A script nobody can read
Rongorongo is the name given to rows of small carved signs found on a small number of wooden objects from Rapa Nui, known in English as Easter Island, in the southeastern Pacific. The signs depict stylised figures, including birds, fish, plants and human-like shapes, along with abstract forms. Although the objects were made by the island’s Polynesian inhabitants, no one has been able to read them. The name itself is a Rapa Nui term, often translated as something like “recitation” or “chanting”, and it was recorded after European contact.
The central questions are simple to state. Is it a writing system that records language? Did it develop before Europeans arrived, or in response to them? And can it be read? On the first question scholars disagree, on the second there is debate, and on the third the answer so far is no.
What survives
Around two dozen inscribed objects are known, and the number most often cited is 26. Most of these rongorongo tablets are flat boards or staffs, with a few other pieces such as a wooden ornament. They are held in museums and collections in Chile, Europe and the United States. They have been given names, such as the Santiago Staff, the Mamari tablet and the Great St. Petersburg tablet. Together they contain a modest amount of text, much of it damaged.
The shortage of material is a major problem. Most inscribed pieces are unique, and several are fragmentary. Many were made of reused or imported wood, and the type of wood is sometimes uncertain. A few pieces appear to have been made from driftwood or from pieces of European origin, which complicates efforts to date them from the material alone. Radiocarbon dating of some pieces has given dates that scholars read in different ways, partly because the age of the wood need not match the age of the carving.
How it was written
The text runs in horizontal lines that are read using a reversed boustrophedon pattern, in the usual description. A reader starts at the bottom left, reads a line from left to right, then turns the tablet around by 180 degrees and continues on the next line, so that the text appears upside down on alternate lines. This pattern is widely accepted, and it is among the few clear structural findings about the script.
The glyphs are carved with sharp tools, possibly shark teeth or obsidian flakes, as local tradition and early reports suggest. Catalogues of signs have been made by researchers, and the total is often given as several hundred distinct forms when variations are counted, though the number of basic signs is far lower. Different scholars classify signs differently, so numbers are not firm.
The tradition and the early reports
The first European reports come from the nineteenth century. Missionaries on the island in the 1860s noted that tablets existed in homes, and around 1870 the Bishop of Tahiti, Florentin-Etienne Jaussen, received a tablet and tried to find someone who could read it. An islander named Metoro Tau’a Ure is said to have been able to recite from tablets, but his readings did not match the signs in a way that could be confirmed, and later work suggests they were more likely general chants than real transcriptions.
A common narrative says that knowledge of reading died out after Peruvian slave raids of 1862 and 1863 and after epidemics, which severely reduced the population and removed the educated people. The population of Rapa Nui fell drastically in these years, and it is accepted that the island suffered a great loss of knowledge and life. Still, how much of the loss of rongorongo can be attributed to these events is uncertain. Today the Rapa Nui people are a living community with their own language and culture, and many take pride in the script as part of their heritage.
Are they true writing?
The question of whether rongorongo is writing in the full sense, meaning that it records spoken language, is debated. Several views exist.
- A true script. Some researchers argue that the repetitive structure, the sign sequences and the consistent layout suggest a system for recording language, possibly with some signs representing words or syllables.
- A mnemonic system. Others suggest the signs served as memory aids for oral recitation, like notches or knots that remind a speaker of a text. In this view the tablets do not record every word.
- A late invention inspired by contact. A third idea is that the script arose after Rapa Nui leaders saw European writing, notably during the Spanish visit of 1770, when island leaders were asked to mark a document with signs of their own. Under this view, rongorongo may be an attempt to imitate the idea of writing. Others argue that it predates contact. The evidence on timing is limited and disputed.
If rongorongo was invented independently, it would be one of very few cases of writing arising in the world, which is partly why the debate matters. Writing systems arose independently in only a handful of places, and the story of Egyptian hieroglyphic script or Mesopotamian writing has long been central to that topic. Equally, a script that borrowed only the concept of writing would still be an original creation.
Decipherment attempts
A number of decipherments have been proposed since the late nineteenth century, and none has won general acceptance. One claim, published in the 1990s, argued that a particular tablet recorded a creation chant, but others pointed out that the reading required choices that could not be tested.
More persuasive, to many scholars, are limited findings. A section of the Mamari tablet seems to follow a pattern linked to the phases of the moon, an interpretation developed by the researcher Thomas Barthel and refined by others such as Jacques Guy. It is a possible calendar, though not all agree. Statistical work on sign sequences has found patterns that look more like language than random decoration, which would favour the idea of real writing, but this is not proof of meaning.
The usual problem, as with Linear A script and the Maya glyph decipherment before its breakthroughs, is the absence of a bilingual text or a long corpus. Without a parallel text such as the Rosetta Stone, the signs have no external check.
Where things stand
Rongorongo remains undeciphered, and the objects themselves are few. The most defensible statement is that it is a real, deliberate system of signs from Rapa Nui, with a systematic reading direction, whose function and language remain unknown. It also sits within a wider set of questions about the island, including the moai statues, which are treated elsewhere on this site, and the history of the people who made both.