EASTER ISLAND HIEROGLYPHICS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 3154, 10 September 1892, Page 5 (Supplement)

EASTER ISLAND HIEROGLYPHICS.

In the last number of the Journal of the recently-formed Polynesian 1 Society, Dr. Carroll claims to have ' succeeded in deciphering the hieroglyphic inscriptions on Easter Island which have been a standing puzzle to ethnologists and philologists alike. The colossal remains on this lonely island are among the most wonderful in the world. Everybody has heard of the stone houses, apparently ruins of a former capital, the colossal faces carved on the cliffs, and the huge stone statues on each headland of the island, some of them as much as 35ft high, capped with crowns of red tufa and looking out to sea with a kind of calm disdainful smile. How they came there nobody knows The natives found there by Captain Cook—fair Polynesians apparently akin to the Maoris—are fast dwindling away, and apparently knew nothing about the origin of these colossal statues or of the meaning of the paintings and inscriptions found on the walls of the houses. Dr. Carroll states that while engaged in studying the languages, histories, antiquities and inscriptions of ancient American peoples he came upon similarities to the Easter Island characters, and with these to work upon he has succeeded in making out some of the writings which baffled all previous observers. Many of the ancient American peoples, he says, used hieroglyphics, phosetic and other writings before the Inca monarchs interdicted their use. Many of these old peoples of Western America, he adds, sailed and travelled over wide regions of the Pacific Ocean long before Europeans went there, one of the places to which they sailed being Easter Island. The inscriptions, of which Dr. Carroll sends translation, to the Journal, are merely invocations to ancestral spirits or deities, and. he remarks, are less historically valuable than others hereafter to be published. We shall be interested to hear what other scientific authorities have to say on the subject. If Dr. Carroll's interpretation is accepted it will not only be a feather in his cap, but also that of the Polynesian Society, in having been the means of giving his interesting discoveries to the world.