Don,
I don’t know anything about you.
You’ve proven to have a sense of humor, so that’s a good start.
We then agreed that yam was consumed on Easter Island. For anyone interested, the glyph of yam is featured on Queen of Hearts. Do we know that for a fact? Nope, like everything else with RongoRongo, it’s an educated guess, but there is a strong consensus about this glyph, so the Queen of Hearts is most likely surrounded by yams.
My silence on other questions does not speak volumes; we just need to take them one at the time.
That was an example of sarcasm which you promised to avoid.
Going down the list:
Am I an Easter Islander?
No, I am not.
Do I have a connection to glyphs?
Well, I do as a typographer who worked with type for a big part of my life, and as an author of this project. I don’t have a “blood” connection to the island. If your question is about my initial interest in Easter Island then I do have a connection, of sort, to that civilization. My co-pilot’s family came from this Island, and we spent a lot of time talking about the place high above the clouds. His favorite joke was “if my ancestors could find Rapa Nui, I can definitely find the damn airport.” He was indeed a brilliant navigator.
My first name is not Spanish. It’s not French either.
Yes, I am of Easter European origin, living for 30+ years in New York.
No, I am not Polynesian.
The Birdman subject cannot be answered in one line; it requires a long yam-like essay, so maybe that one is a good topic for another day.
The glyphs also require a long yam-like essay to answer your question, so maybe that could be our next topic after Birdman. The short answer is no, those are not my interpretations; I don’t have any interpretations of my own of RongoRongo. They come from work of several people who committed their entire lives to the project of researching RongoRongo. I did study their work extensively.
“I was stating researched facts on the topics of Rapa Nui…” nope, you did not. You presented a result of your 10-minute google binge without actually understanding the subject matter and offering far reaching opinions.
I am not shouting down the links you provided; I am shouting down your assumptions based on a very limited amount of your knowledge in these matters. For the life of me, I don’t understand why you are so compelled to offer such opinions, but you do.
For example, you imply that the “birdman is the name of the winner of the contest… there are some religious elements to it, but overall it sound more like an Ironman competition.” In IronMan competitions the contestants swim, run and bike for an extended period of time. I know quite a lot about the subject because I participated in IronMan event last year after training for months.
On Rapa Nui, the contestants of “IronMan-like competition” never became Birdman. The contestants were young kids called Hopu, which were appointed by Chiefs. So Hopu scaled sheer cliffs and swam with the sharks, and often died in the process. When they won, it was not them, but the Chiefs who appointed them who become Birdman.
Your Holocaust example crosses all lines of decency. Especially when it is directed to a person who’s entire family went through the horrors of concentration camps. My grandmother is a candidate to become a Christian Saint for her activities at Auschwitz. The entry to the Auschwitz Museum is located on a street bearing her name.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Midwife+at+Auschwitz%3A+the+story+of+Stanislawa+Leszczynska.-a0130564530
