Exploring a mysterious tablet from Easter Island: the issues of authenticity and falsifiability in rongorongo studies

Abstract

An analysis is conducted on an artifact that relates to the rongorongo tradition on Easter Island (Rapa Nui), a tradition first recorded in 1864 by the lay missionary Joseph-Eugène Eyraud. We here designate this engraved wooden tablet the “San Diego Tablet” (SDT), due to the old San Diego (California) estate where its provenance is traced. Physical damage – including one side that is obliterated by weathering, corrosion, and erosion – is suggestive of the artifact having been stored in a damp place, such as a cave, for a significant period of time. It is known that Rapanui commonly hid and safeguarded possessions, including rongorongo tablets, in secret caves. In various respects – particularly in terms of carving style – the “San Diego Tablet” is perhaps most comparable to the “London Tablet”. The overall inscription on the “San Diego Tablet”, evidently engraved by a scribe who possessed a perhaps rudimentary but genuine training in or knowledge of rongorongo, is not identical or closely parallel to any inscription found in the known rongorongo corpus. However, the “San Diego Tablet” inscription does include various glyph configurations and combinations found in the known corpus, evidence that it is a part of the genuine rongorongo tradition. We also take into account the reports of a tablet first mentioned in the 1870 s, the so-called “Calligan Tablet” – its status declared until now as “lost”. Could the “San Diego Tablet” be the “Calligan Tablet”? This setting is used as a comparative basis for the data obtained from the “San Diego Tablet” and the reports about the elusive “Calligan Tablet”. The sum of deductions leads us to confront unavoidable questions. Are we to assume an intention on the part of the supposed Rapanui scribe who created the “San Diego Tablet” to communicate something (a genuine text and message)? Or should we consider this recently located artifact as a collection of randomly made signs, where perhaps the intention was either the revival of the old scribal tradition or to create an object for trade and personal profit? These questions apply not only to the “San Diego Tablet”, but also to various other known rongorongo tablets and fragments whose authenticity has been questioned over the years, such as the “Chauvet Fragment”, the “Paris Snuffbox”, and even the “London Tablet”. As in other cases regarding genuine versus false rongorongo inscriptions, decipherments, and interpretative choices, the issues of authenticity and falsifiability are crucial to the study of the “San Diego Tablet”.

Keywords:

• authenticity
• “Calligan Tablet”
• falsifiability
• Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
• rongorongo script
• “San Diego Tablet”

Notes

1 cf. Imbelloni (1951, 106); Barthel (1971, 1172); Fischer (1997, 559).

2 For a general picture, see A. Marshack (1991 [1972]), and R. Sproat (2014, 357) for a specific context, “Few archaeological finds are as evocative as artifacts inscribed with symbols. Whenever an archaeologist finds a potsherd or a seal impression that seems to have symbols scratched or impressed on [its] surface, it is natural to want to “read” the symbols”.

3 These terms are most apt for use, considering a developmental timeline for rongorongo. It should be borne in mind, however, that the Old Rapanui masters did not regard their sacred and artistic script as “archaic”, “embryonic”, “an incipient system of writing”, “…not writing proper”, “incomplete”, “partial”, “defective”, “proto-writing”, “transitional”, nor as a “true”, “syllabic”, “full-blown phonetic” system, designations clearly coined by present-day specialists for more technical clarity, i.e. typological distinctions.

4 One characterization of the “early scripts” and the biggest implicit hurdle regarding their decipherment are found in Georges Jean (1998 [1989], 160), “Those [general linguists, our note] who define writing as a device for recording speech by means of visible marks, and take the written language to be point-by-point equivalent of its spoken counterpart, show little appreciation of the historical development of writing and fail to see that such a definition cannot be applied to its early stages, in which writing only loosely expressed the spoken language”.

5 Consider the complex frame of syntax, morphology, and phonetics which characterizes a language. There is a long line of researchers who discuss the early scripts; see e.g. Hill (1967) on general parameters; Meltzer (1980) on the Egyptian hieroglyphs; Greene (1989) on early Cuneiform; Whittaker (1992, 7) on the Zapotec script; Boltz (1994) on the Chinese writing system; Xigui (2000 [1994]) on the early Chinese writing; Damerow (2006 [1999]) on the origins of Cuneiform; Bottéro (2000, 23) on early written languages in Mesopotamia; Baines (2004) on the earliest Egyptian writing; Cooper (2004) on the cuneiform system; Houston (2004b) on writing in early Mesoamerica; Englund (2004) on the proto-Elamite; Fournet (2010) on the oldest Hurrian document known as “Lion of Urkeš” written in an archaic cuneiform system; Sproat (2013) on several symbolic and early written systems; Zsolnay’s (2017, 10–13) report from the areas of Egyptology, Sinology, Hittitology, and Mesoamerican, Cuneiform, and Sign Language. We should also deem that there is no strict homogenous view on the cultures that engineered (one way or another) early scripts; each culture is different and the effects and characteristics of their scripts are to be examined in local and chronologically-specific terms.

6 Thomson (1891, 461), however, has a supportive attitude toward the missionaries, “In 1864 a Jesuit mission was established on the island, and through the teachings of Frère Eugene [i.e. lay brother Joseph-Eugène Eyraud, our note], the ancient customs and mode of life were replaced by habits of more civilized practice”.

7 Before Campbell (1971), the Capuchin priest Sebastian Englert (1948, 318) stressed that these ancestral heirlooms had been until recently considered tapu ( = taboo), which shows the extraordinary secrecy and superstition connected with their hiding-places.

8 cf. Fischer (1997, 48).

9 See e.g. Routledge (1919, 247) and Englert (1948, 318) regarding particular episodes; we furthermore quote Campbell (1971, 376) to the same effect, “Desgraciadamente, como lo hemos anotado, un gran número de las tabletas fue quemado, otras guardadas en lugares escondidos no han sido halladas y otras habrán sufrido el efecto de la humedad de cavernas de la isla, con lo cual la esperanza que siempre queda, de encontrar más tabletas inscritas, disminuye cada vez más [Unfortunately, as we have noted, a great number of tablets was burnt, others kept in hidden-places have not been located and others would have been affected by the humidity in the caverns of the island, henceforth the hope – that always remains – of finding inscribed tablets diminishes increasingly]”.

10 For more on Alexander Salmon Jr., see Heyerdahl (1975, 64); Fischer (2005, 123–4).

11 Consider in this perspective that Thor Heyerdahl (of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition in 1955–1956) was duped by “artifacts” that the Easter Islanders were only too happy to “find” for him, cf. the case of “Kon-Tiki Stone 2149” (RR r), a stone tablet, allegedly originating from Juan Pakarati II Atán’s personal cave (Heyerdahl 1975, Plate 298c; Fischer 1997, 516–7). Additional fakes coming from a number of storage caves belonging to various native residents (featured in Heyerdahl 1975, Plate 210a,c; Plate 211a,b,c,d), show carved figures on mini-stone plates, slightly reminiscent of rongorongo signs.

12 Year 1864 corresponds with the first recorded observation of rongorongo tablets made by an outsider, and with the coming of the Roman Catholic mission (Joseph-Eugène Eyraud 1866); whereas 1770 is the year when the Spanish Captain Don Felipe González y Haedo (1908) visited Easter Island. More than a few scholars have suggested that the idea of the rongorongo script was borrowed as a result of the “signature” of the deed of cession of Easter Island to the Spanish monarch, Carlos III (see Bastian 1872, 85; Emory 1968, 153–4; Fischer 1997, 242–3; cf. González y Haedo 1908). As the present authors think the script goes back in time beyond the segment 1770–1864, a number of the existing (or lost) tablets may pre-date the 1770 boundary.

13 Offering an “exact glyph count” about each rongorongo inscription (and as a result, about the whole corpus) seems impractical and unattainable for now. This has to do with the multiple possible separation methods adopted by different researchers regarding the compounds. An overview of the literature bears witness to the former observation, with the standard corpus totalling between ca. 12,000 and ca. 14,800 glyphs (cf. Melka 2017).

14 This explanation, we consider, would hold true whether or not the side which preserves the glyphs was originally the recto or the verso.

15 cf. Jorge F. Genise (1999), “Paleoicnología de Insectos” [Palaeo-ichnology of insects] regarding a general outlook on the subject.

16 cf. Barthel’s (1958) “Zeilenschema für Schriftdenkmäler [Scheme of lines in the written documents]”; Orliac and Orliac’s (2008, Figure 183) sketch on the variety of shapes of the available rongorongo artifacts.

17 The sources for the consulted photographs of the “London Tablet” include Dalton (1904, Plate A); Routledge (1919, Fig. 98); Heyerdahl (1975, Plates 58a-59a, Cat. No. 1903-150); Fischer (1997, Figs. 63, 64), and Harris (2009).

18 Although the text of the “London Tablet” is closely paralleling that on the recto of the “Small Santiago”, thus being a genuine rongorongo inscription of autonomous value (Fischer 1997, 488), it still stands for a diluted version of the latter tablet.

19 On the sacred and utilitarian value of the toromiro tree for the ancient Rapanui, cf. Métraux (1940, 16–7); Orliac (1990; 1993).

20 S. R. Fischer (1997) is referring here to the fragment “…deutliche Spuren längeren Aufenthalts im Wasser…”, found in the article of Michael Haberlandt (1886, 97).

21 cf. Imbelloni (1951, 102) on dismissing false claims regarding the “Great Vienna Tablet”.

22 See Thomson (1891, 451), “Natural caves are numerous, both on the coast-line and in the interior of the island. Some of them are of undoubted antiquity and bear evidence of having been used by the early inhabitants as dwellings and as burial places. It is reported that small images [= wooden figurines], inscribed tablets, and other objects of interest have been hidden away in such caves and finally lost through land-slides”.

23 For readers especially interested in kinetic experiences about the indigenous caves, we suggest National Geographic Explorer’s (2009) documentary, Easter Island Underworld.

24 cf. Orliac and Orliac (2008, 248).

25 The present condition of the “San Diego Tablet” makes the physical manipulation very difficult for a relatively long period of time due to possible irreversible damaging. Similar premises surround the “Large ( = Great) Vienna Tablet” according to Fischer’s (1997, 505) in situ observations, cf. also Wieczorek and Horley (2015, 128, 130–1).

26 J. Guy’s (1982, 447) choice of words “…free stylistic variations” on the whimsical carving of glyphs, seems another correct way in describing the phenomenon.

27 Duranton (1998, 42).

28 The glyph is described as “staff” or “pillar” in J. P. Harrison (1874, 381). Glyph /1/ is identified in Barthel (1963, 429) as “Stab” [= staff] (toko; kohau; turu ? tira?). Considering the explicit resemblance of the given sign to its referent, such views are not without their validity.

29 Barthel (1963, 429), otherwise, suggested that the “striped” “stick”-like glyph /11/meant “papa” [markierter Stab = marked, notched staff].

30 For the numerous shapes and suggested values of glyph /2/, readers may well refer to Wieczorek (2017).

31 Information on the context-sensitive glyph /76/ is available in Pozdniakov (1996, 291, Fig. 1, a); Guy (1998); Harris and Melka (2011b).

32 Visually speaking, given the “hand”-like shape on its extremity, glyph /61/ is quite different from /64/.

33 On the variability of fish”-like glyph /700/, see especially Ávila Fuentealba (2007, 25, Figura 1, A # 07, 37, 58, 66, 67; B # 19, 21, 22, 29, 34, 46).

34 Occurrences of glyph /15/ are shown on page 95 in Barthel (1958).

35 We find well-founded this specific observation about the inscribed rongorongo glyphs, “Of the marine species a few are readily identifiable, among which the fish is dominant” (Heyerdahl 1975, 206). Therefore, # /700/ (plus variants) is depicted as a “fish”-like glyph or “fish”-shaped glyph throughout the article.

36 See especially Ávila Fuentealba (2007, 40, Figura 35) regarding the parallel sequences found on the “Great Santiago Tablet”; the “Great St. Petersburg Tablet”; the “Small Washington Tablet”; and presumably, on the “Tahua Tablet”.

37 “Unfortunately, most early collections from Easter Island circulated in private hands for a generation before they found their way to any museum and were often catalogued with no entry as to original provenience”.

38 Fischer (2005, 118) writes that “The Elizabeth Kimbell…was wrecked on Easter Island on 6 May 1873, both

ship and cargo lost”.

39 See Van Tilburg (1992).

40 For more, see the journal of Julien Viaud ( = Pierre Loti) published in French (1988).

41 Further details on the “Danish” Christian H. Schmidt are found in van Hoorebeeck (1979, 262–3).

42 Monseigneur Florentin Étienne (Tepano) Jaussen, Apostolic Vicar of Tahiti and Bishop of Axière.

43 W. J. Thomson, Te Pito te Henua, or Easter Island (1891, Plate 43 – from photographs presented by George Davidson to the California Academy of Sciences).

44 As readers should know by now, long or short-standing divisions about various aspects of pre-missionary Easter Island among scholars are nothing new.

45 A preliminary inter-tablet exploration, to wit, was conducted in section Tracings and code numbers after Barthel (1958).

46 See the assessment of Barthel (1958, 24), “Der Stil ist vorzüglich und weist viele singuläre Konstruktionen auf” [The (carving) style is exquisite and it bears many singular glyph-forms].

47 It may be of interest to check Ávila Fuentealba’s (2007, 26) commentary at this point, “La tablilla ‘Q’ también muestra un estilo particular, esto es, un tanto más grueso en el dibujado de los símbolos, aunque ello puede deberse en parte a las herramientas y al tipo de madera que tuvo que cortar [Tablet ‘Q’ ( = the “Small St. Petersburg”) also shows a peculiar style, meaning, it is a little coarser in the design of symbols, though it may be caused by the tools and the wood type (the scribe, our note) had to cut ( = incise)]”.

48 See the assessment of Barthel (1958, 21) regarding the fragment, named after the Parisian collector Charles Stéphen-Chauvet, “Die Schriftzeichen weisen einen ganz rohen, unbeholfenen Stil auf, der wohl als Verfallsform der klassischen Linienführung zu bewerten ist” [The characters ( = glyphs) have a very raw, awkward style, probably to be estimated as a decadent form of the classical (carved) lines]. Kjellgren (2001, 77, Cat. No. 50) includes a reasonably clear photograph of the said fragment.

49 Barthel’s (1958, 20) assessment addresses the text of “Echancrée” as a whole, “Einschließlich der beschädigten Formen sind tatsächlich noch ca. 270 Elemente zu erkennen. Der Stil ist klassisch, aber nicht sehr elegant, und zeichnet sich durch einige singuläre Zeichenkonstruktionen aus” [Still, there are in reality around 270 recognizable elements, including the damaged forms. The style is classic, but not very elegant, and is characterized by a few singular glyph-forms].

50 Most probably a lapsus of Imbelloni (1951), since, as commented above (cf. Fischer 1997, 487), the “London Tablet” contains a total of ten (10) inscribed lines.

51 Consider that these variants are not decaying versions of # /719/ on Ab3, rather than lavish and whimsical scribal renditions.

52 cf. Barthel (1958, 236, note 4). In this context, we may turn to Thomas S. Barthel (1978 [1974], 148), Georg Zizka (1989, 27), and Diego Demangel Miranda (2016) who mention the existence of two indigenous species of reptiles on Easter Island: the mourning gecko (Gekkonidaea Family), with the native name, moko uru-uru kahu (Lepidodactylus lugubris), and the mottled snake-eyed skink (Scincidae Family) with the native name, moko uriuri (Ablepharus boutonii). In Demangel Miranda (2016), the Latin designation of the mottled snake-eyed skink is given as Cryptoblepharus poecilopleurus, terms which appear to have more scientific currency. Métraux (1940, 18) includes a short passage on these denizens, “The harmless little lizards (moko) may have been stowaways on the Polynesian canoes. They have haunted the imagination of Easter Islanders, who have carved ceremonial objects in their shape”.

53 See also the assessment of Barthel (1958, 30) of tablet R, “Der klassische Stil ist formschön und sicher in seiner Linienführung” [The classical style (of carving) is shapely and firm across the linear rows”].

54 Barthel (1958, 146).

55 M. Harris in Harris and Melka (2011b, 254, Table 7) based on the association strength of pair-wise glyphs per the method of Latent Semantic Analysis, found an estimated correlation of 0.91 (base 1) for “700-069”.

56 Barthel (1958, 304–5).

57 Glyph /69/ appears juxtaposed also to glyph /720/730/, e.g. on Sb6 • Bv3 • Hv9 • Cb12 [= Cv12]. Such glyphs are allegedly designed after “whales” and “sharks”, being “marine creatures” similarly to # /700/.

58 For metaphorical assignations on /95/, see Barthel (1958, 264).

59 Strictly speaking, exceptions seem to be the juxtaposed / “conflated” glyph-forms, e.g. /95/ (→ /40.95/, Br2); /95x/ (→ /59f.95x/, Br2); /V95?/ ( → /4.V95?/, Db3).

60 cf. the offerings of Métraux (1940, 389); Englert (1948, 462); Barthel (1958, 309).

61 The descriptor “heron”-like is a convention. There is evidence, however, that there was once, in prehistoric times, a species of heron on the island (so far apparently unidentified); it may have been a species indigenous to Easter Island (cf. Steadman, 1995, 1126, on the endemic heron Ardeidae sp. nov). One might have “arbitrarily” suggested a “cormorant”-like glyph, too, despite its absence in the fossil / bone records so far. To different people, the iconic outlines of different RR glyphs mean different things, so they should be treated with much caution.

62 Additional cases are described in Pozdniakov (1996); Guy (2006); Melka (2008; 2014; 2017); Horley (2009, 2010); Melka and Schoch (2020).

63 Solanum nigrum in the Linnaean fashion, cf. Barthel (1958, 234, footnote 3); see also Churchill (1912, 242), “poporo a berry whose juice is mixed with ashes of ti ( = Cordyline fruticosa) leaves in tattooing”; and Englert (1948, 487) “poporo planta de la familia umbelífera” [plant belonging to the umbelliferous family].

64 It is a known fact by now that the rongorongo texts at our disposal are brimming with scribal variants. In this sense, other real-world script practices are not that different from rongorongo, see e.g. Rogers (2005, 237) in the context of the Mesoamerican Maya scribes, “[They, our note]… tended to exploit different possible ways of writing the same thing. In a text one frequently sees the same word written differently. Even the names of Maya kings and cities show variation in writing. Perhaps to the Maya, to use the same writing too close together was esthetically unpleasing, just as in English we tend to avoid using the same word twice too close together”.

65 cf. also Horley (2009, 252, Figure 1, Bv6).

66 Alan S. C. Ross (1940, 557), in his devised transliteration of “Small Washington Tablet”, mentions “dots

(. . . . . .) indicate a part of the tablet much defaced, but one in which it may nevertheless reasonably be assumed that there once were signs”.

67 Occurrences of glyph /52/ are indexed in Butinov and Knorozov (1957 [1956], Table 4, # 16; Table 5, # 5, 13, 15, 16); Barthel (1958, 102).

68 cf. e.g. Melka (2014, 162), “The slightly different shapes would also point to the fact that the RR sign repertoire was not stabilized yet, with scribes experimenting with and rejoicing in exploring graphic and visual possibilities”.

69 cf. Horley (2005, 111, Figure 12) on “Glyph 003 and feather-adorned elements”.

70 cf. Horley (2007, 27–8); T. S. Melka in Melka and Harris (2011).

71 See Melka (2009c, 63, # 3, Item I / RR 10: The Santiago Staff, line 1 / RR 10-4, with glyph /380.380y/ marked under “Z₍₊₎”) and M. Harris in Melka and Harris (2011).

72 Earlier work on rongorongo bigram retrieval and analysis shows the breadth and depth of the topic (Harris and Melka 2011b). The basic idea was to assess through different computational methods whether two glyphs from a feature set occur together more often than by pure chance, and look for possible correspondence with ethnographic linguistic data.

73 For more information on Dederen’s work, one may refer to F. Dederen’s (2019) Île de Pâques: L’origine de l’écriture rongorongo, in particular to Figures 4, 5, and 14.

74 Here, Barthel‘s (1958, 25) assessment of the “London Tablet” is worth quoting, “Zwar sind die Zeichen nicht so elegant wie auf den meisten anderen klassischen Schriftdenkmälern ausgeführt; an der inneren Zugehörigkeit zur alten Kultur der Osterinsel ist jedoch kein Zweifel möglich. So handelt es sich keineswegs um eine bloße Kopie von Exemplar G, sondern um eine eigenständige Paraphrase der dortigenTradition mit bemerkenswerten Nuancen” [Nonetheless, the characters ( = glyphs) are not as elegantly executed as in the most other classical texts; there is no doubt, however, about its core affiliation to the Old culture of Easter Island. Hence, it is by no means a simple copy of text G ( = the “Small Santiago”), but an independent paraphrasing of the tradition with notable nuances]. See Melka (2016) for comments on the “Small Santiago Tablet”.

75 cf. Englert (1948, 316), on the word of an aged informant who attended rongorongo classes during his youth at a school near Ahu Akapu, reveals that pupils initially commenced to copy signs on banana leaves “…con un lápiz de hueso de pájaro o de palito puntiagudo” […with a stylus of a bird bone or a small pointed stick]; Steadman, Vargas Casanova, and Cristino Ferrando (1994, 88) on two bird bone needles recovered during excavations at Ahu NauNau, Anakena (“Gannet’s Cave”); examples of bone needles in Maiani and Quer (1996, 192); or comments on needle fragments in Beardsley (1996, 78).

76 The “sea turtle”-like glyph /V298/ on Ia5 is a variant of /298/, where the “forked arm” affix /64/ replaces the “arm / hand” glyph affix /6/, characteristic of the style applied on the “Santiago Staff”.

77 In Geiseler’s Report (1995 [1883], 58) we take notice, for example, of a “set of symbols” [= “Rapanui hieroglyphs”], where “The second figure [= ] represents a fish hanging on a hook,…”.

78 See in this regard Horley (2005, 108) who, among the “…tablets of superior craftsmanship…,” lists “B, G, I, P, and R” ( = “Aruku Kurenga” • “Small Santiago” • “Santiago Staff” • “Great St Petersburg” • “Small Washington”).

79 /700/ is the top ranking glyph in the frequency distribution with 13 occurrences.

80 In this vein, the “San Diego Tablet” aligns itself with the majority of the extant RR artifacts, filled up with sequences of glyphs to the hilt. “…The more glyphs carved across the tablets, the merrier”, seems to have sounded like an anthem among the original rongorongo scribes.

81 A fine image of this artifact is found in Horley and Pozdniakov (2018, 81, Figure 1).

82 In the turmoil of the 1860s–1880s affecting Easter Island, it is difficult to consider Bishop Jaussen and the other collectors were told the entire story regarding these rongorongo pieces, whether by the original Rapanui owners or their preceding European collectors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tomi S. Melka

Robert M. Schoch is trained as a geologist, but eclectic in his interests. RMS is fascinated by poorly understood ancient and forgotten societies, cultures, and civilizations. He is particularly interested in the analysis of enigmatic artifacts, symbols, and scripts. The issue of fraudulent antiquities and works of art also captures his attention. When the opportunity arises, RMS enjoys traveling around the globe to contemplate monuments from the past; in this context, one of his favorite destinations is Rapa Nui (Easter Island). During his spare time, RMS savors visiting museums of all kinds, especially those devoted to anthropology, archaeology, the fine arts, and the decorative arts. Sometimes, as a form of mental relaxation and meditation, RMS finds himself pondering traditions and occult writings from former centuries. He also likes to reflect on fundamental issues such as the nature of consciousness, the assumptions behind disparate conceptions of reality, and the possible underlying guiding principles and properties of the cosmos. Searching for potential patterns and cycles in both Earth history and human history is a pastime in which RMS has been known to indulge. RMS can be contacted at [email protected].

Robert M. Schoch

Tomi S. Melka presently has a strong interest in gaining knowledge of various ancient human communities and civilizations. He is especially inclined toward the study of symbolic, visual-based, and writing systems (identified and non-identified) by using mixed methods. TSM does not claim to have deciphered any unknown system, although he claims to have learned a lot along the way which started back in 2004 in Urbana-Champaign, IL. The ancient cultures of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Egypt, Greece, Anatolia, Mesoamerica and South America, and of the pre-Roman Italy hold a constant fascination on his mind. Incidentally, in his free time he reads science fiction, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Alexander Dumas, Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, Mario Vargas Llosa, Adolfo Bioy Casares, John Irving, Umberto Eco, Alan Moore and David Lloyd, Terry Pratchett, Ken Follett (and several others), plus books on cryptology, history of art, fossils, museum collections, and different styles of kung fu. When extra time is no objection, TSM enjoys much co-operating with other investigators and disseminate the research through the available outlets.