Easter Books

Palaeoastronomy is treated in a section (Time, the Calendar, Sacred Geography and Ritual) of chapter 7, pages 100 to 102. An illustration will rise here in 90 minutes". The figure also shows the year AD 1500, they would have seen the Pleiades at 18 degrees above the horizon at the end of the astronomical twilight on hua, the twelfth night of the moon in the Rapa Nui month of Te Maro". There I jumped. Firstly, Hua is the EIGHTH night of the ancient lunar month, the night after the first quarter (Maharu) and that thin crescent should therefore have been a half-crescent. Second, the calendar was luni-solar (like the Ancient Greek and the Jewish calendars), so that some years having twelve months and some thirteen, we cannot be sure of the correspondences between the months of the Maro. Third, the Pleiades being 18 degrees above the horizon and impossible, June 21st being the shortest day of the year in the southern hemisphere. In fact, if I am to believe my astronomical not the 12th or the 8th night of the lunar month, but the 25th. So much for palaeoastronomy.

The part about the rongorongo (pp.111-115) starts with a gratuitous discussion of Lapita pottery, the patterns of which look nothing like the famous hieroglyphs by any stretch of imagination. A whole paragraph then deals with the Naga rebellion against British rule in Assam in the 1930s. Why? Well, the leader of the rebellion had filled a set of notebooks with "regular and repetitive symbols resembling writing but in no known language". Of what possible relevance is that? Of the serious work on the hieroglyphs, not one word, not even a mention of Barthel's indispensable "Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift", even in the bibliography. Not a word on the works of Kudrjavtsev, Butinov, Knorozov, Fedorova, nor how the evidence produced by Butinov and Knorozov convinced Metraux that the rongorongo were a proper writing system, against his original opinion. So much for the rongorongo.

Desultorily leafing through, English. "Ethnography" is used systematically in lieu of "oral tradition", even pluralized (ethnographies = oral traditions). Then I saw this word I did not know: "ramage". Clearly a French word, but it made no sense in the context (it means "canopy" or "singing of birds"). My Collins dictionary (1690 pages) knowing nothing of "ramage" -- nor my Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language (1550 pages) -- I had to turn to my unabridged Oxford (16,000+ pages). "Ramage" is an obsolete word, with the same meanings as in modern French, none of which is what van Tilburg means: "local subgroups" (p.86, but you'll search for it in vain in the glossary, which contains only Polynesian words). So much for writing clearly.

On p.146 you are treated to the knowledge that "Some 40.3% of the statues in Rano Raraku [a volcanic crater from which most of the stone was quarried] are found on the interior and exterior slopes". An impressively accurate figure indeed (why "some" then?) that lends it an air of scientific respectability. But wait, if 40.3% are found on the interior and exterior slopes of the crater, where on earth are the remaining 59.7%? At the bottom of the crater (underwater)? On the ridge? Fascinating questions left unanswered. But impressive accuracy knows how to rub shoulders with fuzziness too. On the same page, in the previous (sic) of Rano Raraku crater is ringed... by evenly spaced [how evenly?] hare paenga of overall similar sizes [how similar?]. Nearly all of the structures [how many really?]... and most have umu pae associated [how many is most?]". Not one set of figures to support those "nearly", "evenly", "most". So much for statistical analysis.

Those are not unrepresentative selections. Open the book at random. You will be treated to the same. On page 114 is a diagram showing Katherine Routledge's "collected data from seven old Rapa Nui men regarding 15 named kohau rongorongo [tablets]". Seven columns, with the names of the seven men, fifteen rows, with obsolete names for the tablets. There is no key, no explanations, you are left to your own devices to figure out which tablets those names refer to, and what (mast) and (roof) might possibly mean. Open it at random again, p.139: "Hoa Hakananai'a, the basalt statue from Orongo, presents unique and significant evidence of Rapa Nui social change encoded within its form and design (fig. 144)". Figure 144 shows the back of a statue, unique in that it is covered in carved hieroglyphs. Since no-one knows their meaning or their import, of what significance can their evidence be, beyond the author's own projected imaginations?