Easter Island
Rapa Nui

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Tongariki by day, with one of many overturned moai.

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A little of of Rapa Nui's [Easter Island] history:

Pollen samples indicate the existence of forests of trees, including huge palms around 200 AD, and human habitation from somewhere between 300 AD and 800 AD depending on who you listen to. Large fishing canoes, palm shelters, edible nuts and wood fires would have comfortably supplied the people with the necessities of life.

More than 200 statues once stood along the island’s coast on ahu [ceremonial platforms], transported up to 10kms [6 miles] from the crater of Rano Raraku - probably by sleds lubricated with sweet potatoes - where they were quarried from volcanic tuff [porous rock]. There are about 400 statues still in the quarry, inside and outside the crater.
Moai range in size from barely a metre to up to 11m [33ft] and weighing 82 tonnes, though there is one still in the quarry that is 20m long and would weigh around 250 tons [pictured later].

Moai were constructed from about AD 500, probably as a form of ancestor recognition or worship by five differing clans that shared control of the island; the inland-looking aspect of most of the moai indicates that the clans thought that the moai were watching over and protecting their people.
Peak moai production was in AD 1400 when the island population was as high as 20,000 and moai size had become highly competitive.

In 1722 when a Dutch explorer called Roggeveen arrived on the island, the first visit recorded by a European, all the moai were upright, but 52 years later when Captain Cook stepped ashore almost all had been toppled.

Archeologists have found no evidence of natural disaster [volcanic eruption, tidal wave] and have thus concluded that Easter Island is a fine example of human habitat self-destruction.
Due to the demands for wood for moai construction and transport in addition to the the increased demands for shelter and boats for the larger population the island became deforested.
Fishing boats became smaller and less efficient, soil eroded and crops became stunted. Result: starvation and inter-clan war, a verdict supported by archeological discoveries of sudden increase in obsidian [a hard stone] weapons in the 17th century, corpses that had been beaten to death and caves used as sanctuaries.

When Roggeveen hove into view the islander saw the wealth and sophistication of the aliens and were suitably awed [according to Roggeveen's own reports], realising the poverty of life and style in which they were living. This led to the comprehension that their ancestors were not protecting them, quite the opposite, the moai fixation had ruined the land.
And so clans pulled down other clans' moai, or possibly even their own, and by the time Captain Cook arrived in 1774, the great statues were mostly face-down in the dirt...

...until 1955, when the first moai were re-erected by Norwegian adventurer and Kon Tiki builder, Thor Heyerdahl. Now about are 17% upright, though but erosion is taking it's toll.

And the rongorongo script? It's still a mystery, but most likely it was an ideographic [picture] reminder for information or story-telling, rather than the world's fifth original form of writing.

Easter Island Photos © Loader