Talk:Rongorongo/archive 2

Featured Article?

That was very premature. Sure, the article is immeasurably better. But it could hardly have got worse than in early August last year could it? I had a look at the Voynich Manuscript article [1], which has become a featured article. The presentation, the layout, are fine, but I am far from impressed with the contents (the link to the 50M pdf, though, is marvellous [2]. If only we'd had such copies twenty years ago!).

To come back to the roro, the 40+ footnotes make the article reader-hostile. Next is the question of what to do with the loonies. The Voynich article does not clearly distinguish between the serious (Currier, Stolfi...) and the nutty (Newbold, Rugg...).

I would not like to see this happen to this article. Admittedly, it could be interesting to deal with, for instance, Dr Carroll's 1890's decipherment. Because it sounds reasonable at first but the more you read, the more skeptical you become. And it can be worthwhile explaining why and how you can soon smell a fine kookie monster in the person of the good Doctor Carroll, and how it takes no particular specialist knowledge nor a bloodhound's nose. Only common sense. But that properly belongs elsewhere, in an article on the pathology of decipherment, not only the Roro, but the Phaistos disk, the Voynich manuscript and others, with a special hat tip to Barry Fell. JacquesGuy (talk) 08:04, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

A pathology of decipherment article would be interesting, if we have a consistent way of discussing it, even if it's just a summary of the book. I had a time battling a Mi'kmaq at Micmac hieroglyphs who thought that anyone who dismissed Fell was oppressing the Mi'kmaq. (Of course, Fell evidently didn't think Native Americans could have come up with any of this stuff on their own, but there you are.)

Yes, the FA nomination was premature, and I've withdrawn it. It might qualify for GA, or at least better than the B it has now.

I'd cleaned up the Russian a bit, but it was restored first by R, then by someone else. The second editor was impressed by R's publications, which he said he couldn't ignore, even though all the Russian scholars we cover here are ignored. Oh well. kwami (talk) 15:53, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The Russian article does not matter. English is the language, as Latin used to be. All they'll do is garb themselves in robes of preposterousness and crankery. Same with the French article. I see that none of its readers has taken up the challenge of improving it. And yet it would be a simple matter (that's why I had put the link to the English article). And I am in two minds if la Bettocchi flies back into the belfry. Leave it or clean it? I would be tempted to leave it. If the francophones want to live in a barrel of crap, hey, let it be their choice. Which reminds me of a Japanese businessman, met... 42 years ago in Paris. He'd just been to Amsterdam. One thing had struck him there. I remember it verbatim to this date. It struck me because it was so unlike the formal Japanese I had been taught.

• Hora, Amusuterudamu!
• ?
• Inu no kuso! Ookii yatsu!

And he brought his hands together to show me the size of the dog turds he'd seen in the streets of Amsterdam. They were not as big when I was in Paris last year, but numbers made up for size.

Before I log off. I think the bit on "Rapanui spelling conventions" is better right at the very beginning. Spelling conventions don't belong to the roro corpus at all. There are many more things like that before you can think of resubmitting it as FA or GA or what. Those forty footnotes for instance. JacquesGuy (talk) 22:08, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, moved the orthography to the Rapanui language article. Reducing the notes, though that doesn't come naturally to me, because I've always loved lots of notes. A couple missing refs have come to light, though. Check I got the right Flenley & Bahn, and who wrote Manifestation de l’expression symbolique en Océanie : l’exemple des bois d’œuvre de l’Ile de Pâques. Cahier V - 2003/2004, Thème 6 - Cultes, rites et religions ? We have it as Orliac 2005. And what should we put down as the source of the imported names of the months? kwami (talk) 23:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Footnotes. I like footnotes too, but only when they are at the foot of each page. Here they're all bunched together at the end of the article. A solution would be to place them, indented, at the end of each section or even the paragraph where the reference occurs. Like this:

Blah blah blah blah blah¹ blah blah blah....................

Note[1]

This way the note is right next to where it belongs. Or close. But I don't know what would be the view of the Powers That Decide Upon FA Or Not FA (Hallowed Be Their Name!).

Never heard of F&B Manifestation de l’expression symbolique en Océanie. I hold Bahn in such esteem that I won't bother finding out.

I found the Orliac reference on the Web, together with the article. Forgot to bookmark it.

The imported names of the months? I don't have a modern Rapanui dictionary. I have two or three Tahitian dictionaries, and it is quite obvious that the Rapanui names are derived from Tahitian, themselves derived from American English. Thus "August" is "atete" in Tahitian and in the Heyerdahl manuscript. If it had been borrowed into Rapanui directly from English it would be something like "akete" (or okete, okata, and so on). When you read Eyraud's report, BTW, you see that he spoke Tahitian to the natives, not Rapanui. Evidence? When he said to Torometi: "e pohe oe." That's Tahitian. Rapanui would be "e mate ko koe." And so we don't know if Salmon spoke Rapanui at all, or just made do with Tahitian! JacquesGuy (talk) 00:59, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't word that well: We had Manifestation de l’expression symbolique en Océanie as Orliac 2005, but it was described as the notebook for 2003/2004, and we have another Orliac 2005 publication. I think I just found it. For F&B I did an Amazon search and copied the title of the only book I found with the proper date. If I got either wrong, it would be a hard error for someone to ferret out later on.

I don't think the powers that be like having notes in each section, or at least that's how I remember it. kwami (talk) 02:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

If you don't have a modern Rapanui dictionary, why do you say that the names in Heyerdahl "are further misspelt"? Do you mean that they differ from the Tahitian, or that Heyerdahl misspelt the Rapanui? kwami (talk) 02:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

If you don't have a modern Rapanui dictionary, why do you say that the names in Heyerdahl "are further misspelt"?

They differ, not all, from Tahitian. An extra space here, a missing letter there. Heyerdahl did not misspel anything. Because he didn't spell anything. He just published the photo. Kondratov made a super-duper magnificent botch-up of it in Heyerdahl 1965. It's in volume II. Wait, I'll get it. He didn't realize those were the names of the months in Tahitian! And he set about "translating" them. Let me find the page. It's p.410, right at the top:

i te 19 oti unu, i tikea ai te mahina, e 29 mahana o te maro ka tahi te marama,
i te 18 oti rai, i tikea ai te mahina, e 29 mahana i te anakena, ka rua marama
i te 17 oti tete, i tikea ai te mahina.

What it means is:
on the 19th of June (tiunu), when the moon is seen, 29 days of Maro, it's the first month.
on the 18th or July (tiurai), when the moon is seen, 29 days in Anakena, the second month.
on the 17th of August (atete), when the moon is seen...

Now Kondratov does not recognize the misspelt names and translates:

On 19 is the end of the warm period, the moon appears, 29 days of the month maro (June), the first month;
on 18 is the end of the dry period, the moon appears, 29 days of the month anakena (July), the second month;
on 17 is the end of the heat, the moon appears.

What he thinks is "ti" in "17 oti tete" is actually a capital A. So it's "i te 17 o Atete".

As for the list fig. 110, out of the Atan manuscript, the very first month is a fine example:

te nu ari

That's January, tenuare in Tahitian.

And Kondratov writes that they are "the Spanish names considerably distorted" (!)

You sure need a lot of distortion to get te nu ari from enero!

To be fair, there's a footnote by Thor Heyerdahl that says: "The distorted European names in the right column might perhaps be of English rather than Spanish origin"

If they were of English origin, you would have a "k" corresponding to the "g" of "August". You have "t" instead. Proof positive that the origin is English via Tahitian. JacquesGuy (talk) 03:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I followed the logic of it being via Tahitian, just wasn't sure if the 'misspellings' were in the manuscript of H's reporting of them. I wanted to clean it up so that we weren't making any more claims than necessary. kwami (talk) 03:16, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

In the manuscripts. Not a shred of a doubt about it. JacquesGuy (talk) 03:35, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Were some of the glyphs in Jaussen glossed as months, which the manuscript then tried to identify, or did the manuscript try to connect random glyphs to the calendar? kwami (talk) 05:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Before I answer your question looksee here: http://tripatlas.com/Rongorongo
Does "tripatlas" stand for "tripe"? Bullshit will thrive.

Now for the question. No, no months, not a single one, in Jaussen's List. The manuscript tries to connect traditional month names with modern Tahitian ones. No glyphs at all there, not a single one. I analyzed it in detail many years ago in my JSO article on the lunisolar calendar and the evidence for how and when the embolismic month was inserted into the basic 12-month year. Wait a minute... ah, that's the one. You've put it back into the bibliography:

GUY, Jacques B.M. 1992. "À propos des mois de l'ancien calendrier pascuan" ("On the months of the old Easter Island calender"), Journal de la Société des Océanistes 94-1:119-125

JacquesGuy (talk) 05:42, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I'm confused. I probably got it wrong in my last edit. I thought this was dealing with rongorongo, whereas your point is that the manuscript botched a comparison of old Rapa Nui with modern Tahitian. Or is it old RN with modern RN, which derives from Tahitian? But that's not connected to whether the usage of rongorongo by the manuscripts is valid. kwami (talk) 07:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

It's got nothing to do with the roro, strictly speaking. Oh, I just rewrote that bit, thinking you'd logged off. BUT... it has something to do. Because if I hadn't had all those data I wouldn't have been able to reconstruct how the lunisolar calendar worked. The author of the manuscript tried to correlate the old Rapanui names of the months with the modern (Tahitian) names. He could only fail, since there can be no exact one-to-one correspondance, year in, year out, between the months of a solar calendar and of a lunisolar one. As for the glyphs in those manuscripts, they're straight copies out of Jaussen's list. JacquesGuy (talk) 07:32, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. I didn't see your changes.

Okay, so you were just commenting on the contents of the manuscripts, not trying to show that they aren't authentic rongorongo, which is to be understood if they're copies of Jaussen.

BTW, I wonder if your Japanese businessman was from Osaka. He sounds it. kwami (talk) 07:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Allow me to add: it doesn't matter whether the names of the months are in old Rapanui, in Tahitian, in Polish, or in Kabardian. What matters here is that the old Rapanui used a lunisolar calendar. We use a solar one. The names of the months are irrelevant. JacquesGuy (talk) 07:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

So it was only an attempt at a calendrical correspondence then, not a linguistic one. kwami (talk) 07:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. JacquesGuy (talk) 08:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

"I wonder if your Japanese businessman was from Osaka."

I don't remember. I did look after several businessmen from Osaka back then (I was an interpreter with a French import-export company in Paris). I don't remember if he said "koote" instead of "katte" and so on. All I remember is that he was the shachoo of a very small paint-making outfit. He was obviously having a holiday in Europe at his own firm's expense. It was his first trip, too. Very funny, rude, and likeable fellow. Many years later I realized that "ookii yatsu" was the exact equivalent of Australian "big bastards." Just like "I'll put it in a bag for you", "I'll wrap it for you" is the equivalent of "...te agemasu." Oh ye shades of Sheldrake's watchamallit fields! JacquesGuy (talk) 09:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Bettocchi

Lorena à Kwami "The surviving texts" le doute est jeté par ce nouveau redacteur sur plusieurs objets anciens : les 25 Items (de A à Y) sont considérés comme anciens. La tablette du Poike est en écriture cursive, donc probablement de la fin du 19e, début du 20e siècle. Il est vrai, avec peu d'analyses en dentrochronologie, mais par contre les relevés en épigraphie prouvent que l'écriture de 25 Items est bien classique. Je viens d'informer par e.mail le British Museum de cette erreur sur en.wikipedia. La tablette de Londres est en Thespesa popoulnea, très classique et bien jolie... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.170.3.58 (talk) 21:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not saying those half-dozen other texts are not genuine, only that people have expressed doubts, and advise caution in relying on them. kwami (talk) 21:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Lorena a Kwami et à Rakjb sur le chapitre "New drawings of the rongorongo corpus" une remarque du redacteur est bien fondée. Il s'agit de l'Item I ou bâton de Santiago (Santiago Staff) qui fut relevé comme comportant 14 lignes (par T. Barthel et S. Fischer). Steven Fischer a mieux cerné la difficulté car il a débuté le tracé par les lignes les plus courtes -En réalité cet objet comporte 15 sections, la 15e termine l'ouvrage de manière originale en raison de la dimension de l'objet. La 15e section est non-boustrophedon (Conference de Lorena Bettocchi Nov 2007- Museo Nacional de Historia Natural (enregistrée á la Dibam de Santiago de Chile numero 167 581)- Le bâton de santiago est donc selon mes conclusions et mes connaissances en épigraphie, le seul objet dont on sache où commence l'écriture et où elle finit. Il y aura bientôt en ligne sur www.ile-de-paques.com le dossier complet de mes conclusions sur l'item I (déposé au CEIPP et à la DIBAM) - DIBAM : Direccion de Bibliotecas Archivos Y Museos Santiago de Chile - Au sujet des publications en Histoire de Lorena Bettocchi, pour l'heure, l'une d'elle fut validée par le Conseil des Recteurs des Universités de Valparaiso (Colloque du Musee Maritime). Les chercheurs qui travaillent sur le rongorongo voudront bien publier des informations contradictoires. Que Jacques G. se mette au travail !

Other scholars are comfortable with the idea that the writing directions of some of the other tablet are also known. kwami (talk) 21:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Lorena a Kwami et à Sergei : Ma réponse sur le bâton de Maori rongorongo mettra les chercheurs d'accord (il n'y a pas encore d'érudits en la matière, nous sommes tous de modestes apprentis, sauf un) - cette étude est sur www.ile-de-paques.com en ligne depuis une heure [[3]]- j'ajoute le lien. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.170.3.58 (talk) 15:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Famille austro-tai, filiation austronésienne, les linguistes ne sont pas toujours d'accord avec ceci [[4]]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.170.3.58 (talk) 19:26, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

names and contents

Lorena à Kwami et SergeiR sur le chapitre "names and contents" : il conviendrait d'ajouter la source bibliographique concernant ces noms attribués aux tablettes, "ika, renga", tablettes de la mort... de Timo, le sorcier etc... noms attribués par les tabous, la peur, le syncrétisme du début du 20e s. Je n'ai pour ma part, en 2008, après 16 années de recherches et de constitution de la banque de données comportant tous les témoignages, qu'un seul document authentique et manuscrit qui fournit ces informations : contenu des notes de Catherine Routledge au British Museum, largement recopiées par tous les auteurs qui ont suivi. J'avais étudié cela en 1998 lorsque j'ai publié mon livre LA PAROLE PERDUE (d'après les notes du père S. Englert); mais à présent plus aucun philologue attaché á la culture polynésienne ne tombe dans le piège. Quelles seraient les sources de Sergei, qui ne sont pas des ouvrages d'ethnologues, archéologues ou missionnaires de l'après Routledge ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.170.3.58 (talk) 13:47, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

types of wood

I just noticed one of the wood species was the European ash. Was this item A? kwami (talk) 11:06, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is the Oar. Would be interesting to find the sizes of the oars used on European ships in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Oar is almost exactly one Imperial yard long (914mm). Perhaps exactly, for I don't know how precisely those tablets have been measured. I have its length as 909mm. Very close to one yard.

On another topic, rereading the article, I found the order of the sections confusing.

Discovery and disappearance belong together for instance, all the more so that the latter followed the former almost immediately. Thomson's observations don't belong with decipherment

So we'd have something like:

1. Discovery by Eyraud
2. Rediscovery by Jaussen, and disappearance. But Metoro's readings and Jaussen's list belong in the decipherment section.
3. Thomson -- because he landed on Easter Island after having been to Tahiti where he met Jaussen.

Then in the decipherment section we can deal with the readings obtained by Jaussen and explain why they were worthless. Same with what Thomson from Ure Vaeiko. The real decipherment started with Kudrjavtsev. So Jaussen's and Thomson's would be presented as "predecipherment" attempts. A bit like Kircher's "decipherment" of the Egyptian hieroglyphics before Champollion. Could be worth mentioning Carroll, the Sydney physician, and Hevesy. To show that the most arrant stupidities were seriously considered then. That's all off the top of my head, though. It's not half-baked, not even quarter-baked, it's still leavening. JacquesGuy (talk) 12:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

rewrite

I have tried what I suggested immediately above. It reads much better (I think) but I have not uploaded it, because it makes a mess of the article. A temporary mess, but how long is temporary? It would need a warning banner "Article being rewritten" or something. The process promises to be painful, since there is no way I know of of previewing a wikipedia article off-line. JacquesGuy (talk) 22:54, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Add {{in progress}} to the top of the section you're working on. kwami (talk) 23:10, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I have been re-ordering the sections, and rewriting bits of them so that it all hangs together. {{in progress}} would have to be right at the top. The sections that have not been re-ordered yet, and partly rewritten, would ensure it's all a horrendous mess. JacquesGuy (talk) 00:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I found greasemonkey and wikEd and installed them. It helped a little bit. Not as much as I hoped, though. Sections 4 (Name and contents) and 5 (Origin) should be relocated elsewhere. Not quite sure where. Gaping gaps have become more obvious. For instance, there should be something about how Barthel's transliteration system made discussions and publications immensely easier in those days without text-and-graphics editors. I'll rig up an illustration. JacquesGuy (talk) 02:05, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

"Rapanui is heavily mixed with Tahitian and Marquesan"

Marquesan??? Tahitian, of course. But Marquesan...? Any source? JacquesGuy (talk) 02:39, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

That's something that was already there and I just left in. kwami (talk) 03:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

All right. Zappity zappity zap zap. The phonological changes undergone by Marquesan are such that Marquesan is mutually unintelligible with Tahitian, Rapanui, Hawaiian, or Maori. E.g. NZ Maori rongo is ro'o in Tahitian and 'ono in Marquesan. If memory serves (I'm quoting from old memories, when I had access to the Menzies Library in Canberra). Marquesan might have 90% cognates or more with Tahitian or Maori, but you won't be able to understand Marquesan if you know Maori. Or Tahitian. Or Rapanui. JacquesGuy (talk) 05:41, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I think (banging my own drum, hey?) that it flows much better now. In the process I discovered many repetitions which must distract readers. How many times has one to be reminded of the magic number, 26? And references to the works of Englert have gone yukue fumei in the flurry of editings. You cannot discuss the roro without Englert's work, and he should figure prominently here. I have got a good mind to add a section about Carroll, the Sydney medic, and Hevesy, because their nutty ideas did make it once into serious publications. So, readers of "serious publications" (and that includes Nature) beware. There remains much to be done. I am glad to see that Michael Everson has taken an interest in the topic. Roro studies have long suffered from a lack of interest from serious, competent people (unlike the case of the Voynich manuscript) JacquesGuy (talk) 02:06, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it sounds better, though I returned a couple points in Spanish to footnotes.

One point, though: I don't know what "The rongorongo glyphs are regular in form" is supposed to mean - standardized shapes across the tablets? all the same size within a tablet? kwami (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 03:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Quoting you: One point, though: I don't know what "The rongorongo glyphs are regular in form" is supposed to mean

Search me! I would say "modular." The anthropomorphic glyphs are composed of 5 elements, each very regular. I am sure that you could design a TrueType font that would allow you to input, say, iieii, and come out with glyph 300 ("iieii" is a "Frogguy" -- as in "Voynich Frogguy" -- transliteration system which I have been developing for some five years now). "iieii" would be a TTF composite glyph. You'd only need a front-end parser to assemble the TTF glyph. That's what I mean to take up with Michael Everson, if he is interested. JacquesGuy (talk) 03:39, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Added a minimal amount on Carroll and Hevesy from the Spanish article. The refs are incomplete, and the dates don't match. Maybe you can also add why Carroll is worthy of mention at all. kwami (talk) 10:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I will do that. Meantime, in a nutshell: Carroll's explanations of his method, and of the structure of the writing, were fundamentally reasonable, until put to the test: the promised grammar and hieroglyphic dictionary never eventuated. But there is more. He writes:

It will also be apparent upon careful inspection of the inscriptions that numbers of the hieroglyphics are compound, and are constructed of distinct portions, these parts being variously combined in the different characters.

How well observed! So you read on and learn that

Each of these parts so combined is either a syllable or a complete word, but sometimes a letter -- either a vowel or a consonant -- of a proper name, or a grammatical form (pre- or post-position), or other part of speech.

At this stage it's hard not to think "perhaps he's cracked it!" And you read on:

The symbol, or part of each character, gives it value in sound to the syllable or word it is used for, or intended to denote. Thus, an open hand reads ma, an abbreviation for maqui, "the hand;" but in this case it means "free." In a pointing position it means ma, "let us see;" in other positions it has several other meanings.

And it still makes sense. But this no longer does:

there are in these inscriptions words and phrases from the Toltecan, Queché, Aztecan, Tschimu, Carañ, Quito, Bacatan, Quichua, Muiscan, Collan, and others. Some of these are only borrowed words, but others by their altered case-endings, suffixed genders, and different grammatical structure, give evidence that a mixture of peoples, as voyagers and residents, took place among those who came to Easter Island in the olden times

Now see how eventually he writhed out of it:

With regard to publishing my work upon the mode of decipherment of the hieroglyphics into the Quichua and other languages in which the engravers wrote, and translating these into English, it would cost a considerable sum of money; the enquiries made up to the present show that to print explanatory modes of decipherment of the original figures so as to be clear and comprehensible, and their equivalents in sounds distinct and plain to all, it would be necessary to cast special types for the figures and the parts of the figures of these hieroglyphics so as to show the equivalent form for each sound, that is for the syllable or word, for without this they could not be read. To do this would, it is estimated by the typefounders, cost about from fourteen to fifteen hundred pounds [around $300,000 of today]

That is why, until recently, all sorts of nonsense could go unchallenged. The corpus was beyond the reach of just about everybody. So every nut case could go about peddling this or that decipherment. There would be no-one to counter the nonsense. Hevesy is one example. Quite a few of the roro glyphs he claimed are like some Indus Valley ones simply do not exist. He fabricated them. Now who could point that out in his days? There lies the importance of Barthel's Grundlagen and of an efficient transliteration system.

So Carroll is interesting. Hevesy is not, though. What is interesting in his case is how thick-skulled the academic world proved to be.

The refs to Carroll are 1892, JPS Vol. 1 pp.103-106, 233-252 and 1897 Vol. 6 pp.91-93

I looked up Hevesy in Jumeau's "Bibliographie de l'Ile de Pâques" and was rewarded with NINE publications by him, from 1932 to 1938.

My! And Carroll kept publishing on the subject until 1908, mostly with the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia.

And while I'm at it... that 1971 publication by Barthel where he says he reduced the glyph inventory to 120 has got to be Pre-contact Writing in Oceania, in: Sebeok T. Current Trends in Linguistics in Oceania, Mouton, 1971, pp.1165-1186. I wonder what's in it JacquesGuy (talk) 13:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Hevesy

The only article by him which I have read is

1938. The Easter Island and the Indus Valley Scripts. Anthropos 33:808-814.

I probably have a photocopy of it in my mess. The first mention of him is

1932. Lettre à M. Pelliot sur une écriture mystérieuse du bassin de l'Indus. Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Comptes-rendus des séances de l'année 1932. Bulletin de juillet-septembre. Séance du 16 septembre 1932, p.310.

One single page, apparently. No idea what's in it.

Next is:

1932. Ecriture de l'île de Pâques. Bulletin de la Société des Américanistes de Belgique, nº9, décembre 1932, pp.120-127.

What would la Société des Américanistes care about Easter Island or the Indus Valley?

All those publications, apart from Anthropos, must be difficult to get hold of.

I have come across an article that seems to mean that the Lavachery-Métraux expedition was mainly prompted by Hevesy's theory. They went to Easter Island to verify it.

Here: http://lhomme.revues.org/document1958.html

I'll have to read Métraux again :-( to see what he says about it. JacquesGuy (talk) 00:04, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Confirmed. I found this on the Net, there http://www.davidmetraux.com/daniel/docs/alfred/alfred_metraux_mysteries_of_easter_island.pdf :

A few years ago the study of the tablets took an unexpected turn. A Hungarian linguist, Guillaume de Hevesy, published a long list of Easter Island hieroglyphs which, it was claimed, presented very striking analogies with the symbols of a newly discovered script found in the ruins of a civilization, five thousand years old, in the Indus valley. If it could be shown that the two scripts were related, new light might be thrown on the obscure past of the whole Pacific area.

The problem thus posed was of such significance for an understanding of the early history of man that the French government in association with certain Belgian scientific institutions decided to organize an expedition to Easter Island to try to read its riddle. The leader of the expeditions was a French archaeologist, Charles Watelin, who unfortunately died, in Tierra del Fuego. I was then asked to carry on the research, four years ago (1934-35), in association with the Belgian archaeologist, Dr. Lavachery.

It's also found in the preface of Métraux's "l'île de Pâques" first published by Gallimard in 1941. I quote the 1975 reprint by Editions Famot, of Geneva:

Cette hypothèse d'une Ile de Pâques dont la civilisation se rattacherait à celle des vieux peuples de l'Asie parut se confirmer il y a quelques années lorsqu'un Hongrois, M. Guillaume de Hevesy, signala des parallèles remarquable entre les symboles gravés sur les tablettes de l'Ile de Pâques et les éléments d'une écriture qui venait d'être découverte dans la vallée de l'Indus et remontait sans doute à quelque 2500 ans avant notre ère... ... C'est dans l'espoir d'apporter des faits nouveaux, susceptibles d'éclaircir cette énigme vieille de deux siècles, que, sur l'initiative du Dr Paul Rivet, directeur du Musée de l'Homme, une mission scientifique fut organisée avec l'appui des gouvernements français et belge.

M. Watelin... comptait voir surgir sous sa pioche les murs de vieilles cités, semblables à celles de Mohenjo-daro. Il avait la certitude que les tranchées qu'il s'apprêtait à ouvrir au pied des volcans allaient lui dévoiler une civilisation inconnue.

But Watelin died of pneumonia before reaching Easter Island and was spared the disappointment.

So there you have the story. Amazing. Again.

JacquesGuy (talk) 04:06, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Carroll founded the RASA?

Not according to my copy of Fischer's roro:

The physician and "philanthropist" who in 1898 became editor of the journal Science of Man, the official organ of the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia...

Ah, wait a minute, here's an interesting tidbit:

http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2003/jan03/article5.html

[Georgina King] turned her back on the Royal Society to be welcomed enthusiastically by the grand sounding Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia, nowadays seen as forming part of the ‘lunatic fringe’

Holy shit! (pardon my French) So it's true!

http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/asaw/biogs/A002220b.htm

The Anthropological Society of Australasia was established in 1885. The Society's founder and secretary was Dr. Allan Carroll. In 1901 the Society gained the prefix 'Royal'.

So we'd better replace the ref. to Fischer, who says nothing of the sort, with that link to the University of Melbourne.

That Carroll makes me think of one Lanyon-Orgill, founder, editor, and main contributor, of the Journal of Austronesian Studies. He had applied for a fellowship at A.N.U. when, bad luck, Donald Laycock happened to be the acting head of the linguistics department. Don checked his credentials and... well...

And of someone else, a director of an Institute of Polynesian Languages and Literatures.

So the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia was a loonie bin set up by a bonesetter. WOW!

The roro are indeed a mighty powerful kook attractor. Time I set up my own institute and society. JacquesGuy (talk) 06:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought that might shake things up a bit. The current wiki link supports Carroll as the founder with a link to the Melbourne site, but that doesn't include the name of the journal, for which we still need Fischer. However, I wonder if we still need the name of the journal, considering its pedigree.

Your French is pardoned. I, evidently, am a native speaker. I hadn't realized that. kwami (talk) 06:50, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The name of the journal is found in the biography of Georgina King in the link already given: (http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2003/jan03/article5.html). There is even a photo of one page of it (bottom, right) with this caption: "'The Discovery of the "Missing Link"—the appearance of Woman as a "Sport" in Nature, and the Evolution of Anthropoid Man'. Reproduced from Science of Man and Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia, vol. 5, no. 11, December 1902 (Sydney: G. Watson, 1898–1913) Pictures Collection."

And you'd be surprised at who got embroiled with Lanyon-Orgill's Journal of Austronesian Studies. Peter Bellwood for one. So Science of Man deserves a mention. With flying colours (hitting the fan?). Helps remind readers that roro studies have been the playground of snake-oil salesmen since the year dot, and none got tarred and feathered. Look at Hevesy!

And did you know that Lanyon-Orgill had translated part of Mamari? Which included the lunar calendar. What a piece of luck!

I wonder what is going to crawl out of this article next? JacquesGuy (talk) 08:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Allan, Allen, or Alan Carroll?

I get all three asking for +Carroll +"Anthropological Society of Australia"

It seems to be "Alan." I found several theses that mention him and in all it's "Alan." He was a paediatrician. You'll find all those references easily:

1. http://alpha3.latrobe.edu.au/thesis/uploads/approved/adt-LTU20061113.110150/public/01front.pdf
2. http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/using/copies/microform/aboriginal/c.html
3. http://www.dr-fnlee.org/docs5/roots/roots.pdf
4. http://www.science.org.au/academy/basser/lists/ms026.htm
5. http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/biogs/P001134b.htm
6. http://alpha3.latrobe.edu.au/thesis/uploads/approved/adt-LTU20061113.110150/public/05chapter6-bib.pdf
7. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2123/402/1/adt-NU2000.0015whole.pdf

It's "Alan" in all except #4 so I'm correcting to "Alan."

—Preceding unsigned comment added by JacquesGuy (talk • contribs) 11:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Illustration of parallel text

Having cast a closer glance at the page, I realize that, maybe, the gif image Roro-HPQ3.gif should be some 40 pixels narrower. As it is, it seems to eat into the right-hand margin. Could an old hand at this game please advise? Miroir du Baron Samedi? (My display is set to 1024x768)

Sorry. Ignore this. I hadn't maximized the window. Bit of advice in such cases would still be welcome.

JacquesGuy (talk) 04:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

You can set the width of an image, but the problem comes in when others have different browser settings. If the image is too wide, it just triggers a left-right scroll-bar. You can see both at Rings of Saturn. kwami (talk) 07:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Origin

"However, there is no archaeological evidence for a long period of writing, for example among the thousands of petroglyphs on the island"

That does not strike me as much of an argument. How many stone inscriptions do we have? What would an archaeologist of 3000 AD make of them? Most are, yes! kohau ika, lists of soldiers killed in WWI and WWII. But pretty little else carved in stone, petroglyphs as they might call them. Is the fallacy worth pointing out? It's been so deeply ingrained for so long. JacquesGuy (talk) 18:36, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

But what inscriptions we do have are almost all in the Latin alphabet. On Easter Island there are petroglyphs, but they are not rongorongo. That might not mean anything, if the people carving the petroglyphs were not among the tangata rongorongo, but it's still worth mentioning. Maybe not so decisively, though.

If praise songs told how many men one killed and how many chickens one stole, and we have the kohau îka telling who was killed, might the roro also record the chickens? (Not thinking of adding that, it's just a thought.)

Also added a link for Everson's draft encoding. kwami (talk) 20:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

"But what inscriptions we do have are almost all in the Latin alphabet. On Easter Island there are petroglyphs, but they are not rongorongo."

Our lapidary inscriptions are all in uppercase letters. Our "rongorongo" are mostly lowercase. Then take Latin. The inscriptions on Roman monuments. Now consider their cursive script, the one they used on wax tablets. You'd never relate the two if you didn't know.

"might the roro also record the chickens?"

I wrote an article about that in the Bulletin of the CEIPP. I took the "genealogy" of Tablet G and reinterpreted it as a chicken-stealing story. And it worked like a dream, much better than a genealogy! Leading to this reading for glyph 76: aue ("woe!"). Which explained neatly how you could have several in succession, as you do on the Santiago Staff! And taught me one thing: the luminaries at Oxford University Press don't read the CEIPP Bulletin. Otherwise they would have contacted me to write a ten-volume report on chicken-stealing in Ancient Rapanui. JacquesGuy (talk) 23:09, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

"the undeciphered hieroglyphs of pre-conquest Easter Island"

There's two... gremlins there.

1. Can one speak of a conquest of Easter Island? I'd say not! Discovery perhaps so...
2. pre-discovery then but what about those who take them as being post-discovery, inspired by the signing of the Spanish annexation treaty? In that light, "pre-conquest" is just as irreceivable as "pre-discovery," too.

And another: "undeciphered hieroglyphs." That is going the antagonize forthwith those who claim that it's not writing, which is a lot of people. Well, in France at least. I have it from Michel Orliac (or perhaps Catherine? or both?) that it's because Claude Hagège once decreted that the roro did not constitute a form of writing and what Hagège says goes. Never mind that the argument boils down to "it's not writing because I can't read, so there." There is a fundamental flaw in reasoning there, which you find again regarding the Voynich manuscript: we can't read it, therefore it's 1) a hoax, 2) glossolalia. (On the other hand Pirahã, which I am sure is a hoax, has escaped that fate — go figure). But back to the undeciphered hieroglyphs. I'd be in favour of dropping "undeciphered" and keeping "hieroglyphs." That leaves open the question of whether there is anything to decipher.

Still remains that pesky "pre-conquest" and I have no idea to offer there. And then also "of which only twenty-six texts remain." "Texts." Same problem. "Examples"? So perhaps: "Rongorongo is the name of the hieroglyphs discovered on Easter Island, of which only twenty-six examples remain..." Hmmm.... I like "discovered on." Even the proponents that they are writings left by visitors from Betelgeuse in 12,212 BC won't have anything to object to that. But Hagège and consorts will object to "hieroglyphs." "Glyphs," then? But "examples" then gives the false impression that there were 26 of them... "preserved on 26 carved wooden objects"? Awkward. JacquesGuy (talk) 22:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, "pre-conquest" is definitely a problem.

Hieroglyphs technically are Egyptian, even if colloquially they're used for things like rongorongo. I don't mind either way, but "glyphs" would be more neutral. I wouldn't want to drop "undeciphered". That suggests that perhaps they have been deciphered. Even if it's proto-writing, it could still theoretically be deciphered, so I don't see the problem.

"Texts" is such a neutral term that I don't see a problem. A tape-recording of birdsong is a "text". kwami (talk) 02:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Unicode proposal

I just downloaded it. I remember now. It's several years old. They're part of the CEIPP extended list. I'd sent it to Michael Everson. He wanted something to... hold a stake, a claim as it were in the... what do you call that? Unicode nomenclature? The CEIPP has completed that project now and they have a list of close to 3000 graphs and allographs. That's what I have to take up with Michael. I have a feeling that the list can be drastically reduced by resorting to composite glyphs ("glyph" in the technical, designer's sense here, not "hieroglyph"). But I don't know enough about unicode and glyph definition, and how the software handles composite glyphs. And then the current list is an eyesore. Much to be done. JacquesGuy (talk) 22:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Knorozov vs Barthel

An interesting story here: http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/ibero/xaman/articulos/9805/9805_hk2.html JacquesGuy (talk) 02:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Footnote about Atua Matariri

I noticed this footnote:

In 1886 Ure Vaeiko recited a chant translated as "Land copulated with the fish Ruhi Paralyzer: There issued forth the sun", which Fischer cites as a parallel

Where is that in Fischer? I seem to remember something like that, but very vaguely.

Anyway, that can only refer to this verse of Atua-Matariri:
Ure Vaeiko: Heima; Ki ai Kiroto Kairui Kairui-Hakamarui Kapu te Raa.
Salmon: God Heima and goddess Kairui-hakamarui produced stars.
Métraux: He Hina [He ima?] ki ai ki roto kia Rui-haka-ma-rui, ka pu te raa.
Métraux: Moon (?) by copulating with Darkness (?) produced Sun

To get the meaning given by Fischer we need to read:

Henua, ki 'ai ki roto ki a Ruhi Hakamaruhi, ka pu te raa

Henua is "land", ruhi is the name of a fish, haka is a factitive verbal prefix, maruhi is "paralytic", raa is "sun."

But in this case "ruhi" is a proper noun because it is introduced by "ki a". As a common noun it would be introduced by "ki te" viz:

Henua, ki 'ai ki roto ki te ruhi hakamaruhi, ka pu te raa

As for it being a paralyzer, Englert does not give it as dangerous but as a large, dark fish with tasty flesh (cierto pez, grande, de color oscuro, carne sabrosa). JacquesGuy (talk) 10:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Dating the tablets

"However, this only dates the wood, not the inscriptions, and the scarcity of wood on Easter Island meant that such things must have been often recycled."

Upon re-reading and re-reading again, this does not make much sense to me. There would seem to be a hierarchy of sorts as to what you recycle into what. When you recycle a tablet as a fishing reel, like the Echancrée was, and many others according to Pinart as quoted by Chauvet, it is because the tablet has become valued lower than a fishing reel. Likewise when it becomes used for fire-making like Tablet H according to Catherine Orliac. Against that, there is Tablet A, an oar recycled the other way, as a tablet. But an oar of European origin. Thus there is only evidence for these to have been recycled once. Even the Snuffbox. There is no evidence that it came from a tablet recycled as a fishing reel.

At best, this only allows to speculate about the date when tablet-engraving ceased to be considered worthwhile, and to speculate further whether that was contemporary with the toppling of the statues. Practical wooden objects, however, fishing reels for example, would likely have become recycled into tablets with the growth of the tourist trade. But where is the evidence? And nowadays wood is available. Not much point in recycling decades-old bits of it. (Where do curio carvers get their supplies from, I wonder?)

I'd rather say something to the effect: "However, this only dates the wood, which may have been used for various other purposes before being inscribed on." And let readers sort it out themselves. JacquesGuy (talk) 23:45, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

"Submitted to Fischer's algorithm"

This word "algorithm" sticks in my craw. It is a strict term of mathematics and of computing. When used with reference to linguistics, it is computational linguistics. It lends Fischer's recipe an illusory cloak of scientific rigor. It is as much an "algorithm" as Jacques Lacan's "Saussurean algorithm" (http://nosubject.com/Matheme should anyone want to delve into that gibberish). In fact, it is a grotesque parody of what an algorithm is, exactly like his work on the Phaistos disc is a grotesque parody of Michael Ventris's methods in deciphering Linear B (Robinson 2002. "Lost Languages", p.313). Since this comes from the author of "The Man Who Deciphered Linear B"... and since there is a real "Fischer's Algorithm" (http://www-step.stanford.edu/abstraction/Fischer/index.html, http://www.liafa.jussieu.fr/~sighirea/trex/demos/fischer.html) I see no reason not to call it something else without further ado. JacquesGuy (talk) 00:52, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I just changed the 'recycled' one.

'Algorithm' may have been my wording, but if so I was just trying to sort things out and wasn't making any particular claim.

Are you talking about Fischer's work on the Phaistos disc? I didn't know he'd made any claims about that. kwami (talk) 01:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Reworded it. kwami (talk) 02:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, didn't you know about it? I don't know if the word "algorithm" is in it, but "grotesque parody" is what Andrew Robinson calls his method. Since I have Faucounau's book, perhaps I should get Fischer's too, when I find it going for $10 or so. A few of its pages are available through Google. That's where I found the original quote about the land bonking the paralyzer fish, which doesn't paralyze but is good eating. It remains possible that Fischer referred to his own procedure as an "algorithm" but I haven't read all his stuff and I wouldn't know where. JacquesGuy (talk) 02:37, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Published

I put in a (fact) note since it wasn't clear when Barthel published the calendar claim. I assume it was 1958b. There's also a problem in the corpus section, where we say that Barthel was the first to publish the corpus, but then go on to compare his drawing w Phillipi. I assume Phillipi only published a small portion, but we should mention that before getting into Barthel. kwami (talk) 02:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that Philippi only published the Santiago Staff (in its entirety, too). Carroll published part of the Oar in his first JPS article. Delving deeper into all the stuff written on the subject will probably reveal many bits and pieces of the corpus published.

JacquesGuy (talk) 02:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

"move corpus out of deciphement"

Much better like this. Makes room for something entitled "Oral traditions" or whatever where Routledge and Englert have their place (I'll unlock his "leyendas" on roro.org). And then that should be just about it (knock on wood). JacquesGuy (talk) 02:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

The rubbing of line 12 of the Santiago Staff

The discrepancy between Fischer's rendition on the one hand, and Philippi's and Barthel's on the other, is puzzling. I find it significant that Barthel should have annotated this rubbing in red ink. Makes me think that the rubbing of the lower part of the glyph shows a knot in the wood, and that Barthel, probably having a copy of Philippi's drawing, double-checked. Whence his "Original doch 53.76!" i.e. "the original is indeed 53.76!" JacquesGuy (talk) 02:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about saying that the bottom half resembles Fischer. It's just a couple lines; the distinctive part is the top.

kwami (talk) 03:37, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we should cover the calendrical reading. We spend a lot of time on Fischer, which no one that I know of accepts

Nevertheless he got published by Oxford University Press, never mind they didn't ask Andrew Pawley, the only Polynesianist of their reading committee, you just can't dismiss him like that.JacquesGuy (talk) 04:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

but then skim over the one decipherment that everyone accepts. I would think that people would be more interested in the latter.

The lunar calendar? Not easy to deal with that in a few lines. That would lead us to Viktor Krupa's stupidities too, approved of by Barthel. Pity Knorozov is no longer alive. JacquesGuy (talk) 04:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Barthel (1958b:Appendix)(?)

Yes, appendix. The line drawings are at the end of the book, not paginated. How do you refer to them, then? JacquesGuy (talk) 03:41, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

No, my question was 1958a vs. 1958b, that's all. kwami (talk) 06:51, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, kaoc'h! (pardon my Breton) it is in Grundlagen of course. So... 1958a. But I don't know which was published first. The S.A. article was in the June or July issue of Scientific American if memory serves. I remember reading it when I was a teenager in Nantes, Frogland. No idea when Grundlagen came out, apart from 1958. Same for (Barthel 1958b:66) in "Etymology". It's 1958a too. And (1958b:173-199) in "the failed Rosetta Stone" is in his Grundlagen, so 1958a. Note, BTW, how Fischer systematically translates "Grundlagen" as "rudiments". Whereby he doesn't know any German, or is pulling the wool over the eyes of those readers who have to rely on a two-bit dictionary. Rudiments mon cul, comme dirait Zazie.

But The Islanders had another writing (the so-called "ta’u script") which recorded their annals and other secular matters, but this has disappeared. (Barthel 1958b:66) must be 1958b (Scientific American) because p.66 of the Grundlagen, as I have it under my nose right now, gives part of the transliteration of H, P, and Q. Perhaps I have an old, old photocopy of the S.A. article somewhere, but where?

I've fixed those ref's, but keep checking, there might be more silly sillinesses lurking. JacquesGuy (talk) 08:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

the thousands of petroglyphs

Thousands? I'd rather hedge my bets. "the many petroglyphs" rather? Oh, and there should be a ref to Georgia Lee. She's the one who knows about those petroglyphs. 59.101.164.106 (talk) 10:59, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Added a section. I've taken some info from Lee's website, but assume that these basic points were covered in her book. kwami (talk) 02:13, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

similar to the petroglyphs

We do need a link to Georgia Lee there. She is the expert on Rapanui petroglyphs. JacquesGuy (talk) 12:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

We used to have

LEE, Georgia. 1992. The Rock Art of Easter Island. Symbols of Power, Prayers to the Gods. Los Angeles: The Institute of Archaeology Publications (UCLA).

I took it out along with dozens of other refs that weren't mentioned in the article. Would this be her most relevant work? kwami (talk) 19:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. I know practically nothing of those petroglyphs. Only seen photos. I've asked her. JacquesGuy (talk) 04:48, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I took out 'thousands', then put it back in when I linked to the blurb on them in the Easter Island article, which has the numbers. We should, however, be able to find a quote on few of the rongorongo resembling petroglyphs (I've seen something, but can't remember where), as well as the statement "a small portion of the population ever being literate" (Thompson again?) kwami (talk) 05:55, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The word "literate" does not occur in Thomson's report. If anywhere that might be in Routledge, but I don't have her book digitized so I cannot do a search. Does it matter? Is anyone going to quibble about that? Put it another way. We have 10,000 people originally. Of these we have now a sample of 111. None is literate. Estimate the proportion of literate people in the population from which this sample was drawn. You don't have to go into any complex statistical computations to find the answer: bloody few, if any at all. JacquesGuy (talk) 07:33, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, "privilege of the ruling families and priests" then. kwami (talk) 10:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't dare propose a {{fact}} there. It's probably somewhere in Routledge, who got it in turn from her informants. Remember that they branded Ure Vaeiko's last reading as a love song that everyone knew. A love song with the French flag (te riva forani properly: te reva farani) and a call for money (horoa moni e fahiti = horo'a moni e fa'ahiti)? A busker's patriotic song, then. Sure. The truth is: they were taking the mickey out of Routledge, just like Metoro was trying to do with Jaussen. The real mystery is: how come no-one has ever brought that to attention? Fischer is content with saying that it is Tahitian, without any evidence nor partial translation -- probably on the sole strength that "f" does not exist in Rapanui. As for Salmon, who must have known Tahitian, who cannot have missed "te reva farani" nor "horo'a moni," his translation has nothing to do with Vaeiko's song. The best match I can find for the "French flag" bit is "under the feathers of your clan" and all I can see best corresponding to the call for money is "O, where is the messenger of love between us?"!

The only thing just about certain is that, if any were literate, they were very few (see statistical argument above). And there is no evidence that they were priests or aristocracy. King Nga'ara is said to have been the last literate one, and to have run a school? Sure. And Hotu Matu'a is also said to have brought I forgot which plant, which palynology has shown to have been there 30,000 years ago. JacquesGuy (talk) 23:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Ana o Keke inscription

"and a komari appears at the upper right of the central figure."

No, that's no komari glyph. That is glyph 27, which looks like a curvilinear V. The komari glyph is glyph 51, which looks very much like Japanese scissors (hasami). It is found repeated on the rei-miro with the long inscription, aka object L, which ends: 470-51t-2.678a-51-79:51-700-51-20.10-51-11-51-11-51-48-51

It occurs there twice more, but fused to the top of a difficult-to-identify glyph, perhaps 700, perhaps 48, or something else again. This fused form is glyph 115 in Barthel's list.

The "feather" or "palm frond" to the left of the "canoe" under the central figure is glyph 3. JacquesGuy (talk) 03:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

"an otherwise unattested compound 211:42"

In fact, a close variant is attested on Br1 as 211s:42, about 200mm from the beginning of the line (http://www.rongorongo.org/b/br0102.html second line down, the ruler is in millimetres). The differences are:

• 211 is "glued" to 42, instead of hovering above it.
• a "ribbon" (Schmuckelement) is dangling from its right elbow
• both "ears" are missing

JacquesGuy (talk) 04:35, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Changed it. Is the 'canoe' an identifiable roroglyph? kwami (talk) 05:40, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a tough one. I showed in 1982 that 211s:42 was an allograph of 40-211s, which occurs earlier in Br1. Glyph 40 is found in the lunar calendar as a logogram for "night" (meaning a count of one night rather than "darkness" I would say). There is no reason why a logogram can't be polysemic, and why it wouldn't mean "canoe" in other contexts. It does look like a canoe, too. And again, perhaps the very canoe-like aspect of the petroglyph is but artistic license, representing the crescent-moon glyph as a canoe. Or the moon could have been said to be "Hina's canoe."

Look! It didn't take long. I just asked +Hina +canoe and this is what I got:

"In Tahiti, Hina-the-canoe-pilot sailed with her brother on a voyage of discovery. She visited the moon and decided to stay there and set her canoe adrift."

'"Hina-gathering-vegetable food". She assumes the form of Lea, the Goddess of canoe builders.'

"Hina-ke-ka (Hina the bailer), who floats up in the form of a gourd and is taken into Wakea's canoe, is here equated with Waka." (waka is the common Polynesian word for "canoe")

Of course that is all speculation, and we won't know for sure until we have deciphered line 1 of the recto of Tablet B. Don't hold your breath, please, you might do yourself a terminal injury. JacquesGuy (talk) 06:37, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Fun with phalluses

I noticed this detail (in boldface) for the first time: "Unfortunately, [Butinov's] proof for this claim consisted again, as in 1956, of the "genealogy" that Butinov believed is inscribed on the verso of the "Small Santiago Tablet" (RR 8v). In actual fact, this text appears instead to be a procreation chant whose X¹YZ structure radically differs from what Butinov has segmented for this text."

In actual fact, this text rather appears to be a procreation chant whose X¹YX structure (not X¹YZ) radically differs from what Fischer has identified as procreation chants (X¹YZ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by JacquesGuy (talk • contribs) 12:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

eyes? ears?

I added a comment under 'Form' about the projections on the sides of the head, which are so characteristic of rongorongo. I thought they were eyes, appearing as they do on turtles etc., but in the cave petroglyph they look more like ears. Please clean it up/delete if I'm off base. kwami (talk) 11:50, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

They certainly look like ears to me in that petroglyph. But, in the "turtle" glyph, they can only be eyes... IF that glyph does represent a turtle.

Ah... and... you'd probably better put the source of the Ana o Keke petroglyph somewhere. When I see something that challenges received ideas ("no roros in petroglyphs") I like to know where I can find it. Same thing for the excerpt of the Small Santiago with that faint line which Fischer claims to be the one to have recorded, but which appears in Barthel too.

JacquesGuy (talk) 12:07, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

They certainly look like eyes on the turtle petroglyph at the bottom of the page here. Assuming there's an artistic tradition common to the two.

The source of the petroglyph is credited on the image file. kwami (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Those faint lines

"The connecting line appears to have been traced with obsidian but then not deepened with a shark tooth."

Careful there. We don't know that they were first traced, then deepened. Let alone with what. Tradition, if it is to be believed, has it that the glyphs were drawn with obsidian OR shark teeth. Not with obsidian THEN shark teeth. As for myself, when I look at those photographic enlargements, I can't help think that they were burnt into the wood. Now that should be dead easy to verify, but has it ever been done? Not to my knowledge. Too many things taken for granted in this sorry saga of vandalism by neglect. JacquesGuy (talk) 12:17, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to follow up on this. kwami (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

There is little point. Routledge (p.244):

In writing, the incision was made with a shark's tooth: the beginners worked on the outer sheaths of banana-stems, and later were promoted to use the wood known as "toro-miro."

Englert (1970:77):

[the students'] copying exercises were not on wood, but on banana leaves with a stylus of bone or wood. Later the students wrote on wooden tablets with sharp-pointed gravers made of obsidian or shark teeth.

The discrepancy leads me to think it was post-hoc rationalization on the informants' part. What would you have answered in the same circumstances, when asked what the incising was done with? Well, Dederen, one of the early members of the CEIPP, made a copy, on wood, of a tablet (Keiti I think it was) and found that the most convenient engraving tool was... a ballpoint pen! That's the closest to a bone with a blunt tip that I can think of. And again, the Balinese use a sharp knife point to write on palm leaves (lontar), then they rub soot in as "ink." Was anything rubbed into the roroglyphs once incised? No-one appears to have ever bothered finding out. Speculation galore, zilch observation. JacquesGuy (talk) 00:00, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

images

I've started adding thumbnails of the tablets to the list, the way we do for the moons. They're from Chauvet and Thomson. Still have Small Santiago to go, but it's traced over. kwami (talk) 07:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

calendar

Moved the calendar to Rapa Nui language. —kwami (talk) 08:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Not a good move. The calendar has to do with paleaoastronomy and decipherment. Practically nothing to do with the language, except for a few names of nights which constitute weak (very weak) evidence that the language of the roro is Rapa Nui. Night Hiro for instance, represented by a feather(?) garland doubled up, while "hiro" is homophonous with a verb that means "to twist fibres into a rope." But on its own this piece of evidence amounts to nothing at all. It is only when added to other similar evidence (Tane for instance, represented by a frigate bird, tavake, same first syllable) that it could amount to something. The interest of the calendar lies elsewhere. It demonstrates, for instance, that the roro are not a pictographic system. If it were, the moon crescents after the full moon would face the other way. It further suggests that sign 3 is a marker for gods, and an allograph of 59f the "feather cape." And so on. Nothing of that is relevant to an article on the Rapa Nui language. JacquesGuy (talk) 00:36, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm, without something to tie it into the RR article, it seemed out of place. The language article, however, has a section on pre-Tahitian RN material, much of which is vocabulary. That seemed as good a place as any. Or maybe we should create a separate article on the RN calendar? (There are other articles like this, such as Lithuanian calendar.) kwami (talk) 02:31, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The "calendar" is the only text which everyone agrees upon being that. So it belongs first and foremost in "decipherment." The next candidate is the genealogy. But there is no consensus there. If you remove the calendar, then you have to remove the genealogy. And everything else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JacquesGuy (talk • contribs) 07:00, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The proposed genealogy is rongorongo, Thomson's calendar is not, and we don't provide any way of connecting it to rongorongo. The link is there for anyone who wants to follow up on it. kwami (talk) 15:16, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

---They are often called hieroglyphs---

... but have no connection to the sacred writing of Egypt

Pousse-au-crime! JacquesGuy (talk) 15:04, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, maybe that should go. kwami (talk) 15:16, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

biography stub

I thought Thomas Barthel deserved some recognition, so I created an article stub. You might want to verify it. kwami (talk) 04:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I looked for a biography of him in German and so far found nothing. I could not even find the title of his thesis.JacquesGuy (talk) 14:20, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I found this and added what I understood of it to the article. kwami (talk) 14:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. I was amazed at the dearth of information about him. Eez curse of Hotu Matu'a re-re-redux! JacquesGuy (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 02:40, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

unknown tablet

Jacques, do you recognize this tablet?

Thanks! kwami (talk) 10:57, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't remember seeing it. Perhaps it's one of those which Fischer calls "epigones." But his book has no pictures of them, only short descriptions quite insufficient to identify this one. For instance, it could be this (p.514):

"Musée de l'Homme D.66.1792/1793.493"

The artefact appears only to exist in the Photographic Collection of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris (D.66.1792/1793.493; wood and size unknown). The tablet displays ten lines (five and five) of c. 106 glyphs, one line on either side being boustrophedonic. It, too, has been incised in the "mixed script" style of the 1920s. The provenance and present location of the artifact are unknown.

That's what pisses me off with Fischer. You'd think he would have provided a photo of it. But no. And what are you supposed to make of "one line on either side being boustrophedonic"? What can that possibly mean? What is the sight of one line being boustrophedonic... ah.. a koan. And what is that "mixed script style of the 1920s"? JacquesGuy (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I assume the "mixed script" is nouveau ta'u or mama, which people decorated tourist items with, like the "îka" tablets made in the shape of a fish.

I can clap with one hand (the only utility of which is to annoy people), so let's see if I can write one line boustrophedonically. Actually, maybe what he meant was each side has four line going in one direction, and one in the other.

The resolution on that tablet is pretty low, but the glyphs sure look good. If it's a fake, someone did a nice job. kwami (talk) 14:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. I can hardly distinguish anything. Sure, signs are visible and they look all right, but upon closer inspection, if it was possible, they might look not so hot anymore. There is an interesting photo of two tablets in Francis Mazière's "Fantastique île de Pâques." The top one is a worm-eaten tablet and the signs on it are horrible. They look like straight copies of the Jaussen List, itself a pretty gruesome exercise in inept draughtsmanship. The bottom tablet looks authentic... until you have a closer look. Where did you find the photo of that one? —Preceding unsigned comment added by JacquesGuy (talk • contribs) 16:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Some tourism site.[5] I wrote to ask where they got it from, if they even remember. kwami (talk) 08:17, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Routledge, Englert now?

Isn't it time to have a section on Routledge and one on Englert soon? Englert's Leyendas and his La Tierra de Hotu Matu'a with its dictionary are about the only useful sources for the language. The word lists gathered by early visitors don't amount to much, apart from showing that the language was straight Polynesian. Routledge is another matter. Her informants' stories are to be taken with a good dose of skepticism. She obviously (to me) knew no Rapanui and no Tahitian and was in no position to sort out the wheat from the chaff. I still can't get over that "love song." The only thing I can say in favour is that her informants cannot have made it all up from scratch. Does she say who translated for her, and if it was into English, or into Spanish? I don't remember, and reading those pages again is such a chore. JacquesGuy (talk) 03:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Englert should probably go in the Rapanui language article. Routledge is more difficult. Maybe we can take that section from the Spanish article, and touch it up a bit. kwami (talk) 08:15, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay, very basic, and maybe not very accurate, but it's something. Move it, gut it, or expand it as you will. I'll leave Englert to you, since I'm not at all familiar with his work. kwami (talk) 08:51, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

All right, I'll do it. But keep in mind that apart from his dictionary there is little about the language in Englert's works. And his grammar of Rapanui is abominable. He was obviously fluent, but he had no idea how to explain it. I wonder, BTW, what Veronica Du Feu's grammar is like. But at US$325 I sure am not keen to find out! Back to Englert. Even his bilingual "Leyendas" have more to do with legends, beliefs, and the description of day-to-day life in the old days than with the language itself. I used them to try to teach myself the language, but others will read them for the ethnological data. Technological data even: there is a description of how the houses were built. And another text about how the moai's were erected. And speaking of moai's and how to move multi-ton monolith monsters:

http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/Page1.htm

Amazing, I found Du Feu's grammar at Alibris. The prices go from AU$244.81 (from a bookshop in India) to... hold onto your hat... AU$717.89 from Goldenstone Books in California! JacquesGuy (talk) 09:16, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Those videos are pretty cool.

I guess I don't understand the importance of Englert, other than the language and ethnological descriptions, so let's just stick him in wherever he fits. There wasn't much in the Spanish article.

Is your proposal that the upward and downward fish in Ca6-8 indicate waxing and waning phases well accepted? It seems we could go into more detail there, even if some of the speculations are too tentative to include. (Or maybe just continue to redirect to your site.)

BTW, the 'citation needed' tags in the notes are mostly date discrepancies. Maybe you could check them against Fischer, since I don't have access to his bibliography? (There are notes in the wiki encoding for what's off.) kwami (talk) 11:01, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, were there no glyphs missing from Barthel's Ca at the transitions from lines 7-8 and 8-9? kwami (talk) 11:07, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

"Is your proposal that the upward and downward fish in Ca6-8 indicate waxing and waning phases well accepted?"

I don't know.

"It seems we could go into more detail there, even if some of the speculations are too tentative to include. (Or maybe just continue to redirect to your site.)"

I don't say much at all there. Remember: it's by "Anonymous," not by "Jacques Guy."

"BTW, the 'citation needed' tags in the notes are mostly date discrepancies. Maybe you could check them against Fischer, since I don't have access to his bibliography? (There are notes in the wiki encoding for what's off.)"

I'll try an ferret it out.

"Oh, were there no glyphs missing from Barthel's Ca at the transitions from lines 7-8 and 8-9?"

Probably not. There is no "hole" in the text. Whereas I could tell there was something missing after 390.41-375-41 ending Ca6. I decided to sweep it under the carpet in my JSO article. And no-one noticed. The article in French written years later for the CEIPP Bulletin is much better. Read it if you can get hold of it. There is a story behind my JSO article. To cut it short: I had sent them a draft of the article for an opinion (I was continuously improving on it). They published it almost by return mail! So what you can read is a draft, warts and all. The CEIPP article is closer to what it should have been. JacquesGuy (talk) 21:26, 11 February 2008 (UTC)