Writing |
Archeologists have long searched for clues to understand
the unique language that once was heard around my island. Wooden tablets have been found
around the Island. Only twenty-one have survived, and are now placed in museums and
private collections. No one knows why they where destroyed. Some say they were burned
to please the missionaries who thought the tablets were evil. Other say they were hidden
to save them from destruction.
These unique tablets have tiny glyphs, about one
centimeter high, carved in shallow grooves running the length of the tablets. Tradition has
it that they used obsidian flakes or shark teeth to cut the glyphs and that the writing was
introduced by the first colonist led by Hotu Matua.
The meaning of the tablets is still largely unknown, except for two and one half lines of one tablet which contain a lunar calendar, identified by Barthel in 1958.
