Helium is a rather excellent web site where budding (and established) writers can self-publish articles on a variety of different subjects. Today the site has published an interesting article about Rongorongo, a glyph language believed to belong to the Rapa Nui people and that has remained largely undeciphered.
Rongorongo is interesting because it is a language that appears to have no known origins, and is apparently unrelated to any other known language. It has been speculated that the language and script was invented on the island, based on the influence of the early Spanish explorers who landed on Easter Island in the 1770s (some 50 years after the Dutch became the first Europeans to discover it). This is supported by the evidence of the earliest known examples of Rongorongo, which are post-1680.
Today the islanders speak mostly Spanish and write in the Latin script, and Rongorongo is no longer spoken or written. The small amounts of the language that have been deciphered relate largely to calendars and rituals, while the strange semantics and the lack of knowledge as to what the glyphs represent have hindered researchers. In the 1950s Thomas Barthel made an inventory of the script, which consists of 120 main symbols and between 1200 and 2000 compound glyphs.
Although Rongorongo isn't officially designated as a language, as researchers manage to decipher more of the script it is getting closer to being recognised as such.
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