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Te Ko’u summit biodiversity

Gerald McCormack, NHT

View from Te Manga to Te Ko’u and Raemaru

The inland mountains of Rarotonga maintain one of the most pristine tropical forests in the Central South Pacific.

The biodiversity crowning glory of the inland forest is in the Cloud Zone, which is recognised by the occurrence of two particular ferns. Depending upon the rainfall, they grow down ridges to between 350 and 450 metres elevation.  In 1988, I defined the Cloud Zone as above 400m as a compromise to facilitate the creation of a reserve including Te ‘Atukura (638m), Te Manga (653m) and Te Ko‘u (588m) within a contiguous block.

While Te Manga and Te ‘Atukura have pinnacle-like summits, Te Ko‘u is completely different with its basin-like summit. The oval basin measures about 200m North-South and 300m East-West with an area of about 5ha (12 acres). This basin is dissected by a small stream running west to east, where it has cut the summit rim into a deep V to cascade down a very steep valley into the Avanā.

During forty years of periodic visits to the summit basin, I have always found the small stream emerging near the basin’s centre and trickling over an impervious clay embankment. This impervious barrier is probably the main structure holding back a large groundwater reservoir on the basin’s western side, enabling the stream to run continuously. The mountain’s high elevation causes frequent cloud cover and a high level of precipitation of about 4,000mm, which is twice the annual rainfall of coastal Rarotonga.

The 1885 claim by the Reverend W. Wyatt Gill that Te Ko‘u is the “source of all the streams which fertilise the island” is false. Its stream is a continuous but relatively small contributor to the Avanā Stream, the largest stream on the island.

Here, we present information on a few species that make Te Ko‘u a Cloud Zone highlight.

 

Rata, Polynesian Metrosideros

The form of our Rata on the summit of Te Ko’u is the parent of the popular New Zealand ornamental Metrosideros “Spring Fire”.

In 1899, Thomas Cheeseman, the Curator of the Auckland Museum, spent three months researching the plants of Rarotonga, culminating in his Flora of Rarotonga of 1903. He recorded 267 flowering plants, of which 168 were native or indigenous, including 17 new species unique or endemic to the island.

He reported collecting Rata on ‘Ikurangi in his diary on the 27th of May, and on the 18th of June, on the summit of Te Ko‘u, he collected a different Rata, writing there are “apparently two species”. However, in his Flora, he accepted only one species (Metrosideros collina) with “two forms: one, …. has the young shoots and branches of the inflorescence silky or tomentose; the other … is nearly glabrous [without hairs], …”

The form he found on Te Ko‘u had a silky/hairy inflorescence and new leaves, and it is restricted to the Cloud Zone, where it is common. The other form, without a silky inflorescence, is common on the drier ridges above mid-elevation, such as on the ridge to the Needle and on the dry summit of ‘Ikurangi.

Although the silky Rata of Te Ko‘u has garnered little attention on Rarotonga, it is now known to be New Zealand’s most popular ornamental Metrosideros, Metrosideros “Sure Fire”. This connection was established by botanist Peter de Lange in 2011. Although it could not be determined when our Cloud Zone Rata was taken to New Zealand, the suspicion points to Cheeseman, who was also known to collect some live plants.

“Spring Fire” must have been popular before 1945 when it was selected to be planted on the Waitangi Treaty Grounds beside the Te Whare Runanga (Meeting House), where they are now about 15m high. After Cheeseman, William Philipson was the next Kiwi botanist to research Cloud Zone plants in 1969. This is too late, so Cheeseman probably took it to New Zealand.

Our Rata, Metrosideros collina, is a dramatically crimson-flowered shrub or gnarled tree to about 5m, also found on islands in the Australs and Societies. It is an endemic plant of Southeast Polynesia.

 

Rata Leafminer Moth

The Rata Leafminer Moth has been found only on the summit of Te Ko’u.

The Rata Leafminer Moth (Macarostola pontificalis) is a tiny, slender moth about 6mm long. Its tiny size is offset by its bright crimson and yellow markings.

It has been found only on Te Ko‘u, where its caterpillar lives within the leaves of the Rata. The young caterpillar makes a narrow serpentine tunnel, which becomes wide and filled with waste at the edge of the leaf. The half-grown caterpillar emerges and moves to another leaf, where it cuts out a half-moon section attached at the end.

On the underside of the leaf, it uses silk to roll the section around itself into a tepee-like cone about 12mm high. It lives and feeds inside the cone until it gets its 5th and last skin, when it bites a hole to emerge. It moves to yet another leaf, where it folds the edge to make a silken tunnel in which it pupates and transforms into a moth.

This remarkable animal is found only on Rarotonga, Rurutu, Rapa ‘iti, Mo‘orea and Ra‘iātea – always at high elevations on Rata. It is an endemic of Southeast Polynesia.

 

Montane Emerald Dragonfly

The Montane Dragonfly is the rarest dragonfly in the Cook Islands, and its only substantial population is on the summit of Te Ko’u.

The Cook Islands has seven dragonflies, and the rarest is the Montane Emerald Dragonfly, found almost exclusively in the summit basin of Te Ko‘u.

The Montane Emerald Dragonfly (Hemicordulia hilaris) has a distinctive metallic blue-green colour and a spindle-shaped abdomen. It is a small dragonfly with a 6cm wingspan, which at rest holds its wings level with its body, rather than forward and down, like the ubiquitous Small Red Dragonfly.

This emerald dragonfly is a strong flier with a wide distribution from New Caledonia and Vanuatu through Fiji, Tonga, and the Samoas to Rarotonga. The genus is still under taxonomic revision, and if the Tahitian species, Hemicordulia oceanica is the same, this would extend the range of our species to the Society Islands.

Dragonflies are usually seen around ponds of all sizes into which they lay their eggs, and their larvae (nymphs) live on the bottom, where they ambush their prey with their long, extendable mouthparts. When the nymphs reach their final stage, they crawl out of the water on some object. There, their skins split open, and the soft-bodied adults emerge to pump themselves into adult shape before their skins become rigid and coloured.

There are no ponds on Te Ko‘u, and where our young emerald dragonflies live is unknown.

 

Te Ko‘u Landsnail

This is the only known photo of a live Te Ko’u landsnail. It was taken in 1984, and no more live animals have been found. Shell length (SL) 9mm.

Native landsnails have not done well on Rarotonga, with more known extinctions than all other animal groups combined. Most native coastal landsnails are extinct, and many mountain species are gone.

Te Ko‘u has proven to be a natural refuge for several species, and around 2007, snail expert Fred Brook found four new landsnail species surviving in the summit basin. They are not yet named.

Rarotonga’s most famous native landsnail was found on the summit Te Ko‘u in 1964 and 1965. Kiwi Laurie Price found it for the American landsnail expert Alan Solem, who named it after the mountain and its finder Tekoulina pricei. Price found numerous specimens in areas of Cloud Blechnum within the summit basin but not elsewhere on the island.

All landsnails, including the Te Ko‘u Landsnail, are bisexual (hermaphroditic) with mature male and female reproductive parts. They produce young by mutual cross-fertilisation, although self-fertilisation can sometimes occur.

They typically produce large nutrient-filled eggs in which the embryos develop after being laid, although in many cases, the adult keeps the eggs inside where the young hatches to be born free-living. In such cases, each embryo grows on the nutrients within its egg and is not connected to the mother. This widespread type of live birth is known as ovatrophic viviparity (“egg-fed, live birth”) or ovoviviparity (“egg, live birth”).

In contrast, our Te Ko‘u Landsnail feeds its embryos while they grow in her uterus. The eggs are small with minimal nutrients, and the embryos are fed through a stalk or umbilicus attached to the uterus wall. This is called matrotrophic viviparity (“mother-fed, life birth”).

Mother-fed live births are incredibly rare in the world of snails. It occurs in only eighteen species worldwide, and our Te Ko‘u Landsnail is in this elite group.

The last live Te Ko‘u snail was seen and photographed by the author in 1984. Brook undertook thorough searches in 2005, 2006 and 2007 and found no live snails, although a few fresh, empty shells indicated that this endangered species might still exist.

Tuna Kavi, the Polynesian Longfin Eel

Tuna Kavi, the Polynesian Longfin Eel, lives in the upper reaches of streams and has been recorded in the summit stream of Te Ko’u.

Rarotonga has three freshwater eels, the most common being the uniformly dark swamp eel Tuna Māori, the Pacific Shortfin Eel (Anguilla obscura). The common eel in the streams, especially at lower elevations, is the marbled eel Tuna Pupu, the Giant Marbled Eel (Anguilla marmorata).

The upper reaches of streams are the home of the slender Tuna Kavi, the Polynesian Longfin Eel (Anguilla megastoma). Over the years, a few hikers have reported seeing eels in the summit stream, and I found a 70cm eel in 1991. It was uniformly grey-brown above and had a yellowish belly.

There are two amazing things about Tuna Kavi being on the summit of Te Ko‘u. The first is the unbelievably steep valley it climbed to reach the top: a valley of several vertical waterfalls. I once attempted to hike up this stream and found it impossible to work my way around the edges of the waterfalls. How do eels sometimes make that climb?

The second thing is that I have not seen any pawns or fish for it to eat. I have heard that Tuna Kavi is the most vicious eel, and it has been found with the remains of rats inside. On the top of Te Ko‘u, the odd rat might be its main food source, although I imagine a few landsnails and insects also fall into the water or venture too close.

A final point about any Tuna Kavi on Te Ko‘u is that when it is about twenty years old, it will change from its usual yellow belly to silver, stop eating, and slither down the mountain to take the Avanā Stream to sea and use its body fat to undertake an ocean journey to a still unknown area where it will breed and die. Research in Samoa and elsewhere has shown that migrating eels swim about 800m deep during the day to avoid predators, mainly sharks, but come up to about 200m at night to warm up.

Finding the deep-water breeding sites of freshwater eels has been very difficult. The sites for only three species are known: the European, American, and Japanese Eels. For example, the European Eel leaves European streams as a silver eel to swim on its stored fats for about five months, covering 6,000km to its breeding site about 500m deep in the Sargasso Sea, east of Bermuda. There, they spawn and die. Their leaf-like larvae take about three years to float on the Gulf Stream back to the Continental Shelf of Europe, where they become swimming “glass eels” which enter streams to become small pigmented eels (“elvers”) and then yellow eels. They change into migratory silver eels when they are about 20 years old.

The deep-water breeding sites of the tropical South Pacific eels are yet to be discovered. Tahiti has the same three eel species as Rarotonga, and their young transparent “glass eels” arrive during the early Wet Season (December-February). Their small size of about 50mm suggests they are only about four months old, indicating relatively nearby breeding sites. This might apply to Rarotonga eels also. There is a lot to learn.

Gerald McCormack, Cook Islands Natural Heritage Trust.

 

 

 

Author’s notes
First published CI News 4 Nov 2023
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Huntsman spiders -harmless and useful

Gerald McCormack, CINHT

Female Heteropoda venatoria.

Male Heteropoda venatoria

The largest spiders in the Cook Islands are the two huntsman spiders: the Brown Huntsman (Heteropoda venatoria), and the Noble Huntsman (Heteropoda nobilis). Their long slender legs have a span to about 12cm, although they have relatively small bodies – to 3cm long.

Huntsman spiders do not build webs to catch their prey. They are nocturnal hunters, actively searching for insects, especially cockroaches, which makes them useful around the house. When they detect an insect they give chase with tremendous speed and agility, and can jump as far as 20cm to land on the prey. The typical outcome of a chase is for the spider to embrace the insect as it subdues and kills it with venom from its fangs. Like other spiders, it then injects the prey with digestive enzymes to dissolve its internal tissues into a nutritious soup for it to drink.

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The Arāpō and the Troublesome Moon

The Arāpō and the Troublesome Moon

Gerald McCormack, CINHT.

The lunar month calendar of the Cook Islands is the arāpō or “path of the nights”, and the lunar year calendar is the nga tino marama.

The 13-month lunar year or annual calendar was difficult to keep synchronised with the seasons. It was abandoned soon after the missionaries brought the Gregorian calendar in the 1820s, which accurately predicted the seasons and required only a one day adjustment every four years.

The arāpō was not abandoned because it remained useful for predicting favourable and unfavourable nights for fishing and planting – and ghost (tūpāpaku) activity. When it is used as an oral calendar it was easy to adjust by direct observation of the moon.

As a written calendar it would seem an easy matter to synchronise the named-nights of the arāpō with a Gregorian calendar showing New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon and Last Quarter. However, experience over the last twenty years, has shown that this is not easy and people have often noticed that the observed phase of the moon did not fall on the expected named-night of some printed arāpō.

Here we look at how the complexity of the lunar cycle challenges those who write an arāpō for the year ahead.

Motu – sometimes only

Over the years I have collected numerous arāpō for different islands and their basic similarity is indicative of an ancient common origin. The arāpō shown as an example has been used often by Ministry of Agriculture.

Almost without exception the arāpō have 30 named nights starting with Tiroe and ending with Motu or Mutu. Astronomically the moon goes through its cycle in about 29.5 days, which means that during a year a repeating 30 night arāpō will become increasingly out of sync with the observed lunar events. For example, in a combined Gregorian and arāpō calendar of 1999 the observed New Moon was on the 16th January which was the 1st arāpō night of Tiroe, but by December, the observed New Moon was on ‘Akaoti Tangaroa the 26th arāpō night – five days ahead of Tiroe.

Lunar tables for 2011 lunar cycles show the number of nights from New Moon to New Moon as: 30, 30, 29, 30, 30, 29, 30, 29, 29, 30, 29, 30 and 29. To keep a 30 day arāpō aligned with the main lunar events throughout 2011 it is necessary to discard Motu/Mutu for the five cycles of 29 nights.

For a written arāpō the only way to know in advance when to use or discard Motu/Mutu is to look up an astronomical table to find the predicted nights for New Moon.

Curious treatment of New Moon

Some ‘arāpō’ phases.

For the astronomer, New Moon is when none of the moon is illuminated by the sun and almost all arāpō have this as the first counted night even when saying it is not New Moon.

Some ‘arāpō’ phasesWhile some arāpō say Tiroe is New Moon, most say New Moon is two nights later on ‘Oata (3rd) and some have it on ‘Iro (2nd). In these latter cases it is not clear why the arāpō count starts ahead of the interpretation of New Moon. I have sometimes heard people talk about how the papa‘ā moon is ahead of the Māori moon and maybe this has something to do with this curious treatment of the New Moon in most arāpō.

Wandering Full Moon

With New and Full Moon being the most significant events, the lunar cycle is usually broken into two parts: waxing when the moon is increasing in the amount illuminated, and waning when the illuminated section is decreasing. In the arāpō waxing is anga raro, literally “in the west” and waning is anga runga, “in the east”.

2011 Luna cycles (with New Moon aligned for counting the nights).

Most arāpō show Full Moon as occurring on one night and most have this as Mārangi, the 16th night, while some show it as the 17th night of Turu. In searching for the correct night the astronomical data surprised me by showing that throughout a year, Full Moon wanders over three arāpō nights: 15th (‘Otu), 16th (Mārangi) and 17th (Turu). In the table of 2011 lunar cycles the nights of Full Moon are: 17th, 16th, 16th, 16th, 15th, 15th, 15th, 15th, 15th, 16th, 16th, 16th and 16th

Astronomically the main cause of this wandering Full Moon is the elliptical orbit of the moon. When the moon is closest to the earth (Perigee) the increased pull of the earth increases its orbital speed and if this occurs during a waxing moon the number of days of waxing is reduced. If it is most distant (Apogee) while waxing it travels slower and there are more days of waxing.

In the table, Perigee (P) and Apogee (A) are shown during waxing and we see that when there is a Perigee the Full Moon is usually on the 15th night (‘Otu) and when there is an Apogee the Full Moon is generally on the 16th (Mārangi) night and sometimes on the 17th night (Turu).

During the waning moon the effect is the opposite of the preceding waxing effect and over a given lunar cycle they cancel each other out so that the whole lunar cycle remains at around 29.5 days. The table shown here can be constructed for any particular years from data at https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/phases/cook-islands/rarotonga

This means that from a particular New Moon any attempt to predict the night of Full Moon using only an arāpō of immutable named nights is doomed to failure. The simplest solution is to be flexible and accept that the observed Full Moon can appear on ‘Otu, Mārangi or Turu.

In New Zealand, the Reverend Metera Aomarere of Otaki (70km northwest of Wellington) obtained a list of lunar nights from Mita te Tai and he recorded that it was adjusted to allow for the drift of Full Moon: “The fifteenth night is Ohua, but in certain months it is the 16th night, and sometimes it is the 17th night – that is, the condition of full moon is attained. If the moon does not become full until the 17th night, then the 15th, 16th, and 17th nights are all termed Ohua, and then the last three nights of the moon, Orongonui [28th], Maurea [29th], and Mutu [30th], are omitted, because a new moon has appeared.”((Best E. (1922)  The Maori Division of Time. Dominiom Museum Monograph No.4. Wellington. p.23))

Best also reported an informant saying that the 10th night Huna could sometimes be removed, which shows that some New Zealand Māori made predictive adjustments to make Full Moon fall on a particular named night. The basis for the prediction of the days to Full Moon in a particular month is unknown, but the following case from Rapanui shows a possibility.

Rapanui lunar system

The “Calendar sequence” shows a lunar cycle in ‘Rongorongo’ (Rapanui writing).

Soon after the arrival of the first Europeans, the people of Rapanui developed their own form of writing, called Rongorongo. The “Calendar sequence” shows a lunar cycle with lunar nights as right-facing crescents and an oval (Full Moon in line 4), and upward-pointing fish for waxing and downward for waning. What is intriguing is the repeated sequence of two people facing each. In 1990 linguist Jacques Guy suggested the first tōhunga was holding a measuring stick and the second was announcing the size of the moon as shown by the large or small crescent behind him.

When the moon is large, waxing will have fewer days because it is moving faster at Perigee, and a waxing named night needs to be removed to shift the named night for Full Moon forward so it will coincide with observed Full Moon. When it is smaller (at Apogee) they need to add a waxing night to keep the arāpō in sync with observed Full Moon. They would also have been adjusting for New Moon.

The question is: could they really measure the changing size of the moon with a stick? Astronomer Phil Evans, using a 10% size difference between Perigee and Apogee moons, calculated that if the Rapanui observers were five metres apart there would be a 5mm difference on the stick. He concluded that “it might have been possible but with difficulty”.  Even if they overcame the difficulty, we will never know why it was worth so much effort – maybe, like scientists today, they just enjoyed trying to accurately predict the future.

Days are not nights

Lunar events on the web and in newspapers are given in terms of Gregorian days and this sometimes leads to a misalignment with an arāpō. For example, Full Moon on the 17th of May is at 1am, which for an arāpō is the night of the 16th of May. The easiest way to adjust for this misalignment is to move predawn lunar events to the previous Gregorian day. In the 2011 table used here to count the nights, the four events moved forward one night are underlined. Furthermore, moving a New Moon increased the count by one to the next Full Moon and Last night of the cycle, and these changes are marked with asterisks.

Conclusion

Aligning an arāpō of predetermined named nights with a Gregorian calendar is fraught with problems, because of the one day variation from New Moon to New Moon and the three day variation from New Moon to Full moon.

The simplest solution, as often used by the Ministry of Agriculture, is the side-by-side system. Print a conventional Gregorian twelve month calendar and using astronomical data for the Cook Islands time zone to show New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon and Last Quarter. Such data is online at http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/moonphases.html (set for Rarotonga).

Alongside print an arāpō calendar of 30 named nights showing the preferred named nights for New Moon and Full Moon and the Quarters, along with the predicted effects of every night on fishing and planting. In this way the user is responsible for sliding the arāpō back and forth to keep its main lunar events synchronised with those on the Gregorian calendar.

To merge an arāpō calendar into a Gregorian calendar is a hard work option. First you need to adjust the Gregorian lunar events by moving pre-dawn events forward a day. Then place the arāpō named nights in sequence, adding or removing names so that the next arāpō lunar event is aligned with the Gregorian lunar event.

 

Citation

McCormack, Gerald (2024) The Arāpō and the Troublesome Moon. Cook Islands Natural Heritage Trust.

Author’s notes
First published CI News 2011, updated Jan 2024.
This article has been updated to include the overlooked information in Best that some Māori were well aware that Full Moon did not occur on a fixed numbered-night. Best E. (1922)  The Maori Division of Time. Dominiom Museum Monograph No.4. Wellington. Moeka‘a, R. 1994 Traditional Scientific Knowledge in the Cook Islands: Arāpō. pp. 131-135. In: Morrison, J.; Geraghty, P. and Crowl, L. (eds.) Science of Pacific Island Peoples, Volume 4.  Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, Fiji. Rere, T. (1960)  Maori Lessons for the Cook Islands. Department of Island Territories, Wellington, New Zealand. Gill, Rev. W.W.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Cook Islands Arāpō -a comparison

Gerald McCormack, CINHT.

Lunar calendars are popular in Polynesia as guides for fishing and planting. In most cases they consist of a series of 30 nights with names (named-nights) that are applied without deviation, except for the 30th night, which can be dropped to ensure the next cycle starts on New Moon. The local calendars are known as the arāpō, literally the “path of the nights”.

In a previous article (30 April), we looked at the astronomical reason why Full Moon varies –more– between the 15th, 16th and 17th night, namely ‘Otu, Mārangi or Turu of the Ministry of Agriculture arāpō. The First Quarter and Last Quarter also vary over three nights: 7th, 8th and 9th for the First Quarter, and 22nd, 23rd and 24th for the Last Quarter. In the table I have shown this 3-night variation in the left column and removed all references to actual astronomical events from the calendars of named-nights.

In this article we compare some commonly accepted lunar calendars to see how they might have evolved since ancient times.

 

Settlement of Eastern Polynesia

The evidence from archaeology, linguistics, and DNA shows that a voyaging people, the Lapita people, were the first settlers in the islands of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, about 3000 years ago (1000 BC).  During the next 2000 years they were a settled people and during that time they developed the first Polynesian language and culture.

Around 1000 AD they set forth to discover and colonise the Society Islands and Tuamotu Archipelago, where they remained settled for about 200 years and during that time they developed the first Eastern Polynesian language and culture.

From about 1200 to 1400 AD they discovered and settled all the remote islands of Eastern Polynesia from Hawai‘i in the north, to Rapanui in the southeast and New Zealand in the southwest.

Samoa and the Society Islands

We cannot travel back in time a 1000 years to look at the lunar calendar brought by the first settlers to the Societies. In the table we show modern calendars from Samoa and Tahiti, and what is immediately obvious is that they have nothing in common.

Although this modern Samoan calendar will have changed, it is unlikely to be radically different from that of the ‘Samoan’ community of 1000 years ago, which means that the Tahitian calendar shows radical innovation. It is as though a founding ‘Samoan’ chief said “forget Savai‘i, let’s develop a new language and culture, and a revolutionary lunar calendar” – and so it was.

Tahiti

Which Tahitian calendar is the most ancient? The scholar Rev John Davies recorded the Pomare calendar in 1819, and the linguist Frank Stimson analysed three Society Islands’ calendars in 1928. The Davies/Pomare and Stimson #1 and #3 have the same named-nights and sequence, except that the 11th can be Rapu or ‘Ari, and the system of counting repetitive nights can be mua, roto and muri or tahi, roto and fa‘aoti – a trivial difference of “first, within and behind” versus “first, within and end”.

Stimson #2 is like the others, except that after New Moon, when the moon is waxing, the repetitive nights have three Tamatea nights instead of two ‘Ore‘ore and one Tamatea. Overall, the remarkable similarity in the Tahitian calendars supports the idea that they have changed little over several hundred years.

Here we show Stimson’s #3 because its counting system (tahi, roto, fa‘aoti) is the same as those of the Cook Islands.

Societies to the Cook Islands

Oral traditions, linguistics and archaeology show that the Southern Group islands were mainly settled from about 1200 to 1400AD with settlers from the Society Islands. These settlers would have brought their arāpō and we would expect Cook Islands arāpō to reflect a common ancestry.

Rarotonga

There are a few Rarotonga arāpō and we are using the Ministry of Agriculture’s, which has been widely used since the 1990s. This calendar is the same as that recorded by Taira Rere in 1960, except it replaces Rapu with Vari, and Mai with ‘Otu, and it swaps around a couple of adjacent nights – trivial differences.

In comparing the Rarotonga calendar with the Tahitian we see they are the same, except for a reversal of named-nights 10 and 11, and the use of Vari instead of Rapu (while noting that Rere 1960 used Rapu).

The Outer Islands

Reverend William Wyatt Gill spent 25 years on Mangaia from 1852 and he was a prolific recorder of Mangaia culture. We use the Mangaia calendar he published in 1876, which is the same as those used today.

I have recorded various calendars from Ngāpūtoru since the 1990s and the one shown here for Ātiu is the same as one recorded on Ma‘uke, while the only one I recorded on Miti‘āro (not shown) was similar to Rarotonga. The one shown for Aitutaki was recorded at the NBSAP meeting of 2000, and is essentially the same as the one used in the schools today.

Compared to the Tahitian calendar, the Mangaia, Ātiu and Ma‘uke calendars have only one significant difference: during the waxing moon repetitive nights the lone Tamatea has increased to two nights and moved ahead of the maintained two ‘Ore‘ore nights, and Hamiama has been reduced from three to two. Although the Aitutaki calendar might at first look quite different it is the same as the other Outer Islands, except they have removed ‘Akaoti Korekore from each sequence to make a calendar of 28 nights instead of 30.

Mystery remains

The Mangaia, Ngāpūtoru and Aitutaki have essentially the same arāpō despite being settled by different groups from the Societies, and having had little cultural interaction after about 1500AD. This indicates they inherited it from a widespread ancient calendar of the Society Islands. Therefore, it might be that the present Tahitian and Rarotonga calendars have undergone a more recent alteration of the repetitive nights of the waxing moon.

This idea is supported by William Wyatt Gill (1876) who wrote “At Rarotonga the 13th is Maitu instead of Atua; otherwise this account of the changes of the moon [for Mangaia] is equally good for Rarotonga.” Anthropologist Percy Smith, who did extensive interviewing on Rarotonga in 1897, recorded an arāpō which also has the Outer Islands’ system of repetitive nights during the waxing moon.

It is not clear if the present Tahitian calendar is ancient or a more recent innovation, and it is not clear when that calendar arrived on Rarotonga. An analysis of lunar calendars from other islands in Eastern Polynesia could shed light on this mystery.

Citation

McCormack, Gerald (2024) Cook Islands Arāpō – a Comparison.

Author’s notes
First published CI News 22 Sep. 2011.

 

 

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