Resumen
Ha'amonga 'a Maui (Tongan: "Burden of Maui") stands on the northeastern coast of Tongatapu, the main island of the Kingdom of Tonga, near the small town of Niutoua. The monument consists of three massive slabs of coral limestone: two upright posts approximately 4.9 metres tall and weighing around 40 tonnes each, supporting a horizontal lintel stone 5.8 metres long. Together they form a trilithon — a gateway — whose design is remarkably similar to the trilithons of Stonehenge in England, though the two monuments are separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles.
The monument was constructed around 1200 CE, according to Tongan oral tradition, by the 11th Tu'i Tonga (paramount king) Taufa'ahau. It was built as a gateway to the royal royal compound at Heketa, and the lintel bears a groove carved along its top surface that was interpreted in the 1960s by King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV (a Tu'i Tonga descendant) as a solar calendar marker: he proposed that the groove aligns with the rising sun at the summer and winter solstices, allowing the king to determine the agricultural calendar. This interpretation has been widely discussed, though astronomical confirmation is debated.
The name "Burden of Maui" refers to the Polynesian demigod Maui, and tradition holds that he brought the stones from Fiji on a yoke across his shoulders. More prosaically, the coral limestone was quarried nearby, but moving and erecting 40-tonne slabs without metal tools or wheeled vehicles was an extraordinary engineering achievement. Two smaller stone structures near the site — the Langi Heketa royal tombs — suggest the area was a major royal and sacred precinct for the Tu'i Tonga dynasty.