Museo la Merced

This guide to Museo la Merced in Santiago follows the rongorongo script of Easter Island, first documented in 1864 by the French missionary Eugène Eyraud, who found carved boards in nearly every home he visited. It traces how slave raids and epidemics wiped out the readers who understood the writing, leaving only a couple dozen boards worldwide, one of which sits among the convent's colonial silver and carved saints. Look closely at how the carving flips upside down at the end of each line, a reading technique found almost nowhere else.