Lapida boards (like swords thrust down through the bottom of a sailing vessel to steer it) were the models for stone slabs used for graves in ancient Costa Rica in the Diquis river delta region (at Koctu), and gravestones in the Philippines are called Lapidas, so very interesting is that when the first artifacts of the Lapita Culture were discovered (by Edward W. Gifford and Richard Shulter in 1952 on Grande Terre island of New Caledonia), the natives called the site xappeta’a which means to dig a hole, a shovel like a sword thrust downward. The Lapita Culture probably was begun by the people who built the now submerged monuments off Yonaguni island, about eighty miles northeast from Taiwan where is the submerged “Tiger Wall,” many of them having sailed eastward when the Ice Age ended.
