Bangika'ango. There are many villages on Bellona Island: *Matahenua/Matamoana (west) *Honga'ubea *Tongomainge *Ngotokanaba *Pauta *Ngongona *Gongau *Ahenoa *Matangi *NukuTonga (East) Bellona Island is, like

Rennell Island Rennell Island, locally known as Mugaba, is the main island of two inhabited islands that make up the Rennell and Bellona Province in the nation state of Solomon Islands. Rennell Island has a land area of that is about long and wide. It is t ...

, a Polynesian-inhabited island within the Solomons, where most of the islands are primarily

Melanesia Melanesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from Indonesia's New Guinea in the west to Fiji in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea. The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Va ...

n with a few

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, and ...

n island provinces. It is thus counted among the

Polynesian outliers Polynesian is the adjectival form of Polynesia. It may refer to: * Polynesians, an ethnic group * Polynesian culture, the culture of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia * Polynesian mythology, the oral traditions of the people of Polynesia * Poly ...

. The nearby Bellona Shoals were the site of several shipwrecks. On the western end of the island there were sacred stone-gods, at a place called Ngabenga- west Bellona. The stone-gods were destroyed by

Seventh-day Adventist The Seventh-day Adventist Church is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabbath, and ...

missionaries in 1938. This island was named at the beginning of the 19th century after Capt. Lord Rennell's ship ''Bellona''. However, its original name is Mungiki.

Literature

*Subsistence on Bellona Island (Mungiki): A Study of the Cultural Ecology of a Polynesian Outlier in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate by Sofus Christiansen. Publisher: Aarhus University Press, Pub. Date: January 1975,

References

External links

pictures

Cultural Ecology

Beliefs and Rites of Pre-Christian Bellona

Map of Bellona Island

Bellona Travel Guide
Rennell and Bellona Islands Polynesian outliers {{SolomonIslands-geo-stub

Population

See also

Literature

References

External links