Rongorongo: The World’s Most Mysterious Writing System

The enigmatic Rongorongo tablets of Easter Island have fascinated researchers and enthusiasts for over 150 years, presenting one of the most intriguing unsolved puzzles in the field of ancient writing systems. These wooden artifacts, adorned with intricate glyphs depicting stylized human, animal, and geometric forms, may represent one of the few independent inventions of writing in human history.

The story of Rongorongo begins with its discovery in 1864 by Eugène Eyraud, a lay friar who noticed wooden tablets covered in hieroglyphic characters in every hut on Easter Island. However, it wasn’t until 1868 that the significance of these tablets became apparent to the wider world, when Bishop Florentin-Étienne Jaussen of Tahiti received one as a gift. Intrigued by the discovery, he sought to collect more tablets and find natives capable of translating them. Unfortunately, by this time, most of the tablets had already been lost or destroyed.

The destruction of the Rongorongo tablets is a tragic tale intertwined with the island’s tumultuous history. European-introduced diseases and Peruvian slave raids had decimated the population, potentially wiping out literacy by the time of Eyraud’s discovery. The remaining islanders, having lost interest in the tablets, used them for mundane purposes such as firewood or fishing line reels. Some tablets were even repurposed as planking for canoes, a fate that befell tablets S and P.

Today, only 26 objects bearing Rongorongo inscriptions are known to exist, scattered in museums and private collections around the world. These artifacts range from wooden tablets to a chieftain’s staff, and even include two ornamental pectorals worn by the island’s elite.

The method of inscription provides clues to the tablets’ creation. Most were carved with shark teeth, but some show evidence of obsidian use for finer details. Tablet N stands out, appearing to have been incised with sharpened bone and elaborated with obsidian flakes.

Dating the tablets has proven challenging. Carbon dating of Tablet Q only constrains its creation to after 1680. However, the presence of a glyph thought to represent the extinct Easter Island palm, which disappeared around 1650, suggests the script is at least that old.

The texts are written in a unique reverse boustrophedon style, where the reader begins at the bottom left corner, reads from left to right, then rotates the tablet 180 degrees to continue on the next line.

The glyphs themselves are a marvel of artistic and potentially linguistic complexity. Nearly all figures with heads are oriented upright and face either forward or to the right, in the direction of writing. Birds are particularly common, with many resembling the frigatebird associated with the supreme god Makemake. Some glyphs bear striking similarities to petroglyphs found throughout the island, hinting at a possible connection between the two artistic traditions.

Attempts to decipher Rongorongo have been ongoing since its discovery, but success has been limited. While a portion of one tablet has been shown to contain a lunar calendar, and another may include genealogical information, the vast majority of the texts remain unread.

The challenges facing would-be decipherers are formidable: a small corpus of texts, lack of contextual information, and poor attestation of the Old Rapa Nui language all conspire to make Rongorongo one of the world’s most enigmatic scripts.

Due these obstacles, the mystery of Rongorongo persists. Some scholars believe it to be a true writing system, capable of encoding spoken language, while others argue it is a form of proto-writing or a mnemonic device for recording genealogies, choreographies, or astronomical observations. The debate over its nature – logographic or syllabic – continues to fuel scholarly discussion and research.

Whether they represent a fully-fledged writing system or a sophisticated memory aid, the Rongorongo tablets offer a exceptional glimpse into a unique cultural tradition that flourished in one of the most remote locations on Earth. As research continues and new technologies are applied to their study, the Rongorongo tablets may yet yield their secrets, shedding light on the rich intellectual and artistic life of ancient Easter Island.