How  did the Tahitians conceptualise the sky to make it an instrument of astronomical measure?

Their traditions provide explanations as cosmological narratives. They can bewitch us, but they are not considered scientific solutions. Astronomy has given to theories that prevail today all the appearance of seriousness and rationality.

Cosmogony began the day the man was asked about its environment and its origins. We had to ask those who had traveled, to tell what they had seen and heard about even more distant regions. The Tahitians are among those curious who went to see what was beyond the horizon. When they returned they told the elders. The elders carefully preserved these experiences in myths. The answers to their knowledge are thus within the carefully maintained myths in their memory and in the vocabulary they use to conceptualise their convictions. To decrypt the myths, the linguistic approach becomes essential.

In the Tahitian cosmogony, the Ta'aroa God created the world. The sky and earth remain firmly clamped in the tentacles of the octopus Tumura'i. After the god Tane had the trenches Ta'aroa lifted sky using ten pou "pillars" that today locate the stars named Ana. Celestial objects can finally emerge from the abyss located at the horizon and move on the celestial dome by tracing the paths which the ancients called rua, identified by their brightest stars, ta'urua. This conceptualization of the cosmos offered the Tahitians a remarkable instrument of space-time measure that will allow them to cross the ocean in all directions.

Their astronomical lexicon includes nearly two hundred words bearing the concepts. The revisitation of the myths has led to an update the science and finally discover how the Polynesians sailed with the stars.

From a summary of a Conférence Savoirs pour tous : Le ciel, un instrument de mesure astronomique pour les Tahitiens

Jeudi 10 April, 2104.

Conférence animée par Jean-Claude TERIIEROOITERAI, Docteur en Littérature, Sciences Humaines, Linguistique.