Easter Island is known above all for the moaienormous head-shaped sculptures that natives carved from volcanic tuff and have fascinated scientists for decades. On the Polynesian island there is, however, another archaeological enigma that is much less visible but equally (or even more) important for humanity: the rongo rongothe pictographic writing system used by the Rapa Nui people. Linguists have not yet been able to decipher its signs, but above all they are concerned about one question: When was it invented?
It may seem anecdotal, but the answer would be a milestone that would transcend Polynesia and help us better understand how humanity gave birth to one of the inventions that has most influenced history: writing.
One word: rongo rongo. It is not nearly as well known as the moai, but the rongo rongo is one of the most fascinating treasures that we owe to the Rapa Nuithe Polynesian natives of Easter Island. It basically consists of a writing system based on pictograms that is preserved in a series of tablets spread around the world. Experts estimate that it is made up of 400 charactersalthough its meaning and logic remains surrounded by unknowns.
The experts they have not been able to decipher it Still, something understandable if two pieces of information are taken into account. First, although rongo rongo has centuries of history, Europeans were not interested in it until the 19th. We owe much of the credit to the French missionary Eugene Eyraudwho shortly before dying described the symbols that covered wooden tablets and staffs located on the Polynesian island. The second fact is that we keep a fairly limited number of engraved boards, pieces that are also distributed in places like Rome, Honolulu or New York.
The great mystery. A few years ago Silvia Ferrara, professor at the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies at the University of Bologna, explained to the BBC why the challenge is so complicated: “No one has reconstructed the systematic correspondence between each sign and the sounds it registers.” At first glance, the glyphs seem to represent silhouettes of animals, plants, people, artifacts and geometric designs, but understanding them requires clarifying such basic questions as whether two signs similar to each other, with slight variations, represent the same sound.
The curious thing is that, as complex as this challenge is, it is not what experts are most fascinated by. There is another question that worries them even more: When and how was the rongo rongo created? Was it something that the natives of Easter Island came up with or did it develop after the arrival of the first European navigators, to beginning of the 17th century? The key is no longer so much to understand what the pictograms say as to clarify who, when, how and under what influence created the system.
Is it so important? Yes. And the reason is very simple. There are many languages (very many), but writing systems developed from scratch, independently, there are very few (very few). “For many, writing represents an essential quality of civilization. There are four cases and places in human history where writing was invented from scratch without any prior knowledge,” explained in 2010 Christopher Woods, of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago.
This ‘miracle’ basically occurred in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica. “It is likely that all other writing systems evolved from the four systems,” detailed the expert If rongo rongo developed on Easter Island basically after the arrival of Europeans, in the 17th century, that ‘photo’ would not change. It would be a valuable creation, although not ‘independent’. Its origin would be explained by external influences.
But… What if it was the Rapa Nui who devised the system completely autonomously? After all, it is known that, despite being a remote island in the middle of Polynesia, the natives arrived there several centuries before than the Dutch sailors.
Solving the unknown. Convinced that this is the great enigma of Easter Island (with the permission of the majority), a few years ago Ferrara tried to clarify the chronology of the rongo rongo writing. The study, carried out together with other colleagues and whose conclusions were collected in Scientific Reportsfocused on four engraved tablets preserved in Rome. To find out what era they were from, the researchers subjected them to radiocarbon dating and asked a botanist to analyze their materials.
What did they find out? That three of the tablets appear to have been used in the 19th century, after the arrival of Europeans to the island. The fourth, however, reserved a surprise: it points to a period between between 1493 and 1509. “It stands out as an anomaly in our chronological model, since it shows an antiquity before the arrival of the Europeans,” reveals Professor Sahra Talamo, also from the University of Bologna. This discovery opens a fascinating horizon that contradicts the version that the rongo rongo flourished under the influence of Western navigators.
“The common narrative has always been one in which the local population was exposed to writing when Europeans arrived on the island starting in 1722 and this was what drove the creation of writing, as a kind of result of a transmission, of exposure to a pre-existing writing system,” comment Ferrara to the BBC. His work opens another door: he suggests that rongo rongo was an “original invention, an innovation that happened because the brains of local people took them in that direction.”
Way to go. Although Ferrara and Talamo’s research is fascinating and sheds light on the origins of Rapa Nui writing, the truth is that it does not settle the debate. Not at least definitively. Radiocarbon analysis concluded that a tablet can be dated between late 15th century and early 16th centurybut that, admits the teacher herself, does not necessarily mean that the engraving it contains is from the same period. That is, the inscription may also have been made in the 19th century, except that its author decided to make it on a 16th century tablet.
It is a possibility, although Ferrara suggests that it would be strange if some native decided to write on a piece of wood cut several centuries before. What sense would it have? Why would someone use a support that, due to its age, was not the most practical for capturing pictograms? “Given the conservation conditions, we cannot assume a date much later than the felling of the wood used for the tablet,” claims. Likewise, remember that the fact that the other three tablets were made after the arrival of the Europeans does not prove that writing emerged then. It was used in the 19th century, but its origins may be earlier.
That’s all? No. There is another argument in favor of Ferrara’s thesis that, although not supported by radiocarbon studies, is equally suggestive. The glyphs used by the natives of Easter Island differ from any other known writing system. They even “lack close parallels,” slide from the University of Bologna. This reinforces the thesis that the rongo rongo was born on the Polynesian island itself. If confirmed, it would be a milestone for the natives of Rapa Nui, but also for humanitywhich would add a new case study to understand a fascinating phenomenon: how our ancestors created writing.
Images | Sophie Laurent (Unsplash), Wikipedia and University of Bologna
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