Rongorongo

Another language, Linear A, from the Minoan civilisation (centred on Crete), is also undeciphered and has Unicode codepoints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A

I am all for that, but the article seems to imply there is still a lack of consensus about the character set. It'd be a shame to commit this to Unicode and have to revise it later.

What would the process for that even look like? We wouldn't want to change the meaning of the code points as it could render scientific documents using them incorrect.

Interesting how much repetition with slight modding there is. I see a lot of birds, bugs, plants, and maybe people (with eyes)? Really fascinating.

It's actually a sharpened version of the original image, which is 35kb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rongorongo_B-v_Aruku-Kure...

Wikipedia only accepts freely-licensed [0] images where there is a possibility of obtaining them. [1] If you manage to get a better photograph, you are welcome to replace the image. If you know of someone who has such an image or could take one, you can request them to license it appropriately.

[0] Think things like Creative Commons or public domain. The license has to allow derivatives and commercial use for anyone, not just Wikipedia.

[1] So exceptions would be for dead people or things that we are very unlikely to get new pictures of. Doesn't apply when you could try getting a license or if there is an existing free image.

Or maybe you aren’t paranoid enough. Can you hold yourself and you industry up to the same impossible standard?

All high level animals respond to reinforcement learning. They learn by correlation, not causation. It’s ridiculously difficult to confirm causation, period. It’s not limited to academics, WikiPedia, etc.

I’d call that a reverse cargo cult, if so.

Wikipedia isn't the forum for any of that. Journals, books, and other literature are the place for discussions about ontology and methodology.

My experience with archaeology is that it's more self critical than you probably expect.

The site summarises accounts of individual researchers, most of which are based on interviews with individuals that are by now dead (as is the researcher). You can doubt as much as you want but I don't see the benefit in this - especially as the article doesn't present 'truthc but rather the different viewpoints/interpretations.

Based on my strictly amateur readings of research in archaeology and historical anthropology, they’re more contentious than I expected. People who jump to unsupported conclusions draw public criticism. There are many papers along the lines of “paper x is wrong for reasons a, b, and c”.

It’s not math, so it’s not a clean procession of verifiable work, but their scientific method seems to be alive and well.

The public image maybe suffers from earlier (~1900) work, which really does read like “here are some evidence-light ideas that strike me, a philosopher gentleman, as quite plausible”.