Credited to Chile. Scholars disagree on whether rongorongo was invented before Europeans reached the island in 1722 or was inspired by seeing European writing. One tablet has been radiocarbon dated to the 15th century, but the date applies to the wood, which may have been old when it was carved.
How it began
Rongorongo was developed on Rapa Nui, the Pacific island that is now part of Chile. Outsiders first noticed it in 1864. Its origin is obscure, and the central question is whether it existed before Europeans arrived in the 1720s. In 2024 a team led by Silvia Ferrara radiocarbon dated four tablets kept in Rome. Three dated to the nineteenth century. The fourth, Tablet D, gave a felling date for its wood of 1493 to 1509, which the authors read as pointing to use of the script before outside influence.
How it works
The script is written with pictorial signs, called glyphs, that show human postures and body parts, animals, plants, tools and heavenly bodies. They are joined in complex ligatures and set out in long linear sequences. The glyphs were finely carved into the curved surfaces of wooden tablets, so the writing is three-dimensional. Twenty-seven inscribed wooden objects survive. The script has not been deciphered.
Who pushed back
The dating does not settle the matter. Trees were scarce on the island and wood was reused, so the age of a piece of wood gives only the earliest possible date for the carving. Tablet D is made of Podocarpus latifolius, a tree that never grew on the island, and another tablet is of European ash. The authors of the 2024 study therefore present independent invention as a possibility, not a proven fact.
Where it stands today
Knowledge of the script was lost quickly. Slave raids struck the island in 1862 and 1863, and the tablets ceased to be produced in the late 1860s. No one able to read them was recorded in a way that allowed decipherment. The surviving tablets are held in collections away from the island, including four at the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts in Rome. Researchers now make three-dimensional models of the tablets to prepare reliable transcriptions. If the early date is confirmed, rongorongo would join the short list of writing systems invented without any outside model.
