Rongo rongo is the hieroglyphic script found on Easter Island. It has remained a mystery since its discovery: it has not been deciphered despite attempts by many linguists, and claims of success by some of them which invariably resulted in ridicule by peer scientists. Just 21 wooden tablets remain bearing the script. Rongo-rongo may mean peace-peace, and the texts may record peace treaties, possibly between the long ears and the conquering short ears. It has also been suggested that rongo-rongo is not a writing system proper but is a genealogical record, a calendar, a mnemonic system or a choreography.

It is most unlikely that Rongorongo may mean "peace-peace". Sebastian Englert gives its meaning as "to recite", and "rongorongo" referring to the tablets themselves as a short form of "ko hau motu mo rongorongo" i.e. the lines (ko hau) carved (motu) for reciting (mo rongorongo). The word "rongo" itself is most likely cognate with "rongo" or its regular phonetic derivations (ro'o, rong, lono, and so on) found in most Oceanic languages as meaning "to hear", itself cognate with Indonesian dengar, same meaning. The meaning of two lines of one tablet is known. It is a lunar calendar, or probably rather a set of rules for predicting when and where to insert one or two intercalary nights into the basic 28-night month to keep it synchronized with the phases of the moon. For a short summary see www.netaxs.com/~trance/mamari.html A short text on another tablet was identified 50 years ago as a probable genealogy by Nikolai Butinov and Yuri Knorozov. See: http://www.rongorongo.org/rosetta/g.html A universal property of undeciphered texts is that, when short enough, they lend themselves to a multiplicity of alternative "translations" among which it is impossible to decide which is most likely correct, and that is why for instance the Phaistos Disk of Crete and the Isthmian inscriptions of Central America are undecipherable. There remain so few Rongorongo that it is probable that they too are undecipherable. The best we can hope for is to understand to a very limited extent how this writing system functioned.