In the 19th century, 24 wooden artifacts were found on Easter Island carved with unknown language / undeciphered symbol or glyph, some heavily weathered, burned, or otherwise damaged .The Rongorongo script of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is composed of glyphs carved into wooden artifacts, depicting human figures, animals, plants, and geometric forms. The writing system known as Rongorongo inscription. The artifacts were collected in
the late of 19th century and are now scattered in museums and private
collections. Unfortunately, none of them still remain on Easter Island. Many believe they represent a lost system of writing or proto-writing and could be one of just three or four independent inventions of writing in human history. Until now, the mysterious glyphs remain undecipherable, and their true messages may be lost forever.
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| Wooden object with Rongorongo inscription |
A high-precision radiocarbon dating study conducted by researchers at the University of Bologna provided critical chronological data. Direct AMS radiocarbon analysis of the wooden substrate of an inscribed Rongorongo tablet preserved in Rome revealed that the wood was harvested between 1493 and 1509 CE.
The word rongorongo came from the Polynesian island of Mangareva, and was applied to the script carved on staves or tablets used as mnemonic devices in the ritual chanting by the so-called rongorongo men. These were men who competed in an annual ritual associated with the birdman cult, which is connected to the deity Makemake.
The objects are mostly tablets shaped from irregular pieces of wood, sometimes driftwood, but include a chieftain's staff, a bird-man statuette, and two reimiro ornaments. There are also a few petroglyphs which may include short rongorongo inscriptions. Oral history suggests that only a small elite was ever literate and that the tablets were sacred.
Several scholars have tried to decipher the script but as yet without complete success, hindered by the small number of tablets. It appears to be a writing system which mixes ideographs (where each concept is represented by a symbol) with a phonetic alphabet.
The objects are mostly tablets shaped from irregular pieces of wood, sometimes driftwood, but include a chieftain's staff, a bird-man statuette, and two reimiro ornaments. There are also a few petroglyphs which may include short rongorongo inscriptions. Oral history suggests that only a small elite was ever literate and that the tablets were sacred.
Several scholars have tried to decipher the script but as yet without complete success, hindered by the small number of tablets. It appears to be a writing system which mixes ideographs (where each concept is represented by a symbol) with a phonetic alphabet.
A persistent debate in Pacific ethnohistory centers on whether Rongorongo represents an independent invention of writing—which would make Rapa Nui one of the few places in human history where writing arose spontaneously—or whether it developed as a post-contact imitation of European writing following initial Spanish contact in 1770.
Because Rapa Nui experienced deforestation during its late settlement period, researchers evaluated whether the wood could have been scavenged drift logs or re-used architectural timbers. Taxonomical analysis established that the tablet was carved from Sophora toromiro, a native tree species that grew on the island.Because the harvesting date of the native wood predates European arrival in the Pacific by more than two centuries (the Dutch explorer Jakob Roggeveen first encountered Rapa Nui in 1722), the study strongly supports the hypothesis that Rongorongo was an autochthonous, pre-contact creation of the Rapa Nui civilization
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