next page table of contents home

5. Clearly mago is related to the shark with a straight tail, vaha mea, and there are 40 days from Ga1-4 to Ga2-14:

39
vaha mea Ga1-4 (5) Ga2-14 (45) mago

Also, the halfway through cut-mark in the head of this mago connects it with another vaha mea variant:

39 220
Ga1-4 (5) Ga2-14 (45) Gb2-10 (266)
261 = 9 * 29

Possibly 'toes' at left and 'fin up' at right means Gb2-10 is indicating autumn equinox, though 221 days is much too long if Ga2-14 is at spring equinox (and given that we cound with 1 day per glyph). Maybe the distance 261 from vaha mea in Ga1-4 is symbolic for 'one more than 10 * 26' (10 months of summer), i.e. a sign of how the summer year has closed.

Mago in Ga2-14 is presumably a part of a lunar calendar for the year (we have seen) and the distance to the obviously connected vaha mea in Gb2-10 is about half a kind of lunar cycle. 14 * 29.5 / 2 = 206½, but 15 * 29.5 / 2 = 221¼ days.

To get some order we can try to integrate also Ga3-23 and Ga7-16, both Jupiter glyphs, in our structure:

4 39 37 102 44
Ga1-4 (5) Ga2-14 (45) Ga3-23 (83) Ga7-16 (186)
230
35 206
Gb2-10 (266)
242

The head of mago in Ga3-23 is without any cut-mark and the fins are designed to look like henua 'beams', which is a quite unusual sign in mago glyphs. Also, Ga3-23 is located at the center of these 5 glyphs. Probably it is meant to refer to Sun. But if it also should indicate spring equinox, it evidently says this event comes 83 days from the beginning of the front side of the text.

With spring equinox around March 21 (north of the equator) the day number will be around 31 + 28 + 21 = 80. Once I earlier used my simple pocket calendars for a few years to investigate how the cardinal dates of the year change over time, and day number 266 certainly is spring equinox south of the equator:

  place of sun day no. 'winter' 'spring' 'summer' 'autumn'
  winter solstice 356        
2001 spring equinox 79 89 days      
  summer solstice 172   93 days    
  autumn equinox 266     94 days  
  winter solstice 355       89 days
2002 spring equinox 79 89 days      
  summer solstice 172   93 days    
  autumn equinox 266     94 days  
  winter solstice 356       90 days
2003 spring equinox 80 89 days      
  summer solstice 172   92 days    
  autumn equinox 266     94 days  
  winter solstice 356       90 days
2004 spring equinox 80 89 days      
  summer solstice 173   93 days    
  autumn equinox 266     93 days  
  winter solstice 356       90 days

This does not, though, gives us a fixed point from which to reconstruct the whole calendar text of G, because number 266 at vaha mea in Gb2-10 could be just a sign.

We should also notice 356 as a relatively stable date for summer solstice, 90 days later. 356 = 156 + 200 and we remember Kuukuu:

'land'

Ira

Sun

52

Kuukuu

Mars

156

Raparenga

Moon

104

Ringiringi

Mercury

182

'sea'

Ringiringi

Mercury

26

Uure

Venus

130

Nonoma

Jupiter

78

Makoi

Saturn

182

With 156 = 6 * 26 we can associate to number 266 (only a change of the position of 26 from the end to the beginning). Day number 266 (counted from January 1) is the day of spring equinox south of the equator. But in a lunar calendar the year perhaps is to be counted from midsummer instead of from midwinter. South of the equator the year could begin with July 1 rather than with January 1. Yet evidently day number 266 is at autumn equinox because it is on side b and there are toes at left and a fin at right:

35 206
Gb2-10 (266)
242

The main part of Polynesia lies just south of the equator, in the tropics where it does not matter if 266 should refer to autumn equinox or to spring equinox. Presumably 266 would therefore refer to autumn equinox because most of the neighbouring peoples outside the tropics were living north of the equator.