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Silvia Ferrara: How Islands Shape Lines, Signs and Scripts

This lecture showcases specific cases of ›island gaze‹, in which code-making, symbols, icons and geometric configurations were deployed into signs and scripts. It explores a set of studies from all over the world and from different periods of our cultural evolution.


From the Aegean islands of Crete and Cyprus, where a large number of writing systems were created in the course of the second millennium BCE, to the undeciphered Rongorongo script from Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and the Caroline Islands in the Pacific, which developed scripts in a highly sophisticated way, all marked by a remarkably advanced linguistic awareness. The case of Rongorongo from Rapa Nui is particularly fascinating as there is compelling reason to believe that it may represent one of the few inventions of writing in the world, whose shapes are well embedded in pre-existing artistic representations and symbols. Dating the inscriptions is a crucial starting point that has the potential to open a new horizon of research tied to the history of the written word.