The Lost Script of Rapa Nui
Attempts to decipher the lost script once used by the Rapa Nui of Easter Island leave more questions than answers.
Hidden away in a nondescript building on the outskirts of Rome, there is a wooden tablet from Easter Island, more remarkable and mysterious than any of its famous statues. Reputedly found by two missionaries in 1870, it is a fragment of a wooden oar, less than a metre in length, covered in strange hieroglyphs. On each side, there are eight lines of text, consisting of almost 2,000 glyphs; but where the inscription begins and ends is anyone’s guess. Though presumably expressing something in the Rapa Nui language, no one knows what it says – and, in all likelihood, no one ever will.
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