The rays of the sunlight from above, a wooden pole vertically planted in the ground and a horizontally cast shadow: In a nutshell the tripartite cosmos of the ancients? I guess that shadow represents both what is dead and what is yet to be born.

"The Tahitian myth of the creation of man is lacking in detail. Ta'aroa with the aid of Tu, the great artisan, created Ti'i the first human being.

The word rahu (to create) is used, but as one of the names of Ti'i is given as Ti'i-ahu-one (Ti'i-mounded-from-earth) it is apparent that he was formed from earth.

He married the goddess Hina, daughter of Te Fatu (Lord, Core) and Fa'ahotu (To-begin-to-form). The children of Ti'i and Hina intermarried in the period of darkness with the gods of that era.

The children whom they conceived were the ancestors of the high chiefs entitled to wear the red feather girdles denoting the highest rank, but the children whom they simply conjured up became the progenitors of the common people." (Buck)

Captain Cook recorded (the first record of Polynesian mythology ever made) this Tahitian account of the Creation:

"Ta'aroa tahi tumu, 'Ta'aroa origl. stock' - most commonly Ta'aroa or Te Tumu - existed before everything except of a rock (Te Papa) which he compressed and begat a daughter (Ahuone) that is Vegetable Mole.*

* Ahuone means 'earth heaped up' - a widespread name for the Polynesian first woman. It sounds as if Cook also heard the term applied to the banks of humus and rotting material on which taro is grown. In the English of his day this was known as 'vegetable mould'.

After he begot the earth the sea fresh water sun moon stars etc. and at last atuas, beings between himself and man and who afterwards begot mankind, {he} went to heaven and left the world to his posterity.

O Ti'i the first {? man} was the son of Te Tumu and Ahuone whenua, both atuas. He was born is shape of a round ball which his father shaped as we now are and called him O Ti'i (finished).

O Ti'i lay with his mother, after many attempts, and begot a daughter, Hina i 'ere'ere nonai, who when grown up persuaded her father, with diffficulty, to initiate her in the same mysteries, whence sprang Hina i o wai, another daughter {on} whom he begot Hina i ta'a ta'a, who he was then obliged to impregnate and begot Hina rorohi, from whom sprang Hina nui ta'i te marama, who brought him a son Taha i te ra'i, who of his mother begot a son 'Oro and a daughter Hina i pia, who together begot Ana, another son. From these three men and the women sprang all mankind.

O Ti'i is said to have lived in an island Havaiki to the northward, from which come hogs, dogs, fowls etc." (Legends of the South Seas)

I count to 7 daughters and 3 sons,10 in all.