Talk:Decipherment of rongorongo/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

De Laat

Section on de Laat

A fully developed writing system

De Laat (2009) transliterates and translates in full the text of three tablets (E or Keiti, B or Aruku Kurenga and A or Tahua, respectively) and proposes that rongorongo is a predominantly syllabic writing system capable of accurately recording the Rapanui language. Compared to Barthel and Pozdniakov, the accompanying syllabary substantially reduces the number of basic glyphs, in the first place because of the classification of a number of signs as being variants of the same glyph and secondly because a substantial number of signs are identified as fused glyphs, i.e., as composites of two or more basic glyphs. The signs representing the pure vowels are also used for the CV-combinations with consonants h and glottal stop. The vowels can be long as well as short.

Basic syllabic grid according to De Laat

	(h)	ng	k	m	n	p	r	t	v
a
	(h)a	nga	ka	ma	na	pa	ra	ta	va
e
	(h)e	nge	ke	me	ne	pe	re	te	ve
i
	(h)i	ngi	ki	mi	ni	pi	ri	ti	vi
o
	(h)o	ngo	ko	mo	no	po	ro	to	vo
u
	(h)u	ngu	ku	mu	nu	pu	ru	tu	vu

A small number of glyphs is believed to be of a disyllabic nature (VCV or CVV) The failure to identify a number of glyphs such as ne and nu as syllables is partly explained by the fact that words such as nei ("here") and nui ("big") in which they occur most frequently have signs of their own.

A special case is haka, which is formed from the ha-head and a torso with outstretched limbs. It is used to create causatives from verbs and verbs from adjectives or adverbs.

Disyllabic glyphs

ina	kai	mai	nei	nui	to(h)u	vae	haka

Words

The majority of the syllabic and disyllabic glyphs are morphemes representing verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives or grammatical particles. The ma-sign for example may stand for the verb maa ("to know", "to examine", "to clean") or the benefactive particle ma ("for") and the ta-glyph for the noun ta ("mark"), the verb ta ("to strike"), the emphatic possessive particle ta ("possession of") or taha, "side" or "to evade".

Other words are created by fusing together two or more of these basic glyphs. Usually, these compounds are realized by simply pasting together two adjacent glyphs as in the case of hoki ("back", "again", "also"), taina ("brother", "sister"), tapu ("taboo"), tari ("to bring") and era ("there") or by putting them on top of each other: (h)au ("hat", "rope", "family", "scratch"), uha ("woman", "wife", "hen"), rangi ("to cry"), patu ("to lead away"), roro ("skull", "head", "mind"). Consequently, the prevailing reading order is from left to right and from top to bottom, although there are exceptions, especially in the more complex glyphs. Occasionally, one glyph is incorporated by another, as for example re by tu in ture ("grief", "rule"). The origins of the components involved sometimes get blurred to a certain degree as in raua ("they") and riva ("good").

Examples of fused glyphs

ho-ki

ta-ina

ta-pu

ta-ri

e-ra

(h)a-u

u-ha

ra-ngi

pa-tu

ro-ro

tu-re

ra-u-a

ri-va

The fusion proces is greatly facilitated by the fact that basic glyphs can have different appearances, that they can be reduced in size or that only parts of them need to be used: e.g., the personal pronouns maatou (exclusive "we") and taatou (inclusive "we") are formed with partial ma- and ta-signs. In this last sign the ta-body is used, while tae ("not"), tutae ("filth", "to seduce") and mata ("axe", "spear", "eye", "face") are assembled with only the ta-birdhead. The ma-part in mate ("to die", "dead") differs slightly from that in maatou and mata.

Syllable nga is represented by two apparently totally unrelated signs. The two nga-glyphs are the 'arrow-with-horns' which is easily appended to other glyphs (e.g. toenga ("rest")) and the 'headless body', which usually functions as carrier of other glyphs: for example in omnipresent composites as anga ("to do", "to work"), hanga ("to like", "to want") or tangata ("man"). This last figure also illustrates another of the script's features: the double use of the phonetic value of one of a composite's components, in this case that of ta. Other examples of this phenomenon are ika-i(ka) ("victims") and rongo-ro(ngo) ("to recite", "to believe").

Fusing of glyphs, however, is not obligatory in the writing of words: in apinga hauhaa ("valuable possessions"), for example, the initial glyph stands alone, and in poto-poto ("short") all the glyphs remain unconnected. The last example also illustrates that reduplicated forms can be written out in full as well.

Examples of fusions involving parts of glyphs and of component reduplication

maa-tou

taa-tou

ta-e

tu-ta-e

ma-ta

ma-te

to-e-nga

(h)a-nga

ta-nga(-ta)

i-ka-i(-ka)

ro-ngo-ro(-ngo)

a-pi-nga ha-u-ha-a

po-to-po-to

According to De Laat, the fact that the phonetic value of a number of syllables is clearly derived from the name of the represented object - for example ta from taha ("frigate bird"), ka from ika ("fish"), ma from mango ("shark"), ina from mahina ("moon") and tu from hetuu ("star") - gives support to Guy's idea that the peculiar verses of the so-called procreation chant Atua Matariri are in fact a spelling bee overheard and misinterpreted by the illiterate informant Ure Va'e Iko. De Laat suggests that the names that were used by the pupils to enumerate the syllabic components in such an exercise were ''the names of the objects these had originally been derived from":

Such an exercise, for example, could have been: "Mango ki ai ki roto Taha ka pu Mata", which to the untrained ear would have sounded like "Shark by merging with Frigate bird produces the Obsidian axe", but to the initiated simply meant "ma combined with ta gives mata."

— De Laat 2009:212

The remark of Eyraud that "each figure has its own name" seems to confirm such a scenario:

It is (...) something he would never have written had he simply been given the signs' syllabic values. Unfortunately, it lead him (and many others after him) to believe that rongorongo was a form of pictographic - and hence primitive - writing.

— De Laat 2009:212

Texts

The following excerpts from the analysis of the text of tablet E or Keiti. illustrate the principles at work in the formation of sentences out of words. This text - like that of the other two tablets that were analysed - appears to contain spoken words only:

The texts of tablets E, B and A consist exclusively of dialogue. The same probably holds true for the tablets that are related to A (H, P and Q) and E (C, G and K). The texts can be divided into segments consisting of one or more sentences, which can be attributed to different speakers.

— De Laat 2009:78

In all three the subject of the (lengthy) discussions is a disturbing event which happens or has happened as the text begins. In the text of tablet E this is the murder of a woman. A man called Taea - presumably her husband - is accused by members of the victim's family of having killed his wife with his stone axe. In the beginning the man denies that his weapon is involved until this is firmly established. He then argues that it must have been used by someone else and he ridicules his accusers' inability to find conclusive evidence against him:

Excerpts from lines Er6-Er8

e   he  tanga(ta)  riva    o   mata     e    tae     anga   ki  ko  uha	mo    haaki  na    ariki    e     ta(ta)ri      mea era
(Taea:) (I) (am) an honest man regarding this axe, then (I) did not use (it) against that woman!	If (you) inform the chief, (he) will be expecting something!
too  na   ina     o   mata     e   tae     haaki kee ki   anga  tohu    hauu	e   tae        anga            tapa       na hakari na
(He) will accept nothing regarding this axe, then (it) would not present different information when a slave was the evildoer!	And surely (her) body is not going to give an account?

This temporarily confuses the accusers until one of them suggests that the use of a sharp weapon and the resistance of the victim will probably have left some marks on the body of the attacker. At this point, they begin to understand that their suspect has covered himself with elaborate bodypaintings to hide the evidence of his crime:

Excerpts from lines Ev1-Ev7

to-a       to     vie      tanga(ta)  ira	mahaki         iti       vie	maa     ta            ta       o-ka  -  o-ka          taea
(Accusers:) That man there (is) the murderer of (his) wife!	(That) woman (was) a dear relative!	(We) will investigate signs of stabbing, Taea!
au        ha-hau      to-a      taea	mata  ite  ko   a-pi      taea	rero-re(ro)  haii   mo  renga na rero-re(ro) ko naa ta vae
The scratches will fasten the murderer, Taea!	The face (we) see has been covered, Taea!	Are those smears enveloping (you) because (it's) beautiful (or) are those smears hiding the marks (on your) legs?
maa   haka-ki[te] ra  koro ngaaha huha	he  huha haauraa  huha    tae ite  raua   maa	i    au   ii   no     kona  -  kona    ha-ha
Cleaning (them) will reveal if (your) limbs are torn!	These unseen limbs (are) meaningful limbs: they (are) the evidence!	These scratches here simply fill (every) bodypart (we) touch!

Further observations and speculations

The fact that there appears to be only dialogue brings De Laat to speculate upon the function of the examined tablet texts as belonging or being related to some form of dramatical performance. Furthermore, the author points at the "supplementary layers of meaning" that are present in some parts of the texts. Sometimes, these make use of the pictographical dimension of the glyphs - much in the same way as is done in other hieroglyphic systems. An example of this is the writing of prefix tae ("not") which often turns its 'head' away from the word it precedes as if to visibly underline the negation (cf. the excerpts of lines Er6-8). Others appear to be connected with certain numbers: the beginning of tablet A for instance, contains sequences of ten tu-, ten rae/era- and ten (h)u-glyphs (3 x 10 = 30). Barthel (1962) has noted that among the Easter Islanders existed a group of clearly preferred numbers, namely three, six, ten and thirty. De Laat speculates that the lunar calender detected by Barthel on tablet C or Mamari could very well be such a layer of meaning supplementary to the primary text. As features such as these have clearly been directed at a reader, the question is presented whether these rongorongo texts were exclusively meant to be read aloud to an audience.

Notes

References

Bibliography

de Laat, M. (2009). Words out of wood, proposals for the decipherment of the Easter Island script. Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers. ISBN 9789059722835. {{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Barthel, Thomas S. (1962). "Zählweise und Zahlenglaube der Osterinsulaner". Abhandlungen und Berichte des Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde. 21: 1–22. {{cite journal}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (in German)

Churchill, William (1912). Easter Island, the Rapanui Speech and the Peopling of Southeast Polynesia. Washington. {{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Eyraud, Eugène (1886). Annales de la Propagation de la Foi (Annals of the Propagation of the Faith). pp. 36: 52–71, 124–138. Lyon. {{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) (in French)

Du Feu, Veronica (1996). Rapanui. London: Routledge. {{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Fuentes, Jordi (1960). Diccionario y gramática de la lengua de la Isla de Pascua Pascuense-Castellano Castellano-Pascuense Dictionary & Grammar of the Easter Island Language Pascuense-English English-Pascuense. Santiago. {{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Discussion

The new section on de Laat's decipherment is overly long, about the same as that on Pozdniakov, already overly long. The chances of her decipherment being right are infinitesimal, and there is no explicit method to it, unlike Pozdniakov's and others'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.101.249.71 (talk) 01:08, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Knock yourself out. Otherwise I'll get to it in a few days. kwami (talk) 08:21, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Extended discussion

Some remarks concerning the objections against De Laat's attempt at decipherment:

In adding the section on De Laat's book, I have not anticipated wikipedia becoming the place for a discussion regarding the merits of her decipherment. Therefore, I am very sorry for my eagerness to bring a recent development to the general attention and for summarizing a 300 page book in a single wiki-section. Although I fully understand that unfounded claims of decipherments are likely to irritate people who take scientific methods and research seriously, I do not think that the book in question deserves to be simply brushed aside as the ramblings of another crackpot. Therefore, I should have waited until a number of serious reviews had appeared in the appropriate places. This would have enabled a more balanced presentation of this matter.

However, since the cat is already out of the bag, I would like to address some of the objections:

- The 'lack of method' argument. Although to me personally it would not matter very much if there was no method at all, as long as the results were very convincing (and verifiable), I understand that it would lend support to the argument that it would be highly unlikely that merely guessing would lead to correct results.

However, to me this seems not to be the case here. The author describes exactly what she has been doing: the basic signs were identified by breaking down the glyphs in their basic components. Subsequently, phonetic values were hypothesized for each basic component which were then tested in their fused and unfused states in the glyphs, and in the texts (De Laat 2009: 209). Laborious and time consuming this comparative approach may seem, it cannot be denied that it is a method. As a matter of fact, it was very much the method used by Ventris in his decipherment of Lineair B.

- It would strike me as very unfair to the author when her book would be judged on the basis of a short summary alone. It should at least be verified whether this is accurately presenting the book's contents. This means that the book itself should be read by anyone who would like to present his criticism - or original research if you will - here or in any other place.

In this way, one of the (few) arguments in the objections would not have been presented. The sign transliterated as riva ("good") is clearly not 543 (of which only one example exists), but glyph 28, of which Barthel lists 27 occurences (Barthel 1958: 98). (Even in the wiki-article two examples of this glyph can be found!). The author identifies Barthel's glyphs 28 and 29 as allographs, capable of representing riva as well as vari ("to surround") (De Laat 2009: 46). There are 17 instances of riva meaning "good" on tablets A, B and E listed. (De Laat 2009: 275).

If one discards a proposed decipherment, claiming that "since it cannot be evaluated, it is not a scientific proposal", one should at least go through the trouble of presenting one's own criticism in a 'scientific' manner.

Sincerely,

Francis Mortimer

Francis Mortimer (talk) 18:20, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

'It would strike me as very unfair to the author when her book would be judged on the basis of a short summary alone.'

I have read the book and I am judging from it, not the summary here.

'In this way, one of the (few) arguments in the objections would not have been presented. The sign transliterated as riva ("good") is clearly not 543 (of which only one example exists), but glyph 28, of which Barthel lists 27 occurences'

The hapax legomenon 543 does occur in the translations proposed, where it is interpreted as "riva". This interpretation is irreceivable.

That other, higher-frequency signs, 28 (32 occurrences) and 29 (16 occurrences), are also being interpreted as "riva" is irrelevant.

Further, that 28 and 29 are allographs of each other remains to be established, in the same manner it has been established that 40 and 42 are allographs... at least in some cases.

'There are 17 instances of riva meaning "good" on tablets A, B and E listed'

There are 17 instances of a glyph (or two different glyphs — I would need to check) having been interpreted as meaning "good" and read as "riva". Not the same thing at all.

'As a matter of fact, it was very much the method used by Ventris in his decipherment of Lineair B.'

Ventris made his discovery procedure quite explicit. There is nothing of the kind here, only readings proposed without any evidence.

'Furthermore, the author points at the "supplementary layers of meaning" that are present in some parts of the texts.'

The Phaistos Disk is too short to be unambiguously deciphered. John Chadwick proved it by... deciphering it. Chadwick's decipherment turned out to be a text in... medieval japanese! (And it was good medieval japanese, too)

The rongorongo corpus is likewise probably too short to be deciphered. Claiming that it carries "supplementary layers of meaning" amounts to saying "whenever the strict application of my decipherment procedure fails I will allow myself to tinker with the procedure ad hoc until it fits some other meaning."

The section on Fischer, although too long, serves to demonstrate the folly of some would-be decipherers (Fischer also claims to have deciphered the Phaistos Disk, an impossibility). The interest of the section on Pozdniakov is to show the method followed — but Sproat is right in saying that the very partial readings obtained are not to be trusted. The method is worthwhile, the conclusions dodgy.

This section on de Laat's decipherment has the same relevance as the sections on Carroll's and Hevesy's, and as Lanyon-Orgill's decipherment of the tablet which happens to contain the calendar, which, on such criteria, also deserves a section.

'If one discards a proposed decipherment, claiming that "since it cannot be evaluated, it is not a scientific proposal", one should at least go through the trouble of presenting one's own criticism in a 'scientific' manner.'

First, the onus of the proof is on the decipherer, not the other way around. Second, but most important, the wikipedia is not supposed to exist in order to provide a show-window for every new quarter-baked theory.

I move that this section be removed.

In ten years' time, we'll see, perhaps, but I'll put my money on it going the same way as Carroll, Lanyon-Orgill, Hevesy, Fischer, Rjabchikov and... yes... Barry Fell. Not only has Barry Fell deciphered the rongorongo, but he has got quite a following. See: http://www.epigraphy.org/volume_22_1.htm Doesn't he deserve a section too? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.101.182.149 (talk) 04:49, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Agree about Barry Fell (Howard Barraclough Fell) having deciphered Rongorongo, saw his video where he explains his methodology, totally convincing. He relies in part on his Maori background -- yes, I believe he was part Maori, unsurprisingly as his great-grandfather John Barraclough Fell was a New Zealand pioneering railroad engineer. His decipherment needs to be recognized as valid on Wikipedia, and statements amended as to the status of this research project. BTW, I believe Rongorongo means secret in Polynesian, and this may explain why his work is not popular in Polynesia. He found a Rongorongo inscription on Tahiti on one of Paul Gauguin's paintings, and a Polynesian lady with whom I tried to discuss the matter became upset about Westerners intruding into their world. Could someone corroborate this? hgwb (talk) 13:48, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

You're actually disagreeing, since the person you're responding to was giving Fell as an example of someone not worth covering. We will cover him if RS's do, but they don't because he's a crackpot. — kwami (talk) 08:00, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

We could perhaps move her to the footnote that covers Rjabchikov (who was personally very insistent for a while in getting all his publications including in the biblio, though recently I noticed that he's no longer covered even on Russian Wikipedia) and the rest. Francis, you've obviously put a lot of work into this, and it seems a shame for that to go to waste, but without any explicit method described, and no peer review, I'm tempted to agree with Anon. here. There are lots of other decipherments out there which we do not cover, some of which are included on Spanish Wikipedia, and the article would be twice as long if we tried to include them all. kwami (talk) 05:40, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

To Kwami/Anonymous:

In the first place let me say that I fully agree with you both in proposing to remove the entire section on De Laat's proposals. My motivation for this however is a different one. As I have stated before I feel very much responsible for misrepresentations (by me or others) of the author's findings. A small example: 'On some occasions he proposes that the individual parts of one glyph are substituted by another, for example re by tu in ture "grief" or "rule".' This is not what the author says, nor is it what I have written, nor is it what can be observed by simply looking at the picture: the two glyphs tu and re in fact have merged intact.

I feel again obliged to address some of the arguments/opinions presented:

The hapax legomenon argument revisited:

The facts: Barthel has identified a certain glyph in line Bv12 as a unique glyph and given it number 543. De Laat (p. 146) points to the fact that the lower part of this glyph is damaged (as are its adjacent glyphs, since these are located on the edge of the tablet). She suggests that this lower part may have been the glyph representing the 'nga'-syllable. As the upper part looks like glyph 29 ('riva') turned 90 degrees, she proposes the compound 'rivanga'.

What it boils down to is that the author disagrees with Barthel that it should be regarded as a unique glyph. Surely, there is nothing wrong with that? Even if she were mistaken in this, there is nothing here to warrant the conclusion that a 'hapax legomenon' is identified as 'riva', which should be a very common word, and therefore is proof of the foolishness of the transliterations.

The Phaistos disc argument:

The fact that the Phaistos disc is hurled into the argument amazes me. Is it because "decipherers" like Fischer and Rjabchikov have claimed a succesful decipherment? Surely De Laat does not claim to have done so, as a matter of fact, I do not recall her book even mentioning it. If it is only mentioned as proof of the fact that if one tries hard enough one can read anything in an undeciphered script of which only a small corpus has survived, it should be clear that it is a very questionable argument: the Phaistos disc has 241 signs, the rongorongo corpus an estimated 15,000. Furthermore, there is of course another important difference: there is no clue for the language printed on the disc, but there is a plausible candidate for the rongorongo: Rapanui.

The supplementary layers argument:

Anonymous states that: Claiming that it carries "supplementary layers of meaning" amounts to saying "whenever the strict application of my decipherment procedure fails I will allow myself to tinker with the procedure ad hoc until it fits some other meaning." This, again, is not what the author (nor I) have written. De Laat simply mentions them (and offers quite a few examples) as an argument for the hypothesis that the script was also meant to be read by a reader to himself, instead of being read to an audience. Nowhere it is stated that these features replace the primary text, i.e. the Rapanui phonetics. I simply fail to understand why anyone would claim that the author has written - or done - something else. After comparing the tablet transliterations with the syllabary, I can only conclude that it has been applied very rigorously to the full texts.

The proof argument:

Anonymous: The onus of the proof is on the decipherer, not the other way around. I fully agree and I fail to see what more 'proof' can be expected than the transliteration of three of the larger tablet texts into Rapanui and a translation of this into English. Can there be better 'proof' of the correctness of the completion of a jigsaw puzzle than the fact that it shows a meaningful picture? What are the chances that a completely faulty interpretation results in coherent texts? Are all these nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, personal pronouns, possessives, benefactives, demonstratives etc. that have emerged, simply coincidence or the result of wishful thinking?

The evaluation is impossible argument:

Anonymous: In ten years' time, we'll see, perhaps, ... What is it with these ten years? What will happen then or in the meantime? Does wrong change into right? Is ten years in the loony bin with the likes of Carroll and Fell enough to be purified - or damned forever? Surely, the "evaluation is impossible" argument is very strange. Allow me to quote the author herself: "The easiest way to verify whether these proposals deserve any merit or belong to the already long list of futile attempts at deciphement, is of course by applying them to the texts on the other surviving artifacts" (De Laat 2009: 219).

Again, I fail to see what better 'proof' could be obtained than by checking the proposed Rapanui/phonetic/syllabic approach against the rest of the existent corpus? Would that take ten years?

I agree with you that wikipedia is not the place for discussions of this type and I am very sorry to have triggered it. Again, if this can be resolved by removing the entire section, this is fine by me. As you will understand, I would find it very unfair to the author when a serious study like this - whether right or wrong - was simply moved to the asylum section in the same month as it was published. In my opinion, to justify this, more serious arguments have to be presented (here or elsewhere).

Sincerely,

Francis Mortimer

Francis Mortimer (talk) 17:00, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the chance of a meaningful translation using spurious values is quite good, since the values are predicated upon producing a result that can be presented as meaningful. All the crackpots (not that De Laat necessarily is one) come up with meaningful translations. Yes, I think the test is in the application: if the other texts end up being something that independent researchers agree is meaningful, then that would be the proof. Since you don't mind removing the section, let's move it here, to the discussion page, for safekeeping until there it is addressed in the academic community, okay? kwami (talk) 18:38, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

To Kwami:

I have no objections to that, but I would prefer my original contributions to be moved here, as the current version is a - for the reader incomprehensible - mixture of (my) factual presentation of the book and (your) comments.

I am sorry I have to disagree on your claim that the chance of a meaningful translation using spurious values is quite good. I have never encountered one, nor have all these eager decipherers ever produced one. As a matter of fact, I think it would be logically quite impossible, especially when such an interpretation would have to be based upon the phonetic values, the grammatical structure and the vocabulary of an existing language.

One last point: in a (failed) attempt to personally apologize to the author, I was informed that M. de Laat is a man. Apparently, 'Mary' is also used for boys in the Netherlands (I found a famous Dutch sculptor named Mari Andriessen). I guess the author has been using the initial to avoid this kind of confusion. So even his gender seems to have been mistaken on the basis of hasty assumptions (by me also).

Sincerely,

Francis Mortimer

Francis Mortimer (talk) 20:22, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

This discussion, indeed, has no place in the wikipedia. Its place is in such interest groups as http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/KRR_Study/ IF they care to take it up. But since the cat has been let out of the bag... here we go *sigh*

The Phaistos disc argument:

The fact that the Phaistos disc is hurled into the argument amazes me. Is it because "decipherers" like Fischer and Rjabchikov have claimed a succesful decipherment?

It is because it is far too short to be deciphered. This is known among cryptographers as "the laundry list paradox". Given a short enough text, a laundry list for instance, we can decrypt hidden messages out of it just by treating it as a cryptogram, imagining that there is a hidden message encrypted in it.

The shorter the text, the more hidden messages we can find in it. The more complex the decryption procedure, again, the more messages. A prime example is the Da Vinci Code. Another is, of course, all the "decipherments" of the Phaistos Disc.

the Phaistos disc has 241 signs, the rongorongo corpus an estimated 15,000

The Phaistos Disc is most likely written in a syllabary, with only a couple score signs. The Rongorongo in a mixed system, with far, far more signs, one or two hundred at the very least.

The true length of the corpus is less 15,000 signs, as 3 tablets (H, P and Q) contain the same text, with very minor spelling variants, A the same again, but with major differences.

Further, the Santiago Staff and Mamari are totally unlike each other and the rest. Thus we are not dealing with one corpus, but three, each with different properties from the rest. Pozdniakov rightly remarked, in one of his earliest articles, that even if Guy's interpretations of a handful of signs of the lunar calendar are right, they avail us next to nothing for the decipherment of the rest of the corpus, because the rest of the corpus is utterly unlike Mamari.

Rule-of-thumb, seat-of-the-pants, moist-finger-in-the-wind analysis: the rongorongo are, optimistically, at the very edge of decipherability.

Furthermore, there is of course another important difference: there is no clue for the language printed on the disc, but there is a plausible candidate for the rongorongo: Rapanui.

I taught myself some Rapanui reading Englert's legends available at rongorongo.org. I cannot make head or tail of de Laat's interpretation. Example (Excerpts from lines Er6-Er8)

e   he  tanga(ta)  riva    o   mata     e    tae     anga   ki  ko  uha

Translation: (I) (am) an honest man regarding this axe, then (I) did not use (it) against that woman!

First, "e he tangata"

Here he is taken to be the indefinite article and e the copula "to be". This is probably out of Englert's grammar in "La Tierra de Hotu Matu'a". If Englert was obviously fluent in Rapanui, his grammar of it is not to be trusted. His description of the language is bound in the straightjacket or latin and greek grammar. "He" is not an article at all, it is a narrative verbal particle. It is in most occurrences followed by a verb. When followed by a noun it expresses "to be". Consequently, it occurs very frequently in Englert's "Legends", very often sentence-initially. But it is very rare in de Laat's decipherment.

Thus "he tangata" does not mean "a man", it means "it is a man" or "there is a man". "I am an honest man" would be "he tangata riva ko au".

As for "e" it is not a copula at all, it is again a verbal particle, which seems to express a distant future or a mild imperative. ("Ka" on the other hand, seems to express an immediate future or an emphatic imperative).

Theoretically then, "e he" cannot exist, and, as far as I could ascertain, indeed it does not occur anywhere in Englert's "Legends".

Second, "ki ko uha".

This cannot be. "Ko" is a substantive particle used with personal pronouns (ko au = me, ko koe = thou, ko ia = he, she) and with personal names. Used with a common noun it occurs always with the article "te" following it, and seems to express importance, or reverence (a bit like Japanese "o" and Sino-Japanese "go").

"Ki te uha" is possible. It would mean "towards a/the hen/hens/woman/women" (Rapanui does not distinguish between plural and singular). "Ko uha" is possible, if "uha" is a proper name, so: "ko Uha". But "ki ko Uha" is impossible: it would be "ki a Uha".

Therefore, the argument that de Laat's decipherment agrees with, or derives from Rapanui as we know it does not hold. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.101.253.3 (talk) 03:54, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

To quote Blazing Saddles, "ditto".

Francis, my point was going to be that the output language isn't much of a constraint if the translator is not a fluent speaker. It's very easy for the naive researcher to get something that sounds like it might or should be a reasonable text, much more constraining for a native speaker to agree that it actually is reasonable (assuming that a modern native speaker would find the old language intuitive, which is uncertain). I can write essays in Chinese that sound perfectly good to me, but a native speaker will have absolutely no clue what I'm trying to say. Given that, I could probably translate rongorongo into a Chinese that I find convincing, but which is in fact gibberish. That's why I don't find getting narratives out of three tablets convincing. The human mind is wonderful at finding patterns, even when they don't exist. kwami (talk) 09:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

To Anonymous:

While running the risk of turning sighs into severe headaches I again feel obliged to question some of your comments:

In the first place, I do not question your assertion that the Phaistos disc cannot be deciphered. I think this is true. I only objected to the fact that you brought it up as some sort of proof that rongorongo cannot be deciphered for the same reason. Yes, H, P, and Q share the same text, but I would say that for the loss of these (Barthel's estimates, P (1540 signs) and Q (900 signs), make for a total loss of 2440 signs) we have the unique opportunity of comparing spelling variants, study the fusion proces of the glyphs, see what glyphs can be left out or inserted without doing harm to the general idea, etc. Personally, I think this relatively small loss to the corpus has been traded in for a treasure chest of information.

(I'll answer some of this for now.) Pozdniakov spends a lot of time on just that in deriving his basic glyphs. kwami (talk)

(FM to KW:) Then I would have to say that he obviously agrees with me on the significance of this part of the corpus.Francis Mortimer (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Of course. kwami (talk)

Why would you categorize tablet Mamari and the Santiago Staff as texts that are totally unlike each other and the rest? This is simply not true. As a matter of fact, Mamari even has a number of passages in common with tablets A, H-P and E (for an example, see: De Laat, p. 95-97). Is it because of the so-called 'lunar calender' which has drawn so much attention? Judging by the fact that sequences of three of these 'moon'-glyphs appear elsewhere (De Laat, p. 13), I would say all these 'moons' are in the first place simply '(h)e'-glyphs, of which the sequences of 5-6 glyphs can be translated with e-e-e e-e(-e) or "yes, yes!". According to De Laat (p. 217), the calender is probably just a very intricate secondary layer behind the primary text.

Part of Mamari is like the other texts, but only part.kwami (talk)

(FM to KW:) Part of A is like the other texts, but only part.

Part of B is like the other texts, but only part.

Part of E is like the other texts, but only part.

Part of G is like the other texts, but only part.

Part of H/P/Q is like the other texts, but only part etc....

So what's so different about Mamari?Francis Mortimer (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

You're missing the point. Read Pozdniakov or some of Fischer's critics. kwami (talk)

(FM to KW:) No, I am pretty sure I am not. I've read Pozdniakov and I cannot find a plausible explanation for his selection of glyphs. I could make all kinds of selections of this type and get results which make tablet B or C or R stand apart. My point is that if you were to use the more rigorous syllabic approach of De Laat the texts wouldn't stand so far apart in sofar as the script is concerned. Fischer's critics are among my favourite literature on the subject. Unfortunately there are not too many. If you know of others than Guy, Coe, Robinson, please let me know. Francis Mortimer (talk) 17:25, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Why would anyone write "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" when wood was so scarce that students couldn't use it, and scribes were carving along the sides of the tablets (like K) and resorting to wormy driftwood? That's part of what makes the content of De Laat's translations so suspicious. kwami (talk)

(FM to KW:) Well, like I said, the scribe wrote 'yes, yes': e e e is (one) "yes", not three. Very basic Rapanui I would say, even to me. By the way, I must stress the fact that this was my transliteration/translation, not De Laat's.Francis Mortimer (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

No, e is "yes", so seven e's would be seven yesses. kwami (talk)

Well, my recently acquired copy of Du Feu (see below) says on the subject of vowel sequences: "Most sequences are possible. An exception is uo. Apparently isolated examples are the sequence ie in the word hiero 'first light' and ue in hue 'accumulate'. The only repetition sequence appears to be eee which occurs in eee 'yes'. Here the articulation of the three vowels is clearly punctuated by slight exhalations that distinguish this sequence from long [e:] as in puté 'sack' and from [e'e] as in me'e 'thing'; the final e is always on a different level, a tone or so up or down from the first two which are on the same level." (Feu 1996: 185).Francis Mortimer (talk) 17:25, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

The Santiago Staff is really only special because it is not a tablet. Yes, the signs appear to be more condensed, i.e. more fused than the ones of other texts, and yes, there appears to be some form of punctuation, but surely the glyphs are compiled of exactly the same components as the other texts?

The staff is statistically unlike any other text (except maybe T, which is poorly preserved). This has been noted by several researchers. Most of the glyphs are similar (though several are unique, to the point that Pozdniakov's 90-character basic inventory is not sufficient for the staff), but their distributions are unlike the other texts. kwami (talk)

(FM to KW:) Well, this of course all depends on how you define a glyph. If you do not break up the signs into their components, you obviously have a lot of compounds/signs which are not in the other texts. If I were a decipherer I would assume that these represent words that are typical of only this text (for instance if it was about a game of chess, you would find king, queen, rook, etc., which are not found in the other texts - for instance because they deal with building model airplanes). But if you would look at the components (letters or syllables, or even particles) you would obviously find plenty of similarity.Francis Mortimer (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't matter how you break it up, as long as you treat all texts the same. The staff simply does not pattern like the other texts. Try reading some of the lit other than De Laat. kwami (talk)

That's a little below the belt don't you think? Surely, I didn't accuse you of not having read De Laat when you started 'modifying' my original contribution? Let me assure you, I have read pretty much all there is on the subject (excluding some publications in Russian, which I do not master). Had I not, I certainly would have kept my trap shut.Francis Mortimer (talk) 17:25, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, that wasn't intentional. Your question suggested that you weren't familiar with it. kwami (talk) 18:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Why do you insist on misquoting the author, since you apparently have his book at your disposal? In the grammatical analysis which always accompanies the tablet transliterations and translations (and which I left out in the excerpts), the first 'e' is defined as EXC (exclamation). Furthermore, the author clearly states that he has used the modern language grammar of Veronica Du Feu (1996) and that he has used her abbreviations (De Laat, p. 71). Nowhere the grammar of Englert is referred to, probably for the same reasons as you have for your reservations about it. Clearly, the only thing which is used from Englert is his vocabulary.

I personally have little knowledge of Rapanui, but the fact that a particle like 'te' is missing after 'ko' is enough to dismiss the whole proposal seems to me a bit too harsh. Perhaps the scribe did not care to write it, as any reader would know it should be put there, perhaps the language has changed in this respect, perhaps De Laat is wrong at this point and 'ko' is actually 'ko te' in front of nouns?

Grammatical "telegraphing" is certainly a possibility, even likely. But that would seem to be at odds with the chatty nature of the translated texts. kwami (talk)

(FM to KW:) Well, as one grumpy old philosopher whose name escapes me at the moment used to say: "Chatty is the nature of many a dialogue!"Francis Mortimer (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. The dialogs are suspicious. You don't get texts like that in other cultures, not when producing them is so resource intensive. kwami (talk) 09:45, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, another pun that misfired. I was merely trying to say that all dialogue is chat, speech, talk, or what have you.Francis Mortimer (talk) 17:25, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

To Kwami:

Well, I would have to brush up on my history to check Champollion's faraonic Egyptian or Ventris' fluency in Minoan Greek - or the evaluation of their findings by native speakers - but I doubt very much that you have a point here.

Champollion was fluent in Coptic, and being a good linguist, he was able to extrapolate quite a bit. Ventris worked with Chadwick, an expert in ancient Greek. Their decipherment revealed unknown details about both languages. Has De Laat discovered hitherto unknown details of Rapanui hidden in these texts? kwami (talk)

(FM to KW:) I am afraid you are missing the point of my little joke: you yourself said that the (not naive) translator would have to be fluent in the language. Clearly both of these men were not nor could they have been. The same is true for any decipherer of rongorongo: we do not know the exact form of the 17th, 18th and 19th century Rapanui. So a decipherer can only try to reason starting from the modern language (like Champollion did with 'modern' Egyptian, i.e. Coptic and Ventris with 'modern' i.e. Homeric Greek). On the point of the hitherto unknown details, I would say the part of the secondary layers of meaning would make for a nice example (De Laat, p. 215-219). Haven't seen that anywhere before.Francis Mortimer (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying that De Laat is fluent in modern Rapanui? Because that would be the equivalent to Champollion & Chadwick. As for details, I meant things like grammatical structures we didn't realize the language had, new vocabulary not preserved in any dictionary, etc. I don't know what 'secondary layers of meaning' is supposed to mean. kwami (talk)

As I have not talked to the author, I wouldn't know about his fluency in Rapanui. Would have to check on that in his book - if it is there. As for the details, it is obvious that when the nominal and verbal frames derived from Du Feu are compared with the author's transliterations, that there are certain differences, for example the absence of the modern tou/tu ... era/ena/nei construction. As for the vocabulary, the author does make a number of suggestions on 'new' words which can be compared to other Polynesian languages, for example ngoto, "deep", which exists in Maori (p. 84). Luckily, there are not too much of these, then surely that would raise other suspicions, wouldn't it? Francis Mortimer (talk) 17:25, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I do however not doubt your ability to write a form of Chinese that nobody can understand nor that you could translate rongorongo into Chinese. But the point is, could you propose an alphabet or a syllabary or a mixed form or something else which attributes phonetic values to the majority of the signs (however you would care to define these) which in turn would make a transliteration of a substantial part of the corpus into (more or less) understandable Rapanui possible? Could you for example produce a list of some 350 Rapanui words which can be found in the texts of tablet A, B and E? And - and this is the catch - could you do all this being totally wrong for the most part?

If I can do it for Chinese, a language which certainly is not in the texts, I can do it for Rapanui! [Lost a paragraph when Windows decided that "paste" meant to restart my computer. I really need to get on Linux!] But it would be quite time consuming to try to replicate De Laat and purposefully get it wrong. This reminds me of proto-World language reconstructions: I long suspected that I could do as well with opposite results, but I'd rather spend my time on something positive. kwami (talk)

(FM to KW:) So, the answer is yes, you could do it, only you have lost it and you have something better to do? I hope this does not involve shooting at people like De Laat, who obviously did invest a lot of his time in it?Francis Mortimer (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I mean when my bullshit detector is going off, I'm not going to waste a lot of time trying to prove to other people that it's bullshit. You could fritter away your entire life doing that. It's a matter of benefit analysis: what is the chance of it being correct, and its value if correct, vs. my loss in time and effort trying to prove it's right if it's wrong. Of course, if someone respectable came along and declared, My God, he's got it! I would take a second look. kwami (talk)

Well, how you spend your time is of course for you to decide. I merely inquired because you said you could do it. We will have to wait until someone respectable comes along then.Francis Mortimer (talk) 17:25, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

As I have said before, if this is so easily done, why haven't we been flooded by 'decipherments' of this type? Surely they would make a more respectable impression than Barthel's and Fischer's genital fixations? Okay, one for the road (Barthel 1958: 282 - my translation): "The precious phallus is taboo for the flower, the turtle-phallus, the tern-vulva, the sperm. Begin with the drumming! The phallus is taboo. A fish! The uncircumcised one is taboo for the woman!" (from line I13). This to me is the genuine gibberish, and yet, even this has received scholarly attention - and appreciation - for decades.

Sincerely,

Francis Mortimer

(ps. Is it allright if I readjust the 'subtitles' in the excerpts, they seem to have moved and no longer refer to the correct signs - at least not in my browser)

Francis Mortimer (talk) 22:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Can't answer why there aren't more of these out there. Probably because the script has generally been assumed to be logographic. There are a lot of logographic translations.kwami (talk) 23:29, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

(FM to KW:) Yes, there are. But as I have come to understand it, a logographic interpretation is always - and therefore never - right. It can simply not be verified. That is why people like Barthel and Rjabchikov have been getting away with it for so long. But a complete phonetical interpretation firmly based on a syllabary, that is a whole different - verifiable - ballgame.Francis Mortimer (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

The fact it can't be verified doesn't make it wrong. Cogent arguments against it being logographic are based on statistical analysis (though of course they may also be wrong). kwami (talk)

I don't know about people taking Barthel's translations seriously. He's important because, so far, his has been the only workable system of referring to the glyphs.kwami (talk) 23:29, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

(FM to KW:) And even there he has really made a mess of things. By the way, De Laat does not use the Barthel numbers (for good reasons I think). I can only give Barthel credit for one thing and that is for collecting the corpus and presenting it in a more or less reliable fashion. After 50 years he still is the most reliable. Even after 'Glyphbreaker' Fischer has had a go at it.Francis Mortimer (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Not following what you mean by readjusting the subtitles. Why don't you try & I'll re-readjust if it messing s.t. up. kwami (talk) 23:29, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

(FM to KW:) I seem to speak some ancient form of Rapanui - I apologize - I simply meant that the transliterations of the glyphs in the excerpts of tablet E are no longer positioned immediately below the appropriate sign. They have been moved to the left. This may cause people to think that they are not supposed to match the signs, which in fact they are. You could say the subtitles run faster than the movie. (By the way I do not think this way of mixing our conversation is very friendly to the reader. Can't we better keep things apart?)Francis Mortimer (talk) 06:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Knock yourself out. PS. You don't need to make html breaks for paragraphs. Just hit 'enter' twice. kwami (talk) 09:45, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I would say all these 'moons' are in the first place simply '(h)e'-glyphs, of which the sequences of 5-6 glyphs can be translated with e-e-e e-e(-e) or "yes, yes!". According to De Laat (p. 217), the calender is probably just a very intricate secondary layer behind the primary text.

The calendar fits the phases of the moon through the lunar month. Saying that it "is probably just a very intricate secondary layer behind the primary text" amounts to saying that the moon's motion around the Earth is just a secondary layer behind the primary text. Whatever meaning you assign to "secondary layer," that is nonsense. The existence and motion of the moon is not secondary to any text, primary or whatever. Fedorova too could reply to criticisms of her "decipherment" of the calendar (root, root, root, root and so on and on and on) that "the calendar is probably just a very intricate secondary layer behind the primary agricultural text". This sort argument leads nowhere but to folly.

(FM to AN:) Let me first quote De Laat on the subject, so as to avoid any confusion on what he and what I was saying: "If this identification (FM: of the 'lunar calender' by Barthel) is correct, it would provide very convincing proof of the existence of these layers of meaning which are supplementary to the primary text." (De Laat, 217) It is only one - small - example in a series. As I read it, De Laat is merely saying that sometimes there is something more to the text than plain phonetic values. Surely making use of the inherent pictographical possibilities of a hieroglyphic script is something which the rongorongo scribe would have in common with his Egyptian and Mayan colleagues? I personally would have found it strange, if he had not used the possibility. Frankly, De Laat's (p. 216) pointing at 3 series of 10 glyphs ( = 30) in the beginning of tablet A, and quoting Barthel as saying that the numbers 3, 6, 10 and 30 are special to the Rapanui, struck me as being something more than just coincidence.

Nobody is saying that the moon's motion around the Earth is just a secondary layer. Heaven forbid such lunacy!Francis Mortimer (talk) 15:22, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

This e-e-e e-e(-e) just reminded me of something. In de Laat's syllabary there is no distinction between h, glottal stop, and the absence of a consonant. Turning to de Laat's translations here I notice the words uha "hen, woman" and huha "thigh". Since hu is not distinguished in writing from u, and ha from a, and the glottal stop is not recorded, these other readings are possible: ua "rain", hua "testicle/to cause a fight", u'a "high tide". The choices made by de Laat would need compelling evidence. I see none.

(FM to AN:) Well, that strikes me as being a little bit peculiar. Let's take a simple example: the English word 'august'. If someone was to say to you: "The letters forming the word 'august' are pronounced in two different ways and stand for two entirely different meanings", would you say that there is something suspicious going on? No, you would say: "Obviously, the intended pronunciation and meaning of a particular occurrence of this word is something that can only be determined by the context of the sentence." I guess, this is exactly the reason why De Laat has gone through the trouble of presenting his findings - or speculations if you will - in the context of three integral transliterated and translated tablet texts.Francis Mortimer (talk) 15:22, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think Anon. is saying the decipherment can't be correct because the script is defective, only that this increases the amount of play that De Laat has to work with, which makes the results less convincing. It's the same in demonstrating language families: the more phonetic and semantic leeway you allow, the more chance resemblances you will find, and therefore the less certain your claimed cognates will be. If you allow enough leeway, you can 'prove' any two languages are related. Of course, that doesn't mean the author is wrong, just that the conclusions are harder to prove. kwami (talk) 18:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Why do you insist on misquoting the author, since you apparently have his book at your disposal? In the grammatical analysis which always accompanies the tablet transliterations and translations (and which I left out in the excerpts), the first 'e' is defined as EXC (exclamation).

I took the obvious interpretation, ignoring that "EXC". Why? Because the morpheme e is not an exclamation. The disjunct morpheme e...e, however, IS. And it is common in other Polynesian languages, too.

(FM to AN:) Well (EXC), regarding the exclamation issue I can only remark that you are in obvious disagreement with Du Feu. As you find her grammar to 'modern' (see below), just out of curiosity I looked 'e' up in Churchill's Rapanui-English vocabulary (1912). Well, lo and behold (EXC EXC EXC), on pag. 193 it says: 'e (3): oh!'. Well, I guess he's just too modern too.

Regarding the disjunct "e ... e" construction, I would have to say that there are examples of this in the transliterations, so I fail to see the problem. Francis Mortimer (talk) 15:22, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, the author clearly states that he has used the modern language grammar of Veronica Du Feu (1996)

More reason to view his decipherment with a skeptical eye. I know of Du Feu's grammar, but I do not have it (nor do I intend to, at US$325, even at $277, used, from Amazon). The little I have seen, via random samples at amazon.com, shows the language described therein to be indeed modern, and riddled with Spanish loanwords to boot. Even after after weeding out the loanwords the chances of this language agreeing with the Rapanui of the times when the tablets were carved (and we do not even know when that was) are remote, especially the grammatical particles.

(FM to AN:) I am afraid, you can't have it both ways. First you say: "Hey, these translations are not modern Rapanui" and now "Heck, what's the use of Du Feu's modern grammar. The language has obviously changed too much!".

Yes, I agree, that is pricey. That's why I took a stroll to the library the other day and got myself a free copy. Reminds me of an old classmate of mine, who - upon being scolded by our teacher for not having looked something up - said, without even blinking an eye, "but the library has burned down!"Francis Mortimer (talk) 15:22, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

As I have said before, if this is so easily done, why haven't we been flooded by 'decipherments' of this type?

We have been. There's Barthel, of course. There is Viktor Krupa, there is Lanyon-Orgill, there is Rjabchikov, there is a chap called Ushanas something or other, there is Barry Fell, there is someone, whose name I forgot, who found a list of zodiac signs on I forgot which tablet. Those are the ones that come to mind. There are certainly many others.

If Barthel received scholarly attention it is because of his work until 1958, when his Grundlagen were published, which is THE reference (for want of any competition) and his article in Scientific American claiming decipherment, which he never delivered. That is when he went round the bend. Polynesianists mostly ignored him, many clinging to the belief that rongorongo was not writing at all. His Grundlagen were never translated into English, or any other language for that matter. Later, fully unhinged articles by him were also published, again only in German. His Rongorongo Studien, published 1963 in Anthropos, are a prime example of crackpottery. That all those works were published only in German considerably restricts the audience, and the number of dissenters. His "Das Achte Land" (translated into English, though) is absolute nonsense from the word go, yet extremely difficult to refute because of the way the data is presented. You would have to it re-edit from scratch in order to argue for or against it. And even if someone refuted it, where would the refutation be published? In some specialized journal, and read by all of ten or eleven people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.101.144.87 (talk) 03:14, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I think Francis' question was why other researchers haven't recovered a syllabary and made a translation based on that.

It's not just that ha = ʻa = a. It's also that the syllables can be reversed. So De Laat's "woman" could potentially also be au (me, smoke, current, dew, bile), a‘u (labor pains), ahu (grave, throne, swollen/to swell up), hau (line, thread), ha‘u (hat), and ha‘u‘u (to help). kwami (talk) 09:45, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

(FM to KW&AN:) Yes, thank you, Kwami, that was indeed my question.

(FM to KW:) On the point of the different meanings of combinations of glyphs (h)a/(‘)a and (h)u/(‘)u, I refer to my answer aboveFrancis Mortimer (talk) 15:22, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Falsifying the unfalsifiable?

"As far as whether your exercise (which is exactly the right way to go) demonstrates De Laat is correct, I'm treating it like a new proposal for a language superfamily. Might be true, but I'd rather get the opinion of someone who has the expertise to falsify it."

Take Chadwick's mock decipherment of the Phaistos Disc. It is internally consistent, it is grammatically correct. You cannot falsify it on those criteria. Yet you know that it cannot be right. So you object: there is a 3000-year time gap between medieval japanese and the Phaistos Disc. Chadwick, risen from the grave and playing the devil's advocate, counters: as we have no record of the japanese of 2000 BC, you cannot prove that my decipherment is wrong, so you have not falsified it, and so, it is right.

What of it? The decipherment is not falsifiable, because of the laundry list paradox. And so it makes no sense to call for its falsification.

In one of the bulletins of the C.E.I.P.P. there is a decipherment by Guy of the "genealogy" of Tablet G. It runs likes this (from memory)

200 351 280 76 That scoundrel (200) Jacques (351) [stole the chickens of] poor (76) Jean (280)

200 280 730 76 That scoundrel (200) Jean (280) [stole the chickens of] poor (76) Pierre (730)

and so on. Then he goes on to argue: stop laughing. If I had used Ngaara, Te Haha, Hotu Matu'a instead Jacques, Jean, Pierre and so on you would have taken me more seriously from the beginning. Chickens were valuable; according to oral traditions solid stone houses were built to protect them from thieves at night. In Rapanui the adjective follows the noun, and 76 ("poor") follows 280, 730 and so on. So my decipherment is consistent not only with oral traditions but also with the grammar of Rapanui. Sure, I provided [stole chickens] which is not in the text, but so what, doesn't Fischer provide [ki roto ki te] and [ka pu te] in his decipherment of the Santiago Staff? Now look at the Santiago Staff. Every "triad" claimed by Fischer start with X.76. In my translation this becomes "Poor X". Isn't that consistent with the hypothesis that the Santiago Staff is a list of victims (kohau ika)? Further, some sections start with 76, and there are some occurrences of 76 reduplicated (76.76). Fischer ignores them because they make no possible sense in his translation. These occurrences of 76 are simply to be read aue "woe, alas" by a very natural semantic shift.

How do you formally falsify this outrageous send-up? You cannot. Does that mean that it is right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.101.159.164 (talk) 13:42, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

...or limit ourselves to mock turtles and faulty phalluses?

As to the Phaistos disc (which is more and more becoming the Phaistos boomerang if you ask me), as I have said before, I fully agree with you on its indecipherability. Yes, even if one was to get it right by accident (one chance in a zillion), one would not be able to prove it. But I do not think that the Phaistos disc proves anything about the indecipherability of rongorongo because 1) the rongorongo corpus is much larger, and 2) the language it represents is known. In the same way, the fact that the 'genealogy interpretation' can be easily refuted does not necessarily prove that it - and thus the rest of the texts - is inherently indecipherable. I agree with Guy (I haven't read the article itself because the C.E.I.P.P publications are hard to come by) that the ABC...Z series could be interpreted in a number of ways, that would make as much sense as a royal genealogy of sorts. I have once tried it myself as: A (200) = 'eat', B (351?), C (280), D (730), E (517), F (222) = 'a food chain' and Z (76) = 'hungry'. This could be for example: 'hungry turtles eat salad' - 'hungry sharks eat turtles' - 'hungry orkas eat sharks - 'hungry fishermen eat orkas' (As I write this I realize they apparently catch them by hurling Phaistos-discs at them). This 'food chain interpretation' also adheres to Rapanui grammar ('noun-adjective', 'verb-object-subject'). And what is more, 'turtle' is consistent with the general interpretation of sign C (although I personally think we then would have to assume that the long-eared turtle has become extinct at about the same time as the rongorongo scribe). Furthermore, it does not require reverting to proper names or adding words that the scribe apparently forgot to write. As I of course was very pleased with this plausible interpretation, I started to look for other text fragments which sported the same glyphs. I quickly realized that either everybody and everything was gnawing at each other in the texts - as glyph 200 is very abundant - or that my little hypothesis was most likely wrong. Surely, it was not absolute proof, but it was enough for me to not pursue this any further. Is absolute proof required in these matters? Surely, it cannot formally be proven that the lunar calender/schedule is there, but does that mean we choose to ignore it?
If the 'genealogy sequence' was the only fragment of the script we possessed, then I would not have been able to prove that my hypothesis was wrong, and therefore there was nothing to prove or disprove. But as we have a substantial body of text we can use that to falsify the theories that are proposed. This is exactly the thing that Guy has been doing with Fischer's much applauded "decipherment": "Your interpretation of glyph 76 cannot explain its occurence at the beginning of a sequence nor its occurence as a reduplicated glyph, therefore, dear Mr. Glyphbreaker, your theory is faulty." But, demonstrating that Fischer's 'translation' is a joke only shows that Fischer's translation is a joke, not that De Laat's is too, nor that rongorongo is indecipherable. This is indeed the fallacy of the excluded middle: Fischer has produced a decipherment, De Laat has produced a decipherment, therefore De Laat, like Fischer, is a prime candidate for teaching typewriter maintenance at the Rocco Columbo School for Women.
And this is my point: as it is simple to refute that 'scoundrel Jacques' is somewhere present in the 'genealogy' text (for example, his name does not consist of syllables of the Rapanui (C)V-type), and as it takes just a little more effort to see that the 'food-chain interpretation' simply is not consistent with other fragments that make use of the same signs, why then would it not be possible to refute De Laat's transliterations and translations? I would say that the claim that they "cannot be formally proven or disproven" itself cannot be formally proven or disproven - and is therefore not very interesting. Although I have to admit that I cannot formally prove this either.
Wouldn't you agree with me that De Laat's hypothesis that glyph 76 is benefactive particle 'mo', which appears where it is to be expected, for example before personal pronouns and verbs (as it does in the 'genealogy' before the verb '(h)anga', "make" or "want",) makes more sense because it is much more 'down to earth'? Doesn't his suggestion that the glyph's shape is more reminiscent of a shark than of a phallus (he points at some examples where the shark mouth is still present) too? Does the hypothesis that the other shark-glyph (730) could be syllable 'ma' (from "mango") - and therefore represent the other benefactive particle in the language - sound so outrageous? Surely, at first glance it makes infinitely more 'sense' than a phallus-procreation theory for which there is no fundament at all and which has only lead to a questionable genealogy interpretation and one claptrap sentence of Fischer about copulating birds and fishes producing suns? I too fail to understand why not every person of some intelligence - Bahn included - had these suns of yolk immediately in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
I am not saying 'De Laat is right', I am just saying 'let's try and refute this'. Even apparent con artists like Fischer and Rjabchikov have gotten their day in court. Let's not bury this guy before he has been properly executed (I mean his book of course).

Sincerely,
Francis Mortimer

Ps: I would appreciate it if you would take another look at the test I performed on the calender and would comment on it. Francis Mortimer (talk) 01:12, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Testing the Mamari calender for phonetic values using De Laat's syllabary (by Francis Mortimer)

To Kwami/Anonymous:

Motivated by the thought that the proof of the pudding should be in the eating, not in discussing the recipe or the cook's credentials, I decided to apply De Laat's proposed syllabary for the rongorongo script to the Mamari calender. I imagined that perhaps the calender could provide a test-case as it has a well-established relation to some real subject matter and since Jacques Guy has already provided a very detailed description of it (which includes some tentative remarks on some phonetic values). This is what I came up with after spending two days gazing at the text and running back and forth to the library. Please inform me whether I am seeing a pattern here that simply isn't there. In that case I will have to commit myself to the aforementioned loony bin voluntarily.

Sincerely,

Francis Mortimer

Testing De Laat's phonetic values on the Mamari Calender

Mamari sequence	Jacques Guy's comments	M. de Laat's phonetic values & Guy's taxograms (E)	FM's translation
A1-B1	Their meaning is unknown. I have proposed that they are instructions to observe and note the apparent diameter of the moon.	tau e i tae-hanga e maatou tuko ka	(A) period we have rejected/not used. (The) giving (of) light [grows] (i.e. the moon is waxing).
night 1	The new moon. Thomson and Englert: Oata, Metraux: Ata. The various meanings of "ata" in Polynesian, "cloud, shadow" are compatible with the notion of new moon: the moon is clouded, in a shadow.	e naa	(The moon) is hidden/hides.
night 2	First night after the new moon, when it becomes faintly visible. Thomson: Oari, Metraux: Ari.	e ara-(a)ra	(The moon) awakens.
A2	see: A1-B1	tau e tae-ite e	(A) period (we) ignore, and then
night 3-8	Six unnamed nights (taxograms for "night" (i.e. pure ideograms without a phonetic function))	E E E E E E	[six moons]
A3-B2	see: A1-B1	tau e tae-ite e maatou tuko ka	(A) period we ignore. (The) giving (of) light [grows].
night 9	Thomson, Englert, Metraux: Maharu.	E	[one moon]
night 10	Thomson, Englert: Ohua, Metraux: Hua. "Hua" variously means in Polynesian "fruit, to fructify" or "vulva, scrotum, bulge". The accompanying sign could be a representation of a prickly fruit or of a scrotum.	hua ra e	(The moon) keeps growing/ is blooming.
night 11	Thomson, Englert: Otua, Metraux: Atua ("God"). The accompanying sign represents perhaps a feather cloak, worn by high chiefs and celestial beings.	rangi e	(The moon) takes command/ reigns supreme, then.
A4-B3	see: A1-B1	tau e tae-ite e maatou tuko ka	(A) period we ignore. (The) giving (of) light [grows].
night 12	Thomson, Englert, Metraux: Maure. The appendage is perhaps phonetic. It is a credible representation of an animal's penis (a dolphin's for instance). Phonetically, "Maure" is "ma = with, ure = penis".	ko-(h)e	?
night 13	Thomson, Englert, Metraux: Ina-ira	E	[one moon]
night 14	Thomson, Englert, Metraux: Rakau. The night immediately before the full moon. The crescent here is filled in.	titi(a)	(The moon) is filling up/is full.
night 15	Thomson, Englert: Omotohi, Metraux: Motohi. The full moon. The sign is a picture of the "Cook-in-the-Moon", common to Polynesian and most Melanesian mythologies. The three "stones" are the cooking stones of the Polynesian earth oven (umu). The homunculus sitting in profile is the cook.	e tahi no	(The moon is) one/a unity.
A5-B4	see: A1-B1	tau e tae-ite e maatou nei tuko ka	(A) period we ignore. (The) giving (of) light [diminishes] (i.e. the moon is waning).
nights 16-20	See: nights 3-8	E E E E E	[five moons]
A6-B5	see: A1-B1	tau e tae-ite e maatou nei tuko ka	(A) period we ignore. (The) giving (of) light [diminishes].
nights 21-22	Thomson, Englert, Metraux: 21: Tapume; 22: Matua	E E	[two moons]
night 23	Thomson, Englert: Orongo, Metraux: Rongo. The last quarter. Note the accompanying string with barbs. Routledge mentions that ceremonies were also held at the last quarter of the moon, where strings of white feathers were used.	rae	?
A7-B6	see: A1-B1	tau e tae-ite e maatou tuko ka	(A) period we ignore. (The) giving (of) light [diminishes].
night 24	Thomson, Englert: Orongo taane, Metraux: Rongo tane. The crescent is accompanied by a picture of a frigate bird, called "taha". The first syllable is perhaps used here phonetically for "ta[ne]".	taha e	(The moon) bends (i.e. is a crescent), and then
nights 25-28	Thomson, Englert, Metraux: 25: Mauri nui; 26: Mauri kero/karo 27: (O)mutu 28: Tireo	E E E E	[four moons]
A8-B7	see: A1-B1	tau e tae-ite e maatou tuko ka	(A) period we ignore. (The) giving (of) light [diminishes].
C-nights-29-30	C: Meaning unknown. The first one, which looks like turtle honu is perhaps a phonetic approximation for "Hotu". The second, two people back to back, is perhaps phonetic approximation for "Hiro": "he rua = two". But this is pure speculation without a sound basis. 29-30: These are probably the two additional nights. Hotu and Hiro, to be added when necessary to the fixed 28 night above. According to both Thomson and Metraux, Hotu was inserted between nights 11 and 12 (Atua and Maure). According to Englert, Hiro was inserted immediately after night 1 (the new moon); according to Metraux, immediately before it.	au tetahi tetahi E E	Some (months) are like (this), others (require) [two moons/nights]

Some preliminary remarks:

1) The conclusion of Jacques Guy in 1990 that the "Mamari calender" was not a calendar strictly speaking, but an astronomical canon for telling in advance when to insert two intercalary nights, Hotu and Hiro, was correct.

2) According the Mamari schedule of tablet C the points for inserting the additional nights were limited to the following 21 pairs of nights:

1-2 (where Hiro was inserted according to Englert) 3-4; 4-5; 5-6; 6-7; 7-8; 9-10; 10-11; 12-13; 13-14; 14-15; 16-17; 17-18; 18-19; 19-20; 21-22; 22-23; 24-25; 25-26; 26-27; 27-28

This means that the Metraux insertion of Hiro (before night 1) and the Thomson/Metraux insertion of Hotu (before night 12) were not allowed at the time this schedule was used.

3) The recorded names of the moons/nights are not mentioned in this schedule, with the possible exception of night 10: 'Hua'. Instead, the sequences that combine crescent moons with other glyphs describe the shape of the moon as it could be observed at a given night.

4) The fact that the attribution of 16 phonetic values of De Laat's syllabary (out of 35) and 2 of his disyllabic values (out of 7) produces words and sentences with are in agreement with the descriptions of the moon fases by Guy and provide an explanation for the intermediary sequences (sometimes called "heralding sequences") as well as the final sequence, supports his proposal for a predominantly phonetic and syllabic interpretation of the rongorongo script. The confirmed (di-)syllables are (in order of appearance): ta; (h)u; (h)e; (h)i; nga; maa; tou; tu; ko; ka; na; (h)a; ra; te; ngi; ti; no and nei. Francis Mortimer (talk) 22:25, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi Francis,

It looks reasonable. My attempt at falsification would be to scramble De Laat's syllabary and see if I can get something just as reasonable (like scrambling Swadesh-list words to see if I can 'prove' a language family proposal with conflicting data). Why don't you sign up for the RR study group on Yahoo (you just need to write the admin and ask) and post your proposal there? Several of the people who debunked Fischer are signed up there, and there should be at least a couple who'd be interested in this. kwami (talk) 22:46, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi Kwami,

thank you for keeping an open mind about this. Sorry if I sounded a little irritated before. I just forgot how much of your time you probably have to spend in keeping this rongorongo island free from all sorts of driftwood. If you say that all this still 'proves' nothing, then I really don't see what more there is for me to do. It was only meant as a little experiment (and as a sort of apology to the author, I guess). As to discussing this with the professionals at the RR-group, I really don't feel up to that, not being much of an expert myself, nor do I have the time for it. But if you would like to post it there or draw their attention to it, that is of course fine with me. But don't you think they already are keeping an eye on these pages? Furthermore, I imagine the author to be far better equipped than me to discuss his proposals with them. I will take some time in the weekend to try and clean up/expand some of these notes, and then on Monday it will be back to 'business as usual'.

Sincerely,

Francis Mortimer

Francis Mortimer (talk) 13:10, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right about the driftwood. One editor threatened to take me to the United Nations for human rights violations because I repeatedly deleted some gibberish—and I mean gibberish in the literal sense that I couldn't make heads or tails of what it was supposed to mean in order to fix it up, and the references were just as bad.

The people on the RR group were happy that this article was cleaned up, but no, I have no reason to think they're watching this talk page. You wouldn't have to argue it, just post it and let them comment, though of course you're right that De Laat would be better represented if you did follow up. That's really the place for this kind of thing, not a Wikipedia page with someone like me who doesn't know what he's talking about trying to keep it up to FA standards.

As far as whether your exercise (which is exactly the right way to go) demonstrates De Laat is correct, I'm treating it like a new proposal for a language superfamily. Might be true, but I'd rather get the opinion of someone who has the expertise to falsify it. If there's something to this, I'd expect the kind of excitement we got with Dene-Yeniseian. —kwami (talk) 19:57, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

It was brought to my attention (at http://wordsoutofwood.blogspot.com) that my contribution on the Mamari calender contained two errors. These have now been corrected: in A1-B1 an 'e' was added to the transliteration and the missing sequence A8-B7 was added after nights 25-28.

Francis Mortimer (talk) 12:58, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Notes

A comparison of the Pozdniakov frequency analysis and De Laat's transliterations (by Francis Mortimer)

When a proposed rongorongo decipherment pretends to yield coherent texts in the Rapanui language - as De Laat's does - one of the more obvious requirements that must be met is that these transliterations display the statistical characteristics of that language. In their comparative frequency analysis of rongorongo glyphs and Rapanui texts, I. and K. Pozdniakov come to the conclusion 1) that the script is syllabic, and 2) that the language is Rapanui. Since De Laat is also a proponent of this view, I have compared his transliterations to their text statistics. This was done to determine whether the Rapanui of his transliterations displays the same characteristics as the ten Rapanui texts analysed by the Pozdniakovs. I have not taken into consideration their statististics for the glyphs themselves, as the Pozdniakov and the De Laat inventories of syllabic signs clearly display a significant number of differences.
Since De Laat himself does not provide statistical information, I have used his "Index on tablet transliterations" to compute the statistics for the syllables of his transliterations of tablets A, B and E and of his lexicon.

Comparison of syllabic frequencies in Pozdniakov and De Laat

		highest frequency	frequency range 8%-3%											range 3%-2%	range 2%-0%
Pozdniakovs' 10 texts	syll.	A	11 syllables											5 syllables	38 syllables
	perc.	10.5	only percentages given: TE = 5.7; HE = 3.5
De Laat's transliteration of text A, B, E	syll.	TA	A	I	NGA	HA	E	U	RA	MA	TE	TO	NA	6 syllables	37 syllables
	perc.	11.5	7.8	6.8	6.1	5.8	5.4	4.9	4.7	4.1	3.6	3.6	3.5
Pozdniakovs' lexicon	syll.	A	I	E	O	U	TA	RA	KA	NA	MA	RI		9 syllables	35 syllables
	perc.	8.5
De Laat's lexicon	syll.	A	I	TA	RA	HA	U	NGA	E	MA	RO	RI		8 syllables	36 syllables
	perc.	9.5	6	5.7	5.4	5.3	4.4	4.3	4.3	4	3.2	3.1

Some remarks

The overall distribution of the frequencies is roughly the same. This would mean that the graphs of De Laat's frequencies would very much resemble the curves of the Pozdniakovs' "Graph 1 - Frequencies in text" and "Graph 4: Frequencies of glyphs and syllables in the lexicon." Unfortunately, the Pozdniakov study does not provide individual frequency percentages for all of the syllables (which is strange since these are the basis for their study). However, from the graphs and figures they do provide the following similarities and differences can be distilled:

For the texts:

1) The Pozdniakov study has A as most common syllable with a frequency of 10.5%, De Laat's A has only 7.8%, whereas TA with 11.5% scores very high. This can be explained by the fact that the word 'tangata' ("man") is used very frequently in the tablet texts. When this word is deleted from the statistics, syllable TA drops to 8.5%. Although the exact Pozdniakovs' figure is not given, the order in which the CV-syllables are mentioned probably indicates that TA is the CV-syllable with the highest score in the 3-8% range.
2) From graph 1 can be concluded that there are some 11 syllables which fall in the category 3-8%. This is comparable to De Laat's series of 11 syllables. (However, as can be hypothesized from the lexicons, this does not necessarily mean that these series are exactly the same).
3) The other ranges are comparable with 5 and 6 syllables, and 38 and 37 syllables, respectively.

For the lexicons:

1) The frequencies 8.5% and 9.5% for syllable A are comparable.
2) Apart from this, Pozdniakov records 10 syllables with a frequency in the lexicon of over 3%: the vowels I, E, O, U and CV-combinations TA, RA, KA, NA, MA and RI. In the smaller lexicon of De Laat (some 400 words) there are also 10 syllables with a frequency of over 3%: I, TA, RA, HA, U, NGA, E, MA, RO, RI. Most important differences are vowel O (2.7%) and CV-combinations HA (5.3%). NGA (4.3%), NA (2.5%) and KA (1.9%).
3) The other ranges are comparable with 9 and 8 syllables, and 35 and 36 syllables, respectively.

Conclusion

With regard to the distribution of syllables, the language provided by De Laat displays virtually the same characteristics as the Rapanui analysed by the Pozdniakovs. This becomes especially clear with regard to the " 'incidental' result" which is mentioned by them: "It is evident to specialists that syllables of structure V have an especially high frequency in the lexicon of Rapanui. Less obvious is that syllables with a CV structure which include the phoneme /a/ also have a high frequency."

Totals for syllables containing each of the five vowels in Pozdniakov and De Laat (in %)

Corpus	a, Ca	e, Ce	i, Ci	o, Co	u, Cu
Pozdniakovs' lexicon	38	13	16	18	15
De Laat's lexicon	43	13	17	15	12
De Laat's transliteration	47	14	14	13	12
De Laat's transliteration corrected for 'tangata'	42	16	15	14	13

The Pozdniakov study states that: "It is therefore highly likely that the most common glyphs in the lexicon of the Rapanui written texts represent either vowels or syllables containing the phoneme /a/." As can be seen in the first table, the 9 syllables with the highest frequency in De Laat's transliteration as well as in his lexicon are either vowels or Ca-syllables, and since the syllabic frequency of the transliteration is directly derived from the inscriptions, the Pozdniakov hypothesis is for a substantial part confirmed.
Francis Mortimer (talk) 23:48, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

A couple points: 1. consider Zipf's law; 2. De Laat correlated glyphs with syllables, so the only way to get a sensible running text would be by having a statistical distribution consistent with the language. The real test is in whether this clarifies the other texts. But really, you should be presenting this on the Yahoo chat group, where people who know what they're talking about can comment on it. Our guidelines prevent us from evaluating original research like this. kwami (talk) 00:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

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Dietrich hypothesis

{{Hidden|titlestyle = background: #ccccff; font-size: 110%; |header=Extended content |content= I just added a section on the Dietrich hypothesis. The scholarly journal article I worked from is referenced in the section lede. I realize there's alot of illustration, but I think that approach is ideal for expressing the relevant concepts. I'm not an expert on wiki-formatting, but I tried to keep things organized. If anyone has questions/comments/criticisms, feel free to post them here. Bigdan201 (talk) 09:12, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to share some thoughts that I couldn't fit into the section. First of all, the original paper is in German, which may explain why this hasn't gotten more attention. I hope that my work will help disseminate the hypothesis.

Both Dietrich and Esen-Baur express admiration for rongorongo, and how the system achieves clarity, economy, aesthetics, and encryption all at once. I too find it to be an intelligent and artistic system of notation.

Speaking of which, assuming that the script hypothesis is wrong and the notation hypothesis is correct, that would explain why rongorongo has defied attempts at decipherment for over a century. Attempting to find language in a notation system would be like trying to "translate" a musical score or math equation -- it's a fundamental misunderstanding.

Finally, Dietrich made a very interesting point while emphasizing the difficulty and importance of proper navigation in Polynesian culture. In the original German: "In allen Wüsten dieser Welt - und damit natürlich auch in der Wasserwüste des Südmeers - gilt die eherne Regel, daß man einen Fehler nur einmal machen kann." Translated: "In all the deserts of the world -- and thus, of course, in the watery desert of the South Pacific -- there is an iron rule: one can make a mistake only once." A striking and sobering thought.

Whenever I work on something, I tend to find new additions or changes to make. but that is all for now. Bigdan201 (talk) 13:32, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Rationale

(redacted) any issues should be discussed here. Bigdan201 (talk) 22:49, 1 September 2017 (UTC) @Bigdan201 and Hullaballoo Wolfowitz: we are back to discussion, it seems. I removed the whole section on the grounds that it is based on sources from 1998 that at the time of the 2008 Featured Article candidacy were not included in the article – except for a brief mention in a footnote – and yet the article passed FA at that time. In other words, the article was considered complete and due without the huge section on Dietrich. It follows that the added content makes it veer off topic and introduce minority viewpoints that are given way too much attention. The section should be removed. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:23, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

First, I appreciate your willingness to enter into dialogue. As to your primary argument, of course Dietrich didn't factor into FA candidacy in 2008 -- the scholarly journal review was only published in 2011. Without that review, I agree that it would not be notable enough for inclusion. To quote @Kwamikagami: "Get published, have reviewers say, "My God, he's got it!", and then we'll include you in this article. That's how an encyclopedia works.". I believe these criteria have been met via these sources: [1] [2]. An affirmative review in a reputable journal should be enough for inclusion. A major reason it hasn't gotten more attention is because the original paper is in German, and the language barrier can be formidable. Yes, I think adding the section helps disseminate this idea and makes it more easily accessible, but my motive is to improve Wiki rather than to promote a certain idea. The scholarly journal review is my primary rationale for adding the content. Bigdan201 (talk) 18:49, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

(redacted)

You're simply wrong on the NFCC issue. Files can be undeleted. And nearly thirty nonfree images illustrating a single facet of this article is just plain not allowed -- no other article comes close to using so many illustrating a single concept. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. (talk) 20:53, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Again, thanks for coming in to discuss. I actually hadn't realized that images could be undeleted; it seems that is true. In light of this, I shall leave my content unrestored, in the interest of civility, until a decision is reached.

(redacted)

Under the WMF licensing resolution, our inclusion standards are significantly more restrictive than general "fair use" law. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. (talk) 00:26, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

(redacted)

(redacted)

Having done further thought and inquiry on this, it seems that I can sidestep the NFCC issue entirely by making some adjustments. Admittedly, minimal use was a controversial point, and now that I've found an alternative there's no more need to justify it. Perhaps this exchange was useful after all. Bigdan201 (talk) 23:31, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

When I first uploaded the images, I wasn't sure how to label them. I labelled them non-free to be on the safe side. While most conditions of NFCC were met, minimal use was problematic. I tried to rationalize this at first, until I realized that there's a better alternative (thus I redacted those arguments, since I don't want the section to be cluttered or confusing). Rongorongo are certainly in the public domain, but the captions in my images may have been subject to copyright. To avoid all ambiguity, I simply cropped out the captions, using only the glyphs; that way almost all my images are public domain and free to use. The sole exception is the illustration demonstrating reverse boustrophedon -- the detailed drawing would fall under copyright, but using only one non-free work for a specific purpose satisfies minimal use. As for Mr. Wolfowitz, you turned out to be helpful after all. Without your opposition, I would not have looked further into NFCC matters, and would not have made the necessary improvements. Hopefully, that settles the matter amicably. Bigdan201 (talk) 03:40, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

A couple points:

• There is no consensus that the system was writing. The reason that scholars often treat it as if it were writing is that, if it's not, there's little hope of ever deciphering it. So, you either adopt the hypothesis that it's writing, and see where that leads you, or you give up. But I doubt that any reasonable scholar taking the 'writing' approach would actually argue that the system is writing -- they're just trying to see if they can produce anything that might support the hypothesis that it is.
• There's little discussion in our article about the opposite hypothesis, that it's not writing. The bias is due to the relative potential productivity of the two hypotheses, not to any consensus or conspiracy toward RR being writing, but nonetheless it would be nice to develop non-writing appoaches in the article. Though I'm leery of supporting crackpot ideas, I do hope we can make something of this.
• However, the Rapanui did not navigate. So why would they need navigation aids? If the Tahitians had developed RR, now that would make sense. But an isolated culture with no good wood to build canoes? Whose only boats, made of lashed-together driftwood, where barely capable of passing the breakers for a little in-shore fishing? Yes, the Polynesians in general were excellent navigators. But the Rapanui were not. And other Polynesian peoples had graphic navigation aids, which were nothing like rongorongo. So, for me at least, Dietrich's hypothesis does not pass the smell test. But it has been peer-reviewed, and therefore IMO worthy of discussion in the article. I mean, it can't be worse than Fischer, which we spend a lot of time on despite it being obvious bullshit.

Oh, the review article spends a lot of time debunking Barthel, as if B's 'classification' of glyphs were semantic. It's not: it's just a way of organizing glyphs in graphic categories so that you can look them up: this one looks like a fish, so it must be in the 600 section (or whatever). But Barthel never claimed that his system reflected anything inherent in the glyphs themselves, so debunking him for doing so is spurious. — kwami (talk) 02:36, 3 September 2017 (UTC) I must say, Esen-Baur makes a very poor case for Dietrich. It amounts to little more than I claim it, therefore it's true. I mean, "inverse boustrophedon makes sense only in terms of a celestial notation system" is almost silly beyond belief. So we have someone positing a hypothesis with no confirmatory evidence, and then a reviewer that swallows it who is either completely ignorant of the history of writing, or who only comprehends what he wants to believe. This is not promising. Dietrich has some nicely aesthetic ideas on how the complex glyphs might be composed of simpler elements. It's nice to see the different assumptions involved. But the identification with star names (from scattered cultures, like when trying to prove that Quechua is an Indo-European language) seems largely arbitrary. I could make as good an argument for completely different identifications, and there seems to be no way to judge whose are more likely. — kwami (talk) 05:56, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Salutations, kwami. You've shown alot of patience and common sense on this talk page, so I value your input. You've made interesting points, and I'll be back to respond in-depth. Bigdan201 (talk) 06:29, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Dan.

I think there are two elements of Dietrich's approach that could be addressed separately: the graphic composition of the glyphs, and their identifications. We could reproduce the basic glyphic elements, as long as we're clear that their identification is speculative (i.e., there are no confirmatory predictions, and AFAICT they weren't even determined by the structure of the texts as with Pozdniakov), and IMO it would be a nice addition if only to show that the elements posited by Pozdniakov et al. are not the only possible way to approach the issue. But when it comes to identifying actual glyphs, I don't think that deserves more than a brief mention. The single reviewer we have doesn't show why we should believe any of it, he simply states it's correct. His description reads like the cherry-picked evidence for Greenberg's Amerind and other debunked cladistic proposals. It seems to me -- without having access to Dietrich's methods -- that it's very likely that his approach is, as Pauli might say, not even wrong. — kwami (talk) 18:49, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

I will respond to all your posts down here.

rongorongo seems like writing, and we work with the assumption that it is in hopes that it bears fruit. However, the concept that it is a notation system, which records something other than human language, is an interesting idea which should not be ignored. It would help explain why we've been unable to decipher it -- you couldn't 'translate' a musical score into language for the same reason. In any case, it's an alternative that should be considered.

I don't necessarily agree with everything in the scholarly journal. But aside from proving notability, it was a valuable source, alongside the original paper published by Asian and African Studies (which is all in German). As for reverse boustrophedon, it is a significant point in favor of celestial notation, which I would not call silly. Boustrophedon was common enough in the history of writing, but Reverse Boustrophedon is another matter. As the single fair use illustration shows, it would reflect the difference in constellations between northern and southern hemispheres. It may not be the only possible reason, but it is a viable explanation for an unusual feature.

As for navigation, much depends on Polynesian history, and how Easter Island was settled. Was the genesis of the Rapa Nui civilization a single voyage and settlement, or was it the product of a cosmopolitan network of trade and navigation in the Pacific (or somewhere in between)? One theory is that there was continuous exchange between Easter Island and other Polynesian islands, which would've required a specialized class of navigators. Easter Island was deforested over time, so there may have been wood for ships in their early history. If the cosmopolitan trade hypothesis is correct, then it would make sense for star-names to come from various cultures throughout Polynesia. The main flaw in this theory is that rongorongo is limited to Easter Island, and (as you pointed out) known Polynesian aids to navigation are completely different in nature. In a situation of cosmopolitanism and trade, one would expect rongorongo to appear on many islands, perhaps in a variety of forms. A counter-argument is that the 'cosmopolitan trade' culture must've broken down, isolating the Rapa Nui, and only their civilization maintained rongorongo. There's plenty of room for doubt, though.

I agree that graphic composition and meaning can be considered separately, in fact I wrote the section that way. Dietrich looked up Polynesian star-names, then matched them with glyphs. He provided further evidence with a 'tentative reading' (under Guiding Stars), in which a sequence of rongorongo is found to be consistent with his readings and with known astronomy. Still, the readings are conjecture. Even if the readings are completely baseless, however, I think the analysis of graphic design is of value. The demonstration of 'grafting, partial elimination, and defining features' is very consistent, and is almost certainly a genuine insight into how rongorongo were composed. I'm impressed by how they condensed glyphs while retaining clarity and aesthetics. Perhaps I could rework the section to put greater emphasis on graphic design, rather than the conjectured values of the glyphs. With that said, I don't think the assignment of meanings was as baseless as you're suggesting. I can't think of any reason why Quechua would be an Indo-European language, when the pre-Columbian American civilizations were entirely segregated from Eurasia (with the possible exception of Polynesian contact). There is at least a plausible explanation for rongorongo representing stars, when there are numerous coincidences between names & glyphs, and a tentative reading which is consistent. Stellar notation is also consistent with the lunar calendar which is already documented. Of course, it depends on Polynesian and Rapa Nui history, as I mentioned before.

In conclusion, I wouldn't say I'm a True Believer of Dietrich, but it is an intriguing theory which is worth documenting. I'm willing to make changes to the section if they are well-advised. Bigdan201 (talk) 05:56, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

You have to travel a long distance before the constellations are upside-down. Yes, the Polynesians traveled that far, but not in single voyages! I could see, e.g., an iconic sign for a constellation getting flipped when the scribes reached Hawaii. But even if there were a provision in the script for doing this on a regular basis, it would be individual signs that got flipped. I don't see how it could motivate a RB direction of writing. After all, with RB the glyphs aren't upside-down, -- you merely flip the tablet while reading -- so RB wouldn't reflect the flipped constellations anyway. The tablets are probably in RB simply because they're tablets. D's conjecture is nearly as silly as saying the Arabs write right-to-left because they live in the east.

Besides, D ignores the fact that, with the single exception of Hawaii, the Polynesians live south of the equator. So the Easter Islanders chose a writing direction to reflect the fact that, every once in a while, an expedition from some other Polynesian nation navigated to Hawaii?

(Okay, there is a tiny Polynesian outlier, Nukuoro, in Pohnpei in Micronesia that's 4 degrees north of the equator, with a grand total of 400 people, but that's on the other side of the Pacific, and claiming navigation to Nukuoro produced RB would be even sillier than Hawaii.)

Graphic decomposition is something that nearly all RR investigators have looked into. The only real difference here is that D is a graphic artist, and so looked at it with a different eye. And came to different conclusions. But those conclusions may be quite arbitrary. E.g., the bird with a broken wing: D takes that to be a simplex glyph because it matches one of his attempted readings. But it could just as easily be the case that the broken wing is one of those elements that never occurs alone, and that the bird with a broken wing is a complex glyph. How can we know? — kwami (talk) 17:21, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

If I understand him correctly, Dietrich argues that rongorongo draws from New Zealand, Micronesia, and Hawaii. If it were the product of cosmopolitan exchange, that would definitely explain why it would incorporate stars/constellations from the northern hemisphere, as well as reverse boustrophedon. As I said, rongorongo only being attested from Easter Island is problematic for that idea. However, it is possible that in earlier centuries, there was more traffic and interaction across the Pacific.

True, you wouldn't have to read them upside-down. But reverse boustrophedon is an unusual feature, and you have to wonder why they would go to the trouble of using it. I don't think the use of tablets would make it necessary, especially since reverse boustrophedon is also seen on the Santiago Staff. It would have the effect of familiarizing the reader with different orientations of the night sky. It's speculative, but it makes sense imo.

As for the bird glyph, Dietrich emphasizes that research on rongorongo is still in its early phases, and there is a lot more work to be done. With that said, ambiguities for particular glyphs don't negate the whole system. If you check the rongorongo 'equations' I put under graphical design, there's a clear and consistent method. Dependent elements are, as a rule, fused in whole form onto other glyphs. In the case of the broken wing, it seems to be a 'defining feature' of the glyph, in which the rest of the body is discarded before grafting, which is not the same thing. In any case, there is a testable and falsifiable system.

There are a few other points in the paper I didn't address in the section. Dietrich used his graphic design background in recognizing the stylized representations of various astronomical concepts. He points out how there are no honorifics or magnifiers, in spite of the hierarchical nature of Polynesian society (and contrasts this with the cartouche of Egyptian Hieroglyphs, which was important for translation). He also mentions that 'section dividers' found in some samples may represent division into separate nights. He also cautions against pseudoscience and jumping to conclusions. Bigdan201 (talk) 04:00, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

"(I don't know) why they would go to the trouble of using" RB: Because it's less trouble. When learning to read, one of the more difficult aspects is keeping track of the text at line returns. Boustrophedon is much easier to read, which is probably why it was so common in the early stages of writing. As for RB, it has the added benefit that the glyphs wouldn't be reversed, either in orientation or in relative order. In order for RR glyphs to keep their relative order, and thus their graphic linkage, in Greek-style boustrophedon, you would have to write the glyphs in mirror image. This doesn't matter for Greek, where the letters were graphically distinct, but would for RR. So RB reading order simply makes sense: it's easier to read than any other. You don't need to posit an ocean-wide development to explain "let's just do it the easy way". As for the staff not being a tablet, it could simply have inherited the conventions of the tablets, which were the normal medium. Why would they have bothered to change the reading order? — kwami (talk) 02:55, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

You make a valid point, I hadn't thought through the advantages of boustrophedon. The one issue I have is that with reverse boustrophedon, one would have to keep turning the tablet around while reading, which seems inconvenient. Other than that, what you're saying is viable; however, a viable explanation doesn't necessarily negate the idea that hemispheric differences had something to do with it. Even if there is no connection to astronomy, reverse boustrophedon is only one point and not the crux of the argument. Bigdan201 (talk) 06:28, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Until recently I had only read the first two thirds of the Dietrich paper. Now I've finally tracked down and read the third part. While reverse boustrophedon (as the ox plows) is mentioned, he doesn't explicitly argue that it reflects the inversion of constellations -- only the Esen-Baur review makes that claim. In light of this, I may have to edit my section and reduce that point to a brief mention. In any case, Dietrich has identified stars/constellations from both northern and southern hemispheres, so the idea of rongorongo reflecting both hemispheres does not rest upon inverse boustrophedon. Bigdan201 (talk) 09:10, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

"a viable explanation doesn't necessarily negate the idea that hemispheric differences had something to do with it" -- of course not. But it's up to the claimant to provide evidence for his claim. (And if he doesn't claim it, we shouldn't include it.) Per Occam's razor, if you have a viable explanation, you don't go for an unlikely one instead. Not unless you can substantiate it.

I remember when I was learning to write: when I hit the edge of the page, I would tend to turn 90 degrees and continue around the margin of the page. A continuous line comes more easily than line breaks. As for plain-B vs RB, the question is whether it's better to rotate the text and read the passage forwards, or hold it still and read the passage backwards. Small tablets make rotation easy, perhaps easier than reading backwards. Just because the Greeks used plain-B doesn't mean that is somehow more natural than RB, so that RB requires some sort of special explanation. Greek is written left-to-right, but that doesn't mean we need some special motivation to explain why the Canaanites wrote right-to-left: it's just a historical coin toss, like why the Brits drive on the left while the French drive on the right. And I don't see why we should privilege the Greeks: why are they the standard for what is normal, and Easter Island consequently abnormal and in need of special explanation? Why not come up with some outlandish hypothesis for why the Greeks wrote backwards, rather than in normal RB like any sensible culture? "Dietrich has identified stars/constellations from both northern and southern hemispheres, so the idea of rongorongo reflecting both hemispheres does not rest upon inverse boustrophedon" -- correct: It doesn't rest on anything! From the equator you can see the constellations of both hemispheres. Easter Island is 27 degrees south, and the axial tilt of the Earth is 24½ degrees, so from Easter Island, at summer solstice and with a clear horizon (as you often have when looking out to sea), you can see stars to within 2½ degrees of the north celestial pole. That means you can see *all* of the northern constellations, even Ursa Minor apart from the very northern tip that is the Pole Star itself. So, even if D is correct about RR representing stars and constellations, and even if he is correct in his identification of those stars and constellations, that is not evidence that there is any influence on RR from other parts of Polynesia. Not unless D correctly identified Polaris in the RR texts. Take a look at the map at Polaris. Polaris is 1¼ degrees from the north celestial pole. That means, with perfect viewing conditions, from Easter Island you can see stars to within twice that distance of the north pole. There aren't any other visible stars within that region, so Polaris is effectively the only star not visible from Easter Island. Now, conditions aren't always perfect, and stars get more twinkly close to the horizon, so let's say it's impractical to see anything within 10 degrees of the pole. That would exclude only one other named star: Delta UMi. Even excluding everything within 20 degrees of the pole (the inner circle in that map), you would still be able to see the body (the box) of UMi and every other northern constellation. Rapa Nui legends that RR was brought from somewhere else are evidence that RR has an external origin. D's stellar hypothesis is not. — kwami (talk) 17:22, 7 September 2017 (UTC) P.S. These claims aren't just theoretical. I've seen all the southern constellations (those that are visible to the naked eye, at least) from the northern hemisphere, including the southern pole star. And the Greco-Roman constellations of Ptolemy, dating from when the Greeks were confined to the Mediterranean and Black Seas, extend well into the southern hemisphere. The second-brightest star in Carina, a piece of the ancient constellation of Argo, lies 20 degrees from the south celestial pole, while the two brightest stars of Centaurus are within 30 degrees. (Those are equivalent to the latitudes of Cepheus and the body of Ursa Minor in the northern hemisphere.) The Greeks considered these southern constellations important enough to navigation in their northern homeland (or to mythology or whatever their motivation) to name them. I can't think of any reason the Easter Islanders shouldn't have been as competent, even if they never left land. — kwami (talk) 17:50, 7 September 2017 (UTC) PPS. If you want my speculation on why the Greeks wrote in B but the Rapa Nui in RB, it's due to the medium they wrote on. As our article boustrophedon puts it (in the introduction, before it devolves into gibberish), "it was a common way of writing in stone in Ancient Greece". But while our article doesn't mention it, B is not original to the Greeks. B inscriptions are found throughout the mideast. And all of these cultures commonly wrote on stone (think of the Ten Commandments). If you're writing graffiti on a boulder, you can't rotate it for RB. But the fluting of the RR glyphs suggest that the Rapanui wrote on panels of banana leaves. That makes rotation extremely simple when writing. Once people were proficient in reading, I don't know whether they bothered to rotate a text while they read it, but they easily could have, and certainly did so while they were learning to read. — kwami (talk) 18:03, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Once again, very informative.

I've made some adjustments to my section. First, I removed the boustrophedon segment, and relegated that idea to a caption in the gallery. Secondly, I changed the wording to emphasize that only Polaris proves astronomical knowledge from the northern hemisphere. In fact, Dietrich did identify [3] [4] with Polaris. While I haven't seen this in the paper, I understand that there was correspondence between Esen-Baur and Dietrich, which means the review reflects additional ideas that were not included (such as wind glyphs and other groupings). On the other hand, Esen-Baur may have added her own speculation into the review, and in fact she does insert her own ideas about the origin of the script (next to Barthel, Fischer, and Dietrich). I'd assume the glyph identifications are Dietrich, but it's plausible that the reverse boustrophedon theory is the product of Esen-Baur. Given that and other uncertainties, I altered the section accordingly.

For the record, Dietrich argues for wider Polynesian influence in rongorongo, from the Maori, Hawaiians, Tahitians, and Marquesans. He took astronomical terms from these various cultures, searched for matching glyphs, and found many parallels. This wasn't the only method of analysis, but it was an important part of the process. He also mentioned Hotu Matu'a, among other points of evidence for external origin. Dietrich emphasizes astronomy and the use of planetariums for researching rongorongo, but I don't recall any specific claim that northern constellations proved northern voyages or Hawaiian influence. So, the theory rests on Polynesian history and culture, as well as graphic analysis (as I said in the lede). The whole hemisphere/boustrophedon issue, even if completely irrelevant, doesn't negate the rest.

What you said about boustrophedon and their mediums of writing makes sense. Being steeped in western culture, I hadn't considered the difficulties of line returns, and the advantages of boustrophedon. They almost certainly practiced with banana leaves before carving wood, so it fits together. It's plausible that students used rotation until they mastered the glyphs well enough to read them in both orientations.

Let me know if there's anything else to discuss or improve. Bigdan201 (talk) 09:28, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

"He took astronomical terms from these various cultures, searched for matching glyphs, and found many parallels."

I believe this is a methodological flaw. It reminds me of Greenberg's Amerind, where he found spurious resemblances by mass comparison. Ruhlen even reconstructed morphological gender in proto-Amerind, based on supposed patterns in a single word (*t'a'na 'child'), which he then claimed proved Greenberg's conclusions. But the more languages you look at, without requiring systematic consistencies between languages, the more likely you are to find chance resemblances and think they say something about the ancestral system. If Dietrich had found his identities in Tahitian, and then again in Hawaiian, and then again in Samoan, Tongan and Maori, that would be good evidence that they were valid and pan-Polynesian. But to find one supposed identity in Tahitian, a different one in Hawaiian, yet others in Samoan, Tongan and Maori, etc., is an excellent way to find spurious patterns. At this point I suspect he's reading tea leaves.

Hmm, I bet if you looked across the world's language, you could find a language for which the word for each item in the basic word list contains the syllable /na/. You could then "prove" that the ancestral human language had a single word, *na, that was used for everything; or else that it had a thousand words, all of which were *na. That's too ridiculous to be believed, of course, but you can "prove" more credible ideas with the same methodology. — kwami (talk) 17:36, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't believe it is. At first, Dietrich tried to see if one culture could explain all the glyphs, and found that he needed a pan-Polynesian approach. He argues that the Polynesian 'Wanderung' led to a variety of cultural information that was ultimately linked together; and that the rongorongo 'masters' intentionally used the variety of star-names from this background for the purpose of encryption. Polynesia, for all its variety, shows a lot of commonalities (mana, tapu, common language family, etc) which supports the "Polynesian Volkerwanderung" concept. There may also be commonalities between the various star-names -- for example, I believe the myth of pillars supporting the sky is found throughout Polynesia, and Dietrich identifies the cardinal directions and some major stars as 'pillars'. Given the nature of Polynesian culture and the encryption concept, there is systematic consistency in this approach.

I think the Amerind theory is not a good comparison. Human languages are full of convergent evolution, coincidences, and false cognates. Trying to tie together languages with just a few features is bound to lead to mistakes -- this is probably why the Altaic hypothesis is mostly discredited. The stellar notation hypothesis is not nearly as abstract or open-ended. Either there is a clear connection between the glyphs and various Polynesian star-names, or there is not. Given the background described above, and a high degree of consistency between star-names and glyphs, it must be seen as a valid hypothesis, rather than spurious coincidence. Bigdan201 (talk) 11:19, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

I was hoping the RR online study group would get back to me on this, but they seem to be defunct. Meanwhile, besides there being a lot of phrasing that doesn't actually mean much, this just doesn't pass the smell test. Reducing to the basics of his graphic analysis, since that's as good a guess as anyone's, but with only a summary of the meanings he ascribes, since statistically those are clearly nonsense. As for meaningless verbiage, e.g. "He speculates that it was his background in graphic design that allowed him to perceive this pattern". What pattern? That there are compounds? Lots of people think there are compounds. Much of the verbiage is filler like this, either meaningless or outright BS, with little having any comprehensible content. So, even some of the stuff I thought I'd save is going to need to go. I'm keeping some of the illustrations, but warning the reader that there is no evidence they are correct. If the warning is rejected as OR, I'm afraid the illustrations will need to go as well. We can't present obvious nonsense without warning. I was hoping I'd have some feedback by authors in the field, but I've waited long enough. — kwami (talk) 05:48, 18 September 2018 (UTC) 100px Leaving this here for now. Xcalibur (talk) 18:37, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

@Bigdan201: Unfortunately, non-free content is not allowed to be used (i.e., displayed) on article talk pages per WP:NFCC#9 or WP:TPG#Non-free images; you may link to the file's page (like I did), but that's about it. Moreover, non-free content is required to be used in at least one article per WP:NFCC#7, and this file isn't currently being used in any. This means it will be tagged for speedy deletion per WP:F5 as orphaned non-free use. Files deleted from Wikipedia aren't gone forever, but rather only hidden from public view; such files can be restored at a later date if they qualify per WP:REFUND. If you want to keep a copy of this file for your personal records, you probably should download it before it's deleted and store some place other than Wikipedia. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:31, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Section deleted

I moved a reduced summary of Dietrich up to the 'fanciful decipherments' section, as it's patent nonsense, but then realized that he was already listed among the crackpots not worth discussing, and had been when this article went under FA review. So I've now deleted him entirely, leaving only the original mention in the footnote. I also deleted some unintelligible gibberish by a Korean author (apparently self-posted) about genetic comparisons to the Indus Valley. Amazing how self-perpetuating nonsense can be. — kwami (talk) 04:47, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

"Patent nonsense"? I beg your pardon, but I don't believe there's been a widely accepted reading of rongorongo (if there is, I'd be very interested in finding out). Until there's an established reading, the field should remain open to various attempts of decipherment, provided they have a reasonable degree of plausibility and scholarship backing them up. On those counts, I believe Dietrich is more than adequate. How is this "obvious nonsense" or "mostly filler"? He presents a deconstruction of how the glyph system works, assigns possible meanings, and justifies these meanings with logical arguments and connections. Moreover, it is a novel approach to the glyphs, and the article could benefit from an alternate perspective (ie that it is a notation system, not a writing system as most presume). Furthermore, what does OR have to do with this? I quite clearly sourced both the paper (in German), and the scholarly journal review; the review in the literature should certainly be enough to qualify this for inclusion. If you'd like me to explain the Dietrich theory further, I'd be willing to do so. In the meantime, I'm perplexed by this rash act of deletionism. Xcalibur (talk) 15:30, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

I also note that you went ahead and did this without conferring with me first, and without even notifying me. If I hadn't checked in when I did, I might've missed this, and the one copyrighted image I used could've been deleted, causing me inconvenience. This encyclopedia is a collaborative project, and in the spirit of cooperation, you should've dropped me a line before purging the content I put up. Xcalibur (talk) 04:01, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Ah, you're Bigdan201. I was wondering why you took offense. Yes, you're right, I should have notified you. I'm sorry. The FA passed with Dietrich ID'd as a crackpot in the 'Fanciful decipherments' section. Either I didn't notice/remember at the time you added the Dietrich section, or I thought to give it some time because you had quoted me as saying that we can post s.t. when s.o. says "By God, he's got it!" What I should have said, of course, is when s.o. who has a clue what they're talking about says that -- such as any of the people cited in the article as having expressed reasoned opinions on other attempted decipherments. Such a review would of course explain how we know he got it right, just as they have explained how we know that Fischer etc. got it wrong. But, because those were my words, I thought I'd give it a chance until the RR study group could respond. Unfortunately, they appear to be defunct. Nonetheless, Dietrich is obvious nonsense, and unless he gets more attention (like that other crackpot, Fischer, did), he doesn't warrant any more attention than the mention he had in the fn when this went through FA. Or any of the dozens of others who have claimed decipherments that haven't gone anywhere. As for deletionism, there are at least four other crackpots who've been added to this article (usually by themselves), and they've all been deleted as well, despite cries of cultural genocide, imperial bias, etc. But, really, Dietrich should have been here at all, not unless they get some traction, as WP isn't supposed to be experimental. I suppose we could leave a quick summary in the 'Fanciful decipherments' section along with Fyoderova. — kwami (talk) 04:30, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm willing to pardon that. But yes, I should've been notified of a sweeping change regarding the content I put up.

I notice that the article was promoted to Featured status in late 2008. The scholarly review supportive of Dietrich's findings was published in early 2011. Since Dietrich wasn't in the literature at the time of review, naturally he would be ignored. That situation has since changed. Wikipedia is built on RS, and the fact that Dietrich is supported by a scholarly secondary source should be enough to qualify his work for inclusion.

Did the 'fanciful decipherments' section quote a source explicitly rejecting Dietrich? I don't see any such. Again, this would've been before he was reviewed in the literature, so it's probable that he was simply ignored, especially because the paper is in German, giving it less currency in the Anglophone world.

Dietrich is not "obvious nonsense" at all. While he's not the only scholar to describe compounding of glyphs, he does so in a very insightful and consistent manner, which almost certainly describes how the glyphs were designed. There is more room to question the 'notation hypothesis' identifying glyphs as symbols for stars, planets, compass points, and other concepts related to calendars and astronomy. However, this is backed up by a number of intuitive connections, a certain perspective on Polynesian history, astronomical research, and other evidence. Notably, this idea would fit with the 'lunar calendar' already discovered in RR. At the very least, you have to admit it's a more reasonable conjecture than wife murder, digging up yams, or sexual relations between fish and birds. Once again, Dietrich is reviewed in the literature, and his arguments are sound, and that should be enough for inclusion.

BTW, I'm not Dietrich, nor have I had any communication with him, so there's no conflict of interest -- I'm just someone who is interested in the mystery of rongorongo. I would like to restore my material, but I'll confer with you first. Xcalibur (talk) 06:58, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Adding on, I thought the rule was: "get published, get approval from a reputable source, then we'll include it". You seem to be adding the step of "and get rubber-stamped by the arbiter kwamikagami". No offense, but I don't think that's necessary. You don't have to like or agree with something for it to go up on wiki.

De Laat, to my knowledge, is self-published, which does not carry anywhere near the same weight as a review in a reputable scholarly journal. So there's no reason to lump the two together -- in terms of reliability and sourcing, Dietrich is on much firmer ground. And to reiterate, the journal review came after the FA review, so the situation has changed. Xcalibur (talk) 02:49, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

• I gave you a chance to respond. Because you didn't, and because the Fair Use deadline was looming, and because there was no justification for deletion in the first place, I've restored the Dietrich content. I don't appreciate your obstructionism, although I do appreciate your addition of inline glyphs, which I've incorporated. I hope you'll be willing to enter into dialogue. Xcalibur (talk) 17:06, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

I didn't think that someone would take "get published, get approval from a reputable source, then we'll include it" to mean get approval from just anyone. Any reputable academic review would explain *how* he got it right, and this one didn't. Just like the reviews of Fyederova and Fischer explain how they got it wrong. That's not adding conditions, just spelling out a condition I thought was obvious -- and because you hadn't understood it, I left it up for a while out of courtesy. It's not a matter of IDONTLIKEIT, but of posting bullshit on WP as if it had academic value or consensus. As for the example of Dietrich as a crackpot, this article was written in collaboration with the RR study group, which consisted of linguists and epigraphers who know as much as anyone in the world about RR. That's who I contacted in the hope for a response so that I could be polite in rejecting this, but unfortunately the group is defunct, and no posts are going through. And it being in German has nothing to do with this -- Barthel was in German! and plenty of the RR group spoke German. — kwami (talk) 17:24, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Just anyone? That approval comes from the Anthropos Institut, which published a positive review (and the original paper was published in Asian and African Studies). When it comes to RS, it doesn't get much more reliable than peer-reviewed, reputable scholarly journals -- if it's good enough for them, it should be good enough for Wikipedia. In fact, the review compares and contrasts Dietrich with Barthel & Fischer, and describes the methodology and the strengths of the hypothesis. This should be apparent if you read through the material, or even the content I put up. That's why I gave you the benefit of the doubt, and assumed you dismissed this out of personal bias. Yes, Barthel was German, but he was also one of the earlier researchers, and thus got more attention; the language barrier may still have played a role. The Dietrich hypothesis is a valid possibility which is neither proven nor disproven. Since there is no translation of rongorongo that has achieved widespread consensus support, the door should remain open to different ideas, especially one with plenty of evidence and logic backing it up.

In regards to crackpots: there was a note which lumped Dietrich in with other names, and the source backing it was just the second part of the original paper. Anyone could've put him there, and I don't know of any reputable rejection of the Dietrich hypothesis.

In regards to your content: where did you get the idea that he 'failed to find star names in Rapa Nui'? I never said that. For all I know, he might've drawn connections with Rapa Nui star-names, and in any case, he found star-names in Tahitian, a language with heavy influence on modern Rapa Nui. And why did you call the method 'mass comparison'? The whole idea is that rongorongo was a product of a larger Polynesian cultural exchange which took place centuries before European arrival. There is, again, evidence and logic backing this idea. Assuming it's correct, it also means that drawing comparisons throughout Polynesia is a valid method (as opposed to comparisons with the Indus Valley script, which is certainly not valid).

In conclusion, it's evident that the Dietrich hypothesis is a valid proposal, and it is suitable for Wikipedia. Xcalibur (talk) 18:33, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Placing the image on talk page is not permitted, as I mentioned in the edit summary. Therefore, I've restored my content. I would've kept it down until the discussion was concluded out of goodwill, but circumstances are not permitting. Hopefully you understand. Xcalibur (talk) 03:47, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

You say, For all I know, he might've drawn connections with Rapa Nui star-names. Sorry, but that's nonsense. If he found such connections, you should present them. Indeed, Esen-Baur (from here on "EB") should have presented them. A failure of such magnitude would indicate utter incompetence. So, either the EB review can be disregarded as incompetent, or Dietrich (from here on "D") didn't find any connections with Rapa Nui. And that is a very serious problem. Then, you say in any case, he found star-names in Tahitian, a language with heavy influence on modern Rapa Nui. That rather supports *my* argument, don't you think? RR wasn't written on modern, post-colonial Easter Island. It predates colonial Tahitian influence, so that influence cannot explain it. The fact that D relies exclusively on other cultures indicates that his hypothesis does not work for Easter Island, and the fact that EB does not understand that very elementary point is disconcerting. Not quite as bad as crediting extra-terrestrials, but based on the same kind of irrationality. Pozdniakov, among others, gave evidence that *if* RR is a script, it couldn't be a simple syllabary or logography. EB notes a couple times that D says RR is not consistent with a syllabary as if he were saying something new or that supported his hypothesis. It doesn't. RR very possibly is not a script. So? That's not news to anyone. It's remarkably easy to publish garbage in peer-reviewed journals. Hopefully JAAS had someone knowledgeable review the submission, but since that was anonymous, who knows? And there have been a number of scandals recently where there has been no peer review in articles appearing in supposedly peer-reviewed journals. From EB's comments, it sounds like the editor of JAAS published D because he felt he deserved greater publicity, not because of peer-review approval. That's a noble sentiment, but is one of the reasons that we expect WP editors to use secondary sources. (Which indeed is what you're doing by citing EB.) Which brings us to the review in Anthropos. I have no idea of the quality of that journal, but the review is not promising. First, EB compares Dietrich favorably to Fischer, but Fischer's a crackpot. Then she compares him to Barthel, showing remarkable ignorance of what Barthel said. At least, I hope it's ignorance. I suspect (and it's just a suspicion) that she knows nothing of Barthel, and just took Dietrich at his word -- but Dietrich doesn't seem to understand Barthel either. They both seem to be under the impression that Barthel classified RR glyphs, and then criticize his classification -- but he never did that. He just assigned numbers to what he suspected, impressionistically, were glyphs and their variants, but AFAICT Barthel made no claim that they were basic in anything other than appearance, or that the decades and centuries were anything other than superficial graphic similarities (glyphs that look like people, glyphs that look like animals, etc). Sure, we can't use Barthel as a classification, but everyone knows that! Admittedly, figures 5 and 6 are mildly interesting. Pozdniakov attempted to determine which glyphs were basic based on their statistical behavior. Even though he might well be wrong (and others haven't picked up on his results), that's at least something that others can evaluate. I don't know how anyone could evaluate Dietrich's lists, since no methodology is provided, or indeed why we should think they're an improvement over Barthel. Esen-Baur constantly refers to Dietrich's "analysis" but, unlike in her coverage of Pozdniakov, never explains what that analysis is. The best we get is phrases like "Dietrich's studies showed", which tells us nothing at all. This is simple incompetence for any reviewer. The whole review article reads like a middle-school book report, which rather than analyzing a text merely summarizes the plot. The "method of combining" section is so elementary that I find the space spent on it remarkable. Especially since it's not original to Dietrich. Basically everyone sees compound glyphs, and that elements of one may be fused with another. So what? Does D provide any evidence that his intuition is better than others'? From what EB says, apparently not. Again, she says "these examples show" -- but in order to say that, you need to give some reason to think that D's readings are correct, which EB never does. She sees to simply assume they're correct. She then finishes up the section with a comparison to Macri, another crackpot. The fact that EB does not appear to recognize that suggests that she has no idea what she's talking about, again suggesting that her information comes from D himself. That doesn't make for a critical review. Indeed, at the end of the review she notes that the article is based on an interview with D and that credit should go to him. In other words, it doesn't sound like a review at all. We certainly wouldn't use a newspaper interview with D to establish the accuracy of his original article, so why should we use this? The "content" section then starts with "having established these structural insights" ... no-one's established anything! Again, the ridiculous claims suggest ignorance and incompetence on EB's part. To summarize a para on p446, D couldn't find any support for his analysis of RR on Eastern Island, and had to go to other cultures to find parallels. This proves the influence of those cultures on Easter Island. -- No, *first* you demonstrate the influence of those cultures on Easter Island, *then* you can find parallels to RR in those demonstrated influences. That's so basic that it's amazing that EB doesn't recognize it -- again showing utter incompetence. EB makes the profound statement that the Polynesians did not concern themselves with stars they could not see. Ya think? There's a lot of this, paragraphs of text almost entirely empty of meaning. "Dietrich has been able to identify dozens of stars, planets and constellations among the rongorongo glyphs by the above mentioned [sic] method." Again, WHAT METHOD? Looking things up in a dictionary? Seriously? At least in this section she says what the "method" was, as opposed to the section on identifying the glyphs, which apparently was based on no method at all. "The Polynesians named [Betelgeuse] Ana-varu (Tahitian) and [it] was given the description 'the pillar to sit by'." So, the Tahitians are "the Polynesians"? And no, it wasn't named A and given the description B, ana-varu *means* the pillar to sit by. Such sloppiness is unacceptable in academic writing. And the review (interview?) continues like that, merely reporting what D says as if he's actually demonstrated something. No indication of how we know he's right, just a book-report plot summary. I'm no going to bother with the rest. This "review" is not a critical review at all, just a summary. The basis of any decipherment, regardless of whether it's a script or a notation system, is its applicability to other texts. D does not do this, so there's no reason to think he got a single thing right. — kwami (talk) 04:37, 28 September 2018 (UTC) When I said last year that we need to find someone who says, "By God, he's got it!", what I didn't think to clarify was that we need to find a reputable, critical review that says that. A combination interview and plot summary is not a critical academic review. — kwami (talk) 04:43, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I'll get back to this shortly. Xcalibur (talk) 08:24, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I was wondering, after I signed off last night, if I was being too harsh, that maybe EB was perfectly competent and simply never meant her article to be an academic review, but rather just a summary, like what you were doing with the D section in this WP article. But at several points she talks about how he's "demonstrated" readings, when all he apparently did was make an educated guess. (Star A in language B means C, and C might could be represented graphically by glyph D, so let's assign meaning A to glyph D and see if it works -- except that he never checks to see if it actually works, and neither does EB.) AFAICT, there is no demonstration of any of the readings in Dietrich, and if there were, any competent reviewer would show how they worked and how we can (or can't) tell that they're correct (or can tell that they're incorrect). EB never does that, but simply states that D's demonstrated things as if a mere claim of accomplishment were sufficient to demonstrate an accomplishment. — kwami (talk) 18:11, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

As a thought experiment, I thought I'd try correlating RR glyphs with European astro names. It's amazing -- there are dozens of matches! This proves that ancient Europeans (maybe Etruscans or Basque fishermen?) were in contact with Easter Island before the colonial era. For example, glyph 09 is a war club, which we can identify with the planet Mars, the god of war. Glyph 28, a vulva, is of course Venus, the god of love. 240 indicates the fleet feet of Mercury. Glyph 07 is a crown, indicating Jupiter, the king of gods -- the correspondences are already better than the Polynesian ones! And that's just with the planets. An upside-down 09 is anti-Mars -- that is, the star Antares. 660 is a swan, that is, the constellation Cygnus. (It may have come to be identified with a frigate bird after arrival on Easter Island, where there are no swans.) 14 is the Southern Cross. 730, the twin fish, is Pisces, while 700, the single fish, is Pisces Austrinus. 62 indicates the star at the end of the tail of Ursa Minor -- that is, the North Star. 53 is the river Eridanus, 69 is the arrow of Sagittarius, and 02 is the belt of Orion. Obviously, Easter Island star lore came from Europe, not Polynesia.

Other than, of course, my hypothesis being utterly ridiculous, can you show that Dietrich's identifications are any better? It's easy to see shapes in clouds. The question is whether there is any predictive power to a decipherment. I haven't bothered to try, but I predict that using my decipherment to read the tablets, even assuming RR is a notational system and not true writing, would produce gibberish. Does Dietrich's fare any better? And why does EB not address that most elementary of issues? — kwami (talk) 18:34, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

In her conclusion, EB calls the couple readings of glyphs that Barthel got from Easter Islanders "preposterous", but she doesn't explain how she came to that conclusion. (Personally, I suspect that the islanders could not read RR and merely said what the glyphs looked like to them, but they were the heirs to the graphic tradition that produced RR, so who knows?) At the very end of the article, she says, "it is up to the experts to falsify or validate Dietrich's hypothesis", and named several "experts" that reviewed this WP article as it was being prepared for FA. That is the very criterion I gave, though I didn't word it that explicitly, and is the reason I tried to contact those experts again for the Dietrich section. And it of course also an admission on her part that EB doesn't have the expertise to evaluate Dietrich's hypothesis, and therefore her article is not the confirmation that we need. — kwami (talk) 18:53, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

I would've responded by now, except for extenuating circumstances. Rest assured I will respond to all of these points in the near future. Xcalibur (talk) 04:48, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

The main point is the last one, that, in EB's own words, her article is not a validation of D, and that there is (as yet) no validation of his hypothesis. That leaves EB as what she appears to be, an English-language summary of D.

Sorry, I've wasted a lot of our time focusing on the details. It is our responsibility to evaluate sources, based on how they're received in the academic community, but in this case there has been no review by the academic community, just an English-language summary advocating such a review. — kwami (talk) 18:55, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Please ping me when you respond. — kwami (talk) 06:03, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

Pardon me, I meant to respond earlier. It was a matter of bad timing, with a confluence of irl issues drawing me away. Now I can give you my full attention.

Rapa Nui star-names: Again, I'd have to pore through the original paper again. In any case, this is not an important point, because rongorongo did not originate on Rapa Nui -- it was a product of the Polynesian "Völkerwanderung", the thriving trade and cultural exchange across Pacific islands that occurred centuries before European arrival. This is the justification underpinning pan-Polynesian analysis.

script: Most attempts to decipher RR assume it is a script of some kind. It is notable that Dietrich departs from this assumption.

peer-review: It's true, scholarly journals are not infallible. However, they have a high degree of reliability as sources, which is what matters for Wikipedia.

comparison: Fischer and Barthel are major scholars in this field, so it makes to compare and contrast Dietrich with a couple of the most well-known works.

Barthel: Of course Barthel's numbering is arbitrary, the point is that this arbitrary numbering obscures the genuine structure; in spite of this, Dietrich still gave credit to Barthel for numbering the glyphs (p. 442)

methodology/analysis: On p.442, left column, it states that he identified single glyphs, and from there discovered the rules for how glyphs were compounded, using the principles of graphic design; these rules are also mentioned on p.458, right column. On p.443, right column, EB states that D’s list is “tested against the specific body of Polynesian literature, ethnographica, and language pertaining to the celestial sphere and navigation.” Did you read this properly? DYRTP?

combining: Of course, D is not the only one to have insights into the structure of RR, there have been others. Macri is cited as an example, although EB points out that Macri supports the script hypothesis, which is presumably incorrect. D’s findings, and the consistency of the proposed rules, is shown in multiple examples on pp. 444-445.

review: Giving credit to Dietrich (among others mentioned) doesn’t negate this as a review. There is in fact evaluation and criticism, such as the conclusion on pp. 458-459, and p. 441, right column. Did you read this properly? DYRTP?

easter island/culture: As already mentioned, this hypothesis is predicated on the idea that rongorongo was not invented on Easter Island, but was a product of the Polynesian golden age during the late medieval era. This is mentioned right there on p.446, left column (and the very end of p. 445). Did you read this properly? DYRTP?

stars/couldnt see: EB says this is obvious, and the statement ties directly into which stars would likely be represented in RR. DYRTP?

what method/dictionary: see p.447. DYRTP?

anavaru: Tahitians are a Polynesian culture. And that sloppy phrasing on p.447, right column, is not the fault of EB, it’s quoted from a source, Makemson. DYRTP?

applicability: p.457 provides a tentative reading based on the Dietrich hypothesis. Another point of methodology (studying in a planetarium) is mentioned here. DYRTP? It’s also really interesting that the ‘lunar calendar’ examined by other researchers dovetails nicely with the Dietrich hypothesis.

too harsh: no, all you did was delete all my work, call it BS and garbage, then cross-examine me and demand that I defend the Dietrich hypothesis as if it were my own thesis. not harsh at all!

demonstration: see p.457, as mentioned above. DYRTP?

I don’t mean to be rude or condescending with my DYRTP (did you read this properly?) comments. However, it seems to me like you skimmed over the review, looking randomly for faults, without making a good-faith effort to entertain its ideas. I simply wanted to point out those times you seemed inattentive to the text.

thought experiment: yes, that is ridiculous, for multiple reasons. this is clearly a bad-faith analogy. The connections you drew between rongorongo and Western astronomy were very far-fetched, relying on multiple tangents to work. For example, associating a war club with the god of war (Mars), or a crown with the king of gods (Jupiter), requires making leaps of faith, which are not required for the Dietrich hypothesis to work. You’re also operating backwards — Dietrich identifies relevant and applicable star-names, then seeks correspondences in RR; while you take the glyph first and try to find matches. To claim that those flimsy coincidences are stronger correspondences than identifying the star ‘pillar to sit by’ with a seated figure by a pillar, or ‘pillar to fish by’ with a fish on a line connected to a pillar (among many others) is downright disingenuous. Finally, there is no historical connection between Western astronomy and the Polynesians (but you knew that already); there is a connection between rongorongo and Polynesian astronomy, because RR is a product of Polynesia and was not invented on Rapa Nui — a point you seem to be ignoring. As I said above, see for yourself on p. 457 for an example.

Barthel: a couple examples are provided on pp.458-459. Moreover, Metoro’s readings are unreliable at best, and most likely fiction, as mentioned in the article and the original paper.

main point: As I said, it is a review, not a summary; evaluation and criticism is provided. Just because the hypothesis isn’t decisively proven doesn’t make it invalid. Indeed, EB states in the conclusion that it’s a ‘strong case for abandoning the script hypothesis’, that it has achieved insights, and ‘made possible real advancements in understanding rongorongo glyphs’.

details/sources: it’s fine, I don’t mind discussing details. There is in fact a review in a reputable scholarly journal, along with an academic paper published in another journal. Given this, and all the other points I’ve made, the Dietrich content is worthy of inclusion on Wikipedia. Xcalibur (talk) 06:53, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Rapa Nui star-names: there is zero evidence that rongorongo did not originate on Rapa Nui.

script: of course, because you're unlikely to be able to decipher it if it's not a script, and this article is about decipherment. But that doesn't mean there's any consensus it is a script -- seems to be just the opposite, actually.

peer-review: except that there is no peer-review of the validity of Dietrich, that's what EB says we need!

comparison: Fischer isn't a major scholar, he's just promoted himself a lot. (He's the greatest decipherer in history!) And Barthel didn't decipher anything, so the comparison is silly.

Barthel: what "genuine structure"? first EB has to show D's claimed structure is genuine.

methodology/analysis: that's not a method, that's just seeing superficial patterns and assuming they're meaningful, without any method of determining if they are meaningful.

combining: there's nothing original here.

review: pp. 458-459: this is what I already noted was idiotic. p. 441: again, noting that Krupa thought it was worthwhile to disseminate D, in case there's anything to it, is not a critical evaluation of D.

easter island/culture: ibid. Statements are not evidence. If I say we'll run out of water because the world is flat and all the water is draining off, that's not evidence that the world is flat.

stars/couldnt see: don't know what you're referring to, and can't be bothered to try to trace it back, since there's nothing to your arguments.

what method/dictionary: if that's all there is to his method, then we certainly shouldn't be wasting space on him. E.g., I proved that rongorongo comes from Europe, but that's not worth anything either.

anavaru: ibid. That's like interpreting ogham as Russian and Albanian names because they're all in Europe.

applicability: that's not application to new texts. planetarium: again, that's hardly a "methodology". How does the ‘lunar calendar’ dovetail with D? I don't see anything about that. EB doesn't even note which texts we're looking at.

too harsh: not defend it as your own thesis, just provide some reason to think it's not bullshit. and you've failed to do that.

demonstration: you'll have to be clearer. I don't see anything. And where does EB explain how e.g. Arcturus "governs" Hawaii's latitude?

thought experiment: "You’re also operating backwards" — actually, I did it in the same direction w many of them, not that it should matter which way we go about it. "there is a connection between rongorongo and Polynesian astronomy, because RR is a product of Polynesia and was not invented on Rapa Nui" — again, you're stating the thing you need to prove and then claiming that your statement proves it. There's no reason to think RR was not invented on Rapa Nui, and even if there were, that does not indicate a connection to astronomy.

Barthel: yeah, what I just said.

main point: Sorry, but stating that it's "a review, not a summary" does not make it a review. EB saying it's ‘made possible real advancements in understanding rongorongo glyphs’ without demonstrating any of those supposed advancements is not an evaluation -- that is just a summary!

EB calls for D to be validated/falsified, she didn't validate him herself (though she made judgemental statements as if she had critically evaluated him). Some of the people she suggests might validate/falsify him already did. That's why he was relegated to a footnote in the 'fanciful' section. Granted, that was before D's latest paper, but EB hasn't added anything of substance. Sorry, but there's no methodology, unless you count such trivial things as looking up names in a dictionary, no verification of results, no application to other texts -- not even any identification of the texts that were used! -- in other words, there's nothing demonstrable to this. It's just another apparently crackpot claim that doesn't deserve any more attention than the experts EB called for already gave it. Find an actual critical evaluation, by someone with the knowledge to make that evaluation (in other words, just what EB said we need), and we can consider it. She suggested five people. I don't know who Farmer or Bouissac are, but I'd certainly accept the other three. Really, anyone with the competence to say, "D claims X, and we can (dis)confirm that thus". — kwami (talk) 09:00, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Pardon me, I wasn't expecting such a prompt response.

Rapa Nui star-names: there's plenty of evidence, including the legend of Hotu Matua which states that he brought rongorongo tablets to Rapa Nui from elsewhere. There are a number of other arguments for this in the original paper.

script: It is commonly assumed to be a script. Deciphering RR without that assumption is notable.

peer-review: EB provides a review of D's paper, both of which are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. This should be enough.

comparison: Fischer and Barthel are major researchers in this field, so it makes sense to use them to compare and contrast.

Barthel/genuine structure: It's explained right there, last paragraph of p. 442. DYRTP? There are single glyphs, combined glyphs, and dependent glyphs (which are always grafted on). Either these categories describe rongorongo or they don't, so it's falsifiable.

methodology/analysis: Graphic analysis is in fact a method. Either the glyphs are designed according to D's rules, or they aren't, so it's falsifiable. The original paper goes into much more detail on the process of graphical analysis, but EB and the illustrations I cropped should suffice.

combining: nothing original? While D isn't the only one to seek patterns, he has done so with greater insight than other research I've seen, which is notable.

review: pp. 458-459: you personally calling it "idiotic" does not make it so. p. 441: did you read the whole paragraph?

easter island/culture: of course, but there's plenty of evidence underpinning the pan-Polynesian view. Barthel's research is mentioned in that passage, and there's plenty more argumentation in the original paper. Of course, anyone can make any claim, but claims backed by evidence should be taken into consideration. The Hotu Matua legend is a statement which may or may not be true, but its telling is a point of evidence with larger implications.

stars/couldnt see: if you can't be bothered to read, then there's only so much I can do for you. You sarcastically criticized the statement that 'Polynesians would only be concerned with visible stars', as if it were a filler line stating the sky is blue. This statement is part of a passage, and that passage describes narrowing down the night sky to the stars & phenomena most likely to be represented in RR.

what method/dictionary: D's method involved both extensive research and graphic analysis (both of which are covered more comprehensively in the paper). No, you didn't 'prove' anything with the bad-faith example of European astronomy, because 1. there's no cultural connection, and 2. the connections you drew were much weaker with many more steps of supposition.

anavaru: you're ignoring the larger cultural context of Polynesian cultural interaction and the Golden Age.

applicability: That is in fact, an application of the 'stellar notation' concept to a line of rongorongo, with consistent results. There's much more of this in the original paper. Use of a planetarium is part of the method of checking RR against astronomical knowledge. As for the lunar calendar, do you honestly not see the connection? D claims RR is a system for stellar notation, and the lunar calendar is perfectly consistent with this.

too harsh: I've provided plenty of support for this, notably RS. You have not demonstrated that it's BS, and you haven't shown me any RS refuting this.

demonstration: p. 457 has a tentative reading. there are other examples of how the combining rules work, and how the star-names correspond with glyphs, which should be apparent. Arcturus is the zenith star for Hawaii, which should be clear enough.

thought experiment: you're disregarding my demonstration that your comparison is, at best, apples and oranges. I repeat: No, you didn't 'prove' anything with the bad-faith example of European astronomy, because 1. there's no cultural connection, and 2. the connections you drew were much weaker with many more steps of supposition.

connection: There is, in fact, plenty of evidence for a pan-Polynesian origin for RR. You are correct in saying that this does not necessarily prove the astronomy hypothesis, however, evidence and argumentation is provided on pp. 446-447. To summarize: RR does not resemble a script, which opens the possibility that it is a notation system. What would the Polynesians use this notation system for? Based on the connections drawn between astronomy and RR by Barthel et al, the emphasis of Polynesian lore on astronomy, and the practical needs of navigating the Pacific without modern aids, a reasonable conjecture is that it is based on astronomy.

Barthel: Those examples are there to show how other methods have gone astray, as opposed to the consistent evidence for D.

main point: The statements under Dietrich's Methodology and Findings, and Conclusion, are in fact evaluative in nature. And those advancements have been demonstrated, you should've been able to glean that from the section I put up.

validated/falsified: Once again, just because this is not a 100% decipherment doesn't negate its significance as research.

footnote/fanciful: All I saw was Dietrich's name mentioned in a footnote, and the source given was the original paper. That doesn't mean anything -- any editor might've put that there. Just because someone dismissed Dietrich while writing the article (without backing this up) doesn't mean D is refuted; likewise, just because you disagree with or dislike the theory, doesn't mean it's refuted.

As for the rest, I've already explained the methodology, analysis, demonstrations, and evidence. The original paper contains much more of this, including many direct references to known artifacts. I've provided RS (primary and notably secondary, both peer-reviewed scholarly journals); you have yet to provide any refutation backed by RS. Xcalibur (talk) 02:31, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Your "explanations" are nothing of the sort. You don't even appear to understand what a scientific methodology is. It's not up to me to refute you, it's up to you to demonstrate your claims. You've repeatedly failed to do so. By her own admission, EB is not competent to judge. You need to find someone who is. Until then, I'm done with this discussion. It's a huge waste of time, and there's no end to arguing with crackpots or those promoting them. — kwami (talk) 06:51, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

First of all, you chose this long-winded format, not I. Secondly, I've explained everything quite adequately, and demonstrated my claims here and in the section, it is you who seems unwilling to understand. You're intelligent, so I know you're not unable, but blatant misunderstandings (like taking the line about visible stars out of context) reveal to me that you skimmed through the text, looking for nitpicks and faults, and you are unwilling to engage with these ideas or even consider that they may be correct.

EB was published in a scholarly journal, a reliable secondary source. Anthropos Institut judged her to be competent, and that is what matters.

As an aside, what do you know about the early history of rongorongo, or of the time-period when the Polynesians were settling islands across the Pacific? There is alot of ambiguity there, so the speculations on RR's origins are justified.

I put the Dietrich section up in order to make the article more interesting and informative. Do you assent to me restoring the Dietrich content, or do you not assent? I want to be certain on this point. Xcalibur (talk) 09:48, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

• If you persist in status quo stonewalling and obstructing, then I shall have to seek resolution through formal channels. Keep in mind that I have presented WP:RS in support of my position, while you have not; moreover, you have not demonstrated that there is any reason to delete the content (other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT). Therefore, I believe I have a stronger argument. If you are willing to continue discussion and/or agree to restoration of the Dietrich section, then these steps won't be necessary. Therefore, I'm giving you one more chance to make amends during talk page discussion. May I have a definite statement from you? Xcalibur (talk) 10:48, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm opposed to including Dietrich. Experts on RR, one of whom EB actually mentions in her summary (Richard Sproat, a colleague of Michael Witzel and Steve Farmer, who she also mentions, and of Jacques Guy who helped prepare this article for FA), have already reviewed his coverage in this article, and found his dicipherment to be fanciful and not worth mentioning except in passing in that footnote. EB is not a critical review, it's an English-language summary. If D had written in English, EB would've had nothing to write. She even admits that's she's not competent to judge. That's why she suggests engaging experts who are competent to judge. EB says, "Especially helpful would be engaging such experts [as] Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel [who have] seen advances when research is open to new methods, including those put forth by outsiders." When I asked for comment again back in July, Sproat commented, "So if Dietrich is right, then the rongorongo festivals recorded by Routledge (from old men who had observed them as children) involved sitting around chanting about astronomical, calendrical and navigational data?" A snarky comment is not formal falsification (which is why I didn't mention it then, I was waiting for something more substantive), but it's hardly a ringing endorsement. And evidently not worth his time to comment on further. D doesn't meet notability. The sources don't satisfy RS. And there's a WP:FRINGE/WP:PSCI problem. Adding crackpot material to WP for "interest" is only justified when it's notable as such (e.g. flat earth), as otherwise it risks misleading the reader into thinking there's something to it, as well as cluttering the article. — kwami (talk) 21:34, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

I can't say I'm surprised, but I wanted to be definite on this. As I said, that footnote simply name-dropped Dietrich with a link to the original paper, and anyone could've thrown that in there. I don't think it's significant, especially considering how obscure that reference is. And I beg to differ, EB is a review; her request for further peer-review does not negate that. Speaking of which, when this article passed FA review, the EB review didn't exist yet, only the original German paper; so the situation has changed.

As for that quip from Sproat, who knows? It's possible. Relevant is this section: Rongorongo#Decipherment, and I quote: "apart from a portion of one tablet which has been shown to have to do with a lunar Rapa Nui calendar, none of the texts are understood." & "The prevailing opinion is that rongorongo is not true writing but proto-writing, or even a more limited mnemonic device for genealogy, choreography, navigation, astronomy, or agriculture." so there is already some support for this concept.

Being published in scholarly journals, particularly with a secondary source, does meet notability. Scholarly journals are in fact RS. And WP:FRINGE/WP:PSCI doesn't really apply here, because there is no scientific consensus on RR -- it's a work in progress. If this article consisted only of successful breakthroughs with widespread support, then this article wouldn't exist.

Once again, I'm convinced that the Dietrich content is justified for inclusion, and have not seen compelling arguments against it. I'm willing to negotiate on this -- for example, if you think the section takes up too much space, perhaps you could help me scale down the illustrations (which make up the bulk of it). But if you will not come to terms, then this discussion will continue at higher levels, hopefully with your willing participation. Xcalibur (talk) 06:19, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

It occurred to me that the Dietrich section was a bit long to scroll through, due to the large illustrations. By reformatting and resizing, I've got it down to under 4 screen-lengths, comparable to Pozdniakov (which has more text). If your concern is article structure, would you accept a more concise version instead?

I'll give you time to respond and continue discussion if you wish. Xcalibur (talk) 13:36, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

You did raise a couple of valid points amidst all the misunderstandings. It's true, first you support the pan-Polynesian hypothesis, THEN you build from there and draw connections; while the RR connections support the idea, they can't be used as a base. As it happens, there's plenty of evidence for the 'Polynesian Golden Age' and pan-Polynesian cultural interaction which is independent from RR. I made the mistake of glossing over that point. In addition, I should've mentioned the earlier parts of Dietrich's method (analyzing structure to determine that it's not a writing system, positing that it's a notation system, then choosing astronomy as the likely candidate based on Polynesian culture); this is also something I glossed over in my write-up. I've edited the draft so that both these points are covered adequately (but not in detail, as the section is long enough and I don't want to go off on tangents). Finally, I'd like to add that improvements could've been made without this deletion and status-quo stonewalling. Xcalibur (talk) 03:16, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

I already mentioned the Hotu Matu'a legend. I'd like to present another point, which you can see on pp. 454-455 of the EB review, or if you prefer, compare [5] with Kotiate. Why is a style of war-club specific to the Maori represented in RR? This, among other things, is something to consider. Xcalibur (talk) 14:34, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

You're engaged in pseudo-history. And who's to say that's a war-club? The logic seems to be, Venus is called 'war-club', therefore I need a RR glyph that looks like a war-club that I can then claim (without any evidence whatsoever) represents 'Venus', this one looks like a Maori war-club, therefore RR was influenced by the Maori. That kind of backward logic doesn't work if you're sober. For all I know, it's a surfboard, or the digit '8', or a sea-slug. — kwami (talk) 00:52, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Ah, there you are.

No, I'm not. There's alot of ambiguities in Polynesian history, but also plenty of evidence supporting widespread cultural exchange and interaction throughout the Pacific. There were other justifications in the paper for a pan-Polynesian origin which includes the Maori. For D, the process was analyzing RR, ruling out the script hypothesis (due to structural inconsistency), positing that it's a notation system, and then choosing astronomy based on cultural and practical significance. If he found just a few glyphs that matched Polynesian star-names, it could be ruled out as coincidence, but he's found numerous correspondences which are 1:1 or nearly so (unlike your mock hypothesis, which used long chains of supposition).

It is implausible that the Polynesians of the 1600s or earlier would depict a hindu-arabic numeral or an underwater creature of little interest to them. As for surfboards, the glyph does not resemble the Alaia. It is much more plausible that RR drew from Maori culture -- at least, you have to admit it's a striking coincidence. Xcalibur (talk) 04:47, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

To elaborate, the 1600's are the latest possible time-frame for the creation of RR. Likely they go back further, based on the Polynesian Golden Age, Rapa Nui history, the palm tree glyph, and other reasons. And here's another question: if RR is a script, why does it not have magnifiers for important names (eg the cartouches of Egyptian hieroglyphs)? One would expect that from a hierarchical society. Xcalibur (talk) 02:05, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

• I've added the current revision of the Dietrich section further down on this talk page. Let me know if you're still willing to discuss. Xcalibur (talk) 08:25, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Another important point: you made much of that footnote under 'fanciful decipherments' which mentioned Dietrich, with a simple link to the paper. Turns out, you, kwami, are the one who added that footnote, as seen here: [6]. It seems like you just added a bunch of random researchers to the footnote, without any refutation. Being such an obscure reference, I wouldn't be surprised if the FA review simply glossed over it. Furthermore, this was in 2008, before the secondary RS (Esen-Baur) was published in 2011. Thus, while the Dietrich hypothesis wasn't eligible at the time of FA review, it is now; the situation has changed. An obscure, baseless footnote that you yourself put up does not disqualify Dietrich by any means. Xcalibur (talk) 02:48, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I made the edit, but it was written by Jacques Guy, and reviewed by some of the same scholars that EB recommended review it. — kwami (talk) 03:10, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Be that as it may, it doesn't change the fact that the edit was made before the review was published. It's also a very brief mention, along with various other researchers -- there's no definite falsification, and there's no reason to assume they even evaluated Dietrich's work before it was made eligible by a secondary source. It's also worth mentioning that Dietrich has been cited by more recent papers in the field, more firmly cementing his place in the literature. To reiterate, a secondary RS (along with primary sources) and citations should be enough justification for inclusion. While I'm not accusing you, your statements were a bit misleading (perhaps unintentionally). Xcalibur (talk) 04:07, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't want to keep rehashing, but there is an important point here. While I'm more than willing to debate the finer points of this material, personal opinions (positive and negative) are overshadowed by the simple fact that the Dietrich hypothesis is backed by academic literature, which is what matters for Wikipedia. Other issues (such as length) can be negotiated, and do not justify purging the section. Again, if you are not willing to discuss and/or withdraw your opposition, this will continue in other venues (not a threat, just a notification). Xcalibur (talk) 10:26, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to address a few more things as well. It's not up to me to refute you, yes it is. burden of proof is generally on the accuser, especially when I've got RS. it's up to you to demonstrate your claims. which I've already done, explaining this stuff and citing page #s. You've repeatedly failed to do so. No, I haven't. You have repeatedly displayed bias against this material. You seem to have taken an approach of 'reverse cherry-picking' in which you skim through looking for faults; this led to disingenuous arguments as well as several instances in which you flat out misunderstood the text.

I'd like to say more about that mock comparison you did between RR and European astronomy. Your model was: GLYPH looks like ATTRIBUTE, which is associated with MYTH, which is associated with STAR/PLANET. Compare this to Dietrich: STAR-NAME matches GLYPH. The Dietrich correspondences are generally straightforward and direct, while your mock comparison makes multiple leaps. And as I said, there is a common historical/cultural background in Polynesia (which does not extend to Europe), which means this is not really mass-comparison. Coincidentally, I came across another researcher in the literature who attempted to draw comparisons between western astrological symbols and RR; while there were a few matches, it was not enough to rule out spurious coincidence (which it surely was). D on the other hand has found numerous correspondences (seen in the main body and gallery of my section), so much so that it would be uncanny if he were not on the right track. Xcalibur (talk) 04:15, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Also, "as if it had academic value" it does, that's why the Dietrich hypothesis is published, reviewed, and cited in academic literature. Xcalibur (talk) 19:56, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

One more point: the EB review is in fact a review, not just a summary, which I've already demonstrated. She is in fact competent to judge, given that EB has plenty of experience & credentials, including a previous analysis of rongorongo & polynesian petroglyphs (which I haven't looked into yet, but it's mentioned). The fact that she requests the attention of notable scholars in the field does not negate this. Overall, I don't see any objections of substance. I'll give you time to come around, but if not, onward and upward. Xcalibur (talk) 10:22, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Edit warring is never an acceptable option.

@Bigdan201 and Kwamikagami: I'm not sure who's right or who's wrong, but whatever disagreement the two of you are having over content (including images) needs to be resolved per WP:DR. It's OK to be WP:BOLD and try and improve articles; however, when someone reverts/undoes your edits, then it's best to follow WP:BRD, except in cases of obvious vandalism, or other serious policy/guideline violations. If the two of you are unable to resolve your differences, then move to the next step of the DR ladder and continue discussing things. You can also seek assistance and various noticeboards or even relevant WikiProjects if you like. Reverting each other back and forth is not going to resolve things and will only likely lead to an adminstrator stepping in to resolve things (which usually means one or both parties end up being blocked). The disputed content can still be found in the page history and can be restored all or in part at a later date if things get sorted out.

As for the use of File:Rongorongo-dietrich-orion-adze-northsouth-reverseboustrophedon.png, complying with WP:NFCCP is only one part of the equation; there's also needs to be a consensus established to use it; so, continuously re-adding it just to stop it from being deleted will also be seen as edit warring. If, by chance, the file is deleted for some reason (e.g., WP:F5), don't panic because it's not gone forever; deleted files are only hidden from public view and can be restored at a later date per WP:REFUND once whatever issues it had are sorted out. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:06, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Understood. I beg your pardon for my actions, I realize that edit warring is forbidden. I'm aware that deleted images can be restored, but I wasn't sure how easy or difficult that is to do, which is why I was trying to avoid that situation. I will abide by your instructions. Xcalibur (talk) 05:16, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

If the image ends up being deleted, the file name will appear as a WP:REDLINK. If you click on the redlink, you should see the name of the administrator who deleted the image. So, if things eventually get sorted out and the consensus turns out to be to use the image, just post a note on the deleting adminstrator's user talk page explaining the situation and asking that the file be restored. Most of the time this will be done asap as long as there are no other problems with the file's licensing, etc. If you want to keep a copy of the image for you records, you can download it to your computer for storage. If the image can currently be seen on another website or somewhere else online, you can add the URL to that page to any discussion of the image as long as doing so is not a problem per WP:COPYLINK. You just link to the external website as if it were an WP:EL. If you created the image yourself, hold copyright over it, and can clearly show such things, you can WP:CONSENT to upload the image under a free-license of your choosing; just follow the instructions given in c:COM:OTRS#Licensing images: when do I contact OTRS?. This won't guarantee that the file will be used in the article, but it will make it no longer subject to Wikipedia's non-free content use policy, which means it could be used on this talk page or any other page outside of the article namespace. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:30, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I understand, thanks. I hadn't realized that images could be un-deleted so easily. Of course I could re-upload, but I was overly concerned about some technical difficulty cropping up (eg if it's the same file/name as a recently deleted image, would that be accepted?). I also felt like it would be an unnecessary indignity, caused by a disagreement that would surely be temporary. However, I take full responsibility for bumping up against policy. My apologies, and thanks for your assistance. Xcalibur (talk) 08:52, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

There’s really no need to re-upload since you can just request that the file be restored; however, I’m not sure whether uploading under the same name would be allowed because technically speaking that name might be still in use. That might be a good question to ask at WP:MCQ or WP:VPT. — Marchjuly (talk) 11:13, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Dietrich section

Due to the temporary dispute over my content, I've decided to copy it here for easy reference. I've made significant revisions since it was displayed on the article. This version is current as of 10/28/2018. The most recent version can be seen at User:Bigdan201/rongorongo, with its original formatting. Xcalibur (talk) 08:48, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Even if we started adding crackpot stuff like this again, there's way way way too much here per WEIGHT. — kwami (talk) 03:11, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Length was a concern, which is why I've shortened it. it's currently about the same length as Pozdniakov, so I don't think it should be an issue. I could reduce it further, but only if necessary. Xcalibur (talk) 04:22, 30 October 2018 (UTC

Question about Wikipedia guideline

Is there some guideline to the deletion of any self contribution based on a published article even if it passed the peer-review process of a linguistic journal? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mkim1963 (talk • contribs) 11:40, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Good question! I'm giving Kwami another day to respond before I restore the Dietrich section. Xcalibur (talk) 11:47, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't remember the links to the relevant guidelines, but self-publication on WP is considered COI. — kwami (talk) 02:51, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps WP:SELFCITE cover what is being discussed here. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:58, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, and in addition, given the number of crackpots publishing nonsense about RR, we need some 2ary source to evaluate your hypothesis. There are lots of hypotheses that get published, but few of them ever amount to anything or are notable enough to include in a WP article. — kwami (talk) 19:00, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, Mkim. I deleted everything you added. It appears to be unreferenced WP:OR, and as such does not belong on WP. It's also heavy on opinion and light on facts, and so is not encyclopedic. — kwami (talk) 02:11, 25 October 2019 (UTC) Mkim, your efforts are appreciated. however, your section doubled the length of the article, so there's a serious issue with scale and brevity. Xcalibur (talk) 04:08, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Dietrich section, revisited

Yet another crackpot thread pushing Dietrich

I've been away from WP for some time. As an experiment, I decided to restore the Dietrich section. perhaps relevant parties will have considered the points I made earlier, and have come around. In addition, I've done some re-organizing, so that even though it's heavy on illustrations, it's about the same screen-length as Pozdniakov. I encourage all interested persons to read the entire section, and skim the posts I made earlier. in particular, the connection between rongorongo and pan-Polynesian cultural interaction is significant. I'm always willing to respond to questions/comments/considerations. Xcalibur (talk) 08:56, 21 May 2020 (UTC) I'd like to add to the earlier discussion. To summarize, the Dietrich thesis is that rongorongo is a celestial notation system, and that there is a consistent pattern to the glyphs, in which basic glyphs are combined both with each other and dependent glyphs to build compounds. The consistency of the graphical analysis can easily be verified, and may be consistent with the mnemonics of the Atua Matariri chant. the 'celestial notation' hypothesis is based on several points, some of which include:

• numerous 1:1 correspondences between Polynesian star-names and glyphs
• the Mamari tablet, which contains a lunar calendar
• pan-Polynesian cultural interaction, the need for navigation during their golden age, the importance of astronomy in Polynesian mythos, etc
• various references to rongorongo not being limited to Rapa Nui (eg Hotu Matua) and being associated with the sky
• structural qualities of the script that conflict with it being writing, but are consistent with a notation system.

that should serve as a useful primer. in particular, the use of star-names from throughout Polynesia is not mass-comparison, because of the cultural and historical links throughout the region. in fact, if there are any sources out there of Rapa Nui star-names, I'd be interested. In addition, the correspondences are numerous and direct, not far-fetched like the mock comparison done by kwami. Anything else, just ask. Xcalibur (talk) 13:03, 24 May 2020 (UTC) another reference in support of Dietrich: “The staff with hieroglyphs from the Easter Island was presented by the foreigner who lives on the island (Sr. Borguer [sic]), who told us that it belonged to the kings of that place, believing it was [used as] a weapon; but we, when asked the explanations from the natives about the aforementioned staff, were pointed at the sky and at the hieroglyphs that [the staff] had with such reverence that makes me more inclined to believe that these hieroglyphs recall something sacred.” from Palaeographic analysis of the Santiago Staff. of course, you could interpret this with a religious meaning, but perhaps when the Rapa Nui survivors pointed from the glyphs to the sky, their meaning was literal. This is even more corroboration for the celestial notation hypothesis. Xcalibur (talk) 15:16, 29 May 2020 (UTC) adding a note: the corroborating story of the Santiago Staff is mentioned by Esen-Baur, p. 441, lower-left column. Xcalibur (talk) 16:25, 11 June 2020 (UTC) I took the liberty of restoring De Laat as well, albeit with a substantially reduced section. De Laat is almost certainly wrong, but there are still some points of interest, namely the fusion of glyphs and the strange stories De Laat came up with. it's interesting to see how different people approach the same problem, and the mirage-like patterns one can find when searching for meaning; it provides contrast to Dietrich, who is on much firmer ground. it's particularly interesting that De Laat found the same basic/compound glyph structure that was illuminated much further by Dietrich. Xcalibur (talk) 17:28, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

There are lots of crackpot ideas out there, some of which we barely mention. The purpose of an encyclopedia is not to give them equal time. — kwami (talk) 21:41, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

the purpose of an encyclopedia is to represent notable views on a topic. how do we define notability? published and reviewed in RS. as you said back then, get published, have a reviewer say "my god, he's got it" and we'll include you in this article. that's how an encyclopedia works. you also added that the reviewer has to know what the hell they're talking about, to that I agree, and Esen-Baur certainly fits the bill, given her background. moreover, Dietrich is published and positively reviewed in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, and it doesn't get much more reliable than that (notwithstanding deceptive journals, but the journals I referred to are legit). as for De Laat, their work is self-published and critically reviewed by Horley (who I think is also qualified), so I decided that a brief summary was most appropriate.

weeding out crackpots is one thing, but not to the extent of gatekeeping an article and deleting anything you personally don't like. reputable academic publishing outweighs IDONTLIKEIT. you've also been biased, skimming over the material and demonstrably not understanding the texts or the points I made. are you willing to have a proper discussion on this, or not? can we keep the content up during discussion, or not? Xcalibur (talk) 03:58, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Esen-Baur admitted she doesn't know what she's talking about, so yes, you can definitely get better than that, and should for an encyclopedia.

No, not in an FA during discussion. Things aren't considered encyclopedic until proven bullshit, they need to be demonstrated in order to be included.

As for IDONTLIKEIT, I actually liked Dietrich at first as a fresh approach, but the more I read the more it fell apart. When the only "review" is a summary by someone who says she can't evaluate the likelihood of the analysis being valid, that's not notable either. Remember, there are tons of other "decipherments" out there. There's the Italian and the Russian who were quite irate when I deleted their stuff from WP (and the edit-wars to delete their self-promoting garbage!), but there was nothing notable about their ideas either, and the RR study group found nothing of value in them.

The version of this article written in collaboration with Guy, Horley, Sproat and the others of the RR study group, which then passed FA, mentioned the "pseudo-scholarship" of Kaulins, Dietrich, Bettocchi and Rjabchikov. They were all four of them (and some older ones like Barry Fell) considered to be crackpots by the linguists evaluating the literature. I missed that when first responding to the Dietrich section that had been added. Now because someone who admits she is not qualified to review Dietrich summarizes him, and because I didn't catch it when it was first added, he's not a crackpot anymore? When the consensus of the professional linguists was that Dietrich was a crackpot, we don't add a ridiculous amt of material about his ideas to an FA just because you buy some of his arguments.

Fischer is also a crackpot. The reason he's included at such length is because he was widely reported to have cracked the code, and we have the published material to debunk it. There's also a lot of good factual information in his book once you discount all the silly analysis. — kwami (talk) 05:31, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

No, EB did not say that. she critiqued and evaluated D, and then called for more researchers to weigh in, which you're misrepresenting. moreover, she has the qualifications and has done lots of research on related topics in Oceania. again, I think De Laat is wrong, but it's worth including the summary (which I compiled from you, Francis, and my own work). De Laat has gotten some attention, and was critically reviewed, which is notable enough for a brief summary. I was thinking it could use a brief criticism section at the end, that would round it out nicely.

I have demonstrated that it's encyclopedic by backing this up with published academic sources, including a secondary review, addressing most of your points and citing page #s. keep in mind, in articles like this, Wikipedia documents various ideas and perspectives from RS, not based on what you believe is true or BS.

the problem is, you didn't read, except to skim through with a biased eye, which I can prove with examples. if you read through the review properly, you'll see that it is in fact a review in addition to a summary, she does critique and evaluate the hypothesis in a reasoned manner, so yes it's notable. you can't judge this fairly unless you read through my section and the EB review, which you evidently haven't done except to a minimal extent. I'm not asking you to delve into the original German papers (as I've done, btw), just read reasonably-sized English texts.

at least you tried to get a third opinion, I'll give you that. is the RR study group still defunct?

as I said before, Dietrich was ineligible when the article passed FA review in 2008, because the EB review was not published until 2011. and as I proved, your account added the note that briefly mentioned Dietrich, in the context of stating that other researchers haven't been accepted. I can't prove how much of it was written by you or them, but your account made the edit, so you can hardly use that as a refutation, especially when Dietrich hadn't been reviewed by a secondary source at that time. again, Esen-Baur is qualified, and it is a review, there's valid critique and analysis throughout, such as the Conclusion that begins on p.458.

it's not a ridiculous amount, it's around the same length as Pozdniakov.

if we can include Fischer, who was demonstrably wrong, why not a published and positively reviewed theory with potential? Fischer's inclusion justifies the De Laat section as well. Xcalibur (talk) 06:29, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Fischer's only covered in any length because there was a huge (relatively speaking) amount of general-audience media attention about him, so the public might think he's done it and it was worth debunking him in detail. It's not worth debunking, say, Barry Fell. De Laat could be added to the list of people we don't review, with his pub and Horley's critique added as refs. Yes, the Pozdniakov section is probably too long for this article, given that no-one else has picked up on his ideas, and could easily be trimmed down. Like many new ideas, it seemed promising at the time, then fell flat. An argument for keeping it as is is that the article passed FA with it in. But there's no reason to add comparable amounts of coverage to other speculation parading as theory. I could also see adding a ref for the latest Dietrich pub to his existing mention. His pseudo-scholarship was around in earlier form before FA. And when his longer paper was published later, I reached out to Guy, Horley, Sproat, Pozdniakov et al. (7 total) -- the very people EB said should review it -- and no-one felt it was worth their time to debunk. The group wound down and went defunct because no-one had anything new to say, the lit wasn't producing any worthwhile interpretations or ideas to discuss, and they had (as Guy put it) other things to do with their lives than debunk and endless stream of crackpot RR 'theories'. With Dietrich, I referred them to the thread on the talk page here, and said I planned to strip down or delete that section in the article if they didn't see anything worth saving, and the only one of them who bothered to even reply was Sproat, who asked sarcastically (cc'ing all the others), "So if Dietrich is right, then the rongorongo festivals recorded by Routledge (from old men who had observed them as children) involved sitting around chanting about astronomical, calendrical and navigational data?" Dietrich wasn't even notable enough for them to comment on. — kwami (talk) 09:21, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree that we can't go through every single attempt at decipherment, and should use judgment. that's why I gave De Laat a short summary instead of copying the lengthy section linked further up. I considered adding info on Rjabchikov, who seems to have at least made the astronomy connection, but I couldn't identify a coherent theory to summarize, so I didn't bother.

there's plenty of reason to add the same amount of coverage to Dietrich, given that it is theory and not just speculation. I don't see how you can review the star-name correspondences and glyph 'equations' and dismiss such strong connections and insights. and keep in mind, rongorongo is a product of pan-Polynesian cultural interaction, when these various islands maintained trade and traffic between them. it certainly wasn't a late invention, as I pointed out in my section. that context plays a significant role in this, and answers many of your earlier criticisms. again, your mock comparison was far weaker and contrived, and you haven't pointed me to any existing source for Rapa Nui star-names, another point you made much of.

as for the scholars you mentioned, all that amounts to is that they didn't read or analyze the theory. the Sproat quotation seems to be initial skepticism in response to the lede and nothing else. they should've at least read an oldid of my section and the EB review. keep in mind, there was alot of overlap between Polynesian mythos and astronomy, so who knows? there's other supporting evidence too, like the lunar calendar, and the anecdote of the Rapa Nui pointing to the sky when questioned about the Santiago Staff. perhaps if I'd added the content years earlier, when they were still active, matters would be different.

I'd rather keep the entire section, but I'd be willing to trim it down if needed.

you seem reasonably intelligent, so why do you insist on not understanding the material? the only solution is that you're biased against it and unwilling to give it a fair reading. at this rate, if someone really did decipher RR, you'd probably dismiss them as a crackpot too. Xcalibur (talk) 10:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Hey, wait a minute. I just took a look at EB again, and she did *not* review additional Dietrich pubs! She reviewed the same stuff that the RR group had concluded was "pseudo-scholarship" that did not warrant further comment. His newer material has not been reviewed at all. So there's nothing there for us to add!

Dietrich is so obviously crackpot bullshit -- he literally can't tell the difference between up and down -- that it's amazing anyone would be suckered by it. R. has "at least made the astronomy connection" and DL's "partial insight into compounding" -- you're *assuming* D's astronomy connection and version of compounding, as if they were mathematical axioms, but there's no evidence for any of it. "keep in mind, rongorongo is a product of pan-Polynesian cultural interaction" -- more circular logic: D is correct, as proven by D; others are worth mentioning to the extent that they are compatible with D. Again, *you* may have bought into D., but you're not a RS. You're engaged in the classical pseudoscientific fallacy of assuming the thing you're trying to prove. A group of experts reviewed D during the run-up to FA, and found nothing more notable than would warrant a footnote. Nothing has changed since then.

EB concludes, "Especially helpful should be engaging such experts who have been involved in deciphering ancience scripts, such as Michael Coe, Paul Bouissac, Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel ... it is up to the experts to falsify or to validate Dietrich's hypothesis."

Well, guess what, such experts already did. Richard Sproat, a colleague of Witzel and Farmer, along with his colleagues Horley, Guy and others (Guy at least is an Oceanist linguist), evaluated Dietrich for this article, and Sproat had the sarcastic comment above when I asked if they were *sure* we shouldn't include Dietrich. So one of the people EB mentions by name, and several of his colleagues, all well-qualified people, have already rendered their judgement. There's nothing new here. — kwami (talk) 23:10, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

EB, BTW, is not an expert in the field, which is why she called for experts in the field to review D. Her review was also written in collaboration with D, to whom she gives the credit. For a RS, WP expects an independent expert in the field. I don't know why you're still stuck on this after years of debunking, but there it is -- no new RS for WP to report. — kwami (talk) 23:36, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

to reiterate, [7] proves that your account added the footnote with Dietrich's name, so this brief mention you've invested in really doesn't say much, especially given the context: At least a score of decipherments have been claimed since then, none of which have been accepted by other rongorongo epigraphers (Pozdniakov 1996).Besides Fedorova and Fischer, who are discussed here, these include... all it says is that Dietrich is another decipherment which hadn't yet been accepted. again, the FA review and that edit pre-date the EB review; D wasn't eligible then, he is now.

you said, Sproat had the sarcastic comment above when I asked if they were *sure* we shouldn't include Dietrich. when was this? the comment seems to be based on my lede, which would make it recent. or was this during FA review? this doesn't add up, but either way, initial skepticism is perfectly understandable, and is not a refutation. it's safe to say that they have not weighed in.

Esen-Baur is in fact an expert, as proven by her publications and qualifications. she called for more experts to weigh in because peer-review generally takes more than one other person's critique. EB also said, Dietrich's hypothesis, with its great relevance to traditional Polynesian culture, made possible real advancements in understanding rongorongo glyphs.

you said, Her review was also written in collaboration with D, to whom she gives the credit. For a RS, WP expects an independent expert in the field. of course Dietrich is given credit for the theory, and there's nothing wrong with communication between them. EB is still independent, she offers impartial critique (such as in the methodology and findings section), and the review is published in a different scholarly journal. in fact, reputable scholarly journals are perfectly acceptable as RS on Wikipedia.

you said, Dietrich is so obviously crackpot bullshit -- he literally can't tell the difference between up and down -- that it's amazing anyone would be suckered by it. citation needed.

but there's no evidence for any of it. yes there is. the rules for compounding, the background and analysis that led to identification of glyphs with star-names, it's all there. this includes structural problems if we assume that RR is a script, instead of a notation system which fits much better; again, the lunar calendar is relevant here.

more circular logic: D is correct, as proven by D. no, as proven by Polynesian history and the glyphs themselves, which are consistent with the rules for compounding, identifications, and interpretations.

you're not a RS. with all due respect, neither are you, kwami. the RS have published and positively reviewed Dietrich, while I don't see any refutations out there.

A group of experts reviewed D during the run-up to FA, and found nothing more notable than would warrant a footnote. Nothing has changed since then. no, they didn't, afaik. you added the footnote before Dietrich was eligible, the EB review is a secondary source which was published in 2011, so now he is eligible. Xcalibur (talk) 01:15, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

You're engaged in OR. An "expert", for RS purposes, is an expert in the field. EB admits she is not. And regardless of whether Dietrich was "eligible" at the time, he was included then, and the article passed FA with him in it. — kwami (talk) 22:41, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

no I'm not, this is all based on the published review and papers. if anything, many of your criticisms count as OR. Esen-Baur is in fact an expert, as stated by the secondary source under the abstract (while google translate is notoriously spotty, it works well enough for German>English). all EB did was invite others for peer-review, which is reasonable and not a concession. Once again, you placed a single reference to Dietrich in a footnote, in the context of mentioning other researchers who haven't been accepted yet. it was an obscure reference, easily glossed over, and was not even a refutation. the fact that a secondary source was published after this was a FA is significant. my content is drawn from primary/secondary RS, it had a silent consensus when you didn't meddle (in spite of it being a substantive addition to a former FA), and there's no valid reason to exclude it. it all comes back to your personal disagreement, and that seems to be caused by bias and an unwillingness to do more than skim the texts, as already demonstrated. Xcalibur (talk) 00:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

You don't seen to know what a RS is. EB is not an expert in the field, which is required for a RS. The fact that she's an expert in another field is irrelevant. (If I'm wrong, please point out her relevant publications, because she didn't!) She also essentially coauthored her 'review' with D, which is not how peer review works in science -- that's why I keep calling it a summary rather than a review. The expert consensus on D is that his is a "fanciful decipherment" and "pseudo-scholarship". When the RR group -- including Sproat, who EB suggested might review D -- decided on that, I had no idea who D was and had never read any of his stuff. So that was in no way my opinion -- I had none. I was so unfamiliar with him that when he came up again I didn't remember he'd already been dealt with. So no, this is not "my personal disagreement", this is about you being suckered by a crackpot. As for "skimming", I read EB quite carefully when this debate first came up.

Now, if some of the experts -- other than Sproat -- that EB would like to see review D do so, and they disagree with Sproat and his colleagues, then we would certainly include that. But we don't add pseudoscientific nonsense to articles just because we can, but only if (as with Fischer) it is noteworthy. The fact that EB contrasted D with only two previous accounts, Barthel and Fischer, shows that she considered them both to be noteworthy, and indeed we give both of them considerable attention. — kwami (talk) 04:22, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

yes I do. reputable scholarly journals qualify as RS, in fact it's hard to come by better RS than that. EBs expertise is closely related to Rapa Nui, rongorongo, and Polynesia, so it counts, and she's published relevant stuff such as [8]. to my knowledge, the review was not co-authored, there was communication between parties, but it's still an independent review, as is evident in the text which critiques and appraises D.

The expert consensus on D is that his is a "fanciful decipherment" and "pseudo-scholarship". again, citation needed. I've already debunked the brief footnote mention that your account added.

So no, this is not "my personal disagreement" yes it is. you've shown an unwillingness to read through the texts I've presented to you (as proven by demonstrable misunderstandings), and you cannot come up with a valid rationale for exclusion. a brief footnote mention you added before the EB review is not a refutation, neither is the skeptical comment you quoted, and your denial of the RS is without grounds. I added the content because it's published and positively reviewed in RS, which justifies inclusion, and outweighs personal opinions. I also did this because I wanted to add worthwhile content, which you are seemingly opposed to.

do you have any questions on the Dietrich theory? perhaps I can help you understand it. there are many reasons that rongorongo may be a notation system rather than a script, including Ds structural analysis which showed it to be inconsistent with an alphabet, syllabary, or abugida. the astronomy connection is also much too strong to be mere coincidence. this is in contrast to actual crackpots who attempt to draw a connection between rongorongo and indus valley script, in spite of them being thousands of years apart and from different cultures; that is definitely spurious, while D has a much more solid foundation. Xcalibur (talk) 05:33, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

This discussion is going nowhere, as is often the case in debates with Truth. If you want agreement that it's appropriate to add pseudoscientific bullshit to an article, you'll have to look elsewhere. What does Megalithische Steinplastiken und monumentale Architektur have to do with rongorongo or the decipherment of ancient scripts? I take it therefore that EB has never written anything that shows expertise in the topic of this article. As she herself admits. Why would you claim she's an expert when she herself says she's not an expert, unless you have no valid basis for including D? "there are many reasons that rongorongo may be a notation system rather than a script" -- indeed there are, as many scholars have said many times. But that doesn't mean that there's anything to D's hypothesis in particular. (And the fact that you don't know what a theory is is worrisome.) Indeed, at first I wanted D in the article to provide a non-linguistic possibility. But that's me, with no real knowledge of the subject. When the experts reject him as nonsense, I'm not going to push my preference on the article. "the astronomy connection is also much too strong to be mere coincidence" -- again, you're engaging in OR. The same kind of statistical claim is made for astrology, palm-reading and alien abductions. You have no basis for determining what is or is not coincidence in this case. Thanks for the offer, but I understood D just fine when I read him. I've forgotten a lot in the intervening years, of course, which may be why I've misrepresented things. If you want citations of unpublished opinions, you'll have to go to the source. I invite you to write Sproat directly. Some of the others might respond as well. I can share email addresses if you write me. — kwami (talk) 07:20, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm not a true believer, just a student who's compiled relevant RS. maybe it's closer to a hypothesis than a theory, but Dietrich has done initial readings and found them consistent with astronomy and the overall concept.

pseudoscientific bullshit citation needed, otherwise that's your incorrect opinion. I've refuted many of your points, and cited page #s to show where you flat out misinterpreted.

When the experts reject him as nonsense, citation needed. can you even show an archived post from the RR study group backing this up?

again, you're engaging in OR. no, I'm not, I'm only reporting on what the reliable sources have to say. it's all in the references I gave you. The same kind of statistical claim is made for astrology, palm-reading and alien abductions. not really. there's a big difference between spurious coincidences & zipf's law, versus numerous specific 1:1 correspondences, which are very unlikely to arise by chance.

I understood D just fine when I read him. that is not the case. for example, you made fun of a line for stating an obvious point, but the first words were 'it is obvious that' and the context was narrowing down which stars are relevant to Polynesian astronomy. you also criticized EB for the phrasing in a quote from a source (Makemson), not differentiating between the author and a quote. there are many more examples like that. when I say you didn't read properly, I'm not being antagonistic, it's an honest judgment.

I suppose I could contact them directly, but it seems unnecessary in this case. I've already got the sources, and this is jumping through more hoops just to get the approval of another editor. if you're not willing to discuss this here, I'll have to go to another venue (which I would've done in late 2018, but I was drawn away at the time). Xcalibur (talk) 08:19, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

btw, the piece I linked you to directly refers to rongorongo; she's also analyzed related petroglyphs, and has a thorough background in Polynesia and Rapa Nui. yes, she's an expert. all that aside, it's a reputable scholarly journal, and that's plenty enough for Wikipedia. and might I remind you, rongorongo is not a linguistic problem, because it doesn't encode language! it's a notation system, not a script, at least that's what consistent evidence indicates. Xcalibur (talk) 10:30, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

If you think EB is an expert in rongorongo or deciphering scripts, when she herself doesn't appear to think so, then you and I have different ideas of what an "expert" is. In any case, I am adamantly opposed to adding fringe science to WP unless it is notable, which this is not. — kwami (talk) 06:15, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

in other words, it's wrong and unfit for inclusion because you say so, and you won't negotiate any further. I tried to re-instate the content, hoping you'd come around, but you keep reverting, even though there's no overriding reason to do so. what can I say, I tried. Xcalibur (talk) 16:46, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Regarding Kwamikagami's statements about De Laat

Hello,

Although it has been my policy not to engage in Wikipedia discussions concerning Rongorongo, I feel obliged to comment on some of the above as user Kwamikagami has repeatedly made incorrect statements about me. I have only been in brief contact with him through the KRR research group (around 2010). In this exchange, I have only pointed at some factual errors in his wikipedia article regarding the Jaussen/Metoro collaboration, so I am a little puzzled about his statements concerning my work and my opinions.

“De Laat has apparently abandoned his decipherment (as of 2009 he said he was going to redo it, and I haven't heard anything from him since)”

I fail to see on which this is based. In 2009, I (self-)published a book which was meant as a proposal (so the title indicates) for a phonetic/syllabic approach. When Horley in his review in the Rapa Nui Journal pointed to the fact that parallel passages in different texts were translated differently (something I was fully aware of as I crossreferenced them) I realized that the translations I had intended primarily as illustrations of the validity of the syllabic grid were taken as definitive readings. These exercises and their obvious flaws have since then been taken as proofs of a totally failed attempt at decipherment. This misunderstanding is something for which I have only myself to blame and therefore I have acknowledged that the three “stories” have serious shortcomings. However, I have never “abandoned” the phonetic approach or the syllabic grid on which they were based. On the contrary, although some phonetic values have been added or replaced, it has remained the basis for my subsequent studies simply because it produces the most plausible words and the most (more or less meaningful) texts. Since 2010, I have maintained a website on the subject, I have published several papers on Rongorongo on the internet, and I have written articles on ancient Rapanui texts which have been published by the Rapa Nui Journal and the Journal of the Polynesian Society. At the Easter Island conference in Berlin (2015), I have presented a paper in which I have proposed that the main RR texts are in some way connected to the neru cult, a practice in which young girls in the advent of puberty were secluded for a periode of time to fatten their body and to bleach their skin. This connection would explain for example the presence of RR signs in Ana O Keke, the cave of the neru in Poike, and why there is mention in the “stories” of a cave, the abduction of women, disfigured bodies, etc. Therefore, Kwamikagami’s statement that he has not heard from me since 2009 seems to me the complaint of a deaf man.

“As for deletionism, there are at least four other crackpots who've been added to this article (usually by themselves), and they've all been deleted as well, despite cries of cultural genocide, imperial bias, etc. Though we did leave De Laat up for a while because he was trying to work things out with the RR study group. They finally convinced him that he was way off track.”

“De Laat contacted the RR study group (mostly linguists, including Horley) that recently had been part of, reviewed or commented on the rewriting of this article for FA status. They convinced him his work was nonsense, and he said he was going to redo it and get back to us. Never did. How is a self-published idea that was trashed by a linguist 'notable'?”

“De Laat doesn't accept De Laat. I know I'm asking you to accept my word on s.t. you can't verify, but he did realize he was wrong when they explained to him how you'd go about an actual decipherment, and thought to try again with more rigorous methods (such as verifying readings in one text by checking it against another).”

“There are lots of crackpot ideas out there, some of which we barely mention. The purpose of an encyclopedia is not to give them equal time. And BTW, de Laat doesn't even believe his stuff any more.”

Yes, I have become a member of the KRR study group but my book or my proposals were never discussed there, something which should be well known to Kwamikagami since he himself was also a member. So the statement that I was “finally convinced” of being “way of track” or that my “work was nonsense” is a complete fabrication from his side and, I imagine, the product of wishful thinking. Since my book was neither discussed nor “trashed by a linguist”, there was no need for me to promise “to redo it” or to “get back” to anyone. I have checked the complete exchange in the KRR group in my files to ensure that my memory is accurate.

I don’t mind being called a crackpot, but I do mind being called a crackpot by someone who does not bother to get his facts straight. I would very much appreciate it if my name was kept out of a discussion in which I am not a participant, especially if my views are going to be misrepresented. If one is really interested in them, I can easily be contacted and my articles (published and self-published) are easily accessible on the web.

For the record (and only because my name keeps popping up in the discussion), I too think that Dietrich's theories lack any substantial base. Possibly, Esen-Bauer herself is not too sure about Dietrich anymore. If I remember correctly, in her presentation in Berlin (2015) she didn’t mention him by name but merely called for people with more expertise in graphic design than anthropologists and linguists to become engaged in the study of Rongorongo.

Mary de Laat (talk) 14:17, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi, good to hear from you! I'm glad you could weigh in. I hope you don't take offense from my statement that you're 'mostly wrong', that's my personal impression, just as it's my impression that Dietrich is on the right track. I still think you've made a worthwhile attempt at decipherment, which is why I tried to document you in a summarized section. naturally, you disagree with Dietrich, since your approaches are mutually exclusive -- it's either a syllabary or a notation system, it can't be both. ultimately, no one knows the truth about rongorongo, and the people who did died of smallpox well over a century ago. still, the correspondences with astronomy, the glyph breakdowns, and other supporting evidence makes a strong case. I trust you read my section (linked on talk page and history) and the Esen-Baur review, both of which cover major points. As for the presentation, that still sounds like an endorsement, albeit one made in a non-partisan manner.

as for kwami, if you peruse our discussions, you'll see how many times he flat out misinterpreted or took things out of context, while ignoring my rebuttals. this has made it impossible to come to an agreement. I still plan to resolve this dispute, in fact I would have in 2018 but life got in the way. Xcalibur (talk) 21:21, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello again,

I’m sorry to have to disagree with you. Although I’m not a fan of Kwamikagami’s manners either, I am convinced that his motives are ultimately honorable. In the absence of a definitive decipherment, his aim is to present the interested reader with an overview of the history and the current state of affairs. It is obvious that some attempts at decipherment should be mentioned but in the limited space of a Wikipedia article it is not necessary to exhaust the reader with a complete list. It is therefore logical to include only those that have received the most scholarly attention. Barthel and Fischer have both been credited and criticized by numerous scholars, so their presence is justified, especially because they both have published the complete corpus (regrettably with numerous errors).

As Dietrich nor myself have received much scholarly attention it is not necessary to include our proposals. If you want to go the formal way and hold on to Dietrich because after all he has been published in a peer-reviewed journal and his method has been positively reviewed, you are skating on very thin ice. Esen-Bauer is not a Rongorongo expert (nor does she claim to be) and should not be counted as one. The journal in question, Journal of Asian and African Studies, was at the time run by Victor Krupa, who was a proponent of Barthel’s ideographic approach so it is not a big suprise that Dietrich’s articles were accepted for publication. If these two are the only criteria by which inclusion should be judged, Rjabchikov would also be entitled to his place in the sun. After all, his articles have been published in several peer-reviewed journals and one of these even received a critical but far from negative review by renowned Rongorongo expert Jacques B.M. Guy (Rjabchikov’s decipherments examined, The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 97, No. 3 (September 1988)).

In conclusion, and although my ego may be otherwise inclined, I have to agree with Kwamikagami that Wikipedia is not the place for discussions about the merits of particular attempts at decipherment.

Mary de Laat (talk) 11:09, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the content should not be exhaustive, and naturally some research will not make the cut. However, I believe that Dietrich is worth adding, given that it's an interesting new approach, has plenty of supporting evidence, and meets the RS requirements. Esen-Baur does in fact have expertise on Polynesia, and the journals are reputable. While I can't justify adding the full-length section on your work, I thought a brief summary was reasonable. I considered adding Rjabchikov as well, if I had been able to pull his work together into a brief summary, but it lacked coherence. Apparently Guy agrees, his review was quite critical, basically stating that Rjabchikov's work was mostly invalid, but with a few useful insights; so that's not really equivalent. I can't think of any others to add, personally. While I'd like to keep my entire section, I'd be willing to compromise and chop it down if it came to that.

I also agree that kwami is not acting in bad faith, but I think he became overzealous, to the point of rejecting any new addition to the article. other than that, we are of two different minds I guess. Xcalibur (talk) 17:32, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

@Mary de Laat: Please let me publicly apologize for my repeated mischaracterization of your work on this talk page. Your summary of events is entirely correct. I confused you with yet another decipherment, by an amateur who had no idea what he was doing (and who was never mentioned on WP). I have no excuse; after several years, various people I'd never met blurred together in my mind and I should have been more careful. Instead I gave in to debunking fatigue, and focused on Dietrich, whose WP coverage went into so much greater depth and included dubious claims of RS support, rather than on you, and I didn't review your contributions to the KRR group (which for the record contributed a lot to the discussion there).

I went through my claims above and deleted or commented out my mischaracterizations of you, along with a few short responses by Xcalibur. Since you captured the most egregious of my mischaracterizations above, please feel free to delete / comment them out as well, though it is nice to have a record here of recent developments of your work, and how the published criticism of your work missed the point you were trying to make. Again, please accept my apologies. — kwami (talk) 05:08, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Dietrich & De Laat rongorongo theories

I'd like to add a section on the Dietrich theory of rongorongo, as well as a smaller section on De Laat. The content is relevant and well-sourced, and enjoyed a silent consensus when not actively contested. The Dietrich section can be seen here: [9] and De Laat is here: [10]. Should these sections be permitted to stay up? Xcalibur (talk) 04:14, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

'Silent consensus' because no-one else is taking care of this article, as was the case with all the self-promoting crackpots in the article before I cleaned it up. I contacted a good Oceanicist about the three ppl discussed above, and he said, "people like Pawley and Ross early had given up about rongorongo. So its clearly the Oceanicists' fault of having left the study to outsiders and cranks. ... Pozdniakov looks sensible, and he has good record as linguist. Dietrich does everything by himself to appear as utter BS. I have only superficially read Esen-Baur, and one paper by Dietrich himself ... but it feels like reading Heyerdahl or Däniken."

Why you think you know better than the experts who helped craft the article for FA, the very experts that EB said should weigh in on this, is beyond me.

Also, your statement "The content is relevant and well-sourced with primary and secondary RS" is bullshit. You have yet to provide a single RS for Dietrich. You apparently still don't understand what a RS is, despite going over this multiple times. Please read the WP guideline. As for de Laat, even he disagrees with you about including his work on WP. — kwami (talk) 04:23, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

First of all, I'm glad to have your participation.

in fact if you check the edit history, you'll see minor tweaks made to my content by others while it was up, which sends a message of soft approval.

there's no way of verifying the 'expert statements' you've quoted. on WP, we're supposed to go by published reliable sources, not secondhand claims of what someone's stance might be. it would at least be helpful to hear from the horse's mouth, as we did from De Laat, who refuted your claims as misrepresentation and fabrication. that provides plenty of reasonable doubt for your assertions. and to reiterate, that trumped-up note with Dietrichs name was added by your account, as proven earlier, and the FA review was before the publication of Esen-Baur, so Dietrich wasn't eligible for inclusion then, but is now.

I understand RS quite well, and have already provided them. For the record, reputable scholarly journals count as RS, especially when there's both primary and secondary sources. for convenience, I'll list them here. Dietrich: De Laat: Hopefully that helps. Xcalibur (talk) 05:29, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

You included one RS for De Laat, by Paul Horley. If you think the others are RS's, you really need to read the guideline again.

Given Horley, and that my objections to De Laat above were spurious, I would support including a short summary of his work, if it weren't for the fact that he himself does not see it as appropriate. Also, he says that his 'decipherment' was not intended as a definitive reading, as Horley treats it, but as an illustration of what's possible. So, do we include a summary with Horley's account of its inconsistencies, perpetuating this misrepresentation? On the one hand, that would seem unfair to De Laat. On the other, we do have a relevant thesis evaluated in a RS. I'm of two minds about this.

As for "that trumped-up note", repeating bullshit doesn't make it anything other than bullshit. That was the evaluated version of the article that passed FA, and as for it not being appropriate to mention Dietrich then because we didn't have RS for Dietrich yet, we still don't have a RS, so that's a transparently spurious excuse. When we do have a RS, we can revisit the issue. Without a RS, Dietrich does not belong here.

Do I need to spell out the RS issues? Obviously, a primary source can not be used to evaluate its own acceptance. It can only be used to provide details of what it says. As for secondary sources, they need to be by someone who is an expert on the subject. A clear example of the problems that come from not following that guideline is Linus Pauling on vitamin C, but there are many many others. Boersema is professor of environmental sciences, and so not an expert on the topic. (Also, I don't have access, but it looks like he might be quoting Horley, in which case he'd be a tertiary source.) Esen-Baur explicitly states that she is *not* an expert on the topic, a point reiterated by De Laat. And even there, he suggests she may have abandoned her support of Dietrich specifically. (Not that it matters, her not being a RS on rongorongo.) — kwami (talk) 06:04, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with using Boersema. normally, relying on De Laat's self-published work would not be acceptable, but in this case it's buoyed by Boersema and Horley, who qualify as RS. regardless of issues, we can still document the relevant info, especially since the tentative readings are summarized in secondary sources. We can simply mention that the readings are not set in stone, and perhaps add a section on criticism. and perhaps De Laat was being humble. if they assent, I can at least restore that section.

But it's true that you added it, and it wasn't even a proper refutation. and yes, we do have RS for Dietrich. not only is his work published in a reputable scholarly journal, but it's reviewed in another reputable scholarly journal by Esen-Baur, who gives a perfectly valid review, and is well-qualified in Polynesian studies. as you said, we need not only primary sources, but a secondary source to evaluate the hypothesis, all of which I've provided.

of course, we can't rely only on primary sources for this, that's why I've included valid secondary sources. and I haven't seen any withdrawal of support.

Finally, I want to make constructive, well-sourced edits to this article, and it's unfortunate that you continue to obstruct this. Xcalibur (talk) 07:01, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

• Comment One thing should be clear: in the unforseeable future, when the breakthrough in the decipherment of rongorongo will have occurred and will be accepted as valid by a majority of academic peers in the field (if we ever see this happen), 80-90% of this page will just be a collection of past errors. Now, do we have pages about desciphered scripts that contain information in excessive detail about failed dead-end attempts...? Ok, back to reality, rongorongo is not deciphered yet, and certainly, our readers deserve a concise overview about the existing hypotheses (plus the assessment about these by other scholars), and detailed information about the less disputed aspects such as text corpus or glyph inventories. (The latter aspect is covered in Rongorongo.) But I wonder if we need to transport readers into parallel universes of alternative facts which cannot be correct at the same time. This is my 2 pennies about the rather lengthy sections (e.g. Poydniakov in the stable version, or Dietrich in the proposed version) which partially exceed in detail when compared with what we have e.g. in Linear B, an undisputably deciphered script.

But if we really want to include this amount of details, then due weight comes in. Dietrich still needs to be assessed by an expert in the script (Esen-Baur is an expert about Rapanui, not the script), while De Laat has been commented on by Horley. So IMHO, both qualify for mention here, even Dietrich's proposal in all its outlandishness, but not with a 15k-narative which makes up alomst a fifth of the page's scroll size and also includes passages like "To provide greater support to this hypothesis, Dietrich sought to identify navigational concepts such as cardinal directions and guiding star markers." Unlike with Starlite, it is not the story which makes up the topic, but the result.

Another thing: why is the section about Guy called "Barthel"? –Austronesier (talk) 12:40, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

First of all, I appreciate your commentary! While we have different perspectives, your points are well taken. It's true, the Dietrich section as it stands is lengthy (partly due to the emphasis on illustrations), comparable to Pozdniakov. if I must chop the section down to a more succinct form to reach agreement, then I'd be willing to compromise. Xcalibur (talk) 13:38, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

First of all, Dietrich already has his mention -- I wish I'd noticed that when this section was first added. Comparing him to Pozdniakov is not appropriate, since Pozdniakov is a reputable linguist. De Laat isn't mentioned, and since he's reviewed by a RS, I agree he's worth a mention. He didn't seem so keen on it himself, as evidently his book didn't get across the point he was trying to make, but it's easy enough to ask him. I agree with Austronesier that the Pozdniakov section is too long, and should be reduced in length. So that's what I think is reasonable: leave Dietrich to his FA mention, possibly add a short section on De Laat, and trim back the section on Pozdnikov. Adding more detail on a non-peer-reviewed crackpot is not acceptable. — kwami (talk) 03:58, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

As I've said, Dietrich has been published & reviewed in reputable scholarly journals. he wasn't eligible during FA review because the secondary RS wasn't published yet; now it is, so the circumstances are different. with that said, I'm willing to meet you halfway: how about a shortened Dietrich section? I can still cover major points while significantly reducing scroll-length. Xcalibur (talk) 04:31, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, you've said it over and over again, but it's still bullshit. "He wasn't eligible during FA review" -- maybe, but he was reviewed for FA nonetheless. He is where he belongs, under 'fanciful decipherments' with the rest of the crackpots. EB's summary adds nothing, since the experts she'd called for had already reviewed him and found nothing worthwhile. Remember, I initially *wanted* his inclusion because I liked balancing the article with a non-phonographic hypothesis, only to reverse my position when I realized he'd been judged a crackpot by those with the knowledge to make such a judgement.

Meeting halfway -- that's like demanding that we including a banana-shaped earth hypothesis at geography and calling it a "compromise" just because someone who knows nothing of geology or astronomy said there might be something to it. Dietrich is a crackpot with ZERO RS reviews, so he does not deserve anything more than the FA mention he already has. De Laat's another matter, but you don't want the hypothesis with a RS review, you want the one with no support whatsoever, evidently convinced that if you say nothing is something for long enough, it will come true. You may be a True Believer, but WP isn't the place for such things. — kwami (talk) 04:50, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

It was a single mention buried in a footnote, which your account added, as I proved earlier. there's no basis for appealing to experts, since there's no way to verify their views, or whether they've weighed in at all. I'll give you credit for seeking a third opinion from the rongorongo study group, but you say they're defunct; if the relevant experts are no longer active, that's even more of a reason not to argue from silence. however, we do have a secondary RS review from Esen-Baur, an expert on Rapa Nui/Polynesia, which should be enough. I understand that you don't accept that, but personal bias should not get in the way of inclusion on WP.

that absurd banana-earth analogy of yours does not apply. the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid is well proven and documented, which is why the flat earth model is rejected, and documented only as a historical oddity and conspiracy theory. Rongorongo, on the other hand, remains a mystery, with no widely accepted solution. if the puzzle is ever solved, we'll have to overhaul this article, but until then, it's fine to document various relevant hypotheses, as long as they meet the requirements, which is the case here.

I'd like to add a short section on De Laat, and I'm willing to truncate the Dietrich section to abide by Due Weight. Xcalibur (talk) 05:30, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

The discussion of Fedorova's tuber count for insomniac Easter Islanders sets a good quantitative standard for the inclusion of Dietrich. Btw his books are self-published, we should not unnecessarily point our readers to unreliable sources, so I say no mentioning them as references. And we should cite EB about Dietrich's unbearable digressions.

As for De Laat, he is just not as "lucky" as Fischer, who can claim the fame that his animalic and celestial daisy chains received more public attention and scholarly review. A passing mention (not a section) of De Laat's book and Horley's review moved out from the footnote into running text is fine. –Austronesier (talk) 12:38, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I just heard back from De Laat. He has something in press (from the same 2015 conference where EB no longer pushes Dietrich), and would prefer not to be mentioned here until that comes out.

Re. Fedorova vs Dietrich, F was critically reviewed by s.o. who actually knows the topic. She was also included as a sample of the fringe science out there, not as a precedent. We decided that one such example was warranted, to give readers a taste of the lit, but that there was no point in including more. Still, if we did review more, our first choice shouldn't be D, who has not been reviewed by anyone who knows the topic and who therefore is less notable than several other debunked crackpots. — kwami (talk) 18:45, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I think less than reliable sources can be used in some cases, as long as they're used alongside RS, and are only being used to show that 'De Laat claims this' without attempting to verify; it's a judgment call. and I can definitely include Esen-Baur's criticisms, that's a good idea.

De Laat's section can still go up, and can be overhauled whenever the new publication comes out. I believe separate sections for De Laat and Dietrich would be both easier and more effective than attempting to merge them into the text elsewhere. Again, I'm willing to cut way down on length for the sake of proportionality. Xcalibur (talk) 04:26, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I understand that you reject Esen-Baur, but I still think that if it's good enough to be published and peer-reviewed in scholarly journals, it should be good enough for WP. with that said, I could put up an abridged Dietrich section that's shorter than the current one on Pozdniakov. can we agree on this? Xcalibur (talk) 00:18, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

update- just added De Laat and an abridged Dietrich section. let me know what you think. Xcalibur (talk) 12:45, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

A third of the article to a crackpot -- just per WEIGHT that's inappropriate, let alone that it's complete bullshit.

De Laat didn't "translate" three texts, but gave examples of what might be done, which is why they contradict each other. He's said he wasn't clear what he was doing and would prefer to wait for review of his latest. — kwami (talk) 19:06, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Agree, there was no consensus for re-adding 15k (what's been "truncated" here?) about Dietrich, nor about adding DeLaat. –Austronesier (talk) 19:10, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I put up the content as an experiment, and to demonstrate the changes made. I edited out an entire chunk, namely the navigation section, which made it shorter than Pozdniakov. the truncated version isn't a third, it was closer to a fifth, and I could reduce it further if needed. partly that's due to the gallery at the end, which I want to keep because it's interesting and relevant. also, it's not BS, with all due respect that's a fallacious personal view.

I understand that De Laat's texts were tentative, and not meant to be set in stone (or wood for that matter), but I still thought the content was relevant. I myself wondered what De Laat conjured up, and checked the RS to find out (since I don't own the book). since De Laat has appeared on this talk page, why don't we go to the source...

User:Mary de Laat if you don't mind me asking, may I have your permission to add the summarized section on your work, as seen here: [11]? Xcalibur (talk) 21:33, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

The gallery just by itself is too much. And I think we're all agreed that the Pozdniakov section is too long, so that's not a target to aim for! Besides the fact that Pozdniakov is a respected linguist while Dietrich is a crackpot. IMO the mention that he's a crackpot with the ref we currently have is enough. I suppose we could add a paragraph to the 'Fanciful decipherments' section noting that he thinks people write upside down in the southern hemisphere. — kwami (talk) 22:03, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

the gallery is about half a page, but it's of interest to the topic as a whole: [12] again, I could reduce the section even further if needed, as long as it retains the illustrations and the essential points on meaning and graphic design. "noting that he thinks people write upside down in the southern hemisphere." this is a ridiculous misrepresentation, even by your standards, kwami. the idea that inverse-boustrophedon might be related to hemispheric differences in astronomy is primarily from Esen-Baur, I haven't confirmed it in the original paper; moreover, it's a relatively minor point, and not central to the hypothesis by any means. no, a brief mention is no longer sufficient now that there's a secondary RS.

idk if De Laat will check back in. in the meantime, when is this new source coming out? and can't we leave the content up for now, and then change it when appropriate?

I'd like to address your crackpot claim, a personal opinion you've emphasized above and beyond published literature. a central point in your argument was 'mass comparison', the idea that comparing rongorongo to astronomy throughout Polynesia was invalid. the problem is, you're ignoring the substantial cultural/historical links throughout the Polynesian region, and the fact that Rapa Nui was colonized during the 'Polynesian Golden Age'. with a complete absence of star-names in Rapa nui, it makes sense to consult closely related cultures. there's also evidence to suggest that, while rongorongo is primarily known from Easter Island, it may not have originated there (e.g. Hotu Matua legend). additionally, we have anecdotes which are consistent with the astronomy connection, such as the Mamari tablet and Phillipi's 1875 account. there's also the numerous direct correspondences, which you'll see if you give it a proper read. finally, rongorongo is an unsolved mystery. are you willing to at least consider the possibility that you jumped to conclusions and that Dietrich may be right after all? Xcalibur (talk) 02:45, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

To Xcalibur,

Whether or how my proposals should be mentioned in the article are questions that should not be answered by me. That is not how Wikipedia works or should work, at least in my opinion. However, if I am going to be mentioned, obviously I would prefer it that my current views are outlined. They can be found in the only recently published proceedings from the Berlin conference (pp. 431-443): "Phonetic values in the petroglyphs at 'Ana O Keke, Easter Island", in: B. Vogt, A. Kühlem, A. Mieth, H. Bork (eds), 2019, Easter Island and the Pacific. Cultural and Environmental Dynamics. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Easter Island and the Pacific, held in the Ethnological Museum Berlin, Germany, from 21-26 June 2015, Rapa Nui: Rapanui Press. A more elaborate and up-to-date treatment of these ideas can be found in the (self-published) paper: "Initiation rites as a possible key to the decipherment of the rongorongo script of Easter Island" (2019) (available at academia.edu).

If, however, the only reason for your determination to have me included in the article is to use this as leverage to have the section on Dietrich also approved, I would rather pass. The simple fact is that Esen-Baur's article cannot be regarded as a peer review, because she is not a peer (as she herself has stressed) and therefore it can only be taken for what it is: a summary by a not too critical admirer. Mary de Laat (talk) 10:56, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

thanks for your response! I'll have to look into the latest publication.

there's no need to presume such ulterior motives. not to flatter you, but I'd like to add your content on its own merits, and this is a separate issue from Dietrich.

I respectfully disagree on the EB review. it's both a summary and a review, and EB is an expert on Polynesia, including petroglyphs which seem to be related to rongorongo. more reviews would certainly be helpful, but I think primary and secondary sources published in scholarly journals should be sufficient. then again, the Dietrich hypothesis clashes with your own, so I wouldn't expect too much sympathy. Xcalibur (talk) 13:57, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

I think Mary de Laat's evaluation of Esen-Baur's review matches kwami's and mine, so there is in turn no need to presume that this opinion is solely based on De Laat being an "involved party". –Austronesier (talk) 15:01, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

the EB source contains critiques, which makes it a review by definition. but I understand your perspective.

hopefully, some sort of compromise can be reached. the article would benefit from an interesting new take on rongorongo, especially one that rejects the script hypothesis. I need to at least cover graphic design and meaning, but if I can do that in a minimalist fashion, perhaps we can come to an agreement. Xcalibur (talk) 22:05, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

as an experiment, I've added my revised content to the article, so you can easily judge. I've further reduced the Dietrich section, bringing it down to 2.5 page lengths (including the half-page gallery). I've also updated De Laat with the latest publication, although it retains the old info, since that's what's referred to in secondary sources. is this good enough? Xcalibur (talk) 02:31, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

another revert. to those involved, User:Kwamikagami & User:Austronesier my current abridged section can be seen here: [13] is this not good enough, or should I reduce it even further? I'm willing to cooperate, I just wish it were easier to make constructive edits. to reiterate, Dietrich's theory is NOT mass-comparison due to the cultural links throughout Polynesia, and there is not a single extant source for Rapa Nui star-names so you can't fault him for that either. Xcalibur (talk) 10:14, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Xcalibur, if you are looking for a list of Rapanui star names, I refer you to E. Edwards & A. Edwards, 2013, When the universe was an island, Appendix 2, p. 442-443. Not many "panpolynesian" names there I'm afraid. Some remarks regarding Dietrich's handling of the glyphs as seen in your presentation: the glyphs as drawn by Dietrich suffer much from the same distortions that characterize Fischer's transcriptions. I don't think artistic licence is appropriate with regard to the subject at hand, even if you are an artist. For example, in the composite sign from line Aa8 in your picture nr. 5, the left arm reaches higher than the head whereas it is in fact shorter. More importantly, on the tablet the top is rounded, not rectangular, which makes it highly unlikely that it is a shortened version of the rectangular sign B001. As a matter of fact, this type of "handless arm" is either pointed or rounded, never rectangular. As it appears, fusions with B001 always show the whole sign, often "held" by an arm or wing (e.g. Br1:6; Er6:8; Er6:13; Hr1:11). Most frequent of course is its occurrence in the much discussed "sitting man with stick" sign. In your picture nr. 3, sign B004 is distorted to fit the theory in a similar way. The pointed arm is symmetrical, and therefore B004 becomes symmetrical. There is however not a single example in the corpus which comes remotely close to Dietrich's drawing of B004. To give another example of these perhaps artistic, but certainly not very factual representations: in your picture nr. 4, the composite is presented as consisting of B284:B003:B607, while a comparison of parallel texts (Ca1; Er9; Hr1; Pr1; Ra6) and similar fusions (Hv4:5; Pv6:3) clearly show that the "head" is not sign B003 but B069. Mary de Laat (talk) 15:49, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

hm, interesting, thanks for your criticism. I'll have to take a closer look at the glyphs, but for the time being, I still believe the evidence is stacked in favor of Dietrich, given the patterns shown and the correspondences. I don't have that book, and I've only found a preview online, but I did come across a paper by the Edwards's on Rapa Nui astronomy. I stand corrected, we do have star-names in Rapa Nui, and they agree with Dietrich! most notable is the name for the Pleiades, matariki which translates to 'small eyes', which agrees 100% with Dietrich's identification. the Rapa Nui name for Canopus, 'wayward one' is also consistent. It seems that Dietrich did in fact work with Rapa Nui star-names, in addition to those from other cultures, which is a huge point in his favor. Pardon me for not being on top of that, I have no association with Dietrich, and have been doing my best to pull this together from the sources, any omissions/slip-ups are my own fault. Perhaps now kwami will come around, since Rapa Nui star-names were a major sticking point in this, and now that point has been addressed. Xcalibur (talk) 19:49, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

We've always known Dietrich used Rapa Nui dictionaries. That wasn't the sticking point. One of the sticking points is that Dietrich thinks people write upside-down in the southern hemisphere, and that RR is boustrophedon to accommodate Hawaii! You know, because Hawaii has such a great RR tradition.

Now that you mention it, however, maybe Dietrich is on to something. Glyph 200 is clearly a bug-eyed alien. I believe that the star names that Dietrich uncovered are not constellations in the sky, but members of the Galactic Federation, proving that the moai were erected by extraterrestrials. Glyph 700 is clearly the Babel fish. — kwami (talk) 21:37, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

are you trying to be funny? leaving aside that the RB/hemispheric connection was put forward by Esen-Baur, and is not significant to the overall theory, everything you just said was obnoxious, no offense. it's like trying to discuss climate change with someone, and they say, "he thinks alien cow farts are going to burn up the atmosphere, LOL XD" it's juvenile, and I expect better. there's a big difference between inserting nonsense, vs drawing 1:1 correspondences with relevant material. more importantly,

"We've always known Dietrich used Rapa Nui dictionaries. That wasn't the sticking point." you contradict yourself. you said, and I quote: "Sorry, but that's nonsense. If he found such connections, you should present them. Indeed, Esen-Baur (from here on "EB") should have presented them. A failure of such magnitude would indicate utter incompetence. So, either the EB review can be disregarded as incompetent, or Dietrich (from here on "D") didn't find any connections with Rapa Nui. And that is a very serious problem." now I have presented connections between D and Rapa Nui star-names, and I could mention even more. the source is: [14] this should be a game-changer by your own admission. and yes, the EB review should have emphasized that point, but that doesn't refute it by any means.

to summarize, the crux of your argument is that 1:1 correspondences between glyphs and star-names are irrelevant, because the star-names are from elsewhere in Polynesia and not Rapa Nui. I've now shown you connections between Rapa Nui astronomy and Dietrich's rongorongo theory. not only that, but the Edwards paper shows correspondences between Rapa Nui astronomy and the rest of Polynesia, supporting the pan-Polynesian connection; as you said, "No, *first* you demonstrate the influence of those cultures on Easter Island, *then* you can find parallels to RR in those demonstrated influences." which I've now done. this is pretty much the top of the pyramid. Xcalibur (talk) 09:49, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Xcalibur, it should be blindingly obvious to you by now that consensus is against you pushing this crackpot 'theory'. Violating RS requirements on an FA is also unacceptable. Reducing the length of your unsupported promotion of Dietrich doesn't somehow make him legitimate. Your chronic edit war has also gotten quite tiresome, and I'm starting to wonder if we need to have you blocked for long-term abuse.

Because Mary's proposal has a RS review, it would be acceptable here. However, he has said (Mary, please correct me if I'm wrong) that he prefers not to have his ideas covered here when he feels that the review misstates them (per his lack of clarity in his first pub). His ideas aren't notable enough that we need to cover them, so I don't have a problem following his preference. — kwami (talk) 21:24, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

there's no consensus here, just you. with all due respect to De Laat (who was enormously helpful just now), there's too much CoI there. Austronesier seems to support inclusion, even though he disagrees with D; Austronesier, feel free to clarify your position.

"Violating RS requirements on an FA is also unacceptable." there is no RS problem here. I've offered reputable scholarly journals as both primary and secondary sources, which should be sufficient. you may personally disagree with those sources, but ultimately that doesn't factor into the RS policy.

"Reducing the length of your unsupported promotion of Dietrich doesn't somehow make him legitimate." it is supported, and you're putting your personal view (which I've now decisively refuted) above the sources. I think length reduction does demonstrate good faith and willingness to compromise.

"Your chronic edit war has also gotten quite tiresome, and I'm starting to wonder if we need to have you blocked for long-term abuse." lately I've only reinstated content after significantly altering or reducing it. and you know what else is tiresome, kwami? making a substantial, well-sourced contribution to the article in line with policy, without compensation, only for you to come along and continuously obstruct. I'm trying to share knowledge with the world, and you're making it difficult. hopefully now that I've answered the central points of your arguments, you may be willing to reconsider the conclusions you jumped to in regards to D. Xcalibur (talk) 10:38, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I have at one point said that I wouldn't object to a mention of Dietrich, maximally in the size of Feodorova (3k), but kwami correctly pointed out that F was critically reviewed by s.o. who actually knows the topic, so the 3k-standard is clearly to high. But the re-insertion of massive text with minimal "truncations" below the threshold of observability, plus loads of images, plus citations from non-RS (self-published books) was clearly disruptive in an ongoing discussion, however stuck it may be. –Austronesier (talk) 11:21, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I did not intend to be disruptive, and I apologize if I was. I thought my reductions were significant (as they removed entire sections and paragraphs), and I wanted to make it easy to see those changes. the non-RS citations were not my own, but were part of the existing De Laat content which I compiled and summarized; I can leave out De Laat if that's the issue. perhaps a brief Dietrich section, far more abbreviated that what I've done so far, would be acceptable? keep in mind that the connections I've just drawn between Rapa Nui astronomy, Dietrich's theory, and Polynesia (with the help of the Edwards paper) radically alter the discussion, and makes Dietrich more viable than ever before. Xcalibur (talk) 11:37, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Actually, the SPSs I meant were Auf Götterpfaden über den Pazifik I+II. –Austronesier (talk) 12:30, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

oh, I can always leave those out if necessary. Xcalibur (talk) 12:43, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

To Kwamikagami, surely you don't expect me to say that my ideas aren't notable enough for coverage :-)?

Of course not! But for what makes them notable for WP, Horley's review, you've expressed reservations. I'm happy to cover your init publication with Horley's critique, or not, since you've since revised your thesis -- which I'm sorry to say I still haven't read :-( — kwami (talk) 00:26, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

To Xcalibur, the fact that matariki is also the Pleiades' name on Easter Island, does exactly nothing to support Dietrich's interpretation of sign B046 as little eyes. However, the fact that the sign has two "eyes", whereas the Pleiades have 6 or more visible stars, the fact that the Rapanui identified its petroglyphic version as a reference to supreme god Makemake, and the fact that the sign is virtually unknown in the rock art of the rest of Polynesia, suggest that Dietrich's interpretation is just a wild guess. But these are facts and apparently we live at a time in which the line between facts and opinions has become a very thin one. So these must be happy days for artists like Dietrich who enjoy to dabble in decipherment. Since a careful handling of the glyphs themselves does not seem to concern him (nor you) very much, I'll give a different example of his handling of these tiresome little things called facts (from Kleine Augen, part 2, pp. 28-29): "Als Beute aus dem Feldzug gegen Ägypten 1798 brachte Napoleon den "Stein von Rosette" mit nach Frankreich, der seitdem im Louvre/Paris gezeigt wird. Auf diesem Stein befinden sich drei Inschriften in drei Sprachformen, Neuägyptisch, Demotisch und Griechisch. Der Franzose Champollion hatte die Hypothese aufgestellt, daß möglicherweise in den sogenannten Kartuschen Königsnamen der bisher unentzifferten Hieroglyphen stehen könnten. Die Abbildung zeigt einige dieser Kartuschen." So here we have the astonishing revelation that the Rosetta Stone is in the Louvre, and not in the British Museum as we all have mistakenly thought, and it was brought there by none other than Napoleon himself as a trophy of his Egyptian campaign! Foregoing to mention that others such as Thomas Young had earlier identified cartouches as holding personal names, he goes on to give illustrations of some cartouches including "Tutanchamun" and "Echnaton" thereby suggesting that these pharaos are on the Rosetta Stone and then continues: "Mit Hilfe des griechischen Textes wußte Champollion, welcher Name zu welcher Kartusche gehörte. Er fand heraus, welche Konsonantenverbindung zu welchem Symbol der Namensschreibung assoziiert ist. Das war der Durchbruch in der Entzifferung einer seit über 2.000 Jahren unentzifferten Schrift." As the last known hieroglyphic inscription dates from about AD 394 and we have Champollion's Lettre à M. Dacier from 1822, that's about 500 years off. O, well, to quote the great scholar Ronald Reagan: "Facts are stupid things". Mary de Laat (talk) 12:23, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

you're missing the significance of finding correspondences between rongorongo, Rapa Nui astronomy, and Polynesian astronomy. Kwami's argument was predicated on those connections not existing, but they do. and matariki is not the only connection there. the Pleiades have 6 or more visible stars one of the dependent glyphs has 6 marks on it, which may also be a reference (since a given concept may have more than one glyph assigned to it), and that doesn't rule out the 'eyes' glyph referring to stars by the same name. the fact that the Rapanui identified its petroglyphic version as a reference to supreme god Makemake from what I've observed, there's noticeable stylistic differences between the 'eyes' glyph and the petroglyphs you're referring to, so they're not necessarily equivalent. and the fact that the sign is virtually unknown in the rock art of the rest of Polynesia this assumes the makemake petroglyph is equivalent to the RR glyph, which is probably not the case.

the egyptian stuff is meant to provide context on the art of decipherment. I'm willing to forgive a few lapses there. moreover, the discussion should remain focused on rongorongo and the central points of the theory. it's notable that rongorongo doesn't have anything like cartouches, which you'd expect in a hierarchical society, unless of course it's not a writing system at all, but a notation system. there's other supporting evidence for this, like the Mamari tablet and the Phillipi account, which have not been addressed. O, well, to quote the great scholar Ronald Reagan: "Facts are stupid things". facts are important, but we don't have enough of them when it comes to rongorongo. much of its history is murky, and the same is true of Easter Island in general. thus, there's room for speculation, as long as it doesn't veer outside the bounds of common sense and rational thought, such as the actual crackpot theory that the Indus Valley script is somehow related to rongorongo, in spite of them being thousands of years apart and from different civilizations! Dietrich, whatever his faults, is on much firmer ground. Xcalibur (talk) 13:26, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

User:Kwamikagami, I ask you to consider the latest evidence I've brought to light. Rapa-nui star-names were the missing piece to the puzzle, and this changes the entire discussion. I only wish I'd made the breakthrough sooner, it would've saved us alot of trouble. I hope you'll consider this, as it should change your mind completely, as long as you're being fair. Xcalibur (talk) 00:11, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

You haven't provided any evidence! You may have drunk the Kool-Aid, but the rest of us haven't. — kwami (talk) 00:26, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

but I have: [15] that's the key source. to quote your summary of D from [16] He attempts to match the meanings of the names for stars and planets in various Polynesian languages with the shapes of rongorongo glyphs. Unable to find matches in Rapa Nui, or very many matches in any particular language, he resorts to mass comparison with all Polynesian languages ... they are especially unlikely given that he did not find parallels in the Rapa Nui language. but he did find matches in Rapa Nui! not only that, but Rapa Nui star-names are very similar to those of various other Polynesian languages, which rules out mass comparison! these were your central objections to the theory, but Rapa Nui astronomy refutes them. to quote you again, "No, *first* you demonstrate the influence of those cultures on Easter Island, *then* you can find parallels to RR in those demonstrated influences." which has been done. I can explain further with examples if you'd like. Xcalibur (talk) 01:53, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

still waiting. in the meantime, I'll present examples. All I ask is that you give this another chance. Xcalibur (talk) 04:03, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Of course Rapa Nui astronomy is Polynesian. Rapa Nui is in Polynesia. The people are Polynesian. The language is Polynesian. The culture is Polynesian. So what? You're missing the entire point. This is OR on your part, not backed by any RS. As such, there's no reason to think it's anything other than garbage. You call drink the Kool Aid for the next decade, but unless you find RS's, it's inappropriate on WP. Except to say that Dietrich is yet another a crackpot. You can repeat the same bullshit over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, year after year after year after year after year after year, but it's still bullshit.

(The critical part of the objection, BTW, was that Dietrich was cherry-picking data, which vastly increases the likelihood of finding spurious correlations.) — kwami (talk) 09:05, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate the response.

Of course Rapa Nui astronomy is Polynesian. Rapa Nui is in Polynesia. The people are Polynesian. The language is Polynesian. The culture is Polynesian. So what? your major point of contention is that Dietrich's work is mass-comparison, that is, he drew connections with unrelated data (you cited the Amerind theory as an example of this). as you said, "No, *first* you demonstrate the influence of those cultures on Easter Island, *then* you can find parallels to RR in those demonstrated influences." which has been done. You also insisted that there should be matches with Rapa-nui star-names, which have also been presented. given that Polynesian cultures are all linked together (as you said), it's not really spurious coincidence or mass-comparison, especially when the astronomical terms are often very similar, as you said, If Dietrich had found his identities in Tahitian, and then again in Hawaiian, and then again in Samoan, Tongan and Maori, that would be good evidence that they were valid and pan-Polynesian.

It's not OR, because my content is derived from reputable scholarly journals and academic papers. some of this you don't personally accept or agree with, but they should still pass muster under WP policy.

as for cherry-picking, this is a new assertion. I'd argue that it's not cherry-picking: it's based on pan-Polynesian cultural interaction, the star-names are linked together (including those of Rapa nui), and there's other reasoning, namely that rongorongo is structurally inconsistent with an alphabet or syllabary (and is more consistent with a notation system), and that astronomy/navigation content is a reasonable hypothesis given the context of the Golden Age of Polynesia centuries ago. On top of that, the Mamari tablet and the Phillipi account are further supporting evidence in favor of stellar notation.

I get the impression that you made your mind up on this fairly quickly, and now you're unwilling to give it a second look, even when I present significant evidence. I don't mean to impose on you either, I just want to make a constructive contribution, and I've negotiated this as best as I can. I'm still willing to compromise, would a section about as long as Fischer be acceptable? I'd rather make things more interesting and informative than less, but if I have to chop it down, I can. Of course, that depends on you giving fair consideration to my latest, game-changing evidence. Xcalibur (talk) 10:49, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

btw, meta comment: I'm fine with you collapsing these admittedly lengthy discussions, but I think you should wait until this particular thread is concluded. Xcalibur (talk) 10:55, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

also, found another source and came across the Berthin paper which referenced D. Xcalibur (talk) 08:00, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

I've presented new evidence, and provided more notability. all I ask is that you reconsider this. as for the trumped-up note, it's not a fair representation, so my removal of the Dietrich reference shouldn't be taken as throwing in the towel. at least you can work with me on that one point, but unfortunately you're not willing to give this another chance. Xcalibur (talk) 11:15, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

@Bigdan201: If you want to present evidence for support of Dietrich's hypothesis, please go ahead and publish it in a peer-reviewed journal. In this talk page, it is out of place. As for the last citation as evidence for his notability: Die Zeit is a highly respectable newspaper, but the report about Dietrich does not necessarily support his scholarly notability, but rather his public notoriety. –Austronesier (talk) 11:44, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

it's not out of place, because the main sticking point is that kwami is personally convinced that this material lacks scholarly and intellectual merit. if he comes around, then we can negotiate adding a further truncated section. that's why I'm focused on presenting evidence and addressing his major criticisms (ie mass-comparison). I've already supplied peer-reviewed scholarly journals, which you and kwami have criticized, but they should still count as RS.

contrary to your claim, the Die Zeit article is not negative, in fact it's reasonable and fair. it mentions Fischer's criticisms, but also has positive comments. if you're behind a paywall, you can check these links: [17][18] and run them through google translate if you'd like (while it has its limitations, German to English is fairly reliable). and as I said, the Berthins paper made a brief reference to Dietrich and stellar notation while listing various hypotheses. so all this does support notability, not notoriety. Xcalibur (talk) 12:20, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

No, the main sticking point is that it is a fringe theory by a layperson with zero credentials, and it hasn't been reviewed yet by scholars with expertise in rongorongo. Simple as that. Thank you for the additional links, I have access to the Zeit article and don't need Google to read it. I have been familiar with die Zeit's reporting style for decades, and this is not how they report about major breakthroughs in science. It rather reads like a story of a "Don Quijote"-like amateur. The subtitle "Ein Grafiker aus Stuttgart will die rätselhafte Schrift von der Osterinsel entziffert haben" exactly says that: an amateur (what else is a graphic designer in the context of the decipherment of an ancient script) making a claim, that's all. –Austronesier (talk) 13:16, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

I beg to differ, it's kwami's disagreement that is the focal point here. as I said, it's published and reviewed by reputable scholarly journals, and has mentions elsewhere. you take issue with Esen-Baur because she's an expert on Polynesia/Rapa Nui rather than rongorongo specifically, but I still believe it counts as a secondary RS. granted, it would be helpful to hear from experts like Sproat, Guy, et al, but we haven't. until we do, we shouldn't argue from silence. as for Die Zeit, it seems like you're reading your own interpretation into it. it doesn't call him a Quixotic amateur, it simply reports on his claims in a neutral, factual manner. naturally it can't be treated as a major breakthrough when it hasn't gained widespread acceptance. but the fact that it hasn't doesn't disprove the theory, it could just mean that rongorongo studies are a bit moribund (supported by the fact that kwami's rongorongo study group on Yahoo is no longer active). Xcalibur (talk) 13:36, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Even if you count Esen-Baur as a peripheral expert review, does this in any way justify the excessive undue presentation of details of Dietrich's theory? I have said what I think about it. I appreciate it that you promote Dietrich's views in a much more sensible way than he himself does, but that's not what WP is meant for. –Austronesier (talk) 14:24, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia is for documenting interesting, notable information provided by reliable sources, which is what I'm attempting to do here. admittedly the original section was rather long, about the length of Pozdniakov before it was reduced (which nonetheless passed FA review). with that said, I'd be willing to make further substantial reductions to the section if that's the issue. Xcalibur (talk) 15:18, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Xcalibur, That is an essential misreading of WP:NPOV/WP:DUEWEIGHT. No, Wikipedia is not for indiscriminate documentation of interesting, information whether provided in reliable sources or not. It is for having articles on notable topics, and within those articles, it is for documenting majority and minority opinions about the article topic in proportion to their appearance in published, independent, secondary, reliable sources. If you accept Wikipedia's principles of WP:NPOV and WP:DUEWEIGHT, then "what you are attempting to do here" is out of bounds. What you could do, though, analogous to Alternative theories of Hungarian language origins or Fringe theories about the Shroud of Turin, is create a new topic, "Alternative theories of rongorongo" and discuss them there, where they would not be WP:UNDUE within that topic, as they are here. Just because something is interesting or written up in a peer-reviewed journal, does not make them a majority or significant minority view, or appropriate for inclusion in this article. Please do not try to force it in, just because it was published. Mathglot (talk) 20:39, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

how's this for proportionality? [19] Xcalibur (talk) 16:08, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

• as an experiment, I've added the updated De Laat section, and a much reduced section on Dietrich. it's down to about the length of Fischer, so hopefully this can be a workable compromise. I'm only doing this to bring attention to the alterations I've made; hopefully this won't be taken the wrong way. Xcalibur (talk) 19:48, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

To Xcalibur,

Since you cannot be bothered too much by Egyptian “stuff”, here are some excerpts from my old notes regarding Dietrich’s rongorongo stuff which I have dug up (they concern Kleine Augen I & II):

1) Some examples of overall silliness:

I, 125: “All signs have the same size, independent of what they represent”. Even a casual look at an inscription shows that this is a very sloppy remark at best. Signs are frequently miniaturized to fit in small open spaces and are sometimes even written inside other signs.

I, 141: “The Maori nor any other people in Oceania knew a religion, they had no gods, worship was unknown.” A rather baffling statement, in my opinion.

II, 27: “The only rule that I have found during 10 years of investigation is: There are no rules in Rongorongo. Sign combinations can be star constellations, they can be names, of course also both, and they can have further meanings that I have not found.” Huh?

2) I, 131-136: Dietrich determines that sign B046 represents the Pleiades (Matariki, “Little Eyes”) and that this cluster of stars was very important to Polynesian navigation. His problem is that there are only 36 occurrences of this sign in a corpus of some 12,000 signs. He tries to solve his dilemma by assuming that there were other RR-signs for the Pleiades and he finds one in B003. This omnipresent “fern”- or “feather”-like sign comes with 3 to 6 (pairs of) “leaves” or "barbs". Dietrich states that the sign is not a “fern” or “feather”, but a “kite tail” similar to the ones described by Gill for Mangaia (Myths and Songs, p. 123). As Mangaian kite tails with 6 feather bushes represent the Pleiades, B003-signs with 6 (pairs of) appendages must also represent these 6 stars. Apart from the fact that Gill describes the appendages as made of “Ti-leaves” and not of feathers as Dietrich would have it, there is only one small problem with this theory: parallel texts clearly show that the number of "leaves" or "barbs" on B003-signs is variable and therefore of no importance. Where, for example, the sign has 6 pairs in text P, in a parallel position it may have 3, 4 or 5 pairs in texts H and Q. Following Dietrich’s interpretation, however, the latter would have to represent completely different stars or constellations.

3) Signs B430 and B431 represent what looks like a young bird. The only difference between the two is that the “bird” of B431 has a small appendage, usually to the lower right. In Kleine Augen I, p. 128, Dietrich establishes that B430 is a “flying duck” and in Kleine Augen II, p. 32, that B431 is a “rat” (with the appendage becoming the rat’s tail). Apparently, he is convinced that these two signs refer to two different stars or constellations. The annoying problem with this is that in parallel texts these two signs appear to be interchangeable (as is the case with other birdlike signs that may have a similar appendage, e.g. B630/B631).

Some additional remarks:

– Despite your repeated attempts to give a different impression, Matariki is the only asterism name that Rapanui has in common with the rest of Polynesia. In fact it is the only astronomical name that is shared by the majority of Polynesian cultures. Its importance can be simply explained by the fact that its heliacal rising marked the beginning of the new year.

– The fact that Rapanui people pointed to the sky in reference to the Santiago Staff merely suggests that they hinted at a relation with astronomy, not with navigation. There are several traditions and artifacts on Easter Island that are evidence of the importance of astronomical observation. Similarly, the lunar calendar on tablet Mamari only suggests an interest in moon observation and chronology, not in navigation. Mary de Laat (talk) 14:16, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, De Laat. I'll address each of these points, but first I'd like to point out that it's important to read through and consider the context. taking particular phrases too literally can be misleading, especially when (as Esen-Baur says) D goes off on literary digressions at times.

I, 125: “All signs have the same size, independent of what they represent”. Even a casual look at an inscription shows that this is a very sloppy remark at best. Signs are frequently miniaturized to fit in small open spaces and are sometimes even written inside other signs. yes, and D points out that glyphs can be miniaturized, rotated, modified, or fit one inside another (eg canoes). what he meant was that RR has a very consistent style, comparable to a typeface, with glyphs fitting together elegantly, even if the objects depicted are not similar in size. for example, a bird and a shark are of very different sizes irl, but in rongorongo their glyphs take up similar dimensions.

I, 141: “The Maori nor any other people in Oceania knew a religion, they had no gods, worship was unknown.” A rather baffling statement, in my opinion. Dietrich referenced mythology, including a story about the moon goddess Hina, so he's well aware of the traditions of Oceania. checking the paper, the context is that they relied on consistent patterns in the night sky, rather than unpredictable events such as novas, meteors, etc. in other words, the Polynesians took a surprisingly objective, analytical approach to astronomy; instead of assuming that the motions of stars/planets were the capricious whim of gods, they observed patterns. therefore, rongorongo should refer to consistently observable astronomical phenomena.

II, 27: “The only rule that I have found during 10 years of investigation is: There are no rules in Rongorongo. Sign combinations can be star constellations, they can be names, of course also both, and they can have further meanings that I have not found.” Huh? you're taking this too literally and out of context. Dietrich describes consistent rules, especially for graphical design. what he means is that rongorongo combines structure with flexibility, so that glyphs can be used in different ways, e.g. for navigation, calendars, etc. (as the previous passage clearly states).

2) I, 131-136: there is only one small problem with this theory: parallel texts clearly show that the number of "leaves" or "barbs" on B003-signs is variable and therefore of no importance. Where, for example, the sign has 6 pairs in text P, in a parallel position it may have 3, 4 or 5 pairs in texts H and Q. Following Dietrich’s interpretation, however, the latter would have to represent completely different stars or constellations. of course that dependent glyph has different numbers of notches, with a different meaning for each amount. 6 notches refers to the Pleiades, while 3 notches refers to Orion's Belt (I'm not sure about 4 or 5). there is no contradiction here.

3) Signs B430 and B431 ... The annoying problem with this is that in parallel texts these two signs appear to be interchangeable (as is the case with other birdlike signs that may have a similar appendage, e.g. B630/B631). I'd have to look further into it, but this seems rather ambiguous and minor.

Despite your repeated attempts to give a different impression, Matariki is the only asterism name that Rapanui has in common with the rest of Polynesia. I've already proven that there's a network of associations between the astronomy of Rapa Nui and the rest of Polynesia. this should come as no surprise, given the common cultural background, historical trade & interaction throughout that region.

The fact that Rapanui people pointed to the sky in reference to the Santiago Staff merely suggests that they hinted at a relation with astronomy, not with navigation. There are several traditions and artifacts on Easter Island that are evidence of the importance of astronomical observation. Similarly, the lunar calendar on tablet Mamari only suggests an interest in moon observation and chronology, not in navigation. of course, but this poses no problems, because rongorongo is not limited to navigational data. Dietrich's hypothesis is that it's primarily a system of astronomical notation, which can refer to navigation, calendars, and more. Xcalibur (talk) 10:45, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

To Xcalibur, this will be my final contribution to the debat because I have come to realize that as a true believer you are not in the least interested in a reasonable discussion:

1) "All signs have the same size, independent of what they represent." is an incorrect statement in whatever way you care to interpret it: signs don't have the same width: fish are smaller than birds, abstract signs are in general smaller than figurative ones, etc. Even if you would say, "No, obviously Dietrich meant they are all the same height", it is still incorrect. A number of small signs - the best example is the very common little circle (B021) - never have the same size/height as people or animals.

"The Maori nor any other people in Oceania knew a religion, they had no gods, worship was unknown." I don't care what Dietrich means by this according to you, I care about what he writes. This silly statement does not say "the Polynesians took a surprisingly objective, analytical approach to astronomy", it says that the people in Oceania did not have religion or gods, period.

"There are no rules in Rongorongo." This seems to me a revealing statement from someone who during 10 years of study has not been able to find one single rule. Contrary to what you seem to think there are no consistent rules of navigational notation described by Dietrich. There are some shaky comparisons between signs and star constellations and a lot of wild guesses and that's about all.

2) "of course that dependent glyph has different numbers of notches, with a different meaning for each amount. 6 notches refers to the Pleiades, while 3 notches refers to Orion's Belt (I'm not sure about 4 or 5). there is no contradiction here." Don't you see my point? Here we have one and the same RR-text in three copies. In the exact same passage we have Pleiades in one text, Orion in the next, and "Canoe" in Ursa Maior in number three. Why? Because Dietrich has determined that the number of barbs on a feather means anything. Happy navigating, folks!

3) "this seems rather ambiguous and minor." Two signs that look very much alike and must mean basically the same because they appear in the same place in two versions of the same text are interpreted both as "rat" and as "bird", and therefore as different stars or constellations. "Rather ambiguous", you bet!, but "minor"? As minor as his Rosetta Stone in the Louvre?

4) "I've already proven that there's a network of associations between the astronomy of Rapa Nui and the rest of Polynesia." No, really you haven't. Nor has Dietrich. This "network of associations" only exists in your minds. For other people to take you seriously, you have to put some substantial evidence on the table. Mary de Laat (talk) 14:31, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

To Xcalibur, this will be my final contribution to the debat because I have come to realize that as a true believer you are not in the least interested in a reasonable discussion:

on the contrary, I've made an effort to have reasonable discourse throughout this talk page. this is in spite of stonewalling, misinterpretation, or flat out ridicule from other parties.

no one knows the truth of rongorongo, and the last people who did died of smallpox in the 19th century. you haven't asked me my opinion of Dietrich's theory, and I'll give it now: at the very least, the analysis of graphical composition is a genuine insight into how rongorongo really works, and this can be considered independently of the astronomy connection. as for astronomy, there's alot of evidence and numerous direct connections in support of this, which seem too consistent to be mere coincidence. it's not incontrovertible proof, but it's the best case I've seen thus far.

1) "All signs have the same size, independent of what they represent." is an incorrect statement in whatever way you care to interpret it: signs don't have the same width: fish are smaller than birds, abstract signs are in general smaller than figurative ones, etc. Even if you would say, "No, obviously Dietrich meant they are all the same height", it is still incorrect. A number of small signs - the best example is the very common little circle (B021) - never have the same size/height as people or animals.

again, this is too literalist. of course there's variation, D himself shows this. for example, the reimiro glyph can be depicted vertically or horizontally, the latter is to accommodate a smaller glyph above it. the point is, rongorongo is a bit like the variable-width font you're reading now, with consistent style and margins. glyphs are designed with this in mind, and are not proportional to the real objects depicted (eg sharks and birds being of similar size). we certainly don't see massive size differentials, as we do in ancient egyptian art for example.

"The Maori nor any other people in Oceania knew a religion, they had no gods, worship was unknown." I don't care what Dietrich means by this according to you, I care about what he writes. This silly statement does not say "the Polynesians took a surprisingly objective, analytical approach to astronomy", it says that the people in Oceania did not have religion or gods, period.

but it effectively does say that in the very next line in the paper! again, context is important. the line you quoted is false if taken by itself at face value, but given D's acknowledgement of Polynesian mythology, I can only assume that he meant what he said immediately after this. perhaps it was a careless slip, though.

"There are no rules in Rongorongo." This seems to me a revealing statement from someone who during 10 years of study has not been able to find one single rule. Contrary to what you seem to think there are no consistent rules of navigational notation described by Dietrich. There are some shaky comparisons between signs and star constellations and a lot of wild guesses and that's about all.

again, too literalist. this is like taking WP:NORULES to mean that there aren't consistent rules, policies, or ways of doing things on Wikipedia. that page doesn't really mean there are no rules, rather that rules are not absolutely binding, and there's room for flexibility and judgment. likewise, D means that RR glyphs can be used in different ways, ranging from navigation, calendrical science, to just recording astronomy. this is so because he does describe rules, particularly for how glyphs are composed and compounded together; as I said, Dietrich’s analysis found that rongorongo glyphs are governed by rules concerning combination, partial elimination, emphasis, iteration, economy, orientation, and aesthetic design. this is discussed further in Esen-Baur's review.

2)Don't you see my point? Here we have one and the same RR-text in three copies. In the exact same passage we have Pleiades in one text, Orion in the next, and "Canoe" in Ursa Maior in number three. Why? Because Dietrich has determined that the number of barbs on a feather means anything. Happy navigating, folks!

I just checked Kudrjavtsev et al. and I see what you mean now. that really is strange, though I wouldn't dismiss the whole theory on a single discrepancy. after all, it might be an oddity of those texts, or scribal error, or maybe extra notches were added later (and Dietrich does state that in other texts, there were later, unprofessional additions that interfered with the originals). also, navigation is not the sole purpose. but I'll admit, that's not what one would expect.

"this seems rather ambiguous and minor." Two signs that look very much alike and must mean basically the same because they appear in the same place in two versions of the same text are interpreted both as "rat" and as "bird", and therefore as different stars or constellations. "Rather ambiguous", you bet!, but "minor"? As minor as his Rosetta Stone in the Louvre?

I'd have to look further into this, and check the parallel texts for myself (as I did for the above). the bit about the Louvre was a silly mistake, but one that can be forgiven.

4) "I've already proven that there's a network of associations between the astronomy of Rapa Nui and the rest of Polynesia." No, really you haven't. Nor has Dietrich. This "network of associations" only exists in your minds. For other people to take you seriously, you have to put some substantial evidence on the table.

yes I have, I did so further up in this discussion. I'll quote myself,

"Canopus is known as atu-tahi, 'wayward one' in Rapa Nui; it's also known as Ao-tahi, 'One Who Stands Alone' in Maori. the Pleiades are known as matariki, 'Small Eyes' in both Rapa Nui and Hawaiian. Sirius is known as Tau Ehu, 'Beautiful Firebrand' in Rapa Nui, and as A'a, 'Burning Bright' in Hawaiian. the Milky Way is known as mango-roa, 'Long Shark' in Maori, and as Te Ngo'e 'Fabulous Marine Creature' in Rapa Nui. and there are more examples besides these. surely you can see the close relation between the astronomy of Rapa Nui and Polynesia, and the direct matches between rongorongo and Polynesian astronomy (including that of Rapa Nui). this addresses your primary criticism of mass-comparison."

this is on top of common cultural background of Polynesia, due to trade/interaction throughout the region during their Golden Age. as kwami said, Of course Rapa Nui astronomy is Polynesian. Rapa Nui is in Polynesia. The people are Polynesian. The language is Polynesian. The culture is Polynesian. and here's my source of Rapa-nui star-names [20].

as for correspondences between glyphs and astronomy, they are numerous and 1:1, as already shown.

In spite of what you said, you're welcome to comment further. I'm willing to consider other views with fairness and objectivity. Xcalibur (talk) 20:10, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

• to summarize: you can point out errors and absurdities in Dietrich's work (although I try to give the benefit of the doubt) and you can point out possible discrepancies (although there are alternate explanations). but regardless of Dietrich's faults, none of this refutes the central points being made, namely that

1. rongorongo is a notation system, not a writing system

2. the notation system contains astronomical content, with numerous & direct correspondences to Polynesian & Rapa Nui astronomy

3. the glyphs are governed by a set of rules for composition and compounding, which form consistent patterns.

the evidence is in favor of the preceding points. the correspondences seem too strong and numerous to be mere coincidence, and are further supported by cultural context (which rules out mass-comparison, which was kwami's main argument). if you assume rongorongo is linguistic, there are a number of stumbling-blocks, such as structural dissimilarity to an alphabet/syllabary, and the Mamari tablet with its repetitive lunar signs; at the same time, these features fit well with a notation system. finally, the rules for composition/compounding are entirely consistent with known glyphs, and the 'equations' provide an elegant deconstruction of how rongorongo was designed. Xcalibur (talk) 23:01, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I replied inline above, but this section is getting so long, it's likely to be missed, so I'll summarize here. This theory should not be included in the article, however interesting it might be. It may have appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, but being an "interesting" theory that was published in a reliable source is not sufficient for inclusion in an article. The WP:NPOV policy of WP:DUEWEIGHT also requires that it be a majority or significant minority viewpoint; this appears to be neither, and thus is inappropriate at this article. What you could do, however, analogous to Alternative theories of Hungarian language origins, is to create a new topic, "Alternative theories of rongorongo" and include it there, where it would not be UNDUE within the scope of that topic, as it is here. Mathglot (talk) 20:47, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

thanks for your response. I agree that these discussions are voluminous, but there seems to be no way of discussing these matters concisely.

this is a fair criticism. however, Dietrich was not only published in a scholarly journal (primary RS), but reviewed in another (secondary RS). this work was also covered in a Die Zeit article, and mentioned in the Berthins paper (as I stated above). such secondary coverage supports Notability, and should be enough for inclusion, especially when this topic is far from settled (i.e. there is no agreed-upon, peer-reviewed interpretation of rongorongo, except for the Mamari calendar, which is consistent with astronomical notation). admittedly the original section was long, comparable to the uncut Pozdniakov section (which nonetheless passed FA review), which is why I've substantially reduced its length as a compromise. Xcalibur (talk) 14:40, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

RfC Discussion, part II

User:Kwamikagami -- I don't mean to bother you, but I'd like to ask you one more time to review the points I made further up in the discussion. I've quoted and addressed your primary critiques on mass-comparison/cherry-picking, and drawn connections between Polynesian astronomy & Rapa Nui (which you made much of). btw, I've never actually stated that the Dietrich theory is correct, I don't know if it is, because the last people who could read rongorongo died of smallpox in the 19th century. It's simply the most intriguing theory I've come across thus far, and the various sources/references support RS & Notability. at the very least, the analysis of glyph compounding is a genuine insight into how RR was written. as for the astronomy connection, if it's not true, then the sheer amount of direct correspondences between rongorongo and Polynesian astronomy is uncanny. if it were a handful of links, or if the links were not strong, we could dismiss this as spurious; but there's a massive amount of direct correspondence, which to me is persuasive. whether you personally agree or disagree with the theory, it's not crackpottery, in other words, it has intellectual integrity (unlike Barry Fell's fanfiction). since rongorongo remains an unsolved puzzle, with this article being essentially a grab bag of notable attempts, you should strongly consider permitting me to add my content. again, I can truncate Dietrich down to the length of Fischer if needed. Xcalibur (talk) 04:15, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

BigDan, it's not just me. Several of us have reviewed Dietrich, and we all think it's nonsense. Cutting it down to Fischer would still be way, way too much -- Fischer's an obvious crackpot, only reason for the lengthy treatment is that he got so much media attention. (Though the effort he went to to get accurate transcriptions is admirable, and valuable.) I know you don't believe me, but I was actually in favor of including Dietrich (despite some of the idiotic things he said) until I realized that the people who actually understand this stuff all thought we was a crackpot. The fact that you find him convincing doesn't matter -- you don't know any more about this than I do. A small blurb about him, along the lines of Fedorova, as a 2nd example in the 'fanciful decipherments' section would be okay if you had a good ref how his 'decipherment' is nonsense. (So far, no-one could be bothered.) But without RS's, there's no place in a WP article for an unsubstantiated fringe hypothesis. — kwami (talk) 05:29, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate the reasonable response. I believe I have RS covered with scholarly journals publishing D and the EB review, as well as the Die Zeit article, mention in the Berthins paper, etc. In addition, I think FRINGE should be considered somewhat differently on a topic like this, since there's no agreed-upon correct answer; I think any hypothesis with sufficient primary and secondary RS to back it up should be viable. however, you've chosen to be gate-keeper, and you don't accept this, and WP leans in favor of the deletionist. what can I say, I put forth my best effort. such is life. Xcalibur (talk) 06:42, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

User:Austronesier - just wanted to say, thanks for your involvement in this matter; your neutral, informative feedback was helpful. if you're willing to support a much reduced version of Dietrich, such as [21] (which could still be reduced further), then we can continue negotiation. otherwise, it seems I've hit a dead-end. Xcalibur (talk) 03:34, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I thought I'd give this one more try. the latest version of Dietrich is down to a single page-length, and I'm not sure how much further I could pare it down while retaining its integrity. is this an acceptable compromise? Xcalibur (talk) 06:57, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

• I'm disappointed, kwami. given that my latest abridgment is a fraction of the length, and fits with the rest of the article, I thought we could finally achieve a compromise. however, you remain as close-minded as before. it seems like you jumped to conclusions early on, and now you're set on the material being crackpot BS, and won't give it a second look. again, I ask you to review the points I made earlier -- I directly addressed mass-comparison/cherry-picking (which seems to be the crux of your argument). I presented the Rapa Nui star-names you demanded, drew connections between Rapa Nui & Polynesian astronomy and RR glyphs, and provided other evidence such as the Mamari tablet and the Santiago Staff anecdote.

User:Austronesier sorry to bother you again, but since you showed up to this: would you be willing to support inclusion of the current abridged version? [22] and while I'm at it, User:Hairy_Dude you made a useful fix to my content while it was up. would you be willing to weigh in? Xcalibur (talk) 00:46, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

My fixes were only copy edits to bring what was here into conformance with MOS; I have nothing to say on substantive issues, I'm afraid, and hoping for a statement from me about which sources are reliable is in vain (except to note in passing that Die Zeit is a general newspaper and so as WP:RS suggests, although reputable, is not necessarily reliable on specialist topics). I can only offer general comments having skimmed this discussion. Namely: what WP:FRINGE says is not that fringe theories should be excluded, but that they should not be given undue weight, for example by dominating the content; as such, cutting down the content based on such sources is appropriate. Are there any reliable sources that debunk the theories that you consider crackpottery? If so, you could also include those to show that it's not just Wikipedia editors who think so. Hairy Dude (talk) 16:56, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

thanks for your response. the Die Zeit source was strictly to support NOTABILITY, while RELIABILITY is covered by the scholarly journals I cited. cutting down the content based on such sources is appropriate. as much as I wanted to include everything, I can see an argument for reducing the section to a summary, so that it balances with the rest of the article. Are there any reliable sources that debunk the theories that you consider crackpottery? no there aren't! I've got primary and secondary sources in the form of reputable scholarly journals supporting Dietrich, while there's no RS against. it's just User:Kwamikagami's view versus the RS, but he remains as intransigent as always. Xcalibur (talk) 13:04, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

You caught me. All those other users that are in consensus against you are sockpuppets of me.

When you find yourself in conflict with reality, the easiest path is to change reality and never, ever admit that you might be wrong. — kwami (talk) 13:31, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

I've got primary and secondary sources in the form of reputable scholarly journals supporting Dietrich – Can't you see the fallacy? "Primary sources in the form of reputable scholarly journals" do not support Dietrich. There is one journal that has published his ideas. "Secondary source(s)" boils down to a single source: Esen-Baur's review. Plus one mention in Die Zeit. If this consitutes notability, WP is doomed. –Austronesier (talk) 14:52, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

the fact that Dietrich has had papers published in a journal counts for something, although that by itself wouldn't be sufficient without the secondary EB review. there's been multiple mentions of this, which include Die Zeit, the Berthins paper, etc. it should be enough. I hardly think WP is doomed if I add a relevant theory with supporting references. after all, I'm not attempting to include every decipherment attempt out there, many of which have less support. keep in mind, the study of rongorongo seems to have been inactive in recent years, with the acknowledged experts having little to say in general, which factors in. Xcalibur (talk) 19:20, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Help us out: which peer-review publication of Berthin & Berthin mentions Dietrich? I can only find a document that says "Submitted to Peer Reviewed Journal Oct. 2006". The published paper in Applied Semiotics has no mention of Dietrich. And what's the "etc." referring to? –Austronesier (talk) 19:41, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

there are citations in Melka's "Structural Observations Regarding RongoRongo Tablet ‘Keiti’", Fischer's book "Rongorongo: The Easter Island Script : History, Traditions, Texts", & Aliaga's "Rongorongo, La Escritura Sagrada De Rapa Nui". there are mentions in other sources, but I'm sticking with reliable and/or scholarly material.

from the Berthins' paper "The Affirmations of Vakai: Semiotic Rongorongo of the Latter Days of Hotu Matu'a" -- The Character of the Script -- Insofar as rongorongo has resisted significant translation, there is no consensus as to exactly how the script encodes information. Whereas the number of different glyphs is probably too large for an alphabet, some epigraphers do consider rongorongo to have features of a syllabary (Macri 1995: 185), (Pozdniakov 1996: 301-303). That is; each glyph or portion of a glyph represents a syllable of a word in the Rapa Nui language. Other investigators propose that the hieroglyphics represent astronomical signs or navigation aids (Kaulins 1981: 2, Dietrich 1998: 118). Finally, there are scholars who contend that the symbols are merely artistic renderings and not a language at all (Van Tilburg 1994: 111-115). I can't confirm that this is peer-reviewed, however. could you link me to the Applied Semiotics paper?

the point is, it's referenced as part of the literature on rongorongo, which supports inclusion. the 'etc' also includes sources which I may have overlooked. to add onto what I said before, kwami (to his credit) ran this past the Yahoo study group on RR, but reported that they're defunct. this supports the notion that RR research has been inactive lately. Xcalibur (talk) 12:57, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, "The Affirmations of Vakai..." is also what I have found on the rongorongo.ca page, but I cannot see that it eventually got published in a journal. Here's the link to the AS paper. It's also linked in rongorongo.ca. –Austronesier (talk) 13:25, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

while the Applied Semiotics paper doesn't mention Dietrich, it does make a case for the Mamari tablet containing a lunar calendar, which provides indirect support for D's theory. here's another mention, from Anthropological Abstracts: [23] Xcalibur (talk) 10:36, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Which provides indirect support... – that's OR. The latter is an abstract of Esen-Baur's article, that hardly counts as another mention. You could as well cite the catalogue of every library in the world that has a copy of one of D's books... –Austronesier (talk) 20:11, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

your point about OR is valid. I figured an abstract in yet another journal has some relevance, much moreso than citing various catalogues. Dietrich has published primary RS, a secondary RS review, an abstract in another RS, references in academic papers & a book by Fischer, and a Die Zeit article, not counting blogs and such. while not a cornucopia, I hardly think WP is doomed if this is deemed sufficient for inclusion, especially since I've cut the section down to a summary. Xcalibur (talk) 12:27, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

References

References for rongorongo theories Rfc

Keeping refs local to this section. Mathglot (talk) 22:36, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Dietrich section, etc (for reference)

Since discussion has been stonewalled, I've decided to link the disputed content here, for easier reference. this is primarily about the Dietrich theory, but it also includes a summary I did for De Laat.

Section on Dietrich

Note: the following post-FA section has been removed from the article due to irreconcilable differences between editors Bigdan201/Xcalibur & Kwamikagami/kwami.

Dietrich

The Dietrich hypothesis interprets rongorongo not as a script, but as a notational system for astronomical, calendrical, and navigational data. This hypothesis rests on an analysis of rongorongo and its graphical qualities, alongside an understanding of Polynesian history, language, and culture. His work has been appraised for its insights and advances in understanding of rongorongo, and for its refutation of the (previously dominant) script interpretation. However, his submissions are also criticized for their literary digressions and flowery language.

Graphical Design

Dietrich’s analysis found that rongorongo glyphs are governed by rules concerning combination, partial elimination, emphasis, iteration, economy, orientation, and aesthetic design.

The glyphs are divided into three categories: independent, compound, and dependent (glyphs that only appear in combination with others). He sees other groupings as being arbitrary, as well as detrimental to the proper understanding of rongorongo. Contrary to other scholars who do not place importance on compound glyphs, Dietrich sees compounding as a major aspect of the system. In fact, Dietrich describes rongorongo as a network in which the characters are interwoven together through various combinations. He speculates that it was his background in graphic design that allowed him to perceive this pattern, while other researchers relied too heavily on linguistics and epigraphy.

To combine glyphs, rongorongo employs consistent rules. First, the ‘defining feature’ of a glyph is identified, and the rest is discarded. Then, this ‘defining feature’ is grafted onto a ‘main body’ glyph which retains most of its original shape (except for the addition of the ‘defining feature’). This is done in such a way that aesthetic unity is maintained. Typically, either one or two ‘defining features’ may be grafted onto a single ‘main body’.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

To combine more than three glyphs, multiple ‘main bodies’ may be linked together, each with ‘defining features’ grafted on. For example, the longest compound known in the corpus uses four ‘main bodies’ to combine a total of ten glyphs into a single unit.

Using this method of compounding, Dietrich found that approximately 120 'basic' characters can be used for over 1,500 combinations. He also found that the vast majority of the corpus consists of compounds.

A major reason for this is economy. A single wooden tablet presented a limited space for writing, so it was in the interest of scribes to transcribe information efficiently, while still maintaining legibility and aesthetic quality. The ‘grafting’ system described above achieves this in an elegant manner. Another reason may be secrecy. Assuming that literacy was restricted to elites and professional navigators, it was in their interest to prevent their notation from being read too easily. This may explain why a given star can be represented by multiple glyphs. It also helps explain the combination system outlined above—while basic characters can be read without difficulty, one would have to master the entire set of basic characters before recognizing the components of combined glyphs. In this way, the meaning would be opaque to anyone without proper training.

Glyphs are inscribed in a vertical orientation, even if the object depicted (e.g. fish, Orion’s belt) is usually seen horizontally. This serves the purposes of economy and aesthetic effect. The 'vertical rule' is important for interpreting the glyphs correctly, so it may have assisted in secrecy as well.

There are variant glyph forms which contain minor alterations or additions. Dietrich posited that these variants represent the movement, position, and significance of astronomical bodies. A variant form might state whether a star is rising, culminating or setting; or whether it is used for navigation or for calendrical/time-keeping purposes. In particular, doubling of a feature may refer to the culmination of an astronomical body in the sky. See: Gallery (bottom row, third from left) for an example.

Meaning

Dietrich's analysis found that the structure of rongorongo is inconsistent with that of a writing system (there are too many single glyphs for an alphabet or syllabary, among other issues). Seeking alternatives, he posited that it is a notation system, designed to codify information other than a human language. As to its content, astronomy was deemed a likely candidate, due to its significance in Polynesian lore and its practical value for navigating the Pacific without modern aids.

Thus, to ascertain the meaning of the glyphs, Dietrich matched traditional Polynesian names for stars & astronomical bodies with the pictorial representations of rongorongo. This method revealed a high degree of consistency, suggesting that most if not all of the glyphs represent astronomical and navigational concepts. Dietrich argues that other researchers have been misled by the literal resemblances of the glyphs, not realizing that they are abstract symbols for the stars (cf. western astronomical symbols). This fits a pattern consistent among many cultures, in which constellations are identified with people, animals, objects, and mythological beings.

For example, the star Betelgeuse is known as Ana-varu in Tahitian, which means “pillar to sit by”. From there, the glyph resembling a seated figure by a pillar is identified with Betelgeuse. Likewise, the constellation Ursa Major is known as Manu-kaki-oa in Marquesan, which means “the bird with the long neck”. The glyph fitting this description is thus identified with Ursa Major. The Rapa Nui name for Pleiades is matariki, meaning "small eyes", which is matched with the corresponding glyph (turned vertically in the typical style). Sirius is known by the Hawaiian term A'a, which means "burning bright"; while the matching glyph has been identified as the Sun by other scholars, the translation to Sirius makes sense as it is the brightest star in the night sky. The planet Venus is known as Naholoholo in Hawaiian, which means "swift running one" in reference to its relatively rapid movement across the sky. In some cases, an astronomical body is given two different readings, which may be for the purpose of 'encryption' as mentioned earlier. In general, comparing Polynesian astronomical terms with rongorongo results in striking linkages, as illustrated below:

• 
  Betelgeuse / Ana-varu / Pillar to sit by
• 
  Ursa Major / Manu-kaki-oa / Bird with long neck
• 
  Pleiades / Matariki / Small eyes
• 
  Algol / Ma-tohi / Split
• 
  Sirius / A'a / Burning bright
• 
  Antares / Rehua / Bird with two wings, one broken
• 
  Venus / Naholoholo / Swift running one
• 
  Milky Way / Ia / Fish
• 
  Milky Way / Mango-roa / Long shark
• 
  Arcturus / Ana-tahua-taata-metua-te-tupu-mavae / Pillar to stand by

Significantly, the celestial notation hypothesis is consistent with the Mamari tablet, which is understood to contain a lunar calendar. This sequence poses difficulties for any linguistic or script-based interpretation, given its repetitive nature, but is a perfect fit for celestial notation. In addition, there are other supporting references, such as Phillipi's 1875 account of the Santiago Staff:

when asked the explanations from the natives about the aforementioned staff, were pointed at the sky and at the hieroglyphs that [the staff] had with such reverence that makes me more inclined to believe that these hieroglyphs recall something sacred.” (from Palaeographic analysis of the Santiago Staff).

Aside from the staff being tapu, this could be interpreted in a literal sense as supporting Dietrich's hypothesis.

Origins

It is often assumed that rongorongo is exclusively a product of Rapa Nui, without external influences. However, there is evidence to suggest that it was a product of pan-Polynesian cultural interaction: this includes the legend of Hotu Matu'a (who is said to have brought rongorongo tablets from overseas), artistic similarities between rongorongo and other Polynesian works such as petroglyphs, the identification of Polaris among the glyphs (which is only visible from the northern hemisphere), and the representation of a Maori style war-club (see: Gallery, bottom right). The fact that matching vocabulary and astronomical content is drawn from throughout Polynesia, far afield from Easter Island, is consistent with this hypothesis; equally significant is the consistency between star-names from Rapa Nui and other Polynesian cultures. The historicity of pan-Polynesian interaction is supported by widespread linguistic and cultural commonalities (such as mana, tapu, etc.), and the 'Golden Age' of Polynesian navigation. It is also unlikely that rongorongo was a late innovation; this is contradicted by the dysfunctional state of Rapa Nui society in the 19th century, the scripts' craftsmanship and originality, and the existence of a glyph representing the Easter Island palm tree, which went extinct in the 1600s.

Navigation

To provide greater support to this hypothesis, Dietrich sought to identify navigational concepts such as cardinal directions and guiding star markers.

Cardinal Directions

Using the same method as above, he first identified Polynesian terms for the compass points. These are:

• 
  North: Kukulu akau, the pillar of the right hand
• 
  South: Kukulu hema, the pillar of the left hand
• 
  East: Kukulu hikina, the pillar of the sunrise
• 
  West: Kukulu komohana, the pillar of the sunset

While three of the four directions were readily identified, West proved to be more difficult. First, an association was made with the moon goddess Hina, and a Hawaiian story in which her leg was broken. From there, Dietrich posited that the “broken leg” glyph may be the “pillar of the sunset”.

Guiding Stars

There are at least two different dependent glyphs used for the concept of a guiding star. The generic Polynesian term is Ihu-ku (Hawaiian) which translates to “standing above the bow”. This concept is associated with the ‘phallic’ dependent glyph. For a specific guiding star used to make landfall on an island, the Polynesian term is hoku ai’aina, which is translated to “stars which ate, ruled the land”. This concept is referred to with the ‘hand’ dependent glyph.

(Note that the 'generic modifier' is affixed to an alternate form of Polaris, known as Hoku-paa or "immovable star")

• 
  Polaris / Hokupaa ihuku / Immovable star (above bow)
• 
  Guiding star / Na hoku ai'aina / Stars which ate, ruled the land
• 
  Sirius / A'a / Burning bright, as guiding star
• 
  Betelgeuse / Ana-varu / Pillar to sit by, as guiding star
• 
  Betelgeuse as guiding star, abridged form

Rigel, Arcturus (north, above bow), Milky Way, Sirius, Polaris (above bow)

The fact that some glyphs are modified with the “guiding star” dependent glyph, while others are not, supports the idea that rongorongo was used for calendrical purposes in addition to astronomy and navigation. This is further evidenced by a tentative reading which is consistent with known astronomy. In the month of March, Rigel, Arcturus, and Sirius can be seen together, and the Milky Way appears in the north to the right of Arcturus. If one were sailing north, they would first see Arcturus on the horizon, and then Polaris. The arrangement of glyphs in this example, and the presence of 'guide modifiers' on Arcturus and Polaris, are consistent with these facts (Note that Arcturus appears in an alternate form known as "frigate-bird star" or Hoku-iwa. Also note that the North glyph has been grafted on, in addition to the generic guide modifier).

Winds and Currents

Winds and currents are also significant for navigation. While no identifications have been made for currents, Dietrich offers a tentative sub-grouping of wind-related glyphs (see: Gallery, second from top-left).

Inverse Boustrophedon

The orientation of rongorongo (as the ox plows, with every other line flipped upside-down) may be related to astronomy, given that constellations appear inverted between the hemispheres. An example of this is given in the gallery (third from top-left). However, aesthetic style and ergonomics may be just as significant, since inverse boustrophedon avoids line-returns.

Gallery

Here are additional illustrations that did not fit above. These include the single and dependent groupings, the tentative sub-grouping of wind-related glyphs, and a demonstration of reverse boustrophedon.

• 
  Grouping of single glyphs
• 
  Grouping of wind-related glyphs
• Reverse boustrophedon & astronomy
  Reverse boustrophedon & astronomy
• 
  Vega / Kau-toki / Adze handle
• 
  Rigel / Puanga / Blossum cluster
• 
  Polaris / Ana-nia / Pillar to fish by
• 
  Canopus / Atu-tahi / One who stands alone
• 
  Aldebaran / Ul / Virile member
• 
  Aldebaran (variant, combined)
• 
  Sirius / Ipu-o-Lono / Gourd
• 
  Milky Way above Sirius (compound)
• 
  Orion's Belt & Pleiades (compound)

• 
  Grouping of dependent glyphs. These include navigational concepts, Pleiades (6 notches) and Orion's Belt (3 notches).
• 
  Grouping of bright/shining glyphs (Venus, Sirius, the Moon, etc)
• 
  Variants of Antares, rising/culminating/setting
• 
  Santiago tablet: note the reverse boustrophedon orientation.
• 
  Venus / Mere-mere / War-club
• 
  Orion's Belt / Alo-tolu / Three in a row

De Laat

De Laat (2009) transliterates and translates in full the text of three tablets (E or Keiti, B or Aruku Kurenga and A or Tahua, respectively); all three are proposed to consist of nothing but extended dialogue. Horley (2010) is a critical review.

De Laat proposes that rongorongo is a predominantly syllabic writing system capable of accurately recording the Rapanui language. According to De Laat, the script consists of 50–60 basic glyphs, which fuse together and form ligatures as in earlier proposals. 35 of these are identified with specific syllables, largely completing a 45-unit CV syllabary in which vowel length, /h/, and glottal stop are not distinguished. Compared to Barthel and Pozdniakov, the accompanying syllabary substantially reduces the number of basic glyphs, in the first place because of the classification of a number of signs as being variants of the same glyph and secondly because a substantial number of signs are identified as fused glyphs, i.e., as composites of two or more basic glyphs.

Words

The majority of the syllabic and disyllabic glyphs are morphemes representing verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives or grammatical particles. Other words are created by fusing together two or more basic glyphs. These compounds are realized by either pasting together two adjacent glyphs, putting them on top of each other, or by incorporating one glyph into another. The fusion process is greatly facilitated by the fact that basic glyphs can have different appearances, that they can be reduced in size or that only parts of them need to be used. Duplication is handled by iteration of glyphs, or by hatching/cross-hatching, as in or .

According to De Laat, the phonetic value of a number of syllables is clearly derived from the name of the represented object - for example ta from taha ("frigate bird"), ka from ika ("fish"), ma from mango ("shark"), ina from mahina ("moon") and tu from hetuu ("star").

Texts

In Words out of Wood, De Laat offers hypothetical translations of three tablets, consisting of extended dialogue concerning a disturbing event. In the Keiti tablet, a man named Taea is accused of murdering his wife by her relatives, and is found to have covered up his wrongdoing by using body-paint to hide the scratches on his body. The Aruku Kurenga inscription tells of a man who resurrects his fellow tribesmen after they are killed by a cave-in, only for them to complain about their artificially revived bodies. The Tahua tablet describes a confrontation with a man who has a magical 'evil eye', who is identified with a sorcerer or spirit known as Apanga, and is eventually defeated by the islanders. More recently, De Laat has offered a substantially revised interpretation: that the rongorongo tablets describe a 'coming of age' or initiation ritual, in which young Rapa Nui were confined in caves and fed a restrictive diet.

Dietrich

The Dietrich hypothesis interprets rongorongo not as a script, but as a notational system for astronomical, calendrical, and navigational data. This hypothesis rests on an analysis of rongorongo and its graphical qualities, alongside an understanding of Polynesian history, language, and culture. His work has been appraised for its insights and advances in understanding of rongorongo, and for its refutation of the (previously dominant) script interpretation. However, his submissions are also criticized for their literary digressions and flowery language.

Graphical Design

Dietrich’s analysis found that rongorongo glyphs are governed by rules concerning combination, partial elimination, emphasis, iteration, economy, orientation, and aesthetic design. The glyphs are divided into three categories: independent, compound, and dependent (glyphs that only appear in combination with others). Dietrich describes rongorongo as a network in which the characters are interwoven together through various combinations. He speculates that it was his background in graphic design that allowed him to perceive this pattern, while other researchers relied too heavily on linguistics and epigraphy.

To combine glyphs, rongorongo employs consistent rules. First, the ‘defining feature’ of a glyph is identified, and the rest is discarded. Then, this ‘defining feature’ is grafted onto a ‘main body’ glyph which retains most of its original shape (except for the addition of the ‘defining feature’). This is done in such a way that aesthetic unity is maintained. Typically, either one or two ‘defining features’ may be grafted onto a single ‘main body’. To combine more than three glyphs, multiple ‘main bodies’ may be linked together, each with ‘defining features’ grafted on.

• 
• 
• 
• 

Using this method of compounding, Dietrich found that approximately 120 'basic' characters can be used for over 1,500 combinations. He also found that the vast majority of the corpus consists of compounds. There are various reasons for this design, such as economy, aesthetics, encryption, and elegance.

Meaning

Dietrich's analysis found that the structure of rongorongo is inconsistent with that of a writing system (there are too many single glyphs for an alphabet or syllabary, among other issues). Seeking alternatives, he posited that it is a notation system, designed to codify information other than a human language. As to its content, astronomy was deemed a likely candidate, due to its significance in Polynesian lore and its practical value for navigating the Pacific without modern aids.

Thus, to ascertain the meaning of the glyphs, Dietrich matched traditional Polynesian names for stars & astronomical bodies with the pictorial representations of rongorongo. This method revealed a high degree of consistency, suggesting that most if not all of the glyphs represent astronomical and navigational concepts. Dietrich argues that other researchers have been misled by the literal resemblances of the glyphs, not realizing that they are abstract symbols for the stars (cf. western astronomical symbols). This fits a pattern consistent among many cultures, in which constellations are identified with people, animals, objects, and mythological beings.

• 
  Betelgeuse / Ana-varu / Pillar to sit by
• 
  Ursa Major / Manu-kaki-oa / Bird with long neck
• 
  Pleiades / Matariki / Small eyes
• 
  Algol / Ma-tohi / Split
• 
  Sirius / A'a / Burning bright
• 
  Antares / Rehua / Bird with two wings, one broken
• 
  Venus / Naholoholo / Swift running one
• 
  Milky Way / Ia / Fish
• 
  Milky Way / Mango-roa / Long shark
• 
  Arcturus / Ana-tahua-taata-metua-te-tupu-mavae / Pillar to stand by

Significantly, the celestial notation hypothesis is consistent with the Mamari tablet, which contains many lunar signs. There are other supporting references as well, such as Phillipi's 1875 account of the Santiago Staff:

when asked the explanations from the natives about the aforementioned staff, were pointed at the sky and at the hieroglyphs that [the staff] had with such reverence that makes me more inclined to believe that these hieroglyphs recall something sacred. (from Palaeographic analysis of the Santiago Staff)

Aside from the staff being tapu, this could be interpreted in a literal sense as supporting Dietrich's hypothesis.

full-length Dietrich: [24] (note that the gallery image on reverse boustrophedon & astronomy is under fair use of copyright, and is currently not hosted due to the dispute).

shortened version: [25]

De Laat: [26]

Xcalibur (talk) 02:50, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

updated. Xcalibur (talk) 00:19, 16 January 2021 (UTC)