|
Located in the Pacific Ocean at 27 degrees south of the equator and
some 2200 miles (3600 kilometers) off the coast of Chile, Easter
Island is considered to be the world's most remote inhabited island.
by Martin Gray
One of the world's most famous yet least visited archaeological sites, Easter
Island is a small, hilly, now treeless island of volcanic origin. Located in the
Pacific Ocean at 27 degrees south of the equator and some 2200 miles (3600
kilometers) off the coast of Chile, it is considered to be the world's most
remote inhabited island. Sixty-three square miles in size and with three extinct
volcanoes (the tallest rising to 1674 feet), the island is, technically
speaking, a single massive volcano rising over ten thousand feet from the
Pacific Ocean floor. The oldest known traditional name of the island is Te Pito
o Te Henua, meaning ‘The Center (or Navel) of the World.’ In the 1860’s Tahitian
sailors gave the island the name Rapa Nui, meaning ‘Great Rapa,’ due to its
resemblance to another island in Polynesia called Rapa Iti, meaning ‘Little Rapa’.
The island received its most well known current name from the Dutch sea captain
Jacob Roggeveen, who, on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722, became the first European
to visit.
Photo © by Martin Gray
The Moai statues of Rapa Nui.
In the early 1950s, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl (famous for his
Kon-Tiki and Ra raft voyages across the oceans) popularized the idea that the
island had been originally settled by advanced societies of Indians from the
coast of South America. Extensive archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic
research has conclusively shown this hypothesis to be inaccurate. It is now
recognized that the original inhabitants of Easter Island are of Polynesian
stock (DNA extracts from skeletons have recently confirmed this), that they most
probably came from the Marquesas or Society islands, and that they had arrived
as early as 318 AD (carbon dating of reeds from a grave confirms this). At the
time of their arrival, the island was entirely covered with thick forests, was
teeming with land birds, and was the richest breeding site for seabirds in the
Polynesia region. Within a matter of centuries this profusion of wildlife was
destroyed by the islanders' way of life. The reasons are today eminently clear.
It is estimated that the original colonists, who may have been lost at sea,
arrived in only a few canoes and numbered fewer than 100. Because of the
plentiful bird, fish and plant food sources, the population grew rapidly and
gave rise to a rich religious and artistic culture. However, the resource needs
of the growing population inevitably outpaced the island's capacity to renew
itself ecologically and the ensuing environmental degradation triggered a social
and cultural collapse. Pollen records show that the destruction of the forests
was well under way by the year 800, just a few centuries after the start of the
first settlement. These forest trees were extremely important to the islanders,
being used for fuel, for the construction of houses and ocean-fishing canoes,
and as rollers for transporting the great stone statues. By the 1400s the
forests had been entirely cut, the rich ground cover had eroded away, the
springs had dried up, and the vast flocks of birds coming to roost on the island
had long since disappeared. With no logs to build canoes for offshore fishing,
with depleted bird and wildlife food sources, and with declining crop yields
because of the erosion of good soil, the nutritional intake of the people
plummeted. First famine, then cannibalism, set in. Because the island could no
longer feed the chiefs, bureaucrats and priests who kept the complex society
running, chaos resulted, and by 1700 the population dropped to between
one-quarter and one-tenth of its former number. During the mid 1700s rival clans
began to topple each other's stone statues. By 1864 the last of the statues was
thrown down and desecrated.
Photo © by Martin Gray
The Moai statues, Easter Island
The barren lands and social strife that Admiral Roggeveen reported during his
visit in 1722 make it difficult to imagine the extraordinary culture that had
flowered on the island during the previous 1400 years. That culture's most
famous features are its enormous stone statues called moai, at least 288 of
which once stood upon massive stone platforms called ahu. There are some 250 of
these ahu platforms spaced approximately one half mile apart and creating an
almost unbroken line around the perimeter of the island. Another 600 moai
statues, in various stages of completion, are scattered around the island,
either in quarries or along ancient roads between the quarries and the coastal
areas where the statues were most often erected. Nearly all the moai are carved
from the tough stone of the Rano Raraku volcano. The average statue is 14 feet,
6 inches tall and weighs 14 tons. Some moai were as large as 33 feet and weighed
more than 80 tons (one statue only partially quarried from the bedrock was 65
feet long and would have weighed an estimated 270 tons).
Photos © by Martin Gray
The Moai statues, Easter Island
The moai and ahu were in use as early as AD 700, but the great majority were
carved and erected between AD 1000 and 1650. Depending upon the size of the
statue, between 50 and 150 people were needed to drag it across the countryside
on sleds and rollers made from the island's trees. While many of the statues
were toppled during the clan wars of the 1600 and 1700s, other statues fell over
and cracked while being transported across the island. Recent research has shown
that certain statue sites, particularly the most important ones with great ahu
platforms, were periodically ritually dismantled and reassembled with
ever-larger statues. A small number of the moai were once capped with ‘crowns’
or ‘hats’ of red volcanic stone. The meaning and purpose of these capstones is
not known, but archaeologists have suggested that the moai thus marked were of
pan-island ritual significance or perhaps sacred to a particular clan.
Scholars are unable to definitively explain the function and use of the moai
statues. It is assumed that their carving and erection derived from an idea
rooted in similar practices found elsewhere in Polynesia but which evolved in a
unique way on Easter Island. Archaeological and iconographic analysis indicates
that the statue cult was based on an ideology of male, lineage-based authority
incorporating anthropomorphic symbolism. The statues were thus symbols of
authority and power, both religious and political. But they were not only
symbols. To the people who erected and used them, they were actual repositories
of sacred spirit. Carved stone and wooden objects in ancient Polynesian
religions, when properly fashioned and ritually prepared, were believed to be
charged by a magical spiritual essence called mana. The ahu platforms of Easter
Island were the sanctuaries of the people of Rapa Nui, and the moai statues were
the ritually charged sacred objects of those sanctuaries. While the statues have
been toppled and re-erected over the centuries, the mana or spiritual presence
of Rapa Nui is still strongly present at the ahu sites and atop the sacred
volcanoes.
Mystery surrounds the purpose of the ahu platforms and moai statues but even
more perplexing mysteries have begun to surface from the research of scholars
outside the boundaries of conventional archaeology. As previously mentioned,
orthodox archaeologists believe that Easter Island was initially settled
sometime around 318 AD by a small group of Polynesians lost on the open sea.
Other scholars, however, have suggested that the tiny island may have once been
part of far larger island and that the original discovery and use of the site
may be many thousands of years earlier in time (it is known, for example, that
Melanesians were journeying around the Pacific in boats as early as 5500 BC).
Three researchers in particular, Graham Hancock, Colin Wilson and Rand Flem-Ath,
believe that Easter Island was an important node in a global grid of sacred
geography that predates the great floods of archaic times. Easter Island, writes
Graham Hancock, is “part of a massive subterranean escarpment called the East
Pacific Rise, which reaches almost to the surface at several points. Twelve
thousand years ago, when the great ice caps of the last glaciation were still
largely unmelted, and sea-level was 100 meters lower than it is today, the Rise
would have formed a chain of steep and narrow antediluvian islands, as long as
the Andes mountain range.” At that time, the land we now call Easter Island
would simply have been the highest peak of a much larger island. The fascinating
question posed by Hancock, Wilson and Flem-Ath is whether this much larger
island had been discovered and settled before the melting of the ice caps.
Besides its more well known name of Rapa Nui, Easter Island is also 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 ignored by mainstream archaeologists 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. Speculations about
this shadowy antediluvian culture include the notion that its mariners had
charted the world’s oceans, that its astronomers had sophisticated knowledge of
long-term astronomical cycles such as precession and cometary orbits, and that
its historians had records of previous global cataclysms and the destruction
they caused of even more ancient civilizations. In his book, Heaven’s Mirror,
Hancock suggests that Easter Island may once have been a significant scientific
outpost of this antediluvian civilization and that its location had extreme
importance in a planet-spanning, mathematically precise grid of sacred sites. He
writes, “The very existence of such an ancient world grid has been staunchly
resisted by mainstream archaeologists and historians – as, of course, have all
attempts to relate known sites to it. Nevertheless, the definite traces of lost
astronomical knowledge that are to be seen on Easter Island, and the recurrent
echoes of ancient Egyptian spiritual and cosmological themes, cast doubt on the
scholarly explanation that the odd name ‘Navel of the World’ was adopted for
purely ‘poetic and descriptive’ reasons. We suspect that Te-Pito-O-Te-Henua may
originally have been selected for settlement, and given its name, entirely
because of its geodetic location.” “What we are suggesting therefore is that
Easter Island might have originally have been settled in order to serve as a
sort of geodetic beacon, or marker – fulfilling some as yet unguessed at
function in an ancient global system of sky-ground co-ordinates that linked many
so-called ‘world navels’”.
Two other alternative scholars, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, have
extensively studied the location and possible function of these geodetic
markers. In their fascinating book, Uriel’s Machine, they suggest that one
purpose of the geodetic markers was as part of global network of sophisticated
astronomical observatories dedicated to predicting and preparing for future
meteoric impacts and crustal displacement cataclysms. The great floods of
archaic myths did not result only from the melting of the ice caps between
13,000 and 8000 BC but also from two great cataclysms that occurred during and
after the melting of the ice caps. These cataclysms, a planet wide crustal
displacement in 9600 BC and the seven cometary impacts of 7640 BC resulted in
the massive waves (3-5 miles high, traveling at over 400 miles per hour for
distances of more than 2000 miles), volcanic activity and other earth changes
recorded in myths all across the planet. Prior to the melting of the ice caps
and these cataclysmic events, however, a great maritime civilization may have
existed, with its cities along coastlines now submerged beneath the seas.
©1983-2005 Martin Gray, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reprinted with permission.
The Article Source:
http://www.sacredsites.com/americas/chile/easter_island.html
PLACES OF PEACE AND POWER - The Sacred
Site Pilgrimage of Martin Gray
Other Articles by Martin Gray
Anthropologist and photographer Martin Gray specializes in the
study of sacred sites and power places around the world, having visited more
than 1000 of these magical sites in 80 countries. Each year he also guides group
pilgrimages to different countries and this year is offering magical journeys to
Peru/Bolivia in June and Greece in October.
Connection between Easter Island and Peru?
"The detail shot shows the incredible precision in the stone fittings. It was
this precision, so similar to the stonework done by the Incas, that gave Thor
Heyerdahl the idea that the Easter Islanders had come from South America in reed
boats on the prevailing currents. Stonework of this complexity had not been seen
in Polynesia, but it was common in Peru. It's impossible to look at that site
and not think of the exact type of stone fitting which is so common in sites
like Machu Picchu."
Source:
http://www.mysteriousplaces.com/Easter_Island/html/tour3.html
 
Vinapu: "The sea wall of Ahu Vinapu I at Vinapu,
which has been likened to Inca masonry". Taken in 1995.
Copyright © Clive Ruggles,
University of Leicester
Image Source:
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~yf5f-wtnb/
Click to enlarge
Stone wall at Ahu Vinapu, Easter Island
 
Left: Stone wall (detail) at Ahu Vinapu, Easter Island; Right:
Inca Wall, Peru
Source:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/easter/civilization/first.html
There are curious connections between the Andes and Easter Island. For as
long as we know, Easter Island has had the potato and the totora reed, both of
Andean origin. In the oldest legends, Easter Island was called "The Navel of the
World." Cuzco was called the same.
Read more
>>
Map of Easter Island
Image Source:
Map of Easter Island
Moai Statues, Eastern Island
Photo Credits: Ahu Akivi - Travel Library
The following statistics on Easter Island's moai are the results of Van
Tilburg's survey in 1989.
She reported, "A total of 887 monolithic statues has been located by the
survey to date on Easter Island...397 are still in situ in quarries at
the Rano Raraku central production center.....Fully 288 statues (32% of 887)
were successfully transported to a variety of image ahu locations....Another 92
are recorded as "in transport," 47 of these lying in various positions on
prepared roads or tracks outside the Rano Raraku zone."
Number of Moai
- Total number of moai on Easter Island: 887
- Total number of maoi that were successfully transported to their final ahu
locations: 288 (32% of 887)
- Total number of moai still in the Rano Raraku quarry: 397 (45%)
- Total number of moai lying 'in transit' outside of the Rano Raraku quarry:
92 (10%)
Less than one third of all carved moai actually made it to a final ceremonial
ahu site. Was this due to the inherent difficulties in transporting them? Were
the ones that remain in the quarry (45%) deemed culturally unworthy of
transport? Were they originally intended to remain in place on the quarry
slopes? Or had the islanders run out of the resources necessary to complete the
Herculean task of carving and moving the moai?
Size and weight of Moai
Measuring the size, weight, and shape of the 887 moai on Easter Island has
been a 15-year process for Van Tilburg. The most notable statues are listed
below:
Largest moai:
- Location: Rano Raraku Quarry, named "El Gigante"
- Height: 71.93 feet, (21.60 meters)
- Weight: approximately 145-165 tons (160-182 metric tons)
Largest moai once erect:
- Location: Ahu Te Pito Kura, Named "Paro"
- Height: 32.63 feet (9.80 meters)
- Weight: approximately 82 tons (74.39 metric tons)
Largest moai fallen while being erected:
- Location: Ahu Hanga Te Tenga
- Height: 33.10 feet (9.94 meters)
- Smallest standing moai:
- Location: Poike
- Height: 3.76 feet (1.13 meters)
Van Tilburg's painstaking effort to inventory and carefully measure the
nearly 900 moai statues on Easter Island has enabled her to construct a digital
version of an average moai. This digital statue has informed her hypothesis for
a potential transport method for moving the moai; the statue which Van Tilburg's
team will attempt to move and erect for the NOVA program has been made to the
exact dimensions of this digital moai. The dimensions are as follows:
Statistically average moai:
- Height: 13.29 feet (4.05 meters)
- Width at Base: 5.25 feet (1.6 meters)
- Width at Head: 4.86 feet (1.48 meters)
- Depth through body at midpoint: 3.02 feet (92 cm.)
- Total volume: 210.48 cubic feet (5.96 cubic meters)
- Center of gravity: 4.46 feet (1.36 meters)
- Total weight: 13.78 tons (12.5 metric tons)
Source:
http://www.pacificislandtravel.com/easter_island/introduction.asp
Moai
Transport Theories
Lowering our replica statue face-up onto our A-frame rig modified as
a canoe ladder. ©1998 EISP/JVT/Photo: J. Van Tilburg
ROCK IT, standing up, side-to-side. Or, maybe try to ROLL IT, lying down, on
round palm poles, or perhaps DRAG IT on its back. Among the many secrets buried
in Easter Island prehistory is the question of how the Rapanui people
transported the multi-ton statues, or moai, from their quarries to their final
ceremonial ahu sites around the island. In many cases, the optimum route of
transport would have meant that the teams of statue-movers, and the statues
themselves, had to traverse several miles over very rough and hilly terrain.
What would have been the best way to move Easter Island's stone giants, which
weighed, on average, some 14 tons? The transport question has long been debated,
and has been the subject of some experimentation by a growing arena of
theorists. All have tried to approach the question as the early Rapa Nui people
did, with the use of only stone, wood, rope, and human power. The following is a
brief summary of those attempts.
Like most oral traditions, Rapa Nui folklore has been passed down through the
generations, and it is unknown whether the stories are based on historical fact.
Most center on the mystical idea that the massive megaliths were moved using "mana,"
or divine power. Those who possessed mana were able to command the moai to walk
to their designated places. Accounts of who actually possessed mana differ
greatly. In 1919, Katherine Routledge, a British archaeologist who lived on
Easter Island for a year, recorded in her journal: "There was a certain old
woman who lived at the southern corner of the mountain and filled the position
of cook to the image-makers. She was the most important person of the
establishment, and moved the images by supernatural powers (mana), ordering them
about at her will." Earlier accounts recorded by visitors to the island indicate
that statues were ordered to walk by the mythical King Tuu Ku Ihu and the god
Make Make. Even specialized priests were known to move moai at the request of
those who wanted them on their family land or ahu.
READ MORE >>
Source:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/easter/move/past.html
Related Links:
Easter Island Photos
Image Source:
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~yf5f-wtnb/
The Moai statues, Easter Island
Image Source:
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~yf5f-wtnb/
Unfinished Statue
Easter Island Slide Collections
Easter Island Links
http://www.pacificislandtravel.com/easter_island/introduction.asp
http://www.world-mysteries.com/gw_rn4.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island
http://www.crystalinks.com/easterisland.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/easter/move/past.html
Map of Easter Island
Rongorongo or the Hieroglyphs of the
Easter Island Tablets
"Mysterious Places"-Easter Island
Easter Island
Statue Project
Easter Island Rock
Art
Easter Island Weather Report - CNN
Chile Information Project
Oceanic Tribal
Arts
Polynesian Archaeology
Topographical Map
Copyright 2003-2012 World-Mysteries.com
|
