Words Out of Wood: Proposals for the Decipherment of the Easter Island Script

Two dozen or so wooden tablets discovered on Easter Island late in the nineteenth century are all that remain of rongorongo—a series of glyphs thought to be the writing system of the island’s lost people. In Words Out of Wood, M. de Laat explores the construction and use of these enigmatic figures and makes a compelling case that rongorongo, despite its resistance to decipherment, constitutes nothing less than a fully developed script. Reproduced here in clear, full-page illustrations,…