Rongorongo: The Key to Future Cryptography

Mystery Language: Rongorongo

Between the years of 300 AD-1200 AD, the Polynesian people migrated and established what is now known as Easter Island (Martin). After an originally successful civilization, the Polynesians overpopulated and overused their resources which resulted in an eventual population decline. In 1722, European explorers further cut into their population by bringing diseases, also giving the island its more popular name “Easter Island”(Martin). Nobody is exactly sure when the Rongorongo texts were written, but historians have determined that the language predates the arrival of the Europeans in the 1700s (Martin).

Penarc

June 4, 2008 Author: penarc , creative commons licensed

The major discovery of the Rongorongo glyphs occurred in 1868 almost accidentally. The Bishop of Tahiti was given a strange gift of one of these texts (Martin). The text consisted of hieroglyphic writing carved on a small wooden board. However, he was unable to find anyone on Easter Island who understood the language and could decipher the text due to the fact so many of the indigenous people had been lost to disease and slavery.

Although the Rongorongo texts have never been interpreted, cryptographers and historians have determined certain characteristics of the hieroglyphics. The texts were primarily written as historical accounts of the Polynesian people and were not intended to be secret texts. Rather, they chronicled all the historical events of their civilization. At first, the texts were written on paper created from banana leaves; however, after the leaves started to rot, the King had the elite class rewrite the historical texts onto toromiro wood tablets (Martin).

The major impediment to translating the Rongorongo texts is the sheer number of glyphs. The texts contain over one hundred twenty different basic glyphs with almost five hundred other variations on these glyphs. The glyphs include human and animal forms along with geometric shapes. The animals include many birds while the shapes often represent common items the Polynesian people used on Rapa Nui. Since it is a distinctive language and not a text representing other letters, there is not a special key for decoding it.

It is thought that Rongorongo glyphs may represent idiosyncratic mnemonic devices meant to remind the reader of something that is representative of something else, such as using a “knot” symbol used to represent marriage (Martin). This differs from almost all written forms of languages today that have characters representing only sounds or only letters.

Rongorongo texts contain a mixture of symbols and a phonetic alphabet written in a unique style known as reverse boustrophedon (Ager). The text begins in the lower left corner and is read left-to-right. Then the text must be turned one hundred and eighty degrees to read the next line left-to-right, and the process is repeated with each line.

Many people have tried to decipher the Rongorongo hieroglyphics over the last century and a half but have failed to unlock the mystery of this unique language. Although Rongorongo was not created to hide the meaning of the writer, it has been highly successful in keeping its secrets. If someone is able to finally interpret this language, they could use it to send secret messages and would have an enormous advantage over the cryptanalysts.

For example, during World War II, the United States used the Navajo code talkers to help send messages to American troops overseas (Singh-Chapter 5). Even when the enemy intercepted these messages, they were unable to decipher them because the Navajo language, only spoken and not written, was such an obscure language with no written history. The Navajo code talkers illustrate to us what happens when people use an obscure language with no key to send encoded messages. The United States military was able to expediently send messages to the U.S. army without any worries of cryptanalysts trying to intercept the message.

The Navajo Code is the only wartime code/cipher that was never deciphered by the enemy because our military went to extremes to make sure that a code talker never fell into enemy hands. This could allow the enemy to torture the code talker into giving away some of the secrets of the code allowing a crib to be developed. Even a few words could help the enemy decipher a code. For example, cryptographers were able to use the encrypted annual birthday messages sent to Hitler to decipher parts of the German code because the meaning of the messages was so obvious.

The Future of Cryptography?

If someone was able to use the Rongorongo hieroglyphic language or create a different language that only the sender and receiver know, then it wouldn’t matter if someone intercepted the message because it would be impossible to decipher the message. The interceptor would not be able to decipher the text because there is no key involved in solving the message and no crib could be developed. Using an entirely different language that only the sender and the receiver understand could be groundbreaking because the methods used to decipher a code or cipher would not apply. The only way to break the code would be by knowing the language.

For example, imagine how much more difficult it would have been for the British cryptanalysts in their quest to solve the Enigma machine during World War II if they had not known the German language at all. It would be impossible. This is what makes the Rongorongo texts nearly indecipherable.

For future military actions, many countries should consider using this tactic for sending secret messages. Although it would be time consuming at first to learn an entirely new language that does not relate to any current languages, the result would be worth the difficulties because it would be more efficient in sending quick messages with no concern of interceptors. A new breed of “code talkers” could be used to be dedicated to learning and using the code. The Rongorongo hieroglyphics may show us the next step in cryptography. This could be a check mate for the cryptanalysts because this new innovation in cryptography could put cryptographers ahead in the race for keeping secret messages safe.

This post is part of a series of essays on the history of cryptography produced by students at Vanderbilt University in honor of the release of The Imitation Game, a major motion picture about the life of British codebreaker and mathematician Alan Turing. The students wrote these essays for an assignment in a first-year writing seminar taught by mathematics instructor Derek Bruff.  For more information on the cryptography seminar, see the course blog.  And for more information on The Imitation Game, which opens in the US on November 28, 2014, see the film’s website.