Tablet BAruku kurenga, verso. One of four texts which provided the Jaussen list, the first attempt at decipherment. Made of Pacific rosewood, mid-nineteenth century, Easter Island. (Collection of the SS.CC., Rome)
There have been numerous attempts to decipher the rongorongo script of Easter Island since its discovery in the late nineteenth century. As with most undeciphered scripts, many of the proposals have been fanciful. Apart from a portion of one tablet which has been shown to deal with a lunar calendar, none of the texts are understood, and even the calendar cannot actually be read. The evidence is weak that rongorongo directly represents the Rapa Nui language – that is, that it is a true writing system – and oral accounts report that experts in one category of tablet were unable to read other tablets, suggesting either that rongorongo is not a unified system, or that it is proto-writing that requires the reader to already know the text. Assuming that rongorongo is writing, there are three serious obstacles to decipherment: the small number of remaining texts, comprising only 15,000 legible glyphs; the lack of context in which to interpret the texts, such as illustrations or parallel texts which can be read; and the fact that the modern Rapa Nui language is heavily mixed with Tahitian and is unlikely to closely reflect the language of the tablets—especially if they record a specialized register such as incantations—while the few remaining examples of the old language are heavily restricted in genre and may not correspond well to the tablets either.[1][2]
Since a proposal by Butinov and Knorozov in the 1950s, the majority of philologists, linguists and cultural historians have taken the line that rongorongo was not true writing but proto-writing, that is, an ideographic- and rebus-based mnemonic device, such as the Dongba script of the Nakhi people,[3][4] which would in all likelihood make it impossible to decipher.[5][4] This skepticism is justified not only by the failure of the numerous attempts at decipherment, but by the extreme rarity of independent writing systems around the world. Of those who have attempted to decipher rongorongo as a true writing system, the vast majority have assumed it was logographic, a few that it was syllabic or mixed. Statistically, it appears to have been compatible with neither a pure logography nor a pure syllabary.[6] The topic of the texts is unknown; various investigators have speculated they cover genealogy, navigation, astronomy, or agriculture. Oral history suggests that only a small elite were ever literate, and that the tablets were considered sacred.[7][page needed]
^Englert 1970, p. 80.
^Sproat 2007.
^Comrie, Matthews & Polinsky 1996, p. 100.
^ abRobinson 2007.
^Pozdniakov & Pozdniakov 2007, pp. 4, 5.
^Pozdniakov & Pozdniakov 2007, p. 5.
^Fischer 1997a.
and 28 Related for: Decipherment of rongorongo information
to decipher the rongorongo script of Easter Island since its discovery in the late nineteenth century. As with most undeciphered scripts, many of the...
Island. It is not yet known whether rongorongo represents true writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, but none have been...
facilitate decipherment, the Rosetta Stone being the classic example. Statistical techniques provide another pathway to decipherment, as does the analysis of modern...
system of glyphs discovered in the 1800s, is believed to represent an older version of the Rapa Nui language. However, the deciphermentofrongorongo is an...
Mamari calendar, the single rongorongo text that can be read, contains no calendrical information in Feodorova's decipherment, but reads instead like the...
Osterinselschrift (Bases for the Deciphermentof the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script:...
Rongorongo (/ˈrɒŋɡoʊˈrɒŋɡoʊ/; Rapa Nui: [ˈɾoŋoˈɾoŋo]) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing...
Text C of the rongorongo corpus, also known as Mamari, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo (/ˈrɒŋɡoʊˈrɒŋɡoʊ/; Rapa Nui: [ˈɾoŋoˈɾoŋo]) texts. It contains...
Zapotec script Mixtec Script Rongorongo – Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island), before 1860. Rongorongo One very similar concept is that of false writing systems, which...
Text Y of the rongorongo corpus, known as the Paris Snuff Box, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. Y is the standard designation, continuing...
and epigrapher who is best known for cataloguing the undeciphered rongorongo script of Easter Island. Barthel grew up in Berlin and graduated from secondary...
deciphermentof the Mayan script, the writing system used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica. Knorozov was born in the village of Yuzhny...
Osterinselschrift (Bases for the Deciphermentof the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script:...
Osterinselschrift (Bases for the Deciphermentof the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script:...
Rongorongo (/ˈrɒŋɡoʊˈrɒŋɡoʊ/; Rapa Nui: [ˈɾoŋoˈɾoŋo]) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing...
Osterinselschrift (Bases for the Deciphermentof the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script:...
Glyph-breaker: A Decipherer's Story. New York: Copernicus/Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-1-4612-2298-9. Fischer, Steven Roger (1997). RongoRongo, the Easter Island...
Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Text B of the rongorongo...
Osterinselschrift (Bases for the Deciphermentof the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script:...
Osterinselschrift (Bases for the Deciphermentof the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script:...
Text X of the rongorongo corpus, known as the (New York) Birdman, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. X is the standard designation, from...
Osterinselschrift (Bases for the Deciphermentof the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script:...
Raŋitoki fragment (Ragitoki, Rangitoki) is a possibly authentic member of the rongorongo corpus. This fragment is kept in an undisclosed institution. Red ink...
Text O of the rongorongo corpus, the Berlin tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. O is the standard designation, from Barthel (1958)...
Osterinselschrift (Bases for the Deciphermentof the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script:...
Osterinselschrift (Bases for the Deciphermentof the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script:...
Text U of the rongorongo corpus, carved on a beam, also known as Honolulu tablet 2 or Honolulu 3628, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. U...
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