Was rongorongo an independent invention of writing?
Below is a guest post by Kyle Gorman and Richard Sproat:
Ferrara et al. [1] report on the results of a study of several specimens of kohau rongorongo, the enigmatic, undeciphered texts of Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui). These texts, inscribed on wood—mostly driftwood that washed ashore on the island—may have numbered in the hundreds during the mid 19th century, when the system is known to have been in use. Roughly two dozen inscribed artifacts survive today. Ferrara et al. claim, on the basis of carbon dating, that one of them was inscribed before European contact in the 18th century, and thus represent “one of the few independent inventions of writing in human history”.
Naturally it is this latter point in particular that has attracted attention in the popular science press. See for example here, here, here and here. So, while the actual results of the paper are quite modest in that they establish the dates of one piece of wood that ended up being carved with glyphs, the authors clearly intend a much more sweeping interpretation of these results. And true to form, the popular science press is happy to help spread a story that, in the words of one of the articles linked above, “could rewrite history as we know it”.
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