The famous Moai monolithic statues carved between the 13th and 16th century AD by the Rapa Nui people. Credit: Corbis.
An engraved wooden tablet found on the Pacific Island, Rapa Nui, (Easter Island) has been identified as centuries older than the European colonisation of the island, supporting the idea that a local writing system may have been invented independently, and without influence from European writing.
The tablet is engraved in Rongorongo, the undeciphered script of the ancient islanders, that could be the most recent example of independent invention of writing in history. The research1, coordinated by philologist, Silvia Ferrara and radiocarbon chronologist, Sahra Talamo, at the University of Bologna, was published in Scientific Reports1.
It’s still unclear when the Rongorongo writing system was first developed. Europeans reached Rapa Nui in 1722, and first recorded the use of Rongorongo in 1864. Today, the script survives on just twenty-seven wooden objects, scattered in museums around the world.
Previous studies dated two tablets to the 19th century, but most objects remain undated. Ferrara and Talamo analysed four tablets housed at the Congregazione dei Sacri Cuori di Gesù e di Maria in Rome. “When they are acquired by museums, most of these objects are treated with resins or preservatives that contain modern carbon, and make carbon dating impossible,” explains Talamo. Luckily, the four tablets in Rome had not been exposed to such treatments. The team was able to extract a very small sample and securely date one tablet as having been made from trees felled in the fifteenth century, while the other three tablets are from the nineteenth century.
3D model of the tablet analysed by the study, named tablet B Aruku Kurenga. Sci Rep 14, 2794 (2024).
“Even though it’s not conclusive, because we dated the tablet and not the inscription, this finding caught our attention,” says Ferrara. The characteristics of the wood suggest the older tablet was shaped, and probably engraved, not long after the tree was felled. Moreover, “when a writing system is adapted, its basic structure usually remains, while a few signs are tweaked to fit the sounds of the local language,” explains Ferrara. Rongorongo, however, shows no graphical or structural similarities to European writing systems, suggesting it may have been invented independently.
