33.7 The pacific: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 6/6)

It was noted previously that when the Maoris arrived in New Zealand they found a previous people, the Morioris

At the risk of overemphasizing the importance of one small island, further information on the far southeastern Polynesian Easter Island may be of some interest. To date we have noted:

• Probable original settlement by people from the South American mainland
• Late arrival of true Polynesians
• The loss of Polynesian culture, in the main, in favor of the earlier traditions

In 1,862 a French missionary, F. Eugene Eyraud, visited Easter Island and found some strange boards and sticks with carved symbols in some of the huts and the local people had no idea of their meaning or significance. Some were salvaged and eventually ended up in various museums across the world. In 1,958 Thomas Barthel (Ref. 9 ) got reproductions of those from Honolulu, Vienna, Santiago de Chile, Leningrad, Washington D.C. and London, finally accumulating some 12,000 signs or ideograms to analyze. The signs were 1/3 to 1/2 inches long and were elegantly made. Previously a French bishop had found a man on Tahiti, who allegedly was originally an Easter islander and he had "read" four of the tablets containing the signs, by chanting a song in Polynesian for each. The chants were recorded by the bishop, but translated into French they seemed meaningless and the notes were almost lost. Barthel decided that the Tahitian, Metoro Tauara, was too uneducated to have completely translated the ancient script and proceeded to develop a translation of his own. He reported that 120 basic elements were combined to make 1,000 compound signs as ideograms and that it was not a phonetic system. Furthermore, he decided that the writing was chiefly religious ritual, without mention of historical events. He says that the islanders had another writing called the "Kau Script" which recorded their annals, but that has disappeared. Since the board writings had a special symbol for the breadfruit tree and other plants which never grew on Easter Island and since Pitcairn Island to the west was mentioned, Barthel felt that these things refuted Heyerdahl's theory of settlement from the eastern mainland. But those talking boards are not dated and whereas Heyerdahl's South American migrations theoretically occurred many centuries ago, it does not seem that Barthel's conclusions are necessarily valid. Ocean trips between Polynesian islands certainly occurred after the time of the early Polynesian migrations, if not before and such have no bearing on very early trips west from Peru or Ecuador. (Ref. 9 )

Please permit one more argument from Heyerdahl. (Ref. 95 ) In 1,864 before the local language had been recorded, a missionary with a group of Mangarevans came to Easter Island via Tahiti and the Tahitian language was introduced, so that subsequently there was a mixture of languages, if there had not been before. The Tahitians who arrived at that time were Christians and therefore did not bring the classical Polynesian deities of Tu, Tane, Tangaroa, Tiki and Maui. Some of those names persisted although they were not worshiped or venerated. The Easter Island gods were Makemake and Haua and symbols related to the former were closely associated with sun-measuring devices and other trappings of solar worship, all unknown in other Polynesian areas. Conversely, the complex bird cult and ritual of Easter Island has no counterpart in the rest of Polynesia, but the bird-man cult was present at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia and in the Chimu culture of north Peru, so that an American origin for those Easter Island practices is suggested.

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