2. Once upon a time, in the days of agricultural society, the year was not considered to be a single unit of time. Instead Mother Nature defined two 'years', the year of 'leaf' and the year of 'straw': In north Asia the common mode of reckoning is in half-year, which are not to be regarded as such but form each one separately the highest unit of time: our informants term them 'winter year' and 'summer year'. Among the Tunguses the former comprises 6½ months, the latter 5, but the year is said to have 13 months; in Kamchatka each contains six months, the winter year beginning in November, the summer year in May; the Gilyaks on the other hand give five months to summer and seven to winter. The Yeneseisk Ostiaks reckon and name only the seven winter months, and not the summer months. This mode of reckoning seems to be a peculiarity of the far north: the Icelanders reckoned in misseri, half-years, not in whole years, and the rune-staves divide the year into a summer and a winter half, beginning on April 14 and October 14 respectively. But in Germany too, when it was desired to denote the whole year, the combined phrase 'winter and summer' was employed, or else equivalent concrete expressions such as 'in bareness and in leaf', 'in straw and in grass'." (Martin P. Nilsson, Primitive Time-Reckoning.) The Easter Islanders had agriculture (including poultry) as their basic food source, while fishing and collecting bird-eggs gave some seasonal variation. The rongorongo texts suggest they saw two different 'years', which I will call the 'front side' and the 'back side' of the year. I think the toa glyph type refers to the 'season of straw' in contrast to hipu which indicats the 'season of grass':
The upper end of a sugarcane was used in military training as a harmless weapon, I have learnt from Vanaga, an internet site no longer in use. |
