Tim and the Tin Titan

20.5.04

The Language of Rapa Nui
I don't remember where is got the link for the site:
Rongorongo or the Hieroglyphs of the Easter Island Tablets but it is a pretty amazing collection of information regarding the writings of the ancient inhabitants of Easter Island.

Not much is known about this language, not even if a proper writing system, a pictogram system or another type of mnemonic system.

There are hundreds of distinct characters and hundreds more variations displayed in the 26 artifact the comprise the corpus of this language. The site has information about each piece, often times including pictures, tracings and numerical transliteration.

Many attempts have been made to translate the writings over the last 150 years, there has even been events when some local are said to have read the artifacts (although some thing they were making it all up). No one, so far, has been able to come up with a theory that makes sense.

The two somewhat consistent elements that are said to have been found are a genealogy and a lunar calendar. Personally, I think the evidence for the lunar calendar is a bit flimsy where as the genealogy look more robust.

Many theories exist, even one that says that the language is related to an ancient language from the Indus Valley.

A very fascinating mystery