Calligan's Lost Rongorongo, and Some Shipwrecks

Abstract

Rongorongo, Easter Island's indigenous script, is represented by twenty-odd known wooden tablets and fragments. Their scarcity is one of the main barriers to the decipherment of the script. Almost all had been discovered and brought to public attention by the end of the nineteenth century. Despite many efforts, no more tablets have been found on the island since then, with the exception of a few fragments hidden in caves and rotted beyond recognition. If any more such artifacts exist, they would be among the few that were collected in the early days of Rapanui exploration and since have disappeared. The following is an account of my attempts to locate one of them, so far without success.