Avez-vous entendu parler de la dernière info venant de l'Île de Pâques ? Apparemment, ils sont tombés sur quelque chose qui pourrait complètement bouleverser ce que nous savons de l'histoire ! C'est comme si c'était tiré d'un film d'aventure, n'est-ce pas ? La rumeur dit qu'ils ont trouvé des artefacts anciens enfouis profondément sous terre, et ils ne ressemblent à rien de ce que nous avons vu auparavant. Les gens s'interrogent sur la possibilité que cette découverte révèle de nouvelles perspectives sur le passé mystérieux de l'île, comme qui a construit ces énormes statues de pierre et pourquoi. Tout le monde est sur le qui-vive, attendant de voir quels secrets ces artefacts pourraient dévoiler ! Animation créée par Sympa.
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FunTranscript
00:00Welcome to Rapa Nui, better known as Easter Island.
00:04It is a tiny point in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean,
00:07located at 3,500 km from the Chilean coast.
00:10This island is especially famous for its imposing Moai statues.
00:14This place also houses one of the most enigmatic writing systems in the world,
00:18known as Rongorongo.
00:20We have created 27 small wooden tablets carrying this script.
00:24For years, historians have debated the authenticity and history of the latter.
00:29And now, we may be about to unravel their mystery.
00:34Man set foot on this island for the first time in the 12th century.
00:38For many decades, it was inhabited by the Rapa Nui people,
00:42relatively isolated at the heart of the Pacific Ocean
00:45until the eruption of the Europeans in the 1720s.
00:48With them came a multitude of challenges,
00:51drastically reducing the indigenous population to a fraction of what it was.
00:55Subsequently, in the 19th century,
00:57the missionary Eugène Hérault visited the island
01:00and carved out wooden tablets decorated with complex symbols.
01:03He described them as extraordinary
01:05and claimed that there were hundreds of them scattered throughout the island,
01:09present in every home.
01:11But alas, not all have survived to this day.
01:14Only 27 of them have been preserved.
01:16Some were eroded by time, burned or otherwise damaged.
01:21Today, they are scattered around the world,
01:24exhibited in museums and preserved in private collections.
01:28Some remains of this language have been brought back to Tahiti and then to Europe,
01:32leaving nothing on Easter Island itself.
01:35The four sacred tablets ended up in a Catholic congregation in Rome.
01:39It was the same ones that participated in this recent discovery.
01:45For years, historians have wondered
01:47whether this writing system was developed independently by the inhabitants of the island
01:51or whether it was borrowed from the Europeans.
01:53To elucidate this mystery, they used carbon-14 dating.
01:57All organic materials, such as wood, coal and others,
02:01contain a tiny amount of a radioactive form of carbon called carbon-14.
02:07At the end of their life, they stop absorbing carbon-14
02:11and the present quantity begins to disintegrate over time.
02:15By measuring the amount of carbon-14 left in a sample,
02:18we can estimate its age.
02:20This method allowed us to determine the age of many fossils and artifacts.
02:24This is how we studied the age of certain Rongo-Rongo tablets.
02:28Three of them had been made from trees grown in the 18th or 19th century,
02:34corresponding to the arrival of the Europeans.
02:36However, one of them is prior to their first visit to the island.
02:43Two elements suggest that the Rapanui people
02:45themselves created the Rongo-Rongo writing system.
02:48First of all, it presents distinct characteristics of European languages.
02:52Its decoding is a difficult task, with more than 400 unique glyphs,
02:56none resembling a known writing system.
02:59Many attempts have been made to unravel the secrets,
03:03without success so far.
03:05Secondly, one of the tablets seems to date back to the 15th century,
03:08before the arrival of the Europeans.
03:10However, the dating to radiocarbon only informs us
03:13about the period when the wood of the tablet was cut,
03:16and not on the period when the writing was engraved on it.
03:19And since we only have one tablet as a reference,
03:22we do not have enough evidence to affirm anything.
03:27On the other hand, why would the inhabitants of the island
03:30have kept cut wood for more than 200 years?
03:33Just to catch it one fine day and write on it.
03:36Anthropologists and historians suggest that the thing is plausible.
03:40The scarcity of resources could have pushed the islands
03:43to recycle old floating wood,
03:45which could date back several centuries
03:47before the appearance of writing itself.
03:49This phenomenon is known in archaeology
03:51under the name of the problem of old wood.
03:54In addition, the tablet seems to be very well preserved.
03:57It has been maintained to protect it from insects
03:59that damage the wood and humidity.
04:02This is why it has survived over the centuries.
04:04Whatever is written on it,
04:06it is likely that this is of great importance
04:09for the people of Rapa Nui.
04:11All this is pure conjecture.
04:13Scientists remain prudently optimistic.
04:16They consider the possibility that the Rongorongo
04:18is one of the rare examples of independent writing,
04:22like those of the Sumerians or Egyptians.
04:25But we need more evidence.
04:28In Rapa Nui language,
04:30rogorogo translates as recited or declared.
04:34Not everyone could write,
04:36only a few people sorted on the fly.
04:39It is likely that only the elite of the island of Pak,
04:41mainly men,
04:42possessed the knowledge of this written language.
04:45After the colonization,
04:46none of them survived.
04:48And we are now faced with the task
04:50of deciphering these inscriptions.
04:52First of all,
04:53researchers fail to agree
04:55on the nature of this scriptural system.
04:57We can't even confirm
04:59if it's their native language.
05:00And when we don't even know
05:02if it's a primitive form of writing
05:04or an entirely developed system.
05:08In the 90s,
05:10a linguist named Stephen Roger Fisher
05:12thought he had decrypted the structure of the Rongorongo.
05:15According to him,
05:16these tablets were called cosmogonies.
05:18Cosmogonies are stories
05:20that expose the genesis of the universe
05:22as well as the emergence of natural phenomena.
05:25They are often rooted
05:27in ancient traditions and cultures,
05:29such as those found in Eastern Polynesia.
05:33The tablets could potentially address subjects
05:35such as the origins of the world,
05:37the source of all existence,
05:39and the formation of various elements of nature,
05:42such as stars or mountains.
05:44This would also explain
05:46why only an educated elite could write.
05:49Fisher advanced that the Rongorongo
05:51was a combination of logographic and semasiographic systems,
05:54which implies that some symbols
05:56represented spoken words,
05:58while others denoted ideas or concepts.
06:01However,
06:02deciphering them would be extremely complex
06:04and would require a deep understanding of the context,
06:08because these symbols acted more like clues
06:11than as complete expressions.
06:13However,
06:14other linguists contested his proposals,
06:16arguing that there were gaps
06:18in the way he formulated his theory.
06:20Alas,
06:21Fisher was not able to corroborate his hypothesis.
06:26It is possible that these inscriptions
06:28are only drawings.
06:29When we examine the tablets,
06:31some figures seem familiar.
06:33Human beings,
06:34animals,
06:35plants
06:36and geometric shapes.
06:37We recognize birds,
06:39one of them resembling a frigate.
06:41A species associated with the god Mekmek
06:43by the inhabitants of Rapanui.
06:45There are also fish,
06:46millipedes,
06:47or at least these glyphs look like them.
06:49Could it be that these inscriptions
06:51are only art
06:52or a form of decoration?
06:53Maybe,
06:54but there are some problems.
06:56The glyphs exhibit a high level of complexity
06:58and structure.
06:59In addition,
07:00they retain a coherent style.
07:02For example,
07:03several symbols depict
07:04what seems to be a human with a raised hand.
07:06The only variation being the different heads represented.
07:09As if it were not complicated enough,
07:11this style of singular writing
07:13also uses a system called
07:15inverted Boustrophedon.
07:16This means that each alternate line is inverted,
07:19creating a pattern like no other.
07:21We do not know why they opted for this practice
07:24consisting of turning the tablet after each line.
07:26All this suggests that they had set up a system
07:29and an organization behind these symbols.
07:31In addition,
07:32it seems that they used these tablets
07:34on a daily basis for practical purposes.
07:38But there is hope for the future.
07:40Recent technological progress,
07:42such as AI
07:43and other computer programs,
07:45could assist our understanding of ancient languages.
07:48We have already undertaken the development of algorithms
07:51that could help us to unravel other mysteries,
07:53such as that of the Voynich manuscript.
07:55Universities have even organized
07:57the Vesuvius Challenge,
07:59an automatic learning contest
08:01which, in 2023,
08:02solved the riddle of the ancient Herculaneum scrolls.
08:05These scrolls were buried under volcanic mud
08:08after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
08:11Due to their extreme fragility,
08:13deciphering these scrolls
08:15would have been a difficult task.
08:17But thanks to digitization and automatic learning,
08:20this enterprise has become much more accessible.
08:23These scrolls have a rich history.
08:25They probably belonged to the personal library
08:28of an Epicurean philosopher named Philodemus.
08:30They contain information of great value
08:32on Greek philosophy and Latin literature.
08:35If we decipher more,
08:37we will learn more about the rich history
08:39of the Roman Empire.