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A tab of wood inscribed with the undeciphered " rongorongo " script from the Eastern Pacific island Rapa Nui , also called Easter Island , foredate the arriver of Europeans there , strengthening the likelihood that the hand is one of the few severally invented authorship systems .
The wood from one of four rongorongo tablets preserve in a assemblage in Rome go out to between 1493 and 1509 — more than 200 years before the first recorded comer of Europeans on the island in the 1720s , according to new inquiry published Feb. 2 in the journalScientific Reports .
Radiocarbon dating shows the wood from one of the rongorongo tablets preserved in Rome came from a tree felled in the late 15th or early 16th century — centuries before Europeans arrived on Rapa Nui.
Silvia Ferrara , the study ’s lead author and a philologist ( someone who learn languages ) at the University of Bologna in Italy , told Live Science that the results support the mind that rongorongo was an original design by the Rapa Nui islander rather than being influence by the writing they ’d date used by Europeans .
The intricate rongorongo glyphs look all unlike any European letters , lending further support to the idea that the language was developed severally . " Historically speak , if you borrow a writing system , then you keep it as close to the original as possible , " she said .
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The four rongorongo tablets in Rome were collected on Rapa Nui in the 19th century by Roman Catholic missionaries. Only two others had been radiocarbon dated before the latest study.
Radiocarbon dating
Rapa Nui , which sit around nearly 2,400 mile ( 3,800 klick ) off the coast of Chile , was settle by homo between 1150 and 1280 . Although Europeans arrived in the 18th century , they did n’t notice the local glyph - free-base hand until 1864 , which now exists on only 27 wooden objective , none of which are still on the island . Catholic missionary took four of these tab in 1869 and institutionalise them to the bishop of Tahiti , who subsequently sent them to Europe .
Ferrara and her confrere conductedradiocarbon datingon lilliputian samples of the four rongorongo tablets hold by a congregation of Catholic nuns based in Rome . The radiocarbon particular date suggested that three of the tablets were made from tree diagram felled in the eighteenth or 19th centuries , but the radiocarbon date of a fourth indicated it came from a tree diagram cut down in the fifteenth C , Ferrara said . That predates the arrival of Europeans on Rapa Nui and suggests that the rongorongo script was in use before then , she said .
But it ’s possible that the glyphs were inscribe on " sometime wood " from a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree felled long before the rongorongo was inscribe on it , she added .
In this face , however , the inscription was probably made about the time the wood was receive , because the alternative explanation — that the Sir Henry Joseph Wood had been stored for more than 200 years before it was used — seems unlikely , she sound out .
The new analysis also suggest the Grant Wood from the oldest tablet came from a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree coinage not native to Rapa Nui , and the researchers think it was plausibly a piece of driftwood .
Undeciphered language
Rapa Nui is notable for itsmany archaeologic mysteries , include thegiant stone headland known as moai , and many people have tried — without success — to decode the rongorongo hand .
Ferrara said more than 400 dissimilar rongorongo glyphs have been recognise among the approximately 15,000 surviving graphic symbol , and none stand for to any other known arrangement of writing .
Rafal Wieczorek , a chemist at the University of Warsaw who was not involved in the latest bailiwick but has investigatedotherrongorongotablets , said that while the unexampled research is n’t conclusive , it is a warm indication that the script was an main innovation — perhaps one of only a handful of times when a piece of writing system had been excogitate from sugar , without knowledge of other writing systems .
Just 27 tablets inscribed with the intricate but undeciphered rongorongo script are known to have survived, comprising roughly 15,000 characters and more than 400 different glyphs.
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" This is a great maturation , " he secern Live Science , because only two rongorongo tablets had been carbon 14 - dated before , and the late sketch established a time span that could be investigated further .
" I actually believe that rongorongo is one of the very few independent inventions of writing in human history , like the written material of the Sumerians , the Egyptians and the Chinese , " he said . " But belief is a unlike thing than hard data … so ideally , we would care to test all the pill . "
