MYSTERIOUS SCRIPTS

Taranaki Daily News, 20 April 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

MYSTERIOUS SCRIPTS

POLYNESIAN DISCOVERIES. DR. PETER BUCK’S COMMENTS. “It is a long call from Easter Island to India in time and space,” said Dr. Peter Buck, ethnologist to the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, when Commenting at Auckland Oh the fact that stone monuments, similar to, those found on Easter Island, had been recently discovered in India by a French scientist during the course of excavations in the Indus Basin, revealing ■ a civilisation that existed at least. 5000 years before, the Christian era. # Dr. Buck' said that unique ideographic scripts incised on wooden tablets that had been found on Easter Island were of greater interest than the remarkable stone images. Most, if not all,- of the plaques had been removed by missionaries and others, and many were in museums throughout the world. The writing was of considerable antiquity. It took the form of pictographs or ideograms, representing stylized figures of men, birds,’ fish, etc., arranged in inverted position in alternate lines. It was “boustrophedon” in conception in that it carried out the idea of the ox and the plough. The writing started at the left-hand side and was carried along to the end of the line or “furrow” and came back from the right-hand side, and the reader of the tablet was obliged to turn it upside down at the end of each line. The figures appeared to have served as mnemonic symbols and could not be translated word from word. The meaning of the symbols and method of interpretation had been lost, probably beyond hope of recovery. Of interest was the fact that on Easter Island there existed a class of native known as • “Rongorongo.” They were the literary people who could. read the tablets. It was considered that the symbols were used for memorising old traditions and history, those . skilled in interpretation being able to recall -the past by reference to the scripts. 1 THE MYSTERY -ASPECT. “If mystery exists at all ,in .respect to Easter Island,” said Dr. Buck, “it lies in the fact that in no other part of Polynesia does anything of a similar character otecur. There is nothing novel in respect to the images. They have been found at Tahiti, in the Society Group, and in the Austral Group, arid at the Marquesas. The features and the formation of the head and face are not built to the same pattern in all the islands. The nose differs in some, showing originality of design. There is no set pattern throughout. The material from which ' the monuments have been made on Easter Island is soft stone —volcanic tufa—taken from an extinct volcano on the island. Some people have thrown out the suggestion that the stone was brought from some other island, while others have denied that the images are the work of the Polynesians. The implements employed in the work, however, found in the Easter Island quarries, prove that the monuments were made by the Polynesians. The fact that the ears are long and different to those of images found elsewhere dries not prove that they are rioFWlynesian in origin.”

Dr. Buck said that when he was in Paris he saw drawings of the images found in the’lndus Basin, and attention was drawn to their similarity to those of Polynesia. More data would have to be forthcoming, however, before any definite conclusions could be drawn. He had met at Tahiti recently members of a French-Belgian expedition that had been making investigations at Easter Island, and was looking forward with interest to see their reports. He had not been to Easter Island, and it might not be necessary for him to go if the expedition that had recently worked there, for about eight months had covered the ground thoroughly. Referring to investigations he .had made in the Gamfrei Archipelago, Dr. Buck said it was significant that those islands were the nearest to Easter Island, and -'there was a class of people there also called “Rongorongo”—a literary class who interpreted history and songs. No wooden i tablets containing ideographic script had been found. EASTER ISLAND. Easter Island is situated . about 2000 miles from the coast of Chile and 1100 miles from Pitcairn. The first European to land was the Dutch admiral, Roggeveen, on Easter Day, 1722—hence its name. The number of monuments and their size, the smallness of the island and of the population, never more than 5000 or 6000, and estimated at only half of that at the time of discovery, indicate an extraordinary intensive application of the’arts of. masonry and sculpture. The successful transportation of the huge monolithic, sculptures and their erection in places remote from the quarries where they were made are unexplained. They were cut from compressed volcanic ash and all conform to a single distinctive type, representing only the upper half of the body, with upturned face and long ears, but vary in height from 3ft to 36ft. One had even been found in the quarry with a length of 66ft, but it had never been moved. The sculptors worked in niches surrounding the statues and the carving was completed before the back was detached by undercutting. No satisfactory explanation has ever been given of how the images, some of which weiged up to 50 tons,, were taken from the quarries. A native account states that they were dragged into position and that round pebbles were placed underneath to serve as rollers.