Easter Island may have invented its own writing system — and no one can read it

Rongorongo is a script carved into fewer than thirty surviving wooden tablets from Rapa Nui, and it remains undeciphered. Radiocarbon dating on one tablet suggests it was made before Europeans ever reached the island, hinting its inhabitants may have invented writing independently, something that has happened only a handful of times in human history. Without a bilingual text like the Rosetta Stone, its meaning stays locked away.

— Rapa Nui (Easter Island) scribes, Rongorongo — Script dated as early as the 15th–16th century