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The Easter Island Tablets: The Indus Valley Hypothesis
H.D. Skinner on Hevesy
Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol.41 (1932)
NOTES AND QUERIES.
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[471] The Easter Island Script.
In Nature [October lst, 1932, p. 502] appears the following note: "According to a letter from Sir Denison Ross in the Times of September 21st, M. Guillame Hevesy, a Hungarian resident in Paris, has discovered that a number of the signs of the pre-historic Indian script on seals from Mahenjo-daro also appear in the script of the Easter Island inscribed wooden tablets, while some of the Easter Island signs, not present on the Indian seals, are to be found in the proto-Elamic of Susa. It would now be interesting to hear whether there is any coincidence in the interpretation of the pre-historic Indian signs suggested by Sir Flinders Petrie (see Nature, September 17th, p. 429), and those suggested for the Easter Island script in the Report of the Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute of which Mr. Sidney Ray was Chairman. The suggestion of a connexion between the two scripts is not the only attempt to find an affinity between Easter Island and this part of Asia. M. J. Hackin, of the Musée Guimet, has recently directed attention to the resemblance which has now been noted between the wooden statues, probably ancestral, which were objects of reverence among the Kafirs of Afghanistan before they were overwhelmed by Islam, of which examples are preserved in the Kabul Museum, and the well-known statues of Easter Island. The resemblances certainly are strong, although it might be argued that they do not go beyond what may be due to the limitations of all undeveloped technique. It must also be admitted that when the material which it is sought to bring into relation is so widely separated in date as in these instances, the comparison, in default of intervening links, carries more interest than conviction."
A number of problems are raised in this paragraph. I can only say that the parallels figured in Sir Denison Ross's letter carry no conviction whatever.__H. D. SKINNER.
Journal of the Polynesian Society, 1932, vol.41, p.323.