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Rongorongo
Rongorongo (Rapa Nui: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, with none being successful. Although some calendrical and what might prove to be genealogical information has been identified, none of these glyphs can actually be read. If rongorongo does prove to be writing and proves to be an independent invention, it would be one of very few independent inventions of writing in human history. Two dozen wooden objects bearing rongorongo inscriptions, some heavily weathered, burned, or otherwise damaged, were collected in the late 19th century and are now scattered in museums and private collections. None remain on Easter Island. The objects are mostly tablets shaped from irregular pieces of wood, sometimes driftwood, but include a chieftain's staff, a bird-man statuette, and two '' reimiro'' ornaments. There are also a few petroglyphs which may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decipherment Of Rongorongo
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 illus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Easter Island
Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called '' moai'', which were created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. Experts disagree on when the island's Polynesian inhabitants first reached the island. While many in the research community cited evidence that they arrived around the year 800, there is compelling evidence presented in a 2007 study that places their arrival closer to 1200. The inhabitants created a thriving and industrious culture, as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone ''moai'' and other artifacts. However, land clearing for cultivation and the introduction of the Polynesian rat led to gradual defo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rapa Nui Language
Rapa Nui or Rapanui (, Rapa Nui: , Spanish: ), also known as Pascuan () or ''Pascuense'', is an Eastern Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family. It is spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as ''Easter Island''. The island is home to a population of just under 6,000 and is a special territory of Chile. According to census data, there are 9,399 people (on both the island and the Chilean mainland) who identify as ethnically Rapa Nui. Census data does not exist on the primary known and spoken languages among these people. In 2008, the number of fluent speakers was reported as low as 800. Rapa Nui is a minority language and many of its adult speakers also speak Spanish. Most Rapa Nui children now grow up speaking Spanish and those who do learn Rapa Nui begin learning it later in life. History The Rapa Nui language is isolated within Eastern Polynesian, which also includes the Marquesic and Tahitic languages. Within Eastern Polynesian, it is closest to M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rongorongo Text C
Rongorongo (; Rapa Nui: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Text C of the rongorongo corpus, also known as ''Mamari'', is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. It contains the Rapa Nui calendar. Other names C is the standard designation, from Barthel (1958). Fischer (1997) refers to it as RR2. Jaussen called it ''Miro-Mimosa'' "Mimosa wood". Location General archives of the '' Padri dei Sacri Cuori'' (SSCC), Casa Generalizia, Via Rivarone 85, I-00166 Rome, Italy. Reproductions are located at the SSCC; ''Musée de l'Homme,'' Paris; Museum of Mankind, London; ''Cinquantenaire,'' Brussels; '' Museum für Völkerkunde,'' Berlin (2 copies)''Institut für Völkerkunde'' Tübingen (prior to 1989; on loan from the '' Linden-Museum''); and the van Hoorebeeck Collection, Belgium. Physical description Excellent condition, with one hole at the top (verso). A rounded rectangular unfluted tablet, 29 � ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Barthel
Thomas Sylvester Barthel (4 January 1923 in Berlin – 3 April 1997 in Tübingen) was a German ethnologist and epigrapher who is best known for cataloguing the undeciphered rongorongo script of Easter Island. Barthel grew up in Berlin and graduated from secondary school in 1940. During the Second World War, he worked as a cryptographer for the Wehrmacht. After the war he studied folklore, geography, and prehistory in Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig. He received his doctorate in Hamburg in 1952 with a thesis on Mayan writing Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs, is historically the native writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. The earliest inscriptions found which .... From 1953 to 1956 he was a Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, in 1957 a lecturer in Hamburg, and from 4 July 1957 to 1 February 1958 he was a guest researcher with the Institute for Easter Is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reimiro
A ''reimiro'' is a crescent-shaped pectoral ornament once worn by the people of Easter Island. The name comes from the Rapanui ('stern' or 'prow') and ('boat'). Thus the crescent represents a Polynesian canoe. Each side of the ''reimiro'' ended in a human face. The outer, display side had two small pierced bumps through which a cord was strung for hanging it. The inner side contained a cavity that was filled with chalk made from powdered seashells. A ''reimiro'' provides the image of the Flag of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). It also appears to feature in the rongorongo script of Easter Island (as glyph 07: ), and one ''reimiro'' is preserved with a long rongorongo text. Although the human faces on the ''reimiro'' are unique to Easter Island, the pectoral itself is part of a wider tradition. In the Solomon Islands, for example, women wear shell pectorals which resemble ''reimiro.'' Gallery Image:Flag of Rapa Nui, Chile.svg, A ''reimiro'' is the emblem of the Flag of Rapa Nui ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rongorongo Text Ragitoki
The Raŋitoki fragment (Ragitoki, Rangitoki) is a possibly authentic member of the rongorongo corpus. Location This fragment is kept in an undisclosed institution. Description Red ink on undyed (or at least faded) barkcloth, 4.5 × 15.5 cm. The nine glyphs were apparently painted on the cloth with some kind of brush. The piece is reportedly a strip torn from a skirt/loincloth. Bark-cloth cloaks and headpieces were indications of high status in the pre-missionary period. Inks used on bark cloth – made from roots, berries and minerals – were apparently rather sophisticated. The cloth was made from the paper mulberry The paper mulberry (''Broussonetia papyrifera'', syn. ''Morus papyrifera'' L.) is a species of flowering plant in the family Moraceae. It is native to Asia, [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toromiro
''Sophora toromiro'', commonly known as toromiro, is a species of flowering tree in the legume family, Fabaceae, that is endemic to Easter Island. History Heavy deforestation had eliminated most of the island's forests by the first half of the 17th century, and the once common toromiro became rare and ultimately extinct in the wild in the 1960s. Local tradition has it that the rongorongo tablets of Easter Island are made of toromiro. However, all tablets of native wood tested by modern methods have turned out to be ''Thespesia populnea'', known as ''miro'' or ''milo'' in some Polynesian languages. David Attenborough describes the timber from which a small wooden male sculpture in his possession is made, having been identified by Kew Gardens as ''Sophora toromiro''. Conservation The tree is being reintroduced to the island in a scientific project partly led jointly by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Gothenburg Botanical Garden, where the only remaining plants of this s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boustrophedon
Boustrophedon is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the left. The original term comes from grc, βουστροφηδόν, ', a composite of , ', "ox"; , ', "turn"; and the adverbial suffix -, -', "like, in the manner of" – that is, "like the ox turns hile plowing. It is mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. It was a common way of writing on stone in ancient Greece, becoming less and less popular throughout the Hellenistic period. Many ancient scripts, such as Etruscan, Safaitic, and Sabaean, were frequently or even typically written boustrophedon. Reverse boustrophedon The wooden boards and other incised artefacts of Rapa Nui also bear a boustrophedonic script called Rongorongo, which remains undeciphered. In Rongorongo, the text in alternate lines was rotated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fijian Language
Fijian (') is an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian family spoken by some 350,000–450,000 ethnic Fijians as a native language. The 2013 Constitution established Fijian as an official language of Fiji, along with English and Fiji Hindi and there is discussion about establishing it as the "national language". Fijian is a VOS language. Standard Fijian is based on the speech of Bau, which is an East Fijian language. A pidginized form is used by many Indo-Fijians and Chinese on the islands, while Pidgin Hindustani is used by many rural ethnic Fijians and Chinese in areas dominated by Indo-Fijians. History Phonology The consonant phonemes of Fijian are as shown in the following table: The consonant written has been described as a prenasalized trill or trilled affricate . However, it is only rarely pronounced with a trilled release; the primary feature distinguishing it from is that it is postalveolar, , rather than dental/alveolar. The sounds ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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