Part 2
Rongorongo
Easter Island, located in the Pacific Ocean about 2,000
miles west of Chile,
is famous for its large
human-shaped statues called moai (MOH-eye). These
1)…………………
have fascinated people for
many years. But the moai are not the only interesting thing about Easter
2)……………….. .
Rongorongo is an old system of writing that was developed on Easter Island. Scholars believe that it
was invented without the influence of other written languages. The symbols that make up rongorongo
include picture symbols-animals, birds, plants, and people-and geometric shapes, such as triangles and
diamonds, that probably represented sounds. The Island’s inhabitants used sharp rocks or sharks’ teeth
to carve the
3)………………..
into stone or pieces of wood. Most likely, the only people who used
rongorongo were royalty and religious leaders. Few other
4)……………….
on the island would have
known how to read or write. By the 18th century, the early culture
of Easter Island was almost
completely
destroyed, and an understanding of rongorongo was lost.
This has made studying the
system of symbols like breaking a code. What makes it even more difficult is that fewer than 30 stone
or wood objects with rongorongo carvings exist in the world. Today, Spanish is the main language of
Easter Island. Many people also learn Rapa Nui, a Polynesian
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