Description

Rongorongo is the script of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). More-famous for its megalithic Mo’ai heads, Rapa Nui has its share of Polynesian mysteries, and Rongorongo is one of the most enigmatic. The origins of these glyphs are unknown, and if it turns out that Rongorongo was a pre-colonial script, it would be one of the only independent inventions of writing in known human history, unseen elsewhere in the Pacific or South America. Only a handful of priests could ever read the glyphs, and most of these indigenous elite were killed in the Peruvian slaving raids of the 1800s and the subsequent disease epidemics that all but wiped out the indigenous islanders. The tragedy and the loss inflicted cannot be adequately comprehended.