Ropen: a Demon Flyer?

image_pdfimage_print
Lake Pung on Umboi Island in Papua New Guinea
Lake Pung, Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, where the ropen ("demon flyer" or not) sometimes flies

The book Mysterious Creatures, A Guide to Cryptozoology, by George M. Eberhart, includes this entry under the “Ropen” title: “An Austronesian word said to mean ‘demon flyer.'” That may be partially correct but easily misleading. Most of the sources for Eberhart’s Ropen entry are the writings of Karl Shuker in Fortean Times articles, dated in the years 2000, 2001, and 2002. Without reading those articles I will not speculate on them. But my associates and I who have explored in Papua New Guinea more recently and have interviewed many natives—we may have had opportunities more extensive than Shuker’s, or at least have had the potential for new insights.

Austronesian is a language family, not a language; individual languages of this family are found on many islands, including many in Papua New Guinea. Among the hundreds of languages spoken in Papua New Guinea, Kovai (spoken in some villages of Umboi Island) is Papuan, according to Wikipedia; it is not Austronesian. But the word “ropen,” for a large flying cryptid that sometimes glows as it flies at night—that word comes from those villages that speak Kovai.

The second Umboi Island expedition of 2004 (a few weeks after mine) turned up an interesting perspective on the word “ropen.” Jacob Kepas, the native interpreter for the American cryptozoologists David Woetzel and Garth Guessman, knew the word but was puzzled. Why go to such trouble flying on a small plane to Umboi Island to search for a bird? In his village near Wau (mainland Papua New Guinea), “ropen” is the word used for a common bird. The large nocturnal flying creature that glows—that frightening creature they call “seklo-bali.”

So in those two small areas of Papua New Guinea (villages of Umboi Island including Opai and Gomlongon, and at least one village near Wau on the mainland) the meaning of the word “ropen” differs greatly. An examination of the expedition reports from American cryptozoologists who have searched for living pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea in the 1990’s and early twenty-first century—that reveals that the Western-world usage of “ropen” comes from the Kovai-speaking islanders of Opai and Gomlongon.

A casual observation of the “Demon Flyer” episode of MonsterQuest on television is a world apart from reading Shuker’s article or Eberhart’s book or one of my books. Monsterquest episodes are mini-adventure-shows, not scientific documentaries, so we are not surprised at a few technical innacuracies; but innaccuracies are hardly confined to television adventure shows. Search with the phrase (in quotes) “demon flyer” and one of the first-page results from Google can take you to a page with the following:

Just off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea . . . are the small islands of Rambunzo and Umboi. These two islands are said to be the home of the Ropen, which when translated from the indigenous dialect literally means, Demon Flyer.

Let us examine that declaration.

First, a brief Google search makes me suspect that the island of “Rambunzo,” by that spelling, does not exist in Papua New Guinea; perhaps it is a misspelling, for the first few pages of Google searching refer to cryptozoology sites and Wikipedia has nothing by that spelling. But if this is a misspelling of “Rambutyo,” ( near Manus Island) we need to consider what at least some of the people of the northern islands of Papua New Guinea call the large nocturnal flying creature : “kor.” My contact person in that part of PNG is clear about that word for what Umboi Islanders (to the south) call “ropen.” “Kor” is their word, which I suspect is used by the people of Rambutyo. In addition, I don’t recall ever writing anything about “Rambunzo,” in any of my web pages from 2003 to late-2011, in spite of what one web site declares about my involvement with that word.

Second, Rambutyo (as the correct spelling for the nonexistent “Rambunzo”), which is actually northeast of the mainland, is smaller than Umboi, but many people would not call Umboi, at 900 square kilometers, “small.” In addition, many islands, of various sizes, are east and northeast of the mainland; why single out those two? The large nocturnal flying creatures, called by various names in various languages, can be seen (although mostly at night by their bioluminescence) around and over many islands of Papua New Guinea, not just over or near Rambutyo and Umboi.

Third, there is no “indigenous dialect” for these two islands. In fact, I was told by Delilah Kau (or “Kow”), wife of the government-and-local-village leader Mark Kau, that several nearby villages around Gomlongon have different “languages.” She probably referred to what we would call different dialects of Kovai, but other villages of Umboi, not so close to Gomlongon, really do have different languages. Even if islanders of Rambutyo all spoke the same language, it would be very unlikely to be the same dialect (even if the same language) as any on Umboi Island.

That brings up the idea that “ropen” comes from two native words. A brief reflection makes that appear unlikely, for how could such a short word come from two words that mean “demon” and “flyer?” No, it is much more likely that the original meaning of the word was something like “flyer.”