The Tahitians had a list of 10 important star 'pillars' (ana) and the last of them was Polaris:
Their comment about Ana-nia (α Ursae Minoris) as a place 'to fish by' may have indicated that the position of Polaris was regarded as not 'on Land' but 'out in the Sea'. And placed as the last star in their list suggests Polaris was a 'last star', which it indeed was if the solar year was beginning with the arrival of Sheratan and Mesarthim:
My list of stars has Polaris at right ascension 01h 49m which I have converted to day number 27.6 counted from March 21:
Then I reduced 27.6 with 1 day in order to reach the position of Polaris in relation to March 21 in 1870 A.D. But perhaps I should have reduced 27.6 with 1.4 days instead in order to reach 1842 A.D. instead of 1870 A.D. In my presentation above I have therefore changed my earlier rule of thumb according to which e.g. right ascension day 26.6 should be approximated with day 27. Instead I have used a new rule according to which 26.6 should be approximated with day 26. Instead of reducing the RA (right ascension) day numbers for all the stars with a fruther 0.4 it was more practical to change my rule of how to approximate their day number positions in the glyph text:
By chance this happened to lead to a very simple way of assigning their day numbers:
My arguments lead to the conclusion that Polaris ought to be not together with the First Point of Aries stars but 1 day earlier (like a 'Last Point of the Sea'). Metoro said kua moe ki te tai at Ca1-26 which maybe should be translated as 'sleeping out in the Sea'.
The creator seems to have arranged his text with a new year beginning where Sheratan and Mesarthim rose with the Sun in April 17. The First Point of Aries was a slowly moving position in the sky (in space) and not a permanently fixed point in time (March 21). One of the old names of Easter Island was Mata ki te Ragi, which perhaps should be translated as 'Eyes towards the Sky', and in the sky they could see not Polaris (which was too far in the north) but the Belly of the Whale (Baten Kaitos, ζ Ceti), which clearly demonstrated where Sun must have been in April 16 - viz. still 'in the Belly of Fish':
"...Then the big
Fish did swallow him, and he had done acts worthy of blame. But We cast him
forth on the naked shore in a state of sickness, Possibly the figure in Ca1-26 illustrates the 'gourd' from which life would spread out from the naked shore. ... But little Maui stood up for himself. 'Well then, I'd better go, I suppose', he said. 'Since you say so, I must be someone else's child. But I did think I was yours, because I know I was born at the edge of the sea, and you cut off a tuft of your hair and wrapped me in it and threw me in the waves. After that the seaweed took care of me and I drifted about in the sea, wrapped in long tangles of kelp, until a breeze blew me on shore again, and some jelly-fish rolled themself around me to protect me on the sandy beach. Clouds of flies settled on me and I might have been eaten up by the maggots; flocks of seabirds came, and I might have been pecked to pieces. But then my great-ancestor Tama nui ki te rangi arrived. He saw the clouds of flies and all the birds, and he came and pulled away the jelly-fish, and there was I, a human being! Well, he picked me up and washed me and took me home, and hung me in the rafters in the warmth of the fire, and he saved my life ... The reef is the beginning of an island and this ought to be the place where 'the new year child' should be born: ... There is a couple residing in one place named Kui and Fakataka. After the couple stay together for a while Fakataka is pregnant. So they go away because they wish to go to another place - they go. The canoe goes and goes, the wind roars, the sea churns, the canoe sinks. Kui expires while Fakataka swims. Fakataka swims and swims, reaching another land. She goes there and stays on the upraised reef in the freshwater pools on the reef, and there delivers her child, a boy child. She gives him the name Taetagaloa. When the baby is born a golden plover flies over and alights upon the reef. (Kua fanau lā te pepe kae lele mai te tuli oi tū mai i te papa).
And so the woman thus names various parts of the child beginning with the name 'the plover' (tuli): neck (tuliulu), elbow (tulilima), knee (tulivae). They go inland at the land. The child nursed and tended grows up, is able to go and play. Each day he now goes off a bit further away, moving some distance away from the house, and then returns to their house. So it goes on and the child is fully grown and goes to play far away from the place where they live ... Possibly Metoro at Ca1-25 tried to explain to Bishop Jaussen that this (April 15) was the place (-ga) where the 'offspring' - child, son, 'fruit' (hua) - was still 'inside'.
(Sunfish, Mola mola.) "Many of the sunfish's various names allude to its flattened shape. Its specific name, mola, is Latin for 'millstone', which the fish resembles because of its grey colour, rough texture, and rounded body. Its common English name, sunfish, refers to the animal's habit of sunbathing at the surface of the water." (Wikipedia) The Sea Beast (the Cetus constellaion) could have been a fish after all, because the sunfish feeds on jellyfish: "Sunfish live on a diet consisting mainly of jellyfish, but because this diet is nutritionally poor, they consume large amounts to develop and maintain their great bulk. Females of the species can produce more eggs than any other known vertebrate, up to 300,000,000 at a time." (Wikipedia) ... Clouds of flies settled on me and I might have been eaten up by the maggots; flocks of seabirds came, and I might have been pecked to pieces. But then my great-ancestor Tama nui ki te rangi arrived. He saw the clouds of flies and all the birds, and he came and pulled away the jelly-fish ... I am giving room for my imagination, otherwise it would be a poor voyage of exploration. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
