How is the hot spot theory different from hawaiian moolelo about the formation of the islands?

Answer 1

Aloha ahiahi, (Good Evening)

The early Hawaiians had a different idea of how the Hawaiian Islands were formed. According to Hawaiian mo'olelo (legend), Maui, the demi god, and his brothers pulled the islands up while fishing.

In reality, even-though the story is heroic, the islands were formed as the Pacific Tectonic Plate drifted over the hot spot in the Mantle of the Earth, lava, under great pressure, burst through the plate skyward. The plate, which moves at a rate of 4 inches per year north west, resided upon the hot spot long enough to amass and island body. In millions of years, Kauai is 8 million years old, or was over the hot spot 8 million years ago. And in turn, came Oahu, 6 million years old, then West Maui, Molioka'i and Lana'i at 3 million years old, followed closely by Haleakal or South Maui at 2.5 million years old and a young island, but the biggest island, Hawaii, weighing in at less than a million years old. Loihi, is a mass that it currently directly over the hot spot and 10,000 feet below the surface, just South of the Big Island.

If you have the chance to fly over the Northern Hawaiian islands of Midway and so on, you will see what lies ahead for our current islands millions of years from now....nothing but worn down hills of sand and coral. What was probably a monster of an island eons ago is now reduced to sand & coral reef atolls.