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Rongorongo is a non-deciphered writing system from Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Because the island was isolated from the outside world until relatively recently, rongorongo has the potential of being one of only a few instances in human history of an independent invention of writing. However, no scientific consensus exists regarding the time span for when rongorongo was used. Its cessation in the 1860s is well-known but its origins are not. Here, we report on detailed analysis of one of the 23 existing rongorongo artifacts—the Berlin Tablet—including botanical wood identification, radiocarbon dating, and photogrammetric study. The wood used to create the tablet was identified as Pacific rosewood, Thespesia populnea, a species that once grew on Rapa Nui, which counters previous theories that the tablet was made from salvaged driftwood. The radiocarbon date, adjusted in accordance to the ethnographic data, suggests that the tablet was made some time between ca. AD 1830 and 1870. Prior to its collection, the tablet had spent a significant amount of time within a cave context that destroyed around 90% of its content. The text is estimated to have been over 5000 signs long, more than double the length of the next longest rongorongo text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rongorongo is an undeciphered script inscribed on wooden objects from Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the Pacific Ocean. The existing editions of the inscriptions, and their widespread locations in museums and archives all over the world today constitute a serious obstacle to any objective paleographical assessment. Thus, with a view to a potential decipherment, creating 3D models of the available corpus is of crucial importance, and one of the objectives of the ERC INSCRIBE project, based at the University of Bologna with Professor S. Ferrara as Principal Investigator. In this preliminary work, we present the results of the 3D digitization of the Mamari tablet, one of the longest inscriptions in Rongorongo, housed in the Museum Archives of the Congregazione dei Sacri Cuori di Ges'u e Maria in Rome. The tablet is made of wood, with a shiny reflecting surface, characterized by a mainly dark texture. The 3D modelling was carried out with the ScanRider 1.2 laser scanner manufactured by VGER, based on Structured Light technology, taking care to ensure the legibility of each sign while preserving the overall shape of the object as precisely as possible. To overcome the difficulties inherent in the object's complex fabric, the Mamari tablet was acquired in separate sections (joined together during processing through specific markers), thus managing to optimize the optical parameters of the laser scanner, such as the exposure of the camera and the depth of field of the projector. Furthermore, an evaluation of the 3D reconstruction precision was also carried out, highlighting a precision of few hundredths of millimeters, in agreement with the claimed nominal standard deviation. In addition to the 3D model produced, one of the main results of this endeavor was the definition of a successful method to scan such complex objects, which will be replicated to finalize the complete 3D modelling of the whole Rongorongo corpus of inscriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]