Tangaroa in the Inscription of the Chicago Fish Tablet

According to the beliefs of the ancient Easter Islanders, the main god, Makemake, made the earth, the sun, the moon and the stars. He also was the creator of mankind (Metraux 1940:312,314). Birdmen figures were features of the cult; frequently these are represented in the local rock art (Metraux 1940:314; Lee 1992:15,22 ff), but it is also known that this mysterious deity was the great spirit of the sea (Thomson 1891:482). The god Tangaroa appeared at Easter Island incarnated in a seal, and his mana, supernatural power, was over the sea (Metraux 1940:310). These items state that Makemake is the Polynesian god Tangaroa, the Lord of the Ocean. </p

Astronomy and Rongorongo

I have used the computer program RedShift Multimedia Astronomy, Version 2 (produced by Maris Multimedia, San Rafael, CA) to look at the stars above Easter Island over a period of years. The pictures were excellent. With this program, I have determined that a solar eclipse occurred on December 31, 1842, near summer solstice, and found reports about this event in the Great Washington tablet (Sb7 - Sb8), in a hieroglyphic record of Atan's manuscript and in a hieroglyphic record of Tomenika's sheet (Rjabchikov 1996a:33, 36). RedShift allowed me to observe the celestial bodies on that day, and I realized why a local, Tomenika, described that eclipse. The partial eclipse lasted about 3.5 hours and would have been a horrible warning from the gods. The duration of that eclipse was unusually long' and it occurred 20 years before the Peruvian slave raid in December 1862. The 20 year interval may be understood as an encoded symbol, because "twenty" is a sign of birds (the sun) in Rapanui manuscript E (Barthel 1978:149).</p