"What does he mean self-proclaimed?" Seth Connelly muttered. "If anybody is a self-proclaimed expert, it's Robinson."
Another slide appeared: The transfer of plants cannot be used as proof of the transfer of culture.—Gordon Fairweather.
"Your turn," Rory said to Fairweather.
"That is most excellent statement," Enrique said. "I will use it for my tourists."
"Quite right, Fairweather," Robinson said. Gordon looked wary. "But these are arguments we've been having for decades. What would it take to prove to you that a transfer of culture had taken place between South America and Rapa Nui, a transfer originating on the mainland, I might add. What if there were new evidence of a cultural transfer from South America to Rapa Nui?"
Another slide appeared. I held my hand over my left eye to see it better, but it didn't help much. I had no idea what I was looking at. It was a series of figures carved into something, most likely a piece of wood. "This is a photograph of the large Santiago tablet, now in the Museo Nacional de Historia Naturel. On it, of course, is carved the writing system we call rongorongo."
As Jasper spoke, another slide appeared: Rongorongo, while an extraordinary achievement for which there are no known antecedents anywhere in Polynesia, was essentially a short-lived phenomenon, beginning shortly after the acquisition of the island for Spain and ending in 1864 when the men called maori rongorongo were either captured in slave raids or felled by smallpox. With them the knowledge of how to read rongorongo was lost.—Gordon Fairweather.
"Is he going to try to tell us something different?" Connelly said.
"Both Gordon Fairweather and Rory Carlyle, whose views I have tried to make sure you understand in the interests of a full airing of opinion, are with us tonight," Robinson said. Something akin to the sound of a small animal being strangled emanated from the general direction of Gordon's throat. "Fairweather," Robinson repeated, "makes three points here. The first is that there is no precedent for rongorongo in Polynesia. He is quite right, and I will ask you to remember that fact."
"Why do I think your words are about to be twisted into something unrecognizable?" Rory said.
"His second point I will return to, but his third, that the ability to read rongorongo disappeared with the capture and deaths of the Maori rongorongo is also correct. Certainly there was no one in the early part of the twentieth century who could read it. But to continue with Dr. Connelly's interesting point of view—"
"Interesting?" Fairweather said. "Is that what you call it?"
"Gordon," Moira said, in a warning tone.
"It is Fairweather's second point that I am most interested in tonight and that is that rongorongo dates to the annexation of this island and its subsequent renaming as San Carlos by the Spanish in 1770. I realize I am repeating what a lot of you already know, but I want to make sure everyone understands this because it is key to what I am going to show you later. According to that theory, the inhabitants of Rapa Nui watched the Spanish in all their imperial finery claim the island and were consequently asked to sign a document that sealed the acquisition. The Rapa Nui elders put some marks on the document, drawings of what they knew—a bird for example—and the Spanish left never to return. That document has survived.
"Then, so the story goes, the people of Rapa Nui, realizing that what the Spanish wrote represented in some way the spoken word, came up with their own writing system, the one we now know as rongorongo. If true, this is an extraordinary achievement—to design a writing system on the spot as it were, as opposed to the way most writing systems evolve, over centuries."
"What does he mean, if true?" Connelly said.
"I have a feeling we are about to find out," Rory said.
"My question to you all, and specifically to Dr. Fairweather, is what if rongorongo is much, much older than that, and what if its origins can be found elsewhere? We already know it doesn't come from Polynesia. Would a more ancient form of rongorongo qualify as evidence of cultural transfer, Dr. Fairweather?"
Robinson paused dramatically. I looked over at Rory and Gordon, then back to Seth. All three, as if attached together with string, slowly leaned forward in their seats.
After a few seconds in which you could hear the proverbial pin drop, a slide appeared on the screen. The slide was relatively dark, which was a merciful relief for me as my head was really throbbing now, and strange lights kept jumping about in front of my eyes. There was no way, though, that I was going to leave until I knew what Robinson had to say. The photograph on the slide was definitely not taken on Rapa Nui, but I had no idea where it had been. It was a desolate place, an earthly lunar landscape in a way, without so much as a blade of grass to be seen, just sand and rock. Nonetheless it was very beautiful. The picture must have been taken at either dawn or dusk, because mountains in the background had a pink tinge, as did the sand.
"Some of you will know that I have been working with some success in northern Chile," Robinson said, with a self-satisfied little laugh. "And it is in Northern Chile that I found something that will interest you all. This is the Valle de la Muerte, Death Valley, in other words, in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile, near the border with Bolivia. The valley, not far from San Pedro de Atacama, was discovered by a priest by the name of padre Gustavo Le Paige. It is now a popular tourist attraction. This part of the world is best known perhaps for salt flats, flamingo habitats, the highest geysers in the world at a startling fourteen thousand feet plus."
"Flamingos? Is he ever going to get to the point?" Albert asked. "I have discovered a rather delectable wine from the Maipo region and it is waiting for me in my room." Brenda Butters, in the row in front of us, turned around and glared. I sympathized with Albert. I was sure Moira had a bottle of painkillers in the room, and I wanted to have at it as well.
"You supply the wine. I'll bring the cola," Lewis chortled, ignoring Brenda's stare.
"It is interesting for another reason, which is that it may well be the driest place on the planet. That means, of course, that we are able to find ancient objects that in another climate would have long since decayed. So it is here that we find extraordinarily well-preserved mummies, for example, and an ancient mud brick pueblo, Aldea de Tulor, that dates to about 800 BC. In other words, the region is home to a very ancient culture.
"Just a mile or two from Death Valley there is a side slip off a similar canyon, and it is here that I discovered something that is going to rewrite the history of Rapa Nui." He paused dramatically. There was a hush. No one moved. It was as if the whole room was holding its breath. Several seconds ticked by.
A new slide appeared on the screen. It looked like a burlap bag filled out into a round ball with a rather small and desiccated head that stuck out of the top of it.
"Eeeww," Yvonne said. "What is that?!"
"Some of you will recognize this as a mummy bundle," Jasper said. "It was found in a tomb that I excavated in the canyon. Notice, please, an object with the bundle. I will show you a closer view of that object now."
Another slide appeared. To me it just looked like a holiday snapshot, the kind I was taking with my fancy new camera, only I hoped mine would be better. Two people were standing in the same kind of desert landscape we'd seen a minute earlier.