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MYSTERIOUS SCRIPT OF EASTER ISLAND
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The Script The script seems to have been noted for the first time in 1770 (Fig.70,1).
In the late 'sixties of the last century the attention of Father Roussel of the Catholic Mission, founded in 1864, was drawn to the wooden tablets carved with figures. Either then or sometime previously, many tablets seem to have been destroyed, but a few were sent to Bishop Jaussen of Tahiti. There are at present about 15 tablets extant. The tablets are known as kohalt-rongo-rongo; they are mainly fragments, of all sizes up to 6 feet.
The symbols were incised with a shark's tooth: the direction of writing is boustrophedon, that is, alternate lines from left to right and from right to left; the alternate rows are in inverted positions, so that the reader is obliged to turn the tablet upside down at the end of each line. A mere glance at Fig. 70 is sufficient to show that the script is highly pictographic, although some characters are already stylized; human figures, birds, fishes, etc. can casily be recognized.
The script is still undeciphered; various attempts have been made to decipher it with the help of the natives, but without definite results. However, thanks to the stories told by the natives, we know the contents of some tablets. Certain tablets deal with ceremonies, some are lists of wars, others are like prayers, and so forth. The characters seem to be mainly memory-aid symbols, to be supplemented by oral explanation.
The script rongo-rongo was the monopoly of organized teachers; every clan had its own "writing-professors," that is, experts in the art who were known as tangata-rongo-rongo, "rongo-rongo-men."
A less elaborate kind of rongo-rongo was called tau, which was still known at the end of the last century; a specimen of this script, written by an old and invalid native, has been published by Mrs. K. Scoresby Routledge; see also D. Diringer, L'Alfabeto nella Storia della Civiltà, Florence, 1937, Fig. 103, +.
Origin
Among the many difficult problems presented by the rongo-tongo script, the most important concerns the origin of this writing. Was it invented on the island, or imported from outside? The latter suggestion seems the more probable. Were the tablets written on the island or imported from outside? When was this script created? No answers can be given with certainty; some can be guessed, but no proof of evidence can be produced
According to local traditions, Hotu-matua, an ancestor of the Pascuans,
mpanied by 200 warriors and their families, came to the island with two big boats, and brought with him 67 inscribed wooden tablets (a
