Rapa Nui Journal Volume 9 Issue 3

Ancient Egyptian Survivals in the Pacific. by R.A. Jairazbhoy, 1990. Karnak House, Billing & Sons Ltd., Worcester, England. 78 pages, Black and white drawings and a 3 photos. ISBN 0-907015-49-2.

Review by Georgia Lee

The Maui Handbook: Including Molokai and Lanai by J. D. Bisignani. 1995. Fourth Edition, Moon Publications, Chico, Calif. 393 pages, 36 maps, drawings photographs (some in color). ISBN 56691-057-9. Price: $14.95. Phone: (800) 345-5473.

Review by Kay Kenady Sanger, Calabasas, California

In July of this ear. a month-long project to assess changes in the condition of some of the island's petroglyph sites was undertaken by Antoinelle Padgett and Georgia Lee, under Ole auspices of the University of California. Berkeley. University Research Expeditions Program (UREP). The study was based on a series of documentation programs that began in 1981 and resulted in the accumulation of slides, photographs, drawings and field notes (Lee 1992).

What's New in Polynesia

International News

What's New in Hanga Roa

At the turn of the century, sometime between 1898 and 1906, the Rector of Drummondville, a small town southwest of Quebec, penned the following poem (Smith 1960:91):

The Dutch-language narratives of Jacob Roggeveen's voyage to the Pacific in 1722 when Easter Island was discovered were given exhaustive treatment in Herbert von Saher's article 'Roggeveen and Boumann: an inventory of all the narratives' (RNJ 7(4):77-82). However, a few points about English-language versions of those same narratives still need to be made to put Captain Cook's visit to Easter Island in 1774 in its historical perspective.

In April 1777. when Captain Cook was sailing northeastward from New Zealand on his third Pacific voyage. he came upon isolated. uninhabited Palmerston Island, an atoll. Which he had discovered and named on his previous voyage. Being urgently in need of fodder for the cattle in his two ships, he sent four boats ashore to see what they could get. When they returned with plenty of 'scurvy grass', young coconuts and pandanus palms, Cook decided to remain at the island for a couple of days to get a good supply of coconuts for his men.

The author of this short paper had a difficult task: to analyse the glyphs and subject known as Tomenika's text, and then to read it--as much a is possible. [t is a cursive text, made on paper in pen and ink. It was found in the village of Hanga Roa by the famous English scientist. Katherine Routledge (1919) during her expedition to Easter Island in 1914-15. She wrote: "We were shown one day in the village a piece of paper taken from a Chilean manuscript book. on which were somewhat roughly drawn a number of signs. some of them similar to those already known, others different from any we had seen. They were found to have been derived from an old man, known as Tomenika. He was the last acquainted with an inferior kind of rongorongo, known as the tau. but now he was ill and confined to the leper colony."

Everyone who sees the moai statues on Easter Island is surprised that these giants were transported across the island by primitive aborigines. There are some problems in effecting transport: the first is their weight. Next is the fact that each statue was transported in one piece. The aborigines finished them in the area of the quarry and after that each was moved to its position on an ahu platform. There are many theories about this mystery of Easter Island. I tried to find a solution with the help of my experience as an engineer. Therefore some of my ideas and claims may not exactly match the archaeological point of view.

Ironically. the best known tree of Easter Island, the Sophora toromiro (Philippi) SKOTTSBERG, or commonly, the toromiro and sometimes miro, no longer grows there. at least not in the wild. The numerous (endemic) toromiros that were once there were either cut down by the Islanders to use for making implements. for carving, and in construction and cooking, or else destroyed by the tens of thousands of sheep that roamed relatively freely over the Island.