A mysterious script engraved on wooden tablets from Easter Island is completely unlike any other known form of text, suggesting that it may represent an independent writing system that is unique to the island. 

After radiocarbon dating several of the ancient objects, researchers have now discovered that the earliest carvings predate the arrival of Europeans, adding weight to the idea that the script was invented locally and was not influenced by foreign writing systems.

Known as the Rongorongo script, the engravings were first noticed by outsiders in 1864, after which they were all either destroyed or shipped abroad. Today, just 27 examples of the writing are known to exist, though none are housed on Easter Island itself. 

Located some 3,800 kilometers (2,400 miles) off the coast of Chile, Easter Island – also known as Rapa Nui – is one of the most remote specks of land on the planet and is best known for its giant head-shaped monuments, called moai. Sadly, by the end of the eighteenth century, the local Indigenous culture had been extinguished by disease outbreaks and raids perpetrated by Europeans, who first reached the island in the 1720s.

The production of Rongorongo scripts therefore ceased, and the writing system has yet to be deciphered by Western scholars. Describing the scripts, the authors of a new study write that “the extant texts are relatively long and written by means of pictorial signs, often called ‘glyphs’.”

“The shapes of the Rongorongo signs represent different classes of images, such as human postures and body parts, animals, plants, tools, heavenly bodies, etc,” they continue.  When and how this form of notation emerged is difficult to say, and while it’s possible that contact with literate Europeans acted as a “stimulus for its creation”, the study authors note that the “pictorial glyphs do not resemble any known script.”

“They, in fact, show their closest parallels in motifs of ancient rock-carved art found on the island,” write the researchers. Such an observation suggests that the Rongorongo script may represent one of the few examples of writing being invented completely independently – as occurred in places like Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica.

However, the only two tablets to have been reliably dated so far were found to be made from trees that were felled in the first half of the nineteenth century, when contact with outsiders had already been established. To investigate further, the study authors radiocarbon dated four more Rongorongo scripts that were removed from the island by missionaries in 1869 and are now housed in Rome, Italy.

Results indicated that three of the carvings were made on wood from trees cut down in the nineteenth century, while the fourth was felled several hundred years earlier, between 1493 and 1509. The tablet therefore predates the arrival of foreigners on the island by at least 200 years, suggesting that the Rongorongo script may indeed have been developed in complete isolation.

Interestingly, the tablet was found to have been made from Podocarpus latifolia, which does not grow on Easter Island, but is the national tree of South Africa. According to the researchers, the wood was typically used to make ship masts from the Middle Ages onwards, and could therefore have washed up on Easter Island as driftwood from a sunken European vessel.

It’s therefore impossible to say exactly how long the piece of wood may have spent at sea before being salvaged and inscribed. Nonetheless, the study authors conclude that “if [the tablet’s] exceptional age indicates that the local population of Rapa Nui could have invented a writing system without influence or input from external agents, Rongorongo could represent one of the few independent inventions of writing in human history, adding a layer of complexity to the narrative of the cultural and historical development of the Rapa Nui inhabitants.”

The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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