1. The form of the glyph type kiore + henua, as seen e.g. in a more normal version (together with maro feathers) in Ga5-9 and in One Tea (Gb8-2), has disturbed me during all these years of rongorongo studies:
I cannot say that I have as yet reached any definite conclusion, but the person with open mouth, a sign of kai, looks as if he is climbing a tree (henua). Kiore means a rat and once, before the missionaries arrived and introduced a new age, the rat was the only land animal (mammal) on the island. From early on I therefore became convinced kiore was a word which included other similar mammals, such as monkeys, an animal climbing trees. And, indeed, a rabbit was a kiore hiva ('foreign rat').
And since an important characteristic of Spring Sun is his ability to climb higher and higher in the sky the henua glyph type could refer to an imaginary and invisible tree. Furthermore, a rat is an animal which has a tendency to eat things he shouldn't (like the hippopotamus) and he reproduces quickly. Spring Sun could be illustrated as a great 'rat' in the sky. To these arguments we can now add the kuhane station Te Kioe Uri, where kioe might be referring to some kind of kiore:
In his The Eighth Land Barthel translates Te Kioe Uri as 'the black rat'. But the colour uri includes several of our own colours, for instance green, which is more appropriate for the greenery in spring:
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