Rongorongo text Ragitoki

It is possible that such items were recycled into more mundane clothing after the arrival of missionaries in 1864, and that the glyphs therefore date to a period when the elite were literate in rongorongo.

Van Houten had observed that Rapa Nui women wore loincloths adorned with "symbols".

Van Houten rolled the fragment into a "scroll", tied it with a piece of twine, and placed it in a pocket-watch case along with a pair of skull-bone beads and a note that has been read,[2] (The word here deciphered as überreicht 'offered/given' is unclear.)

The glyphs, from left to right, have been tentatively identified as,[3] According to amateur historian Moreno Pakarati, the fragment is a forgery:[4] An anonymous owner of the piece allowed the authors to photograph and study it and gave them a fanciful tale about an ancestor named Albrecht van Houten, who supposedly traveled to Rapa Nui in March of 1869.

However, Catholic missionaries who were present on Rapa Nui at that time and wrote several dozens of letters kept a record of every ship that called on the island.