Case file · Sacred site
Rongorongo tablets, Rapa Nui
In 1864 the missionary Eugène Eyraud reported wooden tablets covered in glyphs in Rapa Nui houses; rongorongo remains undeciphered and is a candidate for one of the few independent inventions of writing.
1864 CE · -27.15, -109.43 · status: unexplained
The account
About two dozen objects with rongorongo survive, scattered in museums. The knowledge to read them was lost after the Peruvian slave raids of 1862–63 and the epidemics that followed killed most of the island's elders. Whether it is true writing, a mnemonic device, or was inspired by contact with Europeans in 1770 is still debated.
The sceptical view
Undeciphered does not mean mysterious in origin; the debate is linguistic, not paranormal.