Mystery of Easter Island
One of the greatest mysteries on Earth are the statutes which stand
on Easter Island. Easter Island is the most remote island on Earth. It
is in the southern Pacific Ocean, 2,300 miles west of the coast of Chile
and 2500 miles southeast of Tahiti. The closest island is 1400 miles
away, and that island was uninhabited.
Easter Island is only 15 miles long and ten miles wide. Yet, the
Easter Island, which was almost uninhabited when it was discovered on
Easter Day in 1722 by a Dutch captain, is covered with hundreds of giant
statues, each weighing several tons and some standing more than 30 feet
tall.
Who built these statutes and why and how did they get there?
Nobody knows the answer and many are trying to find out. It is even
suggested that space aliens must have brought them. Here is one possible
explanation:
Easter Island was inhabited by Polynesian seafarers, who traveled
thousands of miles in their canoes, guided by the stars, the rhythms of
the ocean, the color of sky and the sun, the shapes of clouds, the
direction from which the swells were coming, and the presence of birds
making flights out to sea seeking food. The Polynesians first arrived on
the island in 400 A.D. However, the ocean currents which carried them
there would not take them back. They were trapped and, having arrived
there, could not leave.
There were two classes or races of inhabitants: Those with long ears
and those with short ears. The long eared people were the rulers. The
short eared, who came earlier, were the workers. For this reason, most
of the statues have long ears.
Eventually, the short eared people revolted and killed all the long
eared people.
There are 887 statues which have been discovered on the island.
However, only a few statues made it to their intended destination. The
rest were abandoned along the way.
The statues were carved out of the top edge of the walls of a volcano
on the island. After a statue was carved, it was rolled or dragged down
to the base of the volcano. Then, it was stood upright and ropes were
tied around it. Using a pulley system, the statue was walked to its
intended destination.
The ancient grass on the island was tough and capable of being made
into ropes. That grass has since almost disappeared due to sheep-herding
and over-grazing. The ropes were wrapped around the statue, which was
made to act as a pulley. A large group of men, perhaps 30, would pull
one end of the rope, pulling one side of the statue forward. A smaller
group would act as a counterweight, pulling backwards on the other end.
In this way, one side of the statute could be pulled a few feet forward.
Then, the process was reversed, so that the other side of the statute
would come equal to the first. In this way, over a period of months, a
statute could be walked for miles down to the ocean. Then, it was placed
in line with other statues, all of them facing away from the sea,
looking towards the center of the island.
This process was difficult. If a statue fell over in transit, as it
often did, it was too heavy to be pulled upright again, so instead the
islanders went back and carved another statue.
Because the making and movement of these statues required the
cooperation of the entire population of the island, the people must have
believed that their gods required them to build these statues.
At its peak, the population of Easter Island is believed to have
reached 11,000. Finally, the resources of the island became exhausted
and the people started eating each other. Work on the statues stopped
and the statutes were knocked over. When the first Europeans finally
arrived on the island, most of these people had died out.
That is the theory but there are other theories. The matter has not
been solved. Even this theory does not address all the mysteries. Here
are some other mysteries:
The Easter Islanders had their own system of writing, different from
any other in the world. No other Pacific Islanders knew how to write.
The American Indians did not know how to write either. Who taught the
Easter Islanders how to write, or did they develop their own system?
Remember that writing was first invented in Asia only a few thousand
years BC.
The Easter Islanders lived off sweet potatoes, which they farmed.
These sweet potatoes came from the Americas. How did the Easter
Islanders get them? It is possible that a few Easter Islanders traveled
2300 miles to Chile, got sweet potatoes, and brought them back? This
seems unlikely.
Remember that the distances involved were great, further than the
distance from Europe to the closest place in the Americas, which was
only colonized in 1492. Could Easter Island have been colonized by
people from Chile? This was the theory which formed the basis for the
book and movie Kon-Tiki. Yet, DNA taken from graves dug up on Easter
Island have shown that these people were Polynesians, not American
Indians.
The Polynesians lived on the sea and knew how to travel thousands of
miles in their small canoes. They knew where they were going. The
American Indians did not know how to do that. Yet, a few American
Indians could have reached Easter Island, because of a storm, and
brought the seeds of sweet potatoes with them.
Also, the seeds could have been brought in the stomachs of birds. |