Editing Rongorongo (section)

==Form and construction==
[[Image:Rongorongo G-r Small Santiago (raw).jpg|thumb|right|The Small Santiago Tablet (tablet '''G''') clearly shows the [[fluting (architecture)|fluting]] along which the glyphs were carved.]]
The forms of the glyphs are standardized contours of living organisms and geometric designs about one centimeter high. The wooden tablets are irregular in shape and, in many instances, [[fluting (architecture)|fluted]] (tablets '''B''', '''E''', '''G''', '''H''', '''O''', '''Q''', and possibly '''T'''), with the glyphs carved in shallow channels running the length of the tablets, as can be seen in the image of tablet '''G''' at right. It is thought that irregular and often blemished pieces of wood were used in their entirety rather than squared off due to the scarcity of wood on the island.<ref>Fischer 1997:382</ref>

===Writing media===
[[Image:Rongorongo K-v London (edge).jpg|thumb|right|To maximize space, the text wraps around the edge of tablet '''K'''.]]
Except for a few possible glyphs cut in stone (see [[#Petroglyphs|petroglyphs]]), and [[Rongorongo text Ragitoki|one possibility]] on [[barkcloth]], all surviving secure texts are inscribed in wood. According to tradition, the tablets were made of [[toromiro]] wood. However, [[Catherine Orliac]] (2005b) examined seven objects (tablets '''B''', '''C''', '''G''', '''H''', '''K''', '''Q''', and {{lang|rap|reimiro}} '''L''') with [[Comparison microscope|stereo optical]] and [[scanning electron microscope]]s and determined that all were instead made from [[Thespesia populnea|Pacific rosewood (''Thespesia populnea'')]]; the same identification had been made for tablet '''M''' in 1934. This {{convert|15|m|-1|adj=on|sp=us}} tree, known as "Pacific rosewood" for its color and called {{lang|rap|mako{{saltillo}}i}} in Rapanui, is used for sacred groves and carvings throughout eastern Polynesia and was evidently brought to Easter Island by the first settlers.<ref>Skjølsvold 1994, as cited in Orliac 2005b</ref> However, not all the wood was native: Orliac (2007) established that tablets '''N''', '''P''', and '''S''' were made of [[Podocarpus latifolius|South African yellowwood (''Podocarpus latifolius'')]] and therefore that the wood had arrived with Western contact. Fischer describes '''P''' as "a damaged and reshapen European or American oar", as are '''A''' (which is [[Fraxinus excelsior|European ash, ''Fraxinus excelsior'']]) and '''V'''; notes that wood from the wreck of a Western boat was said to have been used for many tablets; and that both '''P''' and '''S''' had been recycled as planking for a Rapanui driftwood canoe, suggesting that by that time the tablets had little value to the islanders as texts.<ref>Fischer 1997:483</ref> Several texts, including '''O''', are carved on gnarled [[driftwood]].<ref>Fischer 1997:497</ref> The fact that the islanders were reduced to inscribing driftwood, and were regardless extremely economical in their use of wood, may have had consequences for the structure of the script, such as the abundance of [[Typographic ligature|ligatures]] and potentially a [[Telegraphese|telegraphic style]] of writing that would complicate textual analysis.<ref>Fischer 1997:382–383; see also [[decipherment of rongorongo]]</ref>

[[File:Red Banana leaf veins.jpg|thumb|left|Rongorongo tablets may have been influenced by writing on [[banana leaf|banana leaves]] like this one.]]

[[Decipherment of rongorongo#Thomson|William J. Thomson]] reported a [[calabash]], now lost, that had been found in a tomb and was "covered with hieroglyphics similar to those found on the incised tablets." During the early missionary period that began in 1864, it was reported that women wore [[Tapa cloth|bark cloth]] decorated with "symbols"; [[Rongorongo text Ragitoki|a fragment]] of one of these survives, and appears to be rongorongo.<ref>{{ cite journal | author = Guy, Jacques B. M. | author-link = Jacques Guy | year = 1992 | title = À propos des mois de l'ancien calendrier pascuan (On the months of the old Easter Island calendar) | journal = Journal de la Société des Océanistes | volume = 94 | issue = 1 | pages = 119–125 | doi=10.3406/jso.1992.2611}} {{in lang|fr}}</ref>

Oral tradition holds that, because of the great value of wood, only expert scribes used it, while pupils wrote on [[banana leaf|banana leaves]]. German [[ethnologist]] [[Thomas Barthel]] believed that carving on wood was a secondary development in the evolution of the script based on an earlier stage of incising banana leaves or the sheaths of the banana trunk with a bone stylus, and that the medium of leaves was retained not only for lessons but to plan and compose the texts of the wooden tablets.<ref>Barthel 1971:1168</ref> He found experimentally that the glyphs were quite visible on banana leaves due to the sap that emerged from the cuts and dried on the surface. However, when the leaves themselves dried they became brittle and would not have survived for long.<ref>Fischer 1997:386</ref>

Barthel speculated that the banana leaf might even have served as a prototype for the tablets, with the fluted surface of the tablets an emulation of the veined structure of a leaf:
{{Blockquote|text=Practical experiments with the material available on [Easter Island] have proved that the above-mentioned parts of the banana tree are not only an ideal writing material, but that in particular a direct correspondence exists between the height of the lines of writing and the distance between the veins on the leaves and stems of the banana tree. The classical inscriptions can be arranged in two groups according to the height of the lines (10–12{{nbsp}}mm ''vs.'' 15{{nbsp}}mm); this corresponds to the natural disposition of the veins on the banana stem (on average 10{{nbsp}}mm in the lower part of a medium-sized tree) or on the banana leaf ([...] maximum{{nbsp}}15mm).|source=Barthel 1971:1169}}
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===Direction of writing===
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Rongorongo glyphs were written in [[boustrophedon|reverse boustrophedon]], left to right and bottom to top. That is, the reader begins at the bottom left-hand corner of a tablet, reads a line from left to right, then rotates the tablet 180 degrees to continue on the next line. When reading one line, the lines above and below it would appear upside down, as can be seen in the image {{if mobile|1=above|2=at left}}.

However, the writing continues onto the second side of a tablet at the point where it finishes off the first, so if the first side has an odd number of lines, as is the case with tablets '''K''', '''N''', '''P''', and '''Q''', the second will start at the ''upper'' left-hand corner, and the direction of writing shifts to top to bottom.

Larger tablets and staves may have been read without turning, if the reader were able to read upside-down.<ref>Fischer 1997:353</ref>

The direction of writing was determined by such clues as glyphs that twist as the line changes direction, glyphs that were squashed to fit in at the end of a text, and, when a particular tablet does not have such clues, parallel passages between tablets.

===Writing instruments {{anchor|writing instruments}}===
[[Image:Rongorongo Gv4 (section).jpg|thumb|right|Most of '''Gv4''' was carved with a shark tooth. However, the two parts of the glyph second from right ({{Roro|070|20}} and [[Image:RR 062V.png|x20px|Bulb on line]]) are connected by a faint bent hair-line that may have been inscribed with obsidian. (The chevrons {{Roro|003|20}} are also linked by such a line, too faint to be seen here, which connects them to the hand of the human figure.)]]
According to oral tradition, scribes used [[Obsidian#Prehistoric and historical use|obsidian flakes]] or small [[shark tooth#Tool use by humans|shark teeth]], presumably the [[hilt|hafted]] tools still used to carve wood in Polynesia, to flute and polish the tablets and then to incise the glyphs.<ref>Métraux 1940:404</ref> The glyphs are most commonly composed of deep smooth cuts, though superficial hair-line cuts are also found. In the closeup image at right, a glyph is composed of two parts connected by a hair-line cut; this is a typical convention for this shape. Several researchers, including Barthel, believe that these superficial cuts were made by obsidian, and that the texts were carved in a two-stage process, first sketched with obsidian and then deepened and finished with a worn shark tooth.<ref>Horley 2009</ref> The remaining hair-line cuts were then either errors, design conventions (as at right), or decorative embellishments.{{refn|Barthel tested this experimentally, and Dederen (1993) reproduced several tablets in this fashion. Fischer comments,<ref>Fischer 1997:389–390</ref>

<blockquote>On the Large St. Petersburg ([P]r3) [...] the original tracing with an obsidian flake describes a bird's bill identical to a foregoing one; but when incising, the scribe reduced this bill to a much more bulbous shape [...] since he now was working with the different medium of a shark's tooth. There are many such scribal quirks on the "Large St. Petersburg" [tablet '''P'''].

The rongorongo script is a "contour script" (Barthel 1955:360) [...] with various internal or external lines, circles, dashes or dots added [...] Often such features exist only in the hair-line pre-etching effected by obsidian flakes and not incised with a shark's tooth. This is particularly evident on the "Small Vienna" [tablet '''N'''].</blockquote>
|group="note"}} Vertical strings of chevrons or lozenges, for example, are typically connected with hair-line cuts, as can be seen repeatedly in the closeup of one end of tablet '''B''' below. However, Barthel was told that the last literate Rapanui king, [[Nga{{saltillo}}ara]], sketched out the glyphs in soot applied with a fish bone and then engraved them with a shark tooth.<ref>Barthel 1959:164</ref>

[[Rongorongo text N|Tablet '''N''']], on the other hand, shows no sign of shark teeth. Haberlandt noticed that the glyphs of this text appear to have been incised with a sharpened bone, as evidenced by the shallowness and width of the grooves.<ref>Haberlandt 1886:102</ref> '''N''' also "displays secondary working with obsidian flakes to elaborate details within the finished contour lines. No other ''rongo-rongo'' inscription reveals such graphic extravagance".<ref>Fischer 1997:501</ref>

Other tablets appear to have been cut with a steel blade, often rather crudely. Although steel knives were available after the arrival of the Spanish, this does cast suspicion on the authenticity of these tablets.{{refn|For example, Métraux said of [[Rongorongo text V|tablet '''V''']] in 1938, "its authenticity is doubtful. The signs appear to have been incised with a steel implement, and do not show the regularity and beauty of outline which characterise the original tablets."<ref>Métraux 1938</ref> Imitation tablets were made for the tourist trade as early as the 1880s.|group="note"|name="steel"}}

===Glyphs===
[[Image:Rongorongo B-v Aruku-Kurenga (end).jpg|thumb|right|A photographic negative of one end of tablet '''B'''. The numbers are line numbers; ''Fin de 13'' means "end of [line] 13".]]

The glyphs are stylized human, animal, vegetable and geometric shapes, and often form [[Typographical ligature|compounds]]. Nearly all those with heads are oriented head up and are either seen face on or in profile to the right, in the direction of writing. It is not known what significance turning a glyph head-down or to the left may have had. Heads often have characteristic projections on the sides which may be eyes (as on the [[sea turtle]] glyph below, and more clearly on sea-turtle petroglyphs) but which often resemble ears (as on the anthropomorphic petroglyph in the next section). Birds are common; many resemble the [[frigatebird]] (see image directly below) which was associated with the supreme god [[Makemake (mythology)|Makemake]].<ref>Guy 2006</ref>{{refn|However, a glyph resembling a chicken or rooster is not found, despite chickens being the mainstay of the economy and some of the tablets supposedly commemorating "how many men [a chief] had killed, how many chickens he had stolen".<ref>Routledge 1919:251</ref>|group="note"}} Other glyphs look like fish or arthropods. A few are similar to [[petroglyph]]s found throughout the island.

[[File:Rongorongo-sample-en.png|thumb|center|upright=2|Some of the more iconic rongorongo glyphs. The seated man [bottom left] is thought to be a compound. Readings from Barthel (1958). The captions in the right-most column are merely descriptive.]]