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[QUOTE]Originally posted by mena7: [QB] http://davidpratt.info/easter1.htm Easter Island: land of mystery Introduction Everywhere is the wind of heaven; round and above all are boundless sea and sky, infinite space and a great silence. The dweller there is ever listening for he knows not what, feeling unconsciously that he is in the antechamber to something yet more vast which is just beyond his ken. – Katherine Routledge, The Mystery of Easter Island, 1919 Fig. 1.1 A stone giant at Rano Raraku continues its solemn watch, silent and inscrutable. Lying just south of the tropic of Capricorn, midway between Chile and Tahiti, Easter Island – or Rapa Nui – is one of the most remote islands on earth. Triangular in shape, with an extinct volcano at each corner, its 170 square kilometres offer a varied landscape of gently rolling hills, volcanic craters, rugged lava fields, and steep ocean cliffs, surrounded by the deep-blue waters of the South Pacific. The island is famous above all for nearly a thousand gigantic long-eared stone statues or moai, most of them 4 to 8 metres tall, and for over 300 stone platforms or ahu, many of megalithic proportions. It is a land of mystery, known in former times as Te Pito o te Henua, ‘the navel of the world’. Fig. 1.2 Easter Island lies isolated in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Platforms were built all around the island’s coast, and statues once stood on most of them, facing inland towards the villages. Some platform statues bore a large cylindrical headdress or pukao carved from reddish stone, and eyes of cut coral were fitted into their faces. Nearly all the statues are made from yellowish volcanic rock, quarried at the volcanic crater of Rano Raraku. Work at the quarry seems to have stopped suddenly, for dozens of statues remain uncompleted, and thousands of stone pickaxes were found scattered around. Another enigma is the island’s still-undeciphered hieroglyphic script, known as Rongorongo – virtually the only ancient form of writing known in Oceania. Fig. 1.3 Rano Raraku volcano.1 (courtesy of Carlos Huber) The official view is that Easter Island was discovered accidentally by Polynesian migrants in the 4th century AD. Their descendants, living in isolation and having nothing better to do, decided to carve giant statues and build huge platforms. They rapidly acquired mastery in advanced stone-carving techniques and the transportation and erection of statues and stone blocks weighing many tons. For over a thousand years they maintained a peaceful, stable, constructive society which supported a large class of master-builders and master-sculptors, and was ruled by a hereditary hierarchy of sacred priest-kings. However, overpopulation and a deteriorating environment resulted in intertribal warfare by the late 17th century. Amidst the turmoil all the statues standing on the platforms were pulled down. It was around this time that the first European explorers discovered the island. However, many controversies remain: How many times was Easter Island settled and from which direction: by Polynesians from the west, or by South Americans from the east? How did the islanders manage to sculpt hundreds of colossal moai, many as high as a three-storey building, transport them great distances, and erect them on the stone platforms? How did they manage to carve and shape the very tough basalt blocks used in the platforms, given that they are not supposed to have had any metal tools? Does the archaeological history of Easter Island really go back no further than 1500 years? Is there any truth to the legend that the island was once part of a much larger landmass [IMG]http://davidpratt.info/easter/rano7.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://davidpratt.info/easter/moai5.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://davidpratt.info/easter/moai2.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://davidpratt.info/easter/tukuturi.jpg[/IMG] Tukuturi [IMG]http://davidpratt.info/easter/moai1.jpg[/IMG] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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