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Your comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

However...

Over the past two years only five genuine questions were received, lost in at least 20,000 pieces of spam^__at least 30 pieces of junk mail per day. To send a question, a comment, a suggestion, visit this page.

The questions received so far are presented in reverse chronological order. Your e-mail address, of course, will not appear.

From: [only an e-mail address] 2002/02/24
Mr. Fergusson's mention of Aku-Aku prompted me to dig out my old copy and look at the document he mentioned. I noticed in some of the color plates (the second grouping, around page 177 in my Pocket Books paperback edition) a photograph of a group of carved stones obtained from a cave on Easter Island. Particularly of interest to me was the stone carved with what appears to be three lines of six or seven Rongorongo characters, as well as what appears to be a three-masted ship. What is the prevailing opinion among experts regarding these stones?
Answer: The opinion of experts... whom to ask? How many are they? Not much of a poll sample. A guess: recent fabrications made either especially for Heyerdahl, or attempts at reviving a lost tradition in the wake of Lavachery and Métraux's visit to the island in the 1930s. As for the stone tablet, when we can read it, we will have a better idea whether it is authentic or not. And that is likely to be never.

More: Any idea on the dates of these?
Answer: I have not come across anything on this topic in my readings.

More: Also, the excerpt of the Esteban Atan manuscript shown in Aku-Aku includes a section of text in addition to the dictionary-style listing. Presumably, this was taken from one of the tablets "read" by Metoro? Any idea which one?
Answer: I am not sure what text you refer to here. My copy is the 1958 George Allen & Unwin hardback. Pages 178 and 179 seem to be what you mean. The caption at the bottom starts: "Two pages from the village skipper's rongo-rongo book..." On the right-hand page is a list of signs in two columns, each with a reading. This is out of Jaussen's list, with minor discrepancies, for instance "he rima i ruga i te puoko" where Jaussen has "Rima i ruga i tona puoko." On the left-hand page is a long text all in hieroglyphs, with separating dots. The sign "translated" by "he rima i ruga i te puoko" on the opposite page is quite distinctive, and rare. It is sign 543. From the concordance (which you can download from here) you can see that it occurs only once, in ninth position, line 12 of the verso of tablet B (Aruku-Kurenga):
```
Bv12.009:59f-9-0!-20f-30a-4-543-2-50-240.27-73.6-4-522y-700.600-59f-320.
```
It also occurs once in the text in Aku-Aku as the last sign of the second last line. Its environment there is not that of Bv12 at all. However, if you turn to the "dictionary" on the page opposite (p.179), and work back up from that sign (second column, fourth last sign), you will see that the same signs occur in the dictionary in the same order as in the "text" on p.178. Turning again to the Jaussen list (Reports of the Norwegian Archeological Expedition etc., George Allen & Unwin, 1966, Vol. 2, Fig.94) you see that the "dictionary" page in Aku-Aku is copied out of the Jaussen list. Turning to Fig. 83, the first page of Jaussen's list, compare it now to the beginning of the hieroglyphic text in Aku-Aku, p.178. They are identical.

More: Although his methods and conclusions are rather questionable, I think perhaps the work of Sergei V. Rjabchikov deserves some mention, at very least among Carroll, Billimoria, and Fischer.
Comment: That's a thought.

More: In general I think his translations are nonsense, and his insistence on using his own, rather confusing numbering scheme instead of Barthel's makes reading his writings a lot of work, but I think at least some good points are raised in the midst of the highly questionable conclusions, such as the idea that hand/arm-type may not effect the meaning of the text.
Comment: Pozdniakov has demonstrated that the "forked hand" (e.g. of sign 204) is equivalent to the "fingers-and-thumb hand" (e.g. sign 206), but different from the "thumbless hand" (e.g. sign 201), and from the "fist hand" (e.g. 202). Pozdniakov's demonstration is sound, if difficult to follow (Pozdniakov 1997. Les bases du déchiffrement de l'écriture de l'île de Pâques. Journal de la Société des Océanistes, Vol.103, No.2, pp.289-303).

More: His website is: http://www.openweb.ru/rongo/ Lots of garbage, but some interesting stuff, including the "signatures" of the Easter Island chiefs on the Spanish treaty, which I hadn't seen before.
Comment: They are in volume 2, figure 81, of the Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the Pacific, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1966.
From: [only an e-mail address], 2002/02/21
Je n'arrive pas à savoir où sont conservées les quelques tablettes qui existent encore. Sont-elles réparties dans divers musées ou regroupées en un seul site ? Lors de mon récent séjour à Rapa Nui, je n'ai rien pu savoir là dessus.
Comment: A query about where the tablets are.
Answer: Voyez ici ^_ See there ^_ Véase aquí
From: Professor Jose-Luis Ibarrola of Pamplona University, Spain, 2002/01/20
You have the French version (with a mention to Babelfish), and a lot of graphics from Pinart pages. It is possible for www.iorana.net to copy this graphics (with mention to www.rongorongo.org, of course, for the graphics) and put it in my Pinart pages ?
Answer: Yes, of course, and feel free to use the other illustrations and photographs if you so wish.
Comment: Similar questions have been asked by several visitors since. The answer to all is there.
From: Karel F. Treebus, The Netherlands, 2002/01/14
I am a collector of translations of New Year's wishes.
Is there anybody who can send me the translation of the wish A HAPPY NEW YEAR! in Rapanui, please?
Answer: Being ignorant of the modern language, I nevertheless suspected that it might be a straight loan from Tahitian, just like "iorana" (from the Tahitian "'ia ora na ['oe]". I asked Father Francisco Nahoe, and here is his answer:
Although they're strongly influenced by Tahitian, as for seasonal greetings, this is what we say:
1. Merry Christmas = 'Iorana i te Mahana Poreko o 'Ietu
2. Happy New Year = 'Iorana i te Matahiti 'Api

There has been a long break during which www.rongorongo.org was unattended, due to an unfortunate software accident: logical drive C: disappeared, along with two others. Most of the indispensable hardware here (printer, scanner) requiring Windows, and some of the software (such as the OCR) also requiring Windows, it was a difficult time. Eventually, with outside help, the missing disks were restored, but disk C: had to be rebuilt from scratch. When the contents of comments@rongorongo.org were accessed again, some two megabytes were found there, almost all spam, and software had to be located, downloaded, and evaluated, to get rid of most of it. In the process, some legitimate comments and questions may have been inadvertently deleted. If you think that yours may have been neglected, and are still interested in getting an answer, do resubmit them.

From: Richard Fergusson, U.K., 2000/04/29
I wondered why no mention was made of the discoveries of Thor Heyerdal's expedition of 1956. In his account 'Aku Aku' published the following year he says that he photographed a 41 page book belonging to an Easter Islander in which several pages were set out dictionary-style, with the meaning of each symbol given in Polynesian written in Easter Island dialect in Latin characters. He even shows a short extract [truncated by TheGuestBook]
Answer: This is the Esteban Atan manuscript, reproduced in its entirety in volume II of Reports of the Norwegian Archaological Expedition to Easter Island and the Pacific, Heyerdahl and Ferdon eds, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1966, figures 96 to 136. The dictionary-style pages are a recompilation of Jaussen's list (figures 83 to 94 in the same volume), which you can see at http://www.netaxs.com/~trance/jaussen.html This manuscript seems to be an attempt at deciphering the rongorongo, based on the Jaussen list, and therefore, on Metoro's testimony, on which see Guy 1999.
From: Richard Schaedel, USA, 2000/02/14
You are to be congratulated for creating an extremely valuable site, especially for making the inscriptions accessible. I have found that looking at rongo-rongo is the only thing I can do while taking public transit; I believe the inscriptions should be on all subways and buses. One very small quibble. It would be a relief to me if you could kindly remove "without a doubt" from your discussion of the lunar calendar of the Mamari tablet. The coincidental section contained therein with [remainder truncated by TheGuestBook.com]
Answer: "without a doubt" has been removed.
Comment: even though the inscriptions are now accessible, there are errors. In its latest newsletter the C.E.I.P.P. announced that it was half-way through checking Barthel's tracings against originals or photos of originals. There is quite a number of errors, and Fischer appears to have compounded them, see this comparison of Barthel and Fischer against the original text.
What ought to be done is to produce a high-quality photographic corpus.
From: Konstantin Pozdniakov, France, 2000/02/08
Cher(e) Rosette Stones, votre site est magnifique. Merci.
Comment: Konstantin Pozdniakov used to be director of research at the St Petersburg Museum. A specialist in West-African languages, like the late Olderogge, he now lives in France where he lectures on Wolof. He has worked on the decipherment of the rongorongo for some years, and has carried out statistical analyses of the corpus, and he sees evidence there that the writing is mostly syllabic. Pozdniakov's findings will be summarized in the decipherment section of rongorongo.org, when leisure allows.

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