A Hawaiian temple or sacred shrine, typically an open-air platform used for religious rituals and worship in pre-contact Hawaiian culture.
From Hawaiian heiau, a Polynesian word with cognates across the Pacific islands, referring to structures dedicated to mana (spiritual power) and the gods of the Hawaiian pantheon.
Archaeologists have discovered over 600 documented heiau across the Hawaiian islands, revealing that ancient Hawaiians engineered some structures to align with celestial events—combining religion with sophisticated astronomy.
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