5. Hands are drawn with 3 fingers in rongorongo, and, as I remember it from Arthur Posnansky's monumental Tihuanacu the Cradle of American Man those who once carved in stone around Lake Titicaca changed their former style into 3 fingers at some point in time. Posnansky made precious drawings before it was too late, before the stone surfaces had deteriorated too much. One such we have seen, where a central Sun figure holds 'staffs' in his 3-fingered hands:  Counting begins with counting on the fingers, and I guess 3 fingers on each hand became a model for how to count the months of summer. Then the model could have been expanded to cover also winter, and takaure in Ga4-2 has 3 'fingers' at bottom left:
The lower part of a figure probably refers to the 'winter' half of the year. If we divide 84 by 3 it becomes 28, the number of nights in a month when Sun is illuminating Moon. The upper half of a figure - as in Posnansky's picture above - probably refers to summer. Therefore the 3-fingered hands of Sun should represent spring respectively autumn equinox. |
