New research on the rongorongo script suggests that it might have been an independent invention of a writing system, similar to that of the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Chinese.
This finding came about when a fourth wooden tablet was dated to around 1493 to 1509, 200 years before the first Europeans set foot on Rapa Nui (another name for Easter Island). It could probably explain why the glyphs are harder to decipher as there's no other writing system to which it can be compared.
The first three rongorongo tablets' date of creation had been pinned to around the 18th and 19th centuries, but the fourth one surprisingly was said to have been made in the 15th century, although there are theories which suggest that "old wood" was used, and that's why the radiocarbon dating tests resulted in a much earlier date.
In that case, it would mean that a piece of wood had been stored for 200 years before it was finally used to write on, which Silvia Ferrara, the lead author of the study and a philologist, said was highly unlikely. So, it's a more plausible explanation that the rongorongo script is an original invention, having no external influence from other languages.
So far, there have been 400 different glyphs identified in the rongorongo script which contains 15,000 characters, and cross-referencing these glyphs with other writing systems, the team has not found any similarities, which gives even more credence to the idea that it had been invented from scratch. - via The Daily Grail
(Image credit: INSCRIBE and RESOLUTION ERC Teams)
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