“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.”
Here’s what you’ll be taught if you learn this story:
For many years, archaeologists have debated whether or not the writing system of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), often known as Rongorongo, was invented independently or influenced by Europeans.
A examine that makes use of radiocarbon relationship to evaluate the age of 4 Rongorongo tablets reveals that one of many tablets predates the arrival of Europeans within the 1720s.
However, the date solely displays when the wooden was felled, and pattern dimension of 1 isn’t giant sufficient to be totally sure.
Today, humans inhabit—or have, at the very least, explored—just about each nook of the planet. But that immense proliferation of Homo sapiens throughout the globe was a gradual course of. With the primary people leaving Africa between 60 to 90 thousand years in the past, the species slowly unfold throughout the Earth over many millennia. And one of many final locations these historical people made their approach to was the southeastern Pacific island of Rapa Nui, identified extra broadly as Easter Island.
Located 2,360 miles off the coast of Chile—which annexed the nation again in 1888—Rapa Nui is without doubt one of the most remoted locations within the world. Its native individuals, who’re additionally named the Rapa Nui, first arrived on the island’s shores between 1150 and 1280 CE, and lived in isolation till the arrival of Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen in 1722.
While Europeans ultimately found the spectacular moai statues for which the Rapa Nui are greatest identified, additionally they stumbled upon a yet-undeciphered script often known as Rongorongo—a three-dimensional writing system that makes use of pictorial indicators often known as glyphs.
But as a result of this script wasn’t first described till 1864, archaeologist and historians have since contemplated an everlasting query: Did the Rapa Nui independently invent this language, or had been they influenced by Europeans?
Now, a examine is making an attempt to resolve this linguistic conundrum by suggesting that, utilizing radiocarbon relationship, one of many 27 wood objects containing Rongorongo inscriptions pre-dates the arrival of Europeans, at round 1493 to 1509. This discovering means that the Rapa Nui might’ve probably invented Rongorongo independently—a uncommon feat all through human history, and one often related to advanced states.
The different sturdy piece of proof for this homegrown language concept is that Rongorongo features a lot otherwise than European languages, which would seem to counsel no discernible exterior influence. Lead writer Silvia Ferarra, an archaeologist and linguist at the University of Bologna, Italy, printed her group’s findings in Scientific Reports in 2024.
“The question is of crucial importance, as it implies the possibility of an independent invention of writing, similarly to what happened in other parts of the world where writing was an original creation, e.g., in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica,” the paper reads. “If Rongorongo predates the arrival of external travelers, it could represent another, and the latest, invention of writing in human history.”
While one of many 4 wooden tablets examined offers pre-European proof for the language, the invention additionally comes with just a few caveats. For one, radiocarbon relationship can solely detect when a tree was minimize down, not inscribed—though, Ferrara suggests that centuries previous wooden could be unsuitable for such a activity. But, extra importantly, the wooden pill offers solely a pattern dimension of 1, as the opposite examined tablets all fell on the different aspect of the European divide.
To collect additional proof, Ferrara must look at the opposite remaining tablets, that are all that’s left of the long-forgotten language. But they’ve been scattered throughout the globe, and will not be straightforward to entry. For now, the search continues within the effort to put the contributions of those native individuals within the appropriate historic context.
You Might Also Like
