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Easter Island

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Carolyn Silver
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« Reply #30 on: March 03, 2007, 02:43:05 am »

But were the paenga stones originally intended for the foundations of thatched houses? As John Macmillan Brown said: ‘The timbers of their houses look ridiculous alongside the cyclopean stone-foundations, into the small holes in which they were stuck.’ The stones are of the hardest basalt, tooled to perfection, and ‘were evidently intended by their original architects to bear the framework of great structures’. He also says: ‘It is difficult to understand how they bored the inch-deep holes for the wooden posts in the adamantine basalt of the foundation stones.’2

During Heyerdahl’s excavations at Ahu Nau Nau, an enormous, stone-lined, boat-shaped enclosure immediately to the landward side was discovered. Although archaeologists assume that all such structures are the foundations of boat-shaped houses, some traditions refer to them as ‘boats of bones’ and associate them with a builder-god named Nuku Kehu who came to Easter Island with Hotu Matua. There are also seven boat-shaped platforms known as ahu poepoe, which were used as tombs. The best example, 21 m long and 4 m high, with the bow elevated over a metre above the stern, lies just west of Anakena close to the ocean, ‘as if it were ready’, comments Father Sabastian Englert, ‘to carry its deceased passengers to some far away coast’.

Graham Hancock says that the ahu poepoe and the ‘boat house’ foundations are reminiscent of the ‘boat graves’ associated with pyramids and tombs in ancient Egypt – which might be stone or brick replicas of boats or full-sized sailing vessels. The ancient Egyptian funerary and rebirth texts describe the souls of deceased kings passing between earth and heaven in such boats. An Easter Island legend about the god-king Hotu Matua says: ‘He came down from heaven to earth ... He came in the ship ...’3

Other noteworthy examples of exquisite craftsmanship are popoi pounders which, says Heyerdahl, ‘were so perfectly formed and balanced, with the slender lines, graceful curves and high polish that our engineers refused to believe that such work was possible without the modern lathe’. He also mentions examples of exquisitely fashioned basalt fish hooks, which the first European explorers never saw being used and which the natives refused to part with.4 These have not been found on other Polynesian islands.



Fig. 6.15 Basalt fish hook.


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« Reply #31 on: March 03, 2007, 02:45:46 am »

The basalt mystery
To carve the moai statues, huge amounts of rock had to be hacked away around each one of them. In theory, this work could have been done using the basalt picks that have been found in abundance at the Rano Raraku quarry – though no one in modern times has felt like demonstrating how a complete statue can be carved by such arduous and primitive means. The possibility that more advanced tools and methods were used at certain times for some of this immense labour cannot be ruled out.





Fig. 6.16 Is this how all the carving was done?1



Although the platforms are mainly composed of unworked basalt blocks, many have retaining walls made of skilfully cut and fitted blocks. Carving these slabs would have been a tremendous undertaking, and this also applies to the shaping and boring of the basalt hare-paenga foundation blocks, the carving of basalt statues, the cutting away of basalt to make the roads, and the carving of several thousand petroglyphs in relief on tough basalt rock. The working of basalt poses problems of an altogether different magnitude than the softer volcanic rock found at Rano Raraku. What tools were used for this purpose? And have any experiments been conducted to test the proposed methods, as in the case of statue carving, raising, and transportation?

John Flenley and Paul Bahn argue that although there are still plenty of ‘intriguing questions’ to be answered about Easter Island, there are no genuine mysteries, though that doesn’t stop them entitling their book: The Enigmas of Easter Island. Interestingly, the problem of working basalt does not merit a single mention anywhere in their informative but conservative book! When asked by email how the basalt was cut, John Flenley said he had no idea, and Paul Bahn replied: ‘a good question, and one which, I think, has never really been tried out with experiments. Obviously the basalt can only have been worked with stone of equal or greater hardness, which can only mean basalt from the island.’2

But as Macmillan Brown pointed out, most ahu blocks are ‘of a vesicular basalt that European masons would find hard to work even with tools toughened by admixture of the rare metals’. Believing however that the masons had nothing but clumsy stone tools at their disposal, he says that each of the scores of immense shaped stones, weighing from 2 to 20 tons, ‘must have taken a workman with his stone implements, aided by sand and water, years to cut and groove’.3 It seems unlikely, though, that such skilled work would have been undertaken with such patently inadequate tools. The reason no one has ever conducted any experiments to see whether basalt can be precision-cut using basalt tools is very simple: no one is dumb enough to even try!

The Poike ditch is a deep and possibly entirely artificial ditch separating the eastern headland from the rest of the island. Although largely filled with silt today, it has a rectangular bottom, 3.7 m deep, about 12.2 m wide, and is about 3.5 km long. The tough basaltic rock removed could easily have supplied building blocks for all the platforms on the island with cyclopean masonry. Ahu Tahiri, Ahu Tongariki, and many more platforms were constructed from blocks of black basalt of a similar type. The ditch was a considerable feat of excavation, and is unlikely to have been chipped out with small basalt picks!

After the initial excavation of the lower trench through the lava flow, a considerable period appears to have elapsed during which a layer of inwash from the surrounding area, at least 1.8 m thick, accumulated in the ditch. There is evidence that some time after the original cutting, partial reexcavation took place, but exactly when is unclear. Carbon dates obtained so far do not tell us when the trench was first excavated, only that it could have been no later than 200 AD – and possibly ages earlier.4


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« Reply #32 on: March 03, 2007, 02:58:39 am »

7. Rongorongo


Even orthodox researchers have to admit that the Easter Island script – Rongorongo – constitutes a genuine enigma. Rongorongo now survives only as markings on 25 pieces of wood scattered around the world’s museums, though other tablets might still be hidden in the island’s sacred family caves. Some signs also survive on paper in makeshift ‘books’ from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The glyphs contain about 120 basic elements – human figures in a variety of positions, birds, animals, plants, celestial objects, and geometrical shapes – but these are combined to form between 1500 and 2000 compound signs. Many of the motifs are also found in the island’s rock art, but none are found on any statues or platforms.




Fig. 7.1

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« Reply #33 on: March 03, 2007, 02:59:21 am »

The writing was inscribed on the rongorongo boards in neat rows a centimetre high. Alternate lines are written upside down, with the end of one line running into the beginning of the next – a system known as boustrophedon (‘as the ox ploughs’). This means that, starting from the bottom lefthand corner of a tablet, the writing proceeds from left to right but at the end of each line the tablet has to be turned round.

The precise nature of the rongorongo script is uncertain. The prevailing view today is that

the motifs represent a rudimentary phonetic writing system, in which picture symbols were used to express ideas as well as objects. In other words, the individual glyphs do not represent an alphabet or even syllables, as in other scripts, but are ‘cue cards’ for whole words or ideas, plus a means of keeping count, like rosary beads. Each sign was a peg on which to hang a large amount of text committed to memory.1

According to legend, Hoto Matua brought 67 rongorongo tablets with him containing traditions, genealogical tables, and other records of the past, and he was accompanied by learned men who knew the art of writing and reciting the inscriptions. Some researchers have argued that the rongorongo script is not ancient but was invented by the islanders after the Spanish visit in 1770, when a written proclamation of annexation was offered to the chiefs and priests for them to sign. Some of the symbols used by the natives in signing the proclamation resembled the rongorongo hieroglyphs. We’re supposed to believe that the rest of the script was invented later! It’s possible that all the existing rongorongo tablets are no more than a few hundred years old; one, for instance, consists of a European oar. But the inscriptions could have been copied from earlier specimens.

The last truly literate islanders died either as a result of the 1862 slave raid or the subsequent smallpox epidemic. Natives who later claimed to be able to read Rongorongo appeared to be either reciting memorized texts or merely describing the figures rather than actually reading them, and sometimes gave different renderings of the same text. The script has still not been deciphered, despite some exaggerated claims to have done so. In 1995, for example, Steven Fischer announced that most of the tablets were religious chants taking the form: god A copulated with goddess B begetting a particular animal, plant, or natural phenomenon. However, his claims to have deciphered the script have been roundly attacked by other researchers.2

Thor Heyerdahl argued that Rongorongo was related to several South American scripts. He mentioned the pictographic writing of the Cuna Indians of Panama and northwest Colombia, who recorded songs by painting on wooden tablets. Some of the symbols are identical with those of Easter Island, and the script was written in boustrophedon style. The writing systems found among early historic (post-Columbian) Aymara and Quechua tribes of the Lake Titicaca area also used boustrophedon. Even the Incas reportedly had a writing system: their history was recorded on ‘boards’, which were passed down through the generations of rulers and guarded by learned men.3 The Spaniards found some stored in the Temple of the Sun and burned them.

Conventional researchers believe that the rongorongo script is Polynesian, with its signs reflecting the local environment and culture. They acknowledge that boustrophedon was used in Peru but say that there is no affinity between the signs used in the two places, though there might have been some influence in either direction. Some see far more significant similarities between certain rongorongo motifs and designs employed in the Solomon Islands in Melanesia, though a direct migration from there to Easter Island is no longer considered tenable. Rongorongo specialist Thomas Barthel speculated that the script originated on the Polynesian islands of Huahine or Raiatea and he believed it came to Rapa Nui with Hotu Matua.

Putting modern preconceptions aside, Rongorongo may reflect a variety of influences. In the 1930s Guillaume de Hevesy identified similarities between the rongorongo signs and 130 signs used in the at least 4500-year-old script found in the towns of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the Indus Valley. The orthodox view is that any similarities have been exaggerated and are purely coincidental.4 The Indus Valley script was usually written from right to left, but there are a few early cases of boustrophedon. (Some Etruscan and Hittite texts are also written in boustrophedon style, as are some Greek ones from about the 6th century BC.)

The seals used in the Indus Valley were made of soapstone. It is noteworthy that one Easter Island legend says: ‘The first race invented the Rongo-Rongo writing: they wrote it on stone. Of the four parts of the world that were at one time inhabited by the first race, it is only in Asia that this writing still exists.’5 Interestingly, Mohenjo Daro and Easter Island lie almost exactly 180° apart: the former is situated at 27°23'N and about 69°E and the latter at 27°08'S and 109°23'W.


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« Reply #34 on: March 03, 2007, 03:00:52 am »



Fig. 7.26




Fig. 7.3



Rongorongo is often said to be the first script to be found in Oceania. However, in 1913 John Macmillan Brown found a script of some 60 characters on Woleai Atoll in the Caroline Islands (fig. 7.4).8 Whereas the Easter Island script is largely ideographic, the Woleai script was syllabic, but unlike any other in the world. It was used by the young chief of the island and was known only to five people on it, though it was also in use on Faraulep, a small island about 160 km to the northeast. In 1908 an expedition to Faraulep collected a number of symbols forming part of a counting system. The numbers ranged from 100,000 to 60 million and would have had no use in daily life. It seems unlikely that the Woleai script originated on a small isolated island.


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« Reply #35 on: March 03, 2007, 03:01:51 am »




Fig. 7.4



Also worthy of mention are the pictographs that have long been known in the Chatham Islands east of New Zealand. They may have been related to some writing system, and were said by natives to have long predated the Morioris, the island’s early Polynesian inhabitants.

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« Reply #36 on: March 03, 2007, 03:02:33 am »

8. Chronology


Radiocarbon dating shows that Easter Island was inhabited by 690 AD, and possibly by the 4th century. This fits in with the tradition that there had been 57 generations of kings since Hotu Matua; allowing an average of 25 years per generation, this takes us back to 450 AD. Some archaeologists suspect that the island must have been settled several centuries earlier. There is of course no evidence – only theories and assumptions – to rule out the possibility that the island was inhabited millennia before this; as mentioned in section 2, some native traditions point to pre-Polynesian settlement. However if ‘unacceptably’ early carbon dates were obtained they would most likely be dismissed as ‘contaminated’.

As already explained, the standard view is that Polynesians discovered Easter Island by chance and that after its initial colonization it was not visited by anyone else until the Europeans began to arrive in the early 18th century. Archaeologist José Miguel Ramírez, however, holds that the variety of vegetal species introduced by the initial settlers shows that a systematic, planned colonization was involved, and adds: ‘It would also not be logical to hold that this amounted to a single contact with the people involved, who thereafter remained in absolute isolation until historical times.’1

Thor Heyerdahl argued that the island was originally settled by South Americans, and centuries later by Polynesians (though probably brought there by South Americans). As shown in section 3, the evidence is ambiguous but is certainly consistent with some sort of South American influence alongside the prevalent Polynesian influence. The island could have received settlers or visitors from both east and west on many occasions. There is clear evidence of different phases of development in statue carving and platform construction, and the insistence that all the archaeological remains must be crammed into a history spanning just 1500 years is theory-driven. The rongorongo phenomenon is also difficult to fit into conventional theories about Easter Island.

A great deal of excavation work still needs to be done. At Anakena the present surface of the sandy plains lies 4 m above the bedrock. At Rano Raraku the ground on which the giant statues were set up is often 6 m below the present surface. As Heyerdahl says: ‘Nobody could tell what kind of monuments and information a coat of soil as high as a house might still conceal.’2 Francis Mazičre put it in a nutshell: ‘The ground of this island will have to be dug deep to discover the true beginnings ...’3

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« Reply #37 on: March 03, 2007, 03:03:21 am »

Statue carving


All Easter Island’s giant statues were supposedly made within the space of a few hundred years. Different phases are clearly discernible, and may be separated by far longer periods than orthodox opinion allows. It is significant that the statues do not bear the slightest resemblance to the Polynesians, and in terms of size, appearance, and number are unique in the Pacific.

In addition to the famous stone giants, there are smaller statues, between about 1 and 2 metres tall, with more rounded and naturalistically-shaped heads that were never designed to wear topknots. They have short faces and deep eye cavities, and none have long ears. They are made of red tuff, black basalt, or the yellowish-grey Rano Raraku stone. They have little in common with the giant statues except that they usually hold their hands on their stomachs with their fingers pointing towards one another. These are generally thought to be oldest carvings on the island, and to have preceded the Rano Raraku figures, as some have been found buried beneath thick layers of earth, and also built into later platforms. However, some of them appear to be recarved fragments of Rano Raraku tuff that used to be statues of the classical type. So some may be ‘early’ and others ‘late’.

The average height of the platform statues is 4 m (13 ft), whereas that of those not on platforms is 6 m (20 ft). It is usually argued that the tallest of the giant statues were the last to be made, as these are still found at the quarry. But some or all of these may date from another, earlier era altogether, and may not have been intended to be taken to the island’s platforms. There are in fact striking differences between the statues at Rano Raraku and those that once stood on the platforms around the coast. As several writers have remarked, the latter seem to be later: the general appearance remained the same but degeneration had set in: their features are less harsh, their arms and hands are atrophied, they no longer have the slender delicacy of the first statues, and they sometimes have no symbols on their backs.


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« Reply #38 on: March 03, 2007, 03:04:25 am »



Fig. 8.1 Statues on Ahu Nau Nau, Anakena, restored in 1978.



Pierre Loti, who visited Easter Island in 1872, assigned the statues standing at Rano Raraku to a very early period.

They are the work of less childish artists who knew how to give them an expression. They frighten. ... What human race do they represent, with their pointed noses and their thin lips that show a pout of disdain or mockery? ... According to the tradition conserved by the old people they were earlier than the arrival of their own ancestors. The migrants from Polynesia ... found the island deserted, guarded only by these monstrous visages. ... Gnawed by lichens they seem to have the patina of fifty centuries like our celtic menhirs.1


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« Reply #39 on: March 03, 2007, 03:05:22 am »



Fig. 8.2 One of the early, purest statues on the outer slope of Rano Raraku.



Francis Mazičre, too, distinguishes between two periods of sculpture. He believed that many of the statues at Rano Raraku, including nearly all the raised statues at the foot of the volcano, belonged to the first period. During a huge excavation at Rano Raraku, he uncovered two 10-m statues, undamaged by erosion, which were completely white and very highly polished. The wings of the nose and the trace of the muscles in the upper lip were handled with striking delicacy and technical skill. Their elegant hands, joined at the height of the navel, in a meditating posture, ended in prodigiously long, tapering nails. The top of their heads was very narrow and clearly not designed for a cylindrical red hat. More such statues were subsequently uncovered.

There are also marked differences among the Rano Raraku statues themselves: in general, the statues inside the crater are smaller and less carefully made than those on the outer slope. Mazičre wrote that on the outer slope ‘the great majority of the sculptures are very highly finished, whereas those on the crater side are decadent – much coarser: they are the work of another set of people altogether’. He said that the statues on the inner side of the volcano were of ‘commonplace technique’ and ‘commonplace stone’ – ‘debased copies’ of the outer-slope statues.2


 
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« Reply #40 on: March 03, 2007, 03:06:36 am »



Fig. 8.3 Statues on the inner slope (above) and outer slope (below) of Rano Raraku.

 
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« Reply #41 on: March 03, 2007, 03:07:50 am »



Mazičre wondered why the lower statues on the outer slope were covered with rubble and earth, while for over 60 m above them lay other figures, free from the rock and ready to leave their hollows.

Either the men had begun by cutting into the cliff at the top and had brought the statues down the slope, in which case the lower statues were inexplicable. Or they had started at the bottom, in which case why had they not taken away the statues that we had just discovered, why was each not taken away as it was finished and ready to go?
    A more thorough analysis showed us that all the statues carved at the top of the cliff – and this applied to the whole rim – were far less carefully made and above all were cut out of a distinctly poorer stone. They belonged to the second period.
    This tended to strengthen our opinion: there had indeed been two periods, two migrations, and in between the quarry had been abandoned for years and years. During this time erosion covered the first series of overlapping statues that began at the foot of the cliff. The second migration, seeing the standing giants, took over that splendid art, changing and debasing it. The newcomers built the ahu, and by a curious anomaly they set up these adopted gods on their platforms, in the Polynesian manner.3

But perhaps there have been more than just two migrations and two periods of carving. And why assume that the Polynesians were the first inhabitants of Oceania to set up statues on platforms?

If the statues at Rano Raraku were carved at different periods, then the fact that unfinished statues lie all over the inner and outer slopes would mean that work came to a sudden end more than once, indicating that history does indeed repeat itself.


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« Reply #42 on: March 03, 2007, 03:08:58 am »

Dating the statues and platforms
During excavations at Rano Raraku, Katherine Routledge noted that thin lines of charcoal,  resulting from grass or brushwood fires, were found at various depths and marked old land surfaces, subsequently covered by later landslips. These successive descents of earth and debris made it virtually impossible to apply stratigraphic dating, which is based on the principle: the deeper the layer, the older it is.

Heyerdahl’s belief that the finest statues were carved and erected on platforms during the ‘middle period’ was partly based on his interpretation of radiocarbon dates of 1467 and 1206 for two charcoal samples from mounds of quarry cuttings on the flanks of Rano Raraku. However, as geologist Christian O’Brien points out, a section through the mound ‘shows clear evidence of land slip formation with some added dumping of coarse stone debris’. He thought it quite conceivable that charcoal from a fire which occurred in the mid-19th century, by reason of one earth tremor, could have been buried deep beneath stone-chippings from an age a thousand years earlier. He concludes that the erect statues were in place when the charcoal was formed from which the samples were taken: ‘Their carving, then, pre-dates 1476 A.D. ± 100 years, and this is the only deduction that can be made from the evidence.’ He says that to work out by how much requires an examination of the state of preservation of the statues and platforms.1

Many statues are severely weathered and others far less so. This does not automatically prove that they were produced over a long timespan since the volcanic tuff from which they are carved is of uneven quality. As already mentioned, the rock of which some statues are made is extremely hard: one statue was struck with a hoe which rebounded in a shower of sparks. Referring to the statues standing at the foot of the volcano, Mazičre wrote:

How long have they stood there? And why are some of them carved from a different stone, one unweathered by the wind? For there they are, unchanged by rain, wind or sand, while others are eaten away and covered with moss. The natives say, ‘The ones lichen does not grow on are still alive.’ And perhaps this is true, as it is for many objects that are called magical because they receive vibrations and retain them.2





Fig. 8.4



One of the statues at Rano Raraku bears a carving of a ship, which is crudely executed and clearly a piece of later graffiti (fig. 8.4). Heyerdahl found the top of the masts above the then ground surface, while the rest of the carving was buried below it. O’Brien points out that the weathered parts of the masts are only marginally less clear than the parts of the masts which had been buried – probably for at least 400 years. He concludes that, if this is a measure of the weathering that has taken place over 400 years, the deep and extensive weathering of the head must have taken considerably longer, perhaps 2000 years or more.

Hard sandstone and limestone, blocks and statues, in other parts of the world, have survived for millennia with no more weathering than the better Easter Island statues, and those made from igneous rock have survived far longer with scarcely a change. ...
    Knowing the composition and state of preservation of the cyclopean blocks at the Greek sites of Mycenae and Tiryns, which are 4000 years old, and have been exposed to a climate not greatly different from that at Easter Island, we could not contemplate any age range less widely spread than 3000 B.C. to 500 A.D. for both the earliest ahu and the statues.3

Even this estimate may yet turn out be extremely conservative.

A further clue to the chronology of Rano Raraku is the fact that since the earliest statues were carved, a layer of debris, eroded soil, and wind-blown dust 6 m or more thick has accumulated, burying the raised statues at the foot of the slope up to their necks. Nearby there are smaller statues lying on the surface, which must clearly date from a far later time. During the carving process and immediately after work was abandoned (which appears to have happened more than once), there would have been no protective, stabilizing vegetation cover at worked areas of the slope. Since charcoal layers indicate several former vegetation-covered land surfaces, the enormous volume of soil and debris around the statues does not seem to have accumulated before vegetation had taken hold. Once this had happened, subsequent changes in ground level would have proceeded very slowly, except as a result of earth tremors and very severe rainfall; during the past 150 years hardly any silt from the quarry uphill has been deposited. Careful study of the degree of erosion at different heights of upright statues could shed more light on this matter.

As regards the platforms, Heyerdahl assigned the initial construction of the finest ahus to the ‘early period’ (pre-400 AD to c. 1100 AD). However, the workmanship displayed at Vinapu and other ‘early’ platforms stands in marked contrast to the inferior statues that he assigned to the same period. In Heyerdahl’s view, the platform masonry of the ‘middle period’ shows neither the technical perfection nor the artistry of the earlier masons. The main aim was to create strong platforms capable of supporting ever taller and heavier statues, in the quickest and most practical way possible. But again there is an incongruity in his position, because although the platform builders of the middle period used small, easily moved and usually uncut stone, ‘their work with statue bases, statues, and topknots shows skill and willingness to handle large stones at least equal to that of the Early Period’.4

The orthodox position is that the finest masonry dates from the latter part of the ‘middle period’ (1100-1680). However, the shoddy semi-pyramidal platforms were certainly a very late development, and it is highly unlikely that the finest platform masonry dates from the same period. Even with metal tools the very precise cutting of such tough basalt would have been a tremendous achievement, and the later natives are not known to have had any metal tools.

It is quite clear that a great many platforms have been rebuilt and modified several times. This applies, for example, to the platform at Anakena, and the evidence suggests that earlier finely carved blocks were fitted together less precisely in later versions of it. The megalithic wall found during Heyerdahl’s excavations at Anakena also predates the present platform, and its beautifully hewn slabs appear to have originally been part of an older and finer structure. Given the toughness of the basalt used to build the platforms (which poses major problems that conservative researchers simply ignore), the oldest parts of the ahus could have stood for countless millennia without suffering serious weathering. If the earliest statues and platforms were in fact the most skilfully made, this raises the question of where the unknown sculptors and builders learned their craft.

The Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island were certainly capable of building large structures with uncut basalt rocks or rebuilding structures from older cut blocks, but there is no solid evidence that they had the means to precisely cut large basalt blocks themselves. As already noted, the basalt hare-paenga foundation stones and basalt statues, which were sometimes built into later platforms, may also belong to a very early period. As regards the carving, moving, and raising of gigantic statues made of volcanic tuff, we have no way of knowing for certain what the early Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island were capable of. But much of the work currently attributed to them may belong to long bygone ages.

Conventional researchers proclaim that it is ‘insulting’ and even ‘racist’ to suggest that the Polynesian ancestors of the present islanders were not responsible for all the archaeological wonders we admire today. But emotive name-calling hardly amounts to a rational argument!

It is commonly said that no volcanic activity has taken place during the human occupation of Easter Island, since the island’s folklore contains no references to this phenomenon. However, during the Chilean expedition of March 1936, some islanders did in fact relate a legend that an ancient race had been wiped out by a cataclysmic eruption of two sacred volcanoes.5 Geologists think a minor volcanic eruption may have taken place only 12,000 years ago, but there have been many large-scale eruptions over the past few hundred thousand years.

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« Reply #43 on: March 03, 2007, 03:10:23 am »

Theosophical hints

H.P. Blavatsky describes Easter Island as a portion of a submerged Pacific continent.1 According to theosophy, the main portions of the ancient continental systems of Lemuria and Atlantis sank many millions of years ago (in the late Mesozoic and early to mid-Cenozoic respectively), but remnants of various sizes are said to have continued to exist for a long time afterwards. For instance, Ruta, a large island in the Pacific Ocean, was destroyed between 850 and 700 thousand years ago, and Daitya, a fairly large island in the Indian Ocean, sank about 270 thousand years ago. The last remaining ‘Atlantean’ island of noteworthy magnitude, Poseidonis, about the size of Ireland, which was situated in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, was submerged in a great cataclysm in 9565 BC.2

Thus the fact that Blavatsky links Easter Island’s civilization with both the Lemurians and Atlanteans does not mean that its present archaeological remains must be millions of years old! As well as saying that the Easter Island statues represent the last descendants of the Lemurian race,3 she writes:

The Easter Island relics are ... the most astounding and eloquent memorials of the primeval giants. They are as grand as they are mysterious; and one has but to examine the heads of the colossal statues, that have remained unbroken on that island, to recognise in them at a glance the features of the type and character attributed to the Fourth Race giants. They seem of one cast though different in features – that of a distinctly sensual type, such as the Atlanteans (the Daityas and ‘Atlantians’) are represented to have in the esoteric Hindu books.4

One of the stanzas of Dzyan states that the Atlanteans built great images 27 ft (8.2 m) tall, the size of their bodies. Blavatsky adds that most of the gigantic statues discovered on Easter Island are 20 to 30 ft high, and those found by Captain Cook were nearly all 27 ft tall and 8 ft across the shoulders. She dismisses the standard view that they were made by the Polynesians and are not very old as ‘one of those arbitrary decisions of modern science which does not carry much weight’. She goes so far as to say that the statues could only have been made by giants of the same size as the statues themselves!5* It should be borne in mind, however, that the statues range from under 2 m to nearly 22 m in height.

*Katherine Routledge cited this statement, together with several inaccurate descriptions of the present archaeological remains on Easter Island (largely the result of Blavatsky using inaccurate contemporary accounts), as evidence that nothing Blavatsky said on the subject needed to be taken seriously (click here).6
    Not every statement made in theosophical literature is equally valid. For instance, a very silly argument for the existence of a large Pacific continent in the remote past is the following: the present inhabitants of the different island groups in the Pacific tend to speak similar languages and to have similar beliefs and customs, yet ‘according to every testimony’ they could never have communicated with one another before the arrival of the Europeans, as they did not have the compass or the necessary boats and navigational skills!7

Blavatsky indicates that Easter Island (i.e. the land then existing at that location) once formed part of the gigantic Lemurian continent.8 She writes:

... we find the Lemurians in their sixth sub-race building their first rock-cities out of stone and lava. One of such great cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some thirty miles west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow piece of sterile ground, and was entirely destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions. The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the handiwork of the Lemurians of the last sub-races ...

She goes on to say that the stone relics on Easter Island are in the cyclopean style, and have been compared to the temple of Pachacamac in Peru and the ruins of Tiahuanaco in Bolivia.9

Referring to Atlantis, Blavatsky writes:

This continent was raised simultaneously with the submersion of the equatorial portions of Lemuria. Ages later, some of the Lemurian remains re-appeared again on the face of the Oceans. Therefore, ... the Fourth Race Atlanteans got some of the Lemurian relics, and, settling on the islands, included them among their lands and continents ... Easter Island was also taken possession of in this manner by some Atlanteans; who, having escaped from the cataclysm which befell their own land, settled on that remnant of Lemuria only to perish thereon, when destroyed in one day by its volcanic fires and lava. This may be regarded as fiction by certain geographers and geologists; to the Occultists it is history.10

Easter Isle ... belongs to the earliest civilisation of the Third Race. Submerged with the rest, a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised the small relic of the Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria.11

The end of the Champlain was dated in Blavatsky’s time at about 200,000 years ago.12

The last quotation implies that at least some of Easter Island’s statues were immersed in seawater for a considerable period, unless all the present statues postdate the cataclysm referred to. Charles Ryan stated that although most statues were made of friable conglomerate material, some were carved from very hard volcanic rock. He thought that the hard ones may be immensely older than those made of soft breccia, or that the latter may once have been much harder, and are disintegrating because they are so old. He also argued that if, as Blavatsky hints, the statues had been submerged for a long time, they would not have been subject to weathering or violence. But he admitted that ‘this theory raises other difficulties’.13

G. de Purucker stated that he ‘could not accept a very enormous antiquity for the statues, though they might be as old as the Egyptian Sphinx, whatever the age of that famous monument may ultimately be discovered to be’.14 No definite age is given for the Sphinx in theosophical literature, but it is suggested that the great pyramids, probably including all the three main Giza pyramids, were built about three precessional cycles (78,000 years) ago, during the precessional cycle that began 87,000 years ago.15 Since a temple beside the Sphinx is connected with the Second Pyramid of Giza by a causeway, the Sphinx may be about the same age. As already mentioned, however, the statues seem to date from very different eras.

De Purucker also writes:

How about those wonderful platforms out in the Pacific built with uncemented stone, which have stood for ages, so old that they are not merely weather-beaten but weather-worn; and in the mild climate of the Pacific Isles you can understand that stones would last longer than they would in the northern countries where frost and hot sun and rain and wind and beating sand will wear down rocks easily. How many thousands of years have those platforms on Easter Island stood, mute witnesses of a banished knowledge of some kind?16

Ryan points out that whereas the statues could have been sculptured with primitive stone tools, the platforms were made of large blocks of adamantine basalt. The seawall at Vinapu consists of beautifully cut and dressed blocks, comparable with the famous casing stones of the Great Pyramid, and equal to the finest pre-Incan cyclopean structures in Peru, but no tools adequate to such a task have been found.

In some of the ahus the irregularities in shape of the faces of the colossal polygonal stones that meet one another are so cut that the surfaces exactly fit together, like those at Cuzco in Peru and Cosa in Etruria. There was no mortar to fill gaps, and the extremely hard stones must have been cut and tooled to exact measurement with great precision in order to fit so well.17

How could primitive artisans have worked these stones so beautifully – or at all? The Easter Islanders had no metal tools and their small, weak stone tools would be about as effective as a knitting needle to cut out and shape blocks of the hardest basalt ... One archaeologist calculated that it would take a man’s life-time to carve one stone of such intractable material, even if it were possible without modern power machinery. The ahus are a far greater mystery than the statues so far as their fabrication is concerned.18

It is not impossible that the ahus are immensely older than the statues, and represent the work of the extremely ancient inhabitants of the land of which Easter Island is a remnant, while the statues are far more recent – perhaps copies of older ones. The basalt-stones are so hard that they might have been in place for hundreds of thousands of years or more without crumbling ...19


http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/easter3.htm
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« Reply #44 on: March 13, 2007, 04:00:38 am »

Easter Island: If these statues could talk
POSTED: 1:13 p.m. EST, March 9, 2007
By Reid Bramblett




Enormous stone statues called moai dot the hillside of the Rano Raraku volcanic crater on Easter Island.
 
 
(Budget Travel Online ) -- The Rapa Nui civilization flourished for more than a millennium, then abruptly collapsed, leaving Easter Island strewn with hundreds of enormous stone statues called "moai." As to how and why the moai were built and moved, or even how people came to the island in the first place, there are at least as many theories as questions.

The probable explanation
Rapa Nui -- which is the native name for the island, its inhabitants and their language -- was most likely settled sometime after A.D. 400 by Polynesians with very impressive canoeing skills. They toiled for centuries to prop up moai around the island, apparently with the belief that the statues watched over villages in some way.

In 1722, when Dutch explorers stumbled across the island on Easter Sunday (hence the name), they found a seemingly peaceful populace. By the time Captain Cook arrived in 1774, the people had been decimated by a civil war. The sharp decline apparently occurred amid a flurry of moai construction; there are hundreds of unfinished heads, as well as dozens of fully carved statues abandoned in fields.

Intended to stand atop cut-stone altars, the moai average 13 feet high and weigh nearly 14 tons each. They were carved at quarries and then moved -- probably by being placed on sleds and either rolled on logs or dragged on skids lubricated with taro and palm oil. Of the 288 figures that completed the journey, nearly all were toppled during the civil war, though since the 1950s various preservation groups have stood 35 of them back up.

The most impressive moai sites
The stone figures are located all over the island, but some spots are more significant than others. At Nau Nau, near the island's prettiest beach, each of the seven moai sports a pukao -- a red, hat-like topknot -- and the altar is surrounded by grazing horses. At Tongariki, 15 moai stand in a row right by the sea. Tahai, just outside the main town, has a trio of altars, with restored stone huts, and a worthwhile anthropological museum, known as MAPSE (011-56/322-551-020, museorapanui.cl , $2). There's also one moai that -- in a breathtaking lapse of judgment -- was spruced up with ceremonial red-and-white eyes for a French magazine's 1978 photo shoot.

Rano Raraku, the volcanic crater where the moai were created, is arguably more stunning than any of the altars: Nearly 400 figures remain half-carved in the cliffs, and dozens more lie facedown or sprout from the grassy mountainside like an army frozen in the march to the coast.

There's more than moai
At Orongo, a village of the so-called birdman cult has been reconstructed. The cult, which arose after the civil war, consisted of a dozen clans that each picked a hero for an annual competition. Participants swam through shark-filled waters to retrieve an egg from a sooty tern's nest; the first one back won kingship for his chief.

Getting there
Easter Island is 2,300 miles west of Chile proper, and is reached via a five-hour flight from Santiago (lanchile.com  from $635). Exploring solo is feasible, considering that the island is 14 miles long and 7 miles wide, with few roads and one town (Hanga Roa), and hotels rent cars for $60 a day. Spend at least three days. Hotel Orongo is in town and has a fine restaurant (011-56/322-100-572, hotelorongo.com  $78).

© 2006. Newsweek Budget Travel, Inc.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/DESTINATIONS/03/09/easter.island/index.html
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