The Rongorongo script, carved into wooden tablets on the remote Easter Island, remains one of science's unsolved enigmas. European missionaries first recorded it in the nineteenth century.
According to UNESCO, invasions devastated the local population, which likely eliminated the last people able to read the symbols. Only a small number of objects survive, held in museums around the world.
Researchers today believe the system may have aided memorisation of myths and genealogies, but its exact decipherment is still unconfirmed.