The history of rongorongo writing is unknown. It was 'discovered' by Joseph-Eugène Eyraud, the first non-Polynesian outsider to live on Easter Island.

In a letter in December 1864 to the Catholic authorities in Paris he wrote:

"...One finds in all the houses wooden tablets or staffs covered with sorts of hieroglyphic characters. These are figures of animals unknown on the island, which the natives trace by means of sharp stones..." (Fischer)

Thereafter things went quickly on Easter Island. In 1869 the Rapa Nui Hina Pote told Bishop Jaussen... that at that time the incised objects were 'feeding their cooking fires'.

Three years later the French Admiral de Lapelin also learnt that the natives had burnt a certain number for no other motive than to make a fire, the value of the tablets having disappeared because of their conversion to Christianity. And wood was more and more rare on the island.