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The Easter Island Tablets: The Indus Valley Hypothesis
H.D. Skinner on Hevesy
Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol.41 (1932)
NOTES AND QUERIES.
____
[471] The Easter Island Script.
In Nature
[October lst, 1932, p. 502] appears the
following note: "According to a letter from Sir Denison
Ross in the Times of September
21st, M. Guillame Hevesy, a Hungarian resident in Paris,
has discovered that a number of the signs of the
pre-historic Indian script on seals from
Mahenjo-daro also appear in the script of the
Easter Island inscribed wooden tablets, while some of
the Easter Island signs, not present on the Indian
seals, are to be found in the proto-Elamic of Susa.
It would now be interesting to hear whether
there is any coincidence in the interpretation of the
pre-historic Indian signs suggested by Sir Flinders
Petrie (see Nature, September 17th, p. 429), and
those suggested for the Easter Island script in the
Report of the Committee of the Royal Anthropological
Institute of which Mr. Sidney Ray was Chairman.
The suggestion of a connexion between the
two scripts is not the only attempt to find an
affinity between Easter Island and this part of Asia.
M. J. Hackin, of the Musée Guimet, has recently
directed attention to the resemblance which has now
been noted between the wooden statues, probably
ancestral, which were objects of reverence
among the Kafirs of Afghanistan before they were
overwhelmed by Islam, of which examples are preserved
in the Kabul Museum, and the well-known statues of Easter
Island. The resemblances certainly are strong, although
it might be argued that they do not go beyond what
may be due to the
limitations of all undeveloped technique.
It must also be admitted that when the material
which it is sought to bring into relation is so widely
separated
in date as in these instances, the comparison,
in default of intervening links, carries more
interest than conviction."
A number of problems are raised in this
paragraph. I can only say that the parallels figured
in Sir Denison Ross's letter carry no conviction
whatever.__H. D. SKINNER.
Journal of the Polynesian Society, 1932, vol.41, p.323.