A friend of mine has vacation time approaching and as a pilot, he can travel anywhere. He was pondering places to visit and asked me, “If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?” Without hesitation I answered, “Easter Island.”

Easter Island is one of the most isolated inhabited places on Earth. An early indigenous name for the island was Te Pito o te Henua, meaning “The Navel of the World” and this is exactly how it looks on maps – like a belly button in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Easter Island is so remote its closest inhabited neighbors are Pitcairn Island, at 2,075 km to the west, while Chile is 3,700 km east (the island is Chilean territory).

Easter Island was so renamed after Dutch explore Jacob Roggeveen “discovered” the land on Easter Sunday in 1722. Rapa Nui (“Big Island”) is the indigenous name for the island, its inhabitants, and its language.

Rapa Nui is most famous for its iconic Moai. These are large stone statues that were carved between 1100-1680. There are some 900 Moai scattered across the island; some staring out to sea like guardians of the island, but most face inland, appearing to oversee its inhabitants.

At some point in Rapa Nui’s history, its population diminished rapidly. Until recently, the popular theory to explain this was that the primitive, superstitious natives destroyed their natural resources in order to build the Moai. The prevailing theory is not of ecocide, but of genocide. It appears that contact with colonizers caused the near-annihilation of this ethnic group. In the 19th century, thousands of Rapa Nui were kidnapped by Peruvians and forced into slavery in mines and plantations. Some Rapa Nui were eventually returned to their homeland, but disease and hard labor killed many of them. Those who returned brought back an epidemic of smallpox that decimated the already diminished population. Others emigrated to South America or other Polynesian islands. Today, there are only about 3,000 Rapa Nui left, and it’s been a struggle to piece together their history and preserve their culture.

The indigenous people write the Rapa Nui or Spanish languages using the Latin alphabet, but Rapa Nui once had its own writing system: Rongorongo. In the Rapa Nui language, Rongorongo means to “recite” or “chant”. This writing dates back to the 17th century and its origin is unknown. It may have originated in South America or Polynesia. Alternatively, the script may have been invented on the island. If so, Rongorongo would be one of the world’s few writing systems that evolved independently.

There is only a very small existing corpus of 25 Rongorongo inscriptions on stone and wood. (Polynesian words can have multiple meanings, and another possible translation of Rongorongo is “talking wood”). An alleged 26th example may be a clever fake. According to lore, Rongorongo was traditionally carved onto banana leaves using obsidian flakes or shark’s teeth. Many of the extant samples are badly weathered, burned, or damaged, and all are kept in personal collections or museums in Paris, Rome, New York, and Hawaii. None remain on the island anymore.

There are about 120 symbols in Rongorongo. These include pictures of humans, animals, plants, astronomical symbols, and geometric shapes. There are also hundreds of glyphs that are formed from these symbols. It is not known if the writing is logographic (one symbol per concept), a syllabary (one symbol per syllable), or an alphabet (one symbol per sound, like our own writing). It’s not even known if this actually is writing. Some scholars believe that Rongorongo is a type of protowriting, that is, picture symbols that don’t have any linguistic content. Others think Rongorongo is a mnemonic device that depicts events in a story or an historical account. Many of the glyphs are similar to the thousands of petroglyphs (pictures carved into rock) that are found on the island.

Rongorongo was written in a very curious style known as reverse boustrophedon. Like a linguistic labyrinth, Rongorongo was read from left to write on the bottom line, then the tablet was turned 180 degrees to read the next line. So, when reading one line the lines above it and below appear to be upside down.

Rongorongo was used until the 186os. Around that time, knowledge of how to read it was lost. Perhaps those who were literate in Rongorongo were sold into slavery, died of smallpox, or moved overseas. Another theory is that the writing was considered sacred and only elders and religious leaders could write and read it. There are also stories that when interested visitors tried to translate the script, they learned that Christian missionaries had forbidden the native’s from using their writing.

Sadly, no one can understand the writing system today. Its decipherment will take the combined efforts of speakers, linguists, archaeologists, and art historians. But for now, Rongorongo remains a mystery.

Share this:

Tweet







Like this: Like Loading...