Easter Island

Easter Island (Rapa Nui in the indigenous language), is a Chilean-governed island in the south eastern Pacific Ocean. Rapa Nui is a small, hilly, now treeless island of volcanic origin. It's been called the most isolated inhabited territory on Earth, but there is another aspect that sets it apart from any other place on Earth - its hundreds of megalithic human-like statues that face inland from the shore. These enigmatic statues are called moai.

Almost all moais were carved out of distinctive, compressed, easily worked volcanic ash. The largest one weights up to 165 tons, and its height is almost 22 meters. Some upright moai have become buried up to their necks by shifting soils.

This massive production of megalithic works on an island that is absolutely barren, with just grass, immediately captures our imagination. How did it all happen? Who built these statues? And why did they build them?


Some scientists suggest that Easter Island inhabitants, the Rapanui, came from Polynesia. But similarities to Indian stone statues around Lake Titicaca in South America are striking. Is this accidental or not? Scholars are unable to definitively explain the function and use of the moai statues. Some of them suggest that the statues were symbols of authority and power, both religious and political.

One of the biggest riddles about Easter Island is how the statues 'traveled' from the quarry to their platforms or ahus, sometimes as far as 20 or 25 kilometres away? Rapa Nui legend has it that the moai "walked from the quarry". But less than one third of all carved moai actually made it to a final ceremonial ahus site. Was this due to the inherent difficulties in transporting them? Were the ones that remain in the quarry deemed culturally unworthy of transport? Or had the islanders run out of the resources necessary to complete the Herculean task of carving and moving the moai?


Easter Island is more well known as Te-Pito-O-Te-Henua, meaning ‘ The Navel of the World’ and as Mata-Ki-Te-Rani, meaning ‘Eyes Looking at Heaven’. These ancient names and a host of mythological details point to the possibility that the remote island may once have been both a geodetic marker and the site of an astronomical observatory of a long forgotten civilization.

History Of Easter Island


Stranded in isolation, 2000 miles from the nearest inhabited shore, Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui has become famous as one of the most mysterious places in the world. Known in ancient times as Te Pito o te Henua (the Navel of the World), the island is most well known for its massive statues recognized throughout the world. But a plethora of other enigmas have intrigued researchers as well.
I stepped off the plane and soaked up the warm tropical air in the last rays of daylight. After a five-hour plane ride I had finally made it to one of the most remote unexplained places in the world. In fact, this lonely island can only be reached two ways, from Santiago, Chile in the east as I had come, or from Papeete, Tahiti to the west as I would go one week later.
After picking up my bag in the small terminal, I slid into the backseat of one of the few taxis on the island and took a two-minute ride to the Hanga Roa Hotel. The accommodation options on Easter Island are relatively limited. Only one hotel has air-conditioning and it wasn’t mine. My room did come complete with a fan and a small television. Unfortunately there was only one electrical outlet in the room, so I had to choose between the two. It wasn’t much of a choice though since the TV only received one or two channels and they were both in Spanish.
With a full week to explore the island, I was in no rush. My hotel offered full-day tours whisking visitors to all the major sites in a single day, but I wanted to discover the island at a more leisurely pace. The next morning I decided to walk around Hanga Roa, the only town on the island. Consisting of one main road, two craft markets, a few small hotels and several surprisingly good restaurants, Hanga Roa can be covered on foot quickly.
Just west of town, down a shaded dirt road I made my way to the island’s only museum, the Museo Antropologico Sebastian Englert. Housing a small collection of artifacts and statues discovered on the island, the museum is a good place to learn more about the island’s history and what is known about its unique culture.
The first confirmed European vessel to reach Rapa Nui was a Dutch ship commanded by Jacob Roggeveen that encountered the isolated shores on Easter Sunday, 1722 thereby giving the island its modern name. Roggeveen was actually searching for the islands of Mangareva far to the west and came upon Easter Island quite by accident. Stormy weather and rough seas prevented the Dutch from venturing ashore for more than a day, but even in this limited time, they were able to record a great deal of information on the status of the island at the time.
Roggeveen found the islanders to generally be friendly and accommodating. They seemed to have ample food and were in good spirits. The Dutch marveled at the colossal statues standing around the island and noted that the islanders seemed to pay the monuments great respect. It would be nearly fifty years before the next Europeans would lay eyes on the island.
In 1770 a Spanish expedition reached Easter Island and reported conditions to be much the same as the Dutch had recorded. However, four years later when Captain James Cook arrived, he found the island to be utterly changed and in a dismal state. Cook recorded the islanders as being thin and miserable with scarcely enough food to get by.
Even the land had transformed. In fact he did not see “anything which can induce ships that are not in the utmost distress to touch at this island.” Cook’s expedition was also the first to note that many of the massive statues that once proudly gazed out from the shore were now toppled and lay face-down or were purposely broken or disfigured.
Over the next hundred years a variety of vessels visited the island culminating in a massive slave raid in 1862 in which eight Peruvian ships decimated the local population taking with them the island king, his family and nearly all the learned men and people of stature on the island. Almost 1000 people were taken to work as slaves before the Peruvian government intervened and agreed to send the survivors back.
Disease and harsh working conditions had laid waste to these once proud people and only 100 individuals boarded the ship for the journey home. By the time they reached Easter Island, only 15 had survived the return trip and with them they brought a smallpox epidemic that few would escape. Within a few years, a population of thousands had been reduced to a mere one hundred and eleven.
Of those who escaped the slave raids or survived the epidemic, much was learned about early life on the island. Unfortunately a great deal of information was lost forever. Many of the earliest foreign residents on the island were missionaries, intent on converting the local populace to Christianity. Through this process, many of the old beliefs were lost or suppressed and countless artifacts were destroyed in the belief that they represented pagan idols. This tremendous loss of early history has contributed greatly to the aura of mystery that still surrounds Easter Island to this day.
With a better understanding of the island’s past, I made my way back down to the coast to investigate some of the sights near town. Clouds were blowing in with a darkening sky as I arrived at Cook’s Bay, just north of Hanga Roa. Walking past three horses grazing lazily, I stared up at two of the great stone statues that the island is so famous for. Known as moai, these towering giants are the first images conjured when most people think of Easter Island. However all of the moai currently standing atop their platforms known as ahu were re-raised in modern times, having all been toppled by around 1860.
But what caused the great stone monuments to fall? Speculation has ranged from earthquakes to a volcanic eruption, but more recent evidence clearly indicates that the statues were felled by the locals themselves. Early accounts of the island tell us that the moai were built in the image of great rulers and that each had its own name. Indeed, while similar, no two moai look alike.
It seems that sometime in the late 1700’s, warring tribes finally turned their aggression towards the relics of the past and during this period many of the moai What caused the individual island groups to become so destructive towards a past they once cherished is still an area of intense speculation and we may never know the real answers. were toppled or defaced. Over the next hundred years the violence escalated and retaliation ensued causing the statues to be systematically brought down until none were left standing.
As the sky continued to darken, I pressed on, walking further north along the coast. It’s hard to stop walking on Easter Island since there is always another moai, ahu or other fascinating sight just out of reach. I passed platforms with standing moai and others where they still remained toppled, lying face-down in the earth. As I walked along a cove, the sky finally broke and pelted me with a light shower of rain.
Spotting a nearby cave, I dashed inside to wait out the storm. Easter Island is speckled with caves, and many are well hidden and now serve as hiding places for ancient family treasures. I looked around my cave, but couldn’t find anything of interest except for an old Coke can. As the sky cleared, I decided it was finally time to head back towards town.
The next morning I took a taxi south from Hanga Roa up to the top of the extinct volcanic crater Rano Kau, home to the ancient ceremonial site of Orongo. With a stunning view west across the Pacific, it was here that one of the most important ceremonies on Easter Island took place. Every Spring, chiefs from the major tribes throughout the island would come together at this village to participate in the birdman competition.
Each tribe would enter its own competitor who climbed 1000 feet down the steep cliffs and plunged into the ocean below. He would then swim through shark infested waters for over a mile to reach the tiny nearby island of Motu Nui where he would wait for the laying of the first egg from a migratory bird known as the sooty tern. The first competitor to return with the egg won the honor of becoming birdman for his master. Upon being crowned birdman, this individual went off to live a life of seclusion for one year where all his needs were attended and he was afforded many privileges.
Since the birdman cult was a relatively late invention on Easter Island, the ceremonial center at Orongo has survived into modern times relatively intact. I walked along a well worn path past low circular stone-houses built into the hillside. Some of them contain painted artwork that is still barely visible. Unfortunately entrance is not permitted.
Past the houses I continued south along the edge of the cliffs. Early accounts of the island described an ahumoai suspended impossibly mid-way up the sheer cliff-face between Orongo and the ocean below. Sadly, erosion from the fierce waves caused these statues to topple into the sea before they could be properly studied. Although documented by the Smithsonian in 1889, some researchers have even gone as far as dismissing the accounts of this ahu to pure fantasy and indeed many books on the island no longer mention this mysterious site. called Rikiriki with a series of
Returning back along the path, high above Motu Nui I came to a series of boulders called Mata Ngarau with images of the birdman and other motifs carved into them. Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl spent many years trying to convince the world that the great stone monuments found on Easter Island were created by an expedition of Pre-Incan explorers arriving from Peru.
On the surface, much of his evidence seems compelling, but over the years many of Heyerdahl’s theories have not stood up to scrutiny. One of Heyerdahl’s dubious claims is that “the practice of ear lengthening is unknown in Polynesia, but Incas of royal birth adopted the habit of their predecessors by piercing their earlobes and putting large plugs in them.”
While it is true that similar images can be found in both places, birdman symbols also show up in Polynesia as well, I had even photographed some myself on the distant island of Maui, Hawaii earlier in the year. It is true that there are striking similarities between Easter Island birdmen and motifs found in South American pottery, but the representation of a human-bird hybrid is by no means a concept exclusive to South America.
Heyerdahl tried to shape the island’s history in South American terms. He believed that Pre-Incan explorers first discovered the island and later set sail further west where they captured Polynesians whom they enslaved. However, over the years historians and archaeologists have come down strongly against Heyerdahl going as far as to portray many of his theories as racist
The currently accepted history of the island as described by mainstream scientists describes the earliest inhabitants coming solely from Polynesia. Any South American influences are attributed to Polynesians from Easter Island setting sail to South America and not the other way around. Even this contact is described as being extremely limited and is downplayed in the extreme by most researchers. The more I walked around the island and the more I saw, the more I became convinced that the true island history was more complex than either side wanted to admit.




With my first two days on Easter Island behind me, I decided I had explored as far as my feet would take me and it was time to rent a car. Shopping around turned out to be pointless as most places seemed to have similar 1980’s Hyundai Sidekicks for the same price. I searched in vain for one with an automatic transmission but was told that there were no automatics on the whole island. Reluctantly I slid behind the wheel of my chosen Hyundai and tried to remember how to work a clutch. Luckily, Easter Island has no traffic lights and only a couple of stop signs so it makes for a pretty relaxing place to get re-acquainted with driving stick. After a few embarrassing lurches and stalls, I was in gear and on my way out of town to my first stop, Vinapu.

One of Thor Heyerdahl’s most visually compelling arguments for a Pre-Incan presence on Easter Island can be found at the superbly constructed stone platform known as Ahu Vinapu. Countless visitors have remarked on its shocking similarity to the great cyclopean stone walls found around Cuzco, Peru. Heyerdahl states that “Vinapu alone stands as a mirrored reflection of the classical masterpieces of the Incas or their predecessors.”


World traveler and writer David Childress remarked on further similarities between the two architectural styles.

At Ollyantaytambo, Sillustani, Cuzco and other sites in the Andes, many of the large polygonal blocks have strange knobs on them, the function of which has never been understood. Here on the southeast corner of the wall [at Vinapu] was a knob, just like the ones in the Andes!

Walking around the platform I thought back to my own time at Cuzco just weeks before. I had seen many examples of the knobs Childress refers to and they are visually very distinctive and hard to miss. Some examples of the stone knobs I saw in Peru can be seen in the photo on the right. After twenty minutes of searching I could find nothing at Vinapu that resembled the protrusions so common in Cuzco, especially in the southeast corner of the wall. Because these knobs are so unique, the existence of one at Vinapu would provide compelling evidence for the influence or Peruvian architects on Easter Island in ancient times. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t relocate whatever Childress had seen 20 years before.
Even without the stone knobs, at first glance, the masonry does look almost identical to Incan architecture. The large stones along the face are precisely fitted together using no mortar. The entire structure also has a slightly rounded shape and across the face and each individual stone is slightly convex or pillow-shaped. Incorporating beveled stones like these was another signature of Incan construction.
However, orthodox researchers point out that a closer inspection of the site shows some flaws in Heyerdahl’s logic. The greatest Incan walls were built of large boulders of various shapes superbly fitted together so that not even a thin blade could be inserted between them. But the wall at Vinapu simply gives a similar illusion. The large stones on the outside are merely a cosmetic facing for an interior filled with rubble. Closer inspection renders the similarity of the sites to be largely superficial.
Skeptics of a Peruvian influence at Vinapu also point out that the superb construction in evidence at this site is unique on the island, rather than being the norm. However, when Captain Cook arrived on Rapa Nui, he described the existence of another platform similar to Vinapu in Hanga Roa.Unfortunately this ahu was dismantled so that its stones could be used in the construction of a harbor. Since it was taken apart before it could be properly studied, most researchers choose to ignore its existence.
Another ahu with stonework resembling that found at Vinapu was documented by William Thomson in 1886. Along the north coast he described and sketched a platform called Ahu Ahau that has since fallen into the sea.Lastly, while conducting excavations at Anakena beach in 1987, Thor Heyerdahl’s team unearthed another finely-constructed massive stone wall just beneath the surface.While still available to researchers, no follow-up digs have occurred to further explore the underground ruins at Anakena.
So certainly in ancient times, the fine construction in evidence at Ahu Vinapu was not unique. Unfortunately most of the stone walls to which it could be best compared are no longer in existence or visible. Whether or not Vinapu genuinely represents a South American influence on Easter Island is a point that will no doubt continue to be debated.
After marveling at the fine stone work, I climbed back into my jeep and continued east stopping at several platforms and moai until I reached Ahu Hanga Te’e. From a distance this ahu didn’t seem to be particularly impressive as all the moai that once stood atop it now lay face down. But a walk around the site revealed a number of interesting features. The generally accepted chronology for stone carving on the island identifies the earliest moai as those with rounded bald heads, while later moai were carved with flat heads to allow a topknot or pukao to be placed on top. These topknots were carved from a soft red scoria and increased the height of moai that were already being carved larger and larger.
Around Hanga Te’e a variety of pukao lay strewn about. Some even featured deep petroglyphs and designs. As I got closer to the platform, I noticed another curious feature. Just in front of the ahu in the ceremonial center was a ring of stones 60 feet across with a single larger stone marking the center. At one time these stone rings were quite common on Easter Island, but now only a few examples remain. Early accounts tell how the islanders used the stones ceremonially to track the position of the sun, the moon and the stars. How exactly this was accomplished and interpreted is no longer known.
As the sun fell lower in the sky I decided I could make it to one more major site and continued east towards the largest stone platform on the island, Ahu Tongariki. Measuring almost 700 feet across, this great stone platform is an imposing sight. Atop it sit 15 carefully placed moai varying in height from 17 to 26 feet and weighing an average of 40 tons. Tongariki suffered a near disaster in 1960 when an earthquake off the coast of Chili generated a 25 foot tidal wave that swept ashore reducing the ahu to rubble and scattering the statues more than 400 feet inland. An intense restoration project in 1990 restored the platform to its former glory.
Currently no other ahu supports more statues, but during Thomson’s stay in 1886 he documented an ahu on an inaccessible terrace along the coast east of Rano Kau that supported an impressive 16 statues. Unfortunately, as with Ahu Ahau, this platform also succumbed to the sea as the fragile volcanic cliff it was built upon was slowly undercut by the relentless waves below. In fact a number of the island’s most mysterious and perhaps most ancient sites have been lost to the ocean in just the last hundred years. Now smothered in the waves below, we’ll never know what secrets these unique sites once held.
The next morning I visited the birthplace of most of the great statues on the island. I steered my jeep to a stop next to the only other car in the parking lot and made my way along the trail up the slopes of Ranu Raraku. The soft volcanic tuft of this long extinct volcano provided perfect working material to carve the vast majority of the moai found around the island. So far, 887 moai have been counted on Easter Island and of these, all but 55 were carved from the slope before me. In fact, the statues were carved in such abundance that almost 400 moai still surround the slopes or lay in various stages of completion and never made it to a coastal ahu for display.
As the carving of the moai continued through the years, the stone monuments were made to be larger and larger. Still attached to the quarry is a moai of truly astounding proportions. Known as El Gigante (The Giant) it measures almost 72 feet in length and is estimated to weigh almost 300 tons. If it had ever been completed, and a topknot placed on top, El Gigante would have stood taller than an 8-story building.
Walking along the length of this massive carving I pondered the question that has intrigued and perplexed all who visit Easter Island. How were the moaiahu? The largest moai ever to be placed on a platform stood over 32 feet high and weighed around 80 tons. The question of how such colossal monuments could be transported over as many as 12 miles of rugged terrain has been the subject of much speculation throughout the years. transported to their
Eric Von Daniken suggested extraterrestrials with anti-gravity technology as the most likely explanation, but it’s hardly necessary to resort to such far-out speculation. Some have theorized that in the days when trees could still be found on the island, the trunks were used as rollers to ease the transport of the moai. Others have suggested that the ground was greased with a mixture of vegetable products and that the moai were then dragged to their ahu on sleds. Neither of these explanations is completely satisfying though.
Throughout the centuries, the native population has stuck to a single story. They describe how the chief would use his mana or spiritual power to command the statues to walk to their desired locations. Most researchers dismiss these claims, but in 1986 Thor Heyerdahl was able to recreate a walking movement using two teams of islanders controlling ropes attached to a moai. By pulling back and forth on the ropes, the teams were able to “walk” the statue forward by tilting it side to side.
However, recent excavations along the ancient roads that radiate out from Ranu Raraku have cast further doubt on how that moai were moved. Sections of the road were found to be broad and flat, suitable for “walking” a statue or using rollers. But other sections were V-shaped, rendering most transportation methods suggested thus far impossible. The roads also traveled up and down slopes and did not lead all the way to the platforms that were the moais’ final destination. The mystery of the monuments’ transport still remains unsolved but new developments may bring us closer to the real answer.
I followed the branching path to the left and climbed up a narrow gap into the interior of the crater. Dotting the slope, surrounding the banks of a fresh water lake, over a hundred stone faces basked in the sunlight buried up to their necks in eroded soil and volcanic chunks dislodged from the cliffs above. Hundreds of years ago, as the environment collapsed, water sources dried up, leaving the lake before me as one of the few remaining locations with fresh water.
Along the banks of this valuable resource, a thick crop of totora reeds have been a point of contention for over 50 years. Thor Heyerdahl claimed that the reeds were identical to those found at Lake Titicaca in the Andes, and must have been imported by the earliest South American settlers. However, pollen analysis carried out by John Flenley in the 1980’s clearly showed that the reeds have grown in the lake for over 30,000 years and thus made their way to the island by natural means.
As I walked around the edge of the lake, I took a moment to examine one of the stone faces along the path. The moai found at Ranu Raraku have a unique appearance in that they have no eyes. Instead the giants were completed and polished in every other way, but the eye sockets were carved last, etched out only once a moai had reached its designated ahu.
It was long believed that the great statues on Easter Island had no real eyes, but in 1978, native archaeologist Sonia Haoa discovered fragments of coral and red scoria that exactly matched the eye sockets of a statue above. The discovery that the moai did in fact have inlaid eyes proved shocking to many researchers as this practice was not a Polynesian custom. The practice was common in many other ancient cultures however, including those from the Middle East and Central and South America.
As I continued along the shore I thought about all the conflicting evidence I had seen so far. Mainstream archaeologists insist on a purely Polynesian heritage for the original population of Easter Island. But the artifacts and sites Thor Heyerdahl and others had documented seemed to paint a very different picture. In the days ahead I would continue to discover that Easter Island’s history is a complex puzzle with no easy solutions.

 Source : www.unexplainedearth.com