Respuestas para [Forecast Q1-2025] - The Mystery of the Easter Island

A  9Easter Island, a small, hilly, treeless volcano, is one of the world's most celebrated archaeological sites. However, it is rarely visited and not inhabited.1The island was named Easter Island by Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch Captain, who visited the island on 5th April 1722 and was the first European to set foot on the island. Following the mystery of its inhabitants, a Norwegian explorer called Thor Heyerdahl visited the island in the early 1950s. Heyerdahl suggested that the original inhabitants of the island were Indian societies that had originated from the Southern coast of America. However, after a broad ethnographic, linguistic and archaeological research, this theory was found to be inaccurate.

B     According to research and DNA extracts from the exhumed skeletons on the island, the original inhabitants of the island were from the Marquesas Islands in Polynesia. 2-10According to the carbon dating of reeds collected from the graves, these people arrived on the island in 318 AD. It is believed that at that time, the island had lots of trees, swarming with both land and sea birds and there were abundant food sources from fish, plants, and birds that made the human population grow rapidly, giving rise to a rich artistic and religious culture.

C     3Among some of the most famous features of the culture of the inhabitants are the moai, which are gigantic stone statues. It is believed that there were at least 288 of these moai statues that were erected on about 250 stone plateaus known as ahu and each of the ahu is approximately 1.5 miles from another one, forming a continuous line around the island.12In addition to the moai statues that sit on the ahu plateaus, {[there are other unfinished moai statues that spread across the island.Some of them are found in quarries, and others along ancient roads and coastal areas. On average, the moai statues are 14.5 feet tall with a weight of 14 tones and 13they are mostly carved from Rono Raraku, a type of volcanic stone, which is tough. There are other larger moai statues that weigh 80 tones with a height of about 33 feet. Going by the enormous size of these statues, it is assumed that it took about 50 to 150 people to move them across the island on rollers and sleds made from trees.

D     It has been difficult to conclusively explicate the purpose of the moai statues. However, it is believed that the idea originated from a similar practice back in Polynesia though it was done differently in the Easter Island. The statues had some human characteristics. According to iconographic and archaeological analysis, the cult of carving the statues was founded on a male philosophy, based on the authority of a certain lineage. 4-14Therefore, the statues were symbols of both political and religious authority and power. To the people that used them, they were sources of sacred spirits. In Polynesian religions, when wood objects and carved stones were ritualistically prepared, people believed that some magical spiritual power referred to as mana changed them. Therefore, the ahu platforms on the Easter Islands were sanctuaries while the moai statues were the sacred objects.

E     5The island also has other names like the Mata-Ki-Te-Rani, which means ‘Eyes Looking at Heaven’, and Te-Pito-O-Te-Henua, which means ‘The Navel of the World’. These two names, though ignored by most archaeologists, show that there is a possibility that the island could have been used as an astronomical observatory site and a geodetic sign respectively. Graham Hancock, in his book Heaven's Mirror, suggests that the island may have been an important scientific outpost of the antediluvian civilisation. Other scholars like Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight have studied the ancient geodetic signs and suggested that they were used for forecasting and preparing for future disasters in their book called Uriel's Machine.

F     6At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, scientists and writers came up with a number of theories as to why civilisation on Easter Island declined just about the time the first European made contact with the island. One of the theories, which has been rendered inaccurate, was formulated by Jared Diamond in his book known as Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive.

G     7Basically, most of these theories state that the island was unable to replenish itself ecologically following the demand for lots of resources for the growing population after colonisation. As a result, the forests on the island had been depleted by 1400s. The ground cover had been removed. Springs had dried up and the swarms of birds had vanished. Since there were no trees to cut logs for building canoes that could have been used for offshore fishing, and the birds and wildlife had been depleted, people lacked enough food. The crop yield had also declined and the consequent famine struck resulting in cannibalism. And since there was no food to feed the population on the island including the priests and administrators, there was a social and cultural collapse. According to the theories, the population had dropped to a tenth of its original number and most of the moai statues were destroyed during clan wars in the 1600s and 1700s.

H     11These theories presented defective ideas starting with the racialist's assumptions by Thor Heyerdahl. These ideas were then propagated by writers like Jared Diamond who had no historical archaeological knowledge of the actual events that took place on Easter Island.  8The most convincing hypothesis is that the devastation of Easter Island was as a result of the cold-hearted European visitors, especially the slavers. They introduced diseases like smallpox on the island and murdered natives on Easter Island and transported them to South America as slaves.