Easter Island: “Mysterious Rapa Nui. What secrets does Easter Island hide? Easter island post
Easter Islandis one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, and thanks in large part to its isolation, Rapa Nui's history is unique. There are many scientific hypotheses and guesses regarding the time of the settlement of Rapa Nui, the race of local residents, the reasons for the death of a unique civilization, whose representatives built huge stone statues (moai) and knew writing (rongorongo), which has not yet been deciphered by linguists. With the discovery of the island in 1722 by the Dutch traveler Jacob Roggeven and the appearance of the first Catholic missionaries, radical changes took place in the life of the Rapanui: the hierarchical relations that existed in the past were forgotten, the practice of cannibalism was discontinued.
Check-in time for Easter Island
Radiocarbon data obtained by scientists Terry Hunt and Karl Lipo of the University of California (USA) during the study of eight samples of charcoal from Anakena indicate that Rapa Nui Island was inhabited around 1200 AD. BC, which is 400-800 years later than previously thought, and only 100 years before the trees began to disappear on the island.
According to the legends of the ancient Rapanui people, compiled by Sebastian Englert, Easter Island appeared thanks to the giant Woke, who with his staff destroyed a large country comparable to Khiva (the Polynesian name for the Marquesas Islands). The first settlers of Rapa Nui were Ngata Vake and Te Ohiro. They landed on an island near Te Rotomea and stopped at Vai Marama (the name of a small lake near Mataveri). Woke began to destroy the island again, and to stop the giant, Te Ohiro chanted a spell, after which Woke's staff broke and the island was saved.
Having reached Easter Island, the scouts landed at Hanga-Tepa'u (Vinapu beach), and then went to the Rano-Kao volcano, where Ku'uku'u landed yams. Then they began to circle the island in order to find a suitable place where the Ariki Hotu-Matu'a could disembark. However, Poike Peninsula and Hanga-Hoonu Bay were not suitable for large canoes. At Hanga-Hoonu Bay, they spotted a large sea turtle, which was in fact the spirit that pursued them throughout their journey. The scouts decided to go after the turtle. So they reached Hiro-Moko (part of Anakena Bay), where the travelers decided to raise the turtle.
However, the travelers did not have time to sail away: after a two-month voyage of the ariki, Hotu-Matu'a had already approached three islets near Easter Island near the Rano-Kao volcano in two canoes. At the island of Motu Nui, Ira and Raparenga explained to the chief that the island was unfit for life, but the Ariki still decided to land on it. Then the scouts told how to swim to Anakena Bay, which they found convenient for landing. Two canoes sailed in different directions to inspect the entire island: Hotu-Matu'a sailed from the east, and Tuu Ko Iho and his wife Ariki sailed along the western coast of Rapa Nui. During the voyage, Ava Reipua gave birth to a son, who was named Tu'u Maheke. The king landed at Hiro-Moko, and the queen at Hanga-Hiro. Soon, houses were built on the shores of Anakena Bay, where the settlers lived.
Theory of American settlement of the island
In his works on Easter Island, the Norwegian traveler Thor Heyerdahl hypothesized that the islands of Polynesia were inhabited by American Indians. In his opinion, the migration of the population took place in two stages. The original islands of Polynesia were inhabited in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. NS. immigrants from Peru, who had fair skin, aquiline noses, bushy beards. They contributed to the spread of the megalithic type of civilization in Pacific, the most striking example of which was the Rapanui civilization.
After exploring Easter Island, Heyerdahl supported his hypothesis with several arguments. First, he argued that the technique for erecting the Rapanui ahu and moai was similar to the technique for erecting similar structures in the Andes. He found the greatest similarity between the ahu Vinapu in Rapa Nui and several buildings in Cuzco that date back to the pre-Inca period. However, there are clear differences between them: the structures in Cusco were built from solid polished stone, while on Easter Island, ahu were built by cladding with small stone plates of rough masonry.
Secondly, while researching the Rapanui writing, Heyerdahl discovered the similarity of the graphic representation of signs in Rapa Nui with the writing of the Indian tribe Kuna, but at the same time he doubted the direct connection between these two languages. In his opinion, writing on Easter Island appeared in the 5th century together with the Peruvian leader Hotu Matu'a, with whom the first settlers of Rapa Nui arrived.
Thirdly, the Rapanui built single and double canoes similar to the Peruvian ones, wore feather hats, like those of South American Indians, and deformed the earlobe by placing large ornaments in it.
The theory of the Melanesian settlement of the island
The legend of short-eared and long-eared would not have caused such great interest among scientists of the 20th century, if the point of view was not widespread among them about the racial difference between the Rapanui and Polynesians and the similarity of the inhabitants of Easter Island with the Melanesians. This hypothesis, widely discussed in scientific circles in the middle of the 20th century, was put forward by the scientist Jose Imbelloni. However, there were many of her opponents, for example, this hypothesis was not supported by the anthropologist Harry Shapiro, who devoted a lot of time to studying the structure of the skulls of the ancient Rapanui and defended the point of view of the Polynesian origin of the inhabitants of Easter Island. British anthropologist Henry Balfort has identified several similarities between the Rapanui and Melanesian cultures. First, similar obsidian arrowheads used by the ancient Rapanui were found on the island of New Guinea. Secondly, the Rapanui figurines have the same aquiline nose as the Papuan ones. Third, ear deformities were also widespread among the Melanesian peoples. Fourthly, the cult of "bird-men" was widespread not only on Easter Island, but also on the Solomon Islands.
Easter Island is the most remote inhabited piece of land in the world. Its area is only 165.6 square kilometers. Belongs to the island of Chile. But the nearest mainland town of this country, Valparaiso, is 3703 kilometers away. And there are no other islands nearby, in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean. The nearest inhabited land is 1819 kilometers away. This is Pitcairn Island. It is known for the fact that the rebellious crew of the ship "Bounty" wished to stay on it. Lost in the vastness of Easter keeps many secrets. First, it is not clear where the first people came from. They could not explain anything to the Europeans about this. But the most mysterious mysteries of Easter Island are its stone idols. They are installed along the entire coastline. The natives called them moai, but they could not clearly explain who they were. In this article, we have tried to summarize the results of all recent scientific discoveries in order to unravel the mysteries that shrouded the most remote part of the land from civilization.
Easter Island history
On April 5, 1722, the sailors of a squadron of three ships under the command of the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeven saw land on the horizon, which had not yet been marked on the map. When they approached the east coast of the island, they saw that it was inhabited. The natives were sailing towards them, and their ethnic composition amazed the Dutch. Among them were Caucasians, Negroids and representatives of the Polynesian race. The Dutch were immediately struck by the primitiveness of the technical equipment of the islanders. Their boats were riveted from pieces of wood and let the water through so that half of the people in the canoe scooped it out, and the rest rowed. The landscape of the island was more than bleak. Not a single tree towered on it - only rare bushes. Roggeven wrote in his diary: "The desolate appearance of the island and the exhaustion of the natives suggest the barrenness of the land and extreme poverty." But most of all, the captain was shocked by the stone idols. How, with such a primitive civilization and scarce resources, did the natives have the strength to carve so many heavy statues from stone and deliver to the shore? The captain had no answer to this question. Since the island was opened on the day of the Resurrection of Christ, it received the name of Easter. But the natives themselves called him Rapa Nui.
Where did the first inhabitants of Easter Island come from?
This is the first riddle. Now over five thousand people live on the islet 24 kilometers long. But when the first Europeans landed on the shore, the natives were much smaller. And in 1774 the navigator Cook counted only seven hundred islanders on the island, emaciated from hunger. But at the same time, among the natives there were representatives of all three human races. Many theories have been put forward about the origin of the Rapa Nui population: Egyptian, Mesoamerican and even completely mythical, that the islanders are survivors of the collapse of Atlantis. But modern DNA analysis shows that the first Rapanui people landed around the year 400 and most likely arrived from Eastern Polynesia. This is evidenced by their language, which is close to the dialects of the inhabitants of the Marquesas and Hawaiian Islands.
Development and decline of civilization
The first thing that caught the eye of the discoverers were the stone idols of Easter Island. But the earliest sculpture belongs to 1250, and the latest (unfinished, remaining in the quarry) - to 1500. It is unclear how the civilization of the natives developed from the fifth to the thirteenth century. Perhaps, at a certain stage, the islanders moved from tribal society to clan military alliances. Legends (very contradictory and fragmentary) tell of the leader Hotu Matu'a, who first set foot on Rapa Nui and brought all the inhabitants with him. He had six sons who divided the island after his death. Thus, the clans began to have their ancestor, whose statue they tried to make larger, more massive and more representative than that of a neighboring tribe. But what was the reason that at the beginning of the sixteenth century the Rapa Nui stopped carving and erecting their monuments? This was discovered only by modern research. And this story can be instructive for all mankind.
Small scale environmental disaster
Let's leave the idols of Easter Island aside for now. They were sculpted by the distant ancestors of those wild natives who were found by the expeditions of Roggeven and Cook. But what influenced the decline of the once rich civilization? After all, the ancient Rapa Nuy people even had a written language. By the way, the texts of the tablets found have not yet been deciphered. Scientists only recently gave an answer to what happened to this civilization. Her death was not quick due to the eruption of the volcano, as Cook suggested. She has been in agony for centuries. Modern studies of soil layers have shown that the island was once covered with lush vegetation. The forests were teeming with game. The ancient Rapa Nui were engaged in agriculture, growing yams, taro, sugar cane, sweet potatoes and bananas. They went out to sea in good boats made from the hollowed-out trunk of a palm tree and hunted dolphins. The fact that the ancient islanders ate well is indicated by DNA analysis of food found on shards of pottery. And this idyll was destroyed by the people themselves. Forests were gradually cut down. The islanders were left without their fleet, and therefore without the meat of ocean fish and dolphins. They have already eaten all the animals and birds. The only food for the Rapa Nui was crabs and mollusks, which they collected in shallow waters.
Easter Island: moai statues
The natives could not really say anything about how they were made and, most importantly, how stone idols weighing several tons were brought to the shore. They called them "moai" and believed that they contained "mana" - the spirit of the ancestors of a certain clan. The more idols, the stronger the concentration of supernatural power. And this leads to the prosperity of the clan. Therefore, when in 1875 the French took out one of the moai statues of Easter Island to deliver it to a Paris museum, the Rapa Nui had to be restrained with weapons. But, as studies have shown, about 55% of all idols were not transported to special platforms - "ahu", but remained standing (many in the primary processing stage) in the quarry on the slope of the Rano Raraku volcano.
Art style
In total, there are more than 900 statues on the island. They are classified by scholars chronologically and by style. The early period is characterized by stone heads without a torso, with a face facing upward, as well as pillars, where the torso is very stylized. But there are also exceptions. So, a very realistic figure of a kneeling moai was found. But she remained standing in the ancient quarry. In the Middle Ages, Easter Island idols became giants. Most likely, the clans competed with each other, trying to show that their mana is more powerful. Artistic decoration in the Middle Period is more sophisticated. The idols' bodies are covered with carvings depicting clothes and wings, and huge cylindrical caps made of red tuff are often hoisted on the head of the moai.
Transportation
No less a mystery than the idols of Easter Island was the secret of their movement to the ahu platforms. The natives claimed that the moai themselves came there. In fact, it turned out to be more prosaic. In the lowest (more ancient) soil layers, scientists have found the remains of an endemic tree, which is related to the wine palm. It grew up to 26 meters, and its smooth trunks without branches reached 1.8 meters in diameter. The tree served as an excellent material for rolling sculptures from quarries to the shore, where they were installed on platforms. To hoist the idols, they used ropes that were woven from the bast of the hauhau tree. The ecological disaster also explains the fact why more than half of the sculptures were "stuck" in the quarries.
Short-eared and long-eared
Modern residents of Rapa Nui no longer have religious reverence for moai, but consider them their cultural heritage. In the mid-50s of the last century, a researcher revealed the secret of who created the idols of Easter Island. He drew attention to the fact that Rapa Nui is inhabited by two types of tribes. In one, the earlobes have been lengthened since childhood by wearing heavy jewelry. The leader of this clan, Pedro Atana, told Tur Heirdal that their ancestors passed on to their descendants the art of creating the status of moai and transporting them to the place of installation. This craft was kept secret from the "short-eared" and passed on orally. At the request of Heyerdahl, Athan, with numerous assistants from his clan, carved a 12-ton statue in the quarry and brought it upright to the platform.
Uniqueness Easter islands manifests itself in an ambiguous opinion about him. That is, on the one hand, people know everything about a given place, on the other, nothing at the same time. Its mysterious stone statues are still silent witnesses of an ancient and unknown culture. But who and how could have created these monumental sculptures from the rocks?
A bit of geography. Easter Island is located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, between Chile and Tahiti (Figure 1). Local natives christened it - Rapanui or Rapa Nui (Rapa Nui). Easter is the most remote island in the world. The distance to the nearby piece of land in the west is two thousand ninety-two kilometers, and in the east - two thousand nine hundred and seventy-one kilometers. It is formed in the shape of a triangle, with extinct volcanoes on each edge.
The area of the island is about one hundred and sixty square kilometers. Easter Island is recognized as the highest point above sea level. It is located on a huge hill, which was named the East Pacific Upland. In view of this, Thor Heyerdahl wrote that the nearest land that the locals see is the Moon.
The capital of the island, as well as its only city, is Anga Roa. The island has its own flag (Fig. 3) and its own coat of arms (Fig. 4).
Interestingly, Easter Island has / had several names: Vaihu, Mata-ki-te-Ragi, San Carlos Island, Rapanui, Teapi, Tekaouhangoaru, Te-Pito-o-te-Henua, Hititeairagi, Easter Island.
Some legends claim that Easter Island was once part of one large country (many consider it the surviving part of Atlantis). This looks quite plausible, since today at Easter, a lot of evidence has been found that confirms these legends: there are roads on the island that lead directly to the ocean, a large number of underground tunnels have been dug, originating in local caves and paving the way in an unknown direction, as well as others not less significant information and surprising finds.
Interesting data on underwater exploration of the ocean floor near Easter Island is provided by the Australian Howard Tirloren, who arrived here with Cousteau. He said that having arrived here in 1978, they studied the seabed around the island in sufficient detail. Anyone who has gone down in the bathyscaphe will confirm that the mountains under water, even at shallow depths, have a rather unusual appearance: some of them even had holes that resembled connectors for windows. And once Jacques-Yves Cousteau found one unfamiliar deep-sea depression in the vicinity, where after he dived for three more days. When he returned, he wanted to explore this depression even more scrupulously. Cousteau did not manage to see anything in full, but according to him, silhouettes of walls can be seen at the bottom, forming something like a section of a large city. However, because of the people serving in the DINA political police, which was supervised by Pinochet himself, nothing came of it. According to Tirloren, they were forced to endorse documents on non-disclosure of information, and also demanded to stop the research, so all work was stopped. But what is unusual about this depression? Why the Chilean state security is so afraid of scientists remains a mystery. After the Pinochet regime, this issue was raised again, but to no avail. Thus, this fact does not exclude the assumption that a significant part of Easter Island sank during some kind of catastrophe.
In 1973–1977, several American oceanologists studied oceanic trenches near Easter Island, namely, near the Sala-i-Gomez ridge. As a result, they discovered sixty-five underwater peaks and agreed with the hypothesis of the existence of an unknown archipelago, which was in this area tens of thousands of years ago, and then sank into the water. But all subsequent studies were frozen for no good reason at the request of the Chilean government. "Island of mysteries" still does not give an opportunity to unravel its mystery.
The obtained geophysical information asserts that the coast of Southeast Asia is slowly sinking into the ocean. Maybe this subsidence once happened faster and at one moment, like Atlantis, it went deep into the depths of the ocean, including Pacifida with its huge population and distinctive culture, traces of which are still found on Easter Island? And the various tablets with inscriptions and monuments of art are nothing more than surviving evidence of an ancient extinct civilization? After all, according to the testimony of the first inhabitant of Easter Island, Eiro, in all the buildings there are wooden planks or sticks containing some hieroglyphs and symbols. Basically, these are images of unknown animals, which the natives continue to paint with stones to this day. Each image has its own designation; but in view of the fact that they make such products on very rare occasions, this suggests that these hieroglyphs are only the remnants of ancient writing. That is, the natives are only trying to follow old customs, without trying to find any meaning in this.
Macmillan Brown, in his research, even tried to find out the approximate date of the death of the Pacifida. In his opinion, this phenomenon could have occurred in the interval between 1687, when the English sailor Davis examined a large ledge in the area of Easter Island, and 1722, when Admiral Roggeven did not find anything in this place except for a small island. The cataclysm that happened was evidenced not only by the unexpectedly stopped work in the quarries on Rano Raraku. In many areas of Easter Island, spacious roads are paved that end in the ocean. Does this mean that these paths end deep under water? Is it possible to find new evidence of a lost culture on the seabed?
There is one but that completely destroys this hypothesis, and this is a question of chronology. At what point did the land in the Pacific Ocean begin to sink? Three hundred years ago, or three thousand, or perhaps even three hundred thousand? Or is this figure in the millions? Geological and geophysical data indicate that the deepening of the land and the collapse of the Pacifida happened just in the ancient period. The fauna and flora of islands such as the Galapagos, New Zealand, Fiji were formed from the mainland, but many centuries ago they were part of one huge continent. This led to the finding here of fossils that have long disappeared and are not found anywhere else on the globe. Likewise, at one point the Australian continent broke away from Asia. Land immersion at the location of Easter Island has not occurred since that ancient period.
Geological and oceanographic surveys near Easter by Chubb confirmed the fact that it did not drop a millimeter, and at the time the monuments were erected, the coastline was as stable as it is today. This argument was repeated by the Swedish expedition, which established the geological stability of the island, which lasts for at least a million years.
Studying the issue of the emergence of the island itself, the author got the impression that many scientists do not set a goal not to understand or reveal the truth, but pursue the goal of defending their own point of view, to prove what is beneficial for them. Or, moving in an absolutely impartial search, they come across postulates that are currently imposed on society as official ones, but burst at the seams at the slightest check. This forces them to deploy their research from a straight path to the thorny direct official wilds. It is not difficult to draw attention to the fact that most researchers evaluate the available artifacts only from the point of view of the dominance of matter over spirituality, and nothing else.
In the process of studying the topic, a number of questions arose. Why do scientists, faced with inexplicable archaeological artifacts and at the same time with the same incomprehensible behavior of the authorities, which openly prohibit research, do not sound the alarm in every possible way and do not try to convey the obvious to the public? Why don't they build hypotheses in which there would be a place for all findings and facts, and not just convenient or understandable ones? How can one sometimes come up with theories so that they do not seem crude to the public? Are they not interested in learning about the past of their planet, or simply do not have free time due to everyday problems? Who really needed to build multi-ton statues on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, arrange them around the perimeter of the island facing the ocean, paint with ornaments and patterns? What was it about their writing that when the first Europeans who visited the island saw it, they began to hastily eradicate it from the local population, so much so that after forty years almost none of the Rapanui could not only write, but also read their household signs? One can argue that it was accidental and in general this 18th century was a very long time ago, well, but why are not excavations and research being carried out at the state level now? Why, if you now go to the statue behind the fence, the person will face prison? And why has UNESCO banned excavation and exploration of the underground part of the statues? Another curious fact is that almost all modern researchers of the original culture of Easter Island claim that it is impossible to find out its true meaning or decipher the writing, and everything that is read is ordinary everyday texts.
A people exterminated in half a century.
Fifty years later, in 1722, the Englishman James Cook and the Frenchman La Perouse visited Easter Island. Since then, the situation has changed a lot. Many plains were abandoned. Once the chubby inhabitants lived in poverty, and the statues filled with grandeur were almost all toppled and lay on the ground. The ancient cult was erased from memory. From the famous race of "long-eared" only a few representatives remained, most likely, their death is associated with rivals - "short-eared", who not only destroyed the tribe, but also their inherent culture. As a result of the events that took place on Easter Island, a whole era ended, which lasted more than one century, and possibly even a millennium. What it was during the period remained an unsolved mystery for many. Roggeven and his assistants were unable to find out practically anything about her. Captain Cook, La Pérouse and the Spaniards, who discovered this island in the second half of the 18th century, did not show curiosity about ancient artifacts, they were looking only for new territories that could be developed and used as colonies. By the time European researchers finally woke up interest in the cultural heritage of other peoples, only silent witnesses of its majestic past remained on Easter Island - these are huge and breathtaking statues. Now they have been thrown off their foundations, on the edge of the crater there was only an abandoned temple and several strange wooden tablets with unknown hieroglyphs. The number of local residents decreased not only because of the incessant civil wars. In 1862, slave traders from Peru burst here, they captured and took out about nine hundred people, including the last king. The prisoners were sent to extract fertilizers in the Atacama Desert. Later, another three hundred inhabitants of the island were captured and sent to Tahiti for hard labor on the plantations. When, on Easter, a showy war began, organized by Dutroux-Bornier at the request of a French company, the remaining inhabitants and inhabited missionaries fled from it. Subsequently, they moved to the Gambier archipelago, located in a more westerly direction. Thus, the population of the island in fifteen years has decreased from two and a half thousand to one hundred and eleven people! Therefore, those few people who decided to stay, no longer remembered anything about the age-old customs of their forefathers.
Interesting facts about the inhabitants of the island (Fig. 6). According to H.P. Blavatsky, the multi-colored skin of the local aborigines indicates that different peoples have mixed on Easter Island, which include the Lemurians (the third hereditary race) and the Antlants (the fourth hereditary race). This information is contained in the Secret Doctrine of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, where Easter Island is mentioned as the habitat of some of the earliest generations of the third race. An unexpected volcanic eruption and the rise of the ocean floor sank it, along with all the monuments and culture. At the same time, the island remained untouched, as proof of the existence of Lemuria. There is another interpretation - the territory of Easter was occupied by several Atlanteans, who, fleeing from the cataclysm that occurred in their area, settled on the rest of Lemuria, but not for long, since it was subsequently destroyed by a volcanic eruption and collapsed lava. Thus, it becomes clear that the ancestors of black Lemurians, as well as red-skinned and fair-skinned Atlanteans, were mixed in this territory.
A blow that destroyed the culture of the ancient people.
A large number of scientists have made a lot of efforts to reconstruct the culture of the Easter population piece by piece. But the resulting picture was incomplete. The researchers were fortunate enough to find out that on this small piece of land, measuring only one hundred and eighteen square kilometers, there are two cultural centers:
Rano Raraku quarry;
the Orongo sanctuary on the edge of the Rano Kao volcanic mountain.
At the same time, Rano Raraku is also a volcano crater, on the southern side of which there are ancient quarries. In them, huge sacred statues were subsequently carved from the porous rock of the rocks. This mountain still bears the aftermath of a terrible civil war. A large number of statues remained unfinished, at various stages of completion. For some, only the first outlines are observed, for others, for readiness, it is enough to work with a chisel several times in order to freely dissociate them from the rock and move them. The rest are standing or lying around and are already prepared for shipment. One of the most massive ready-made monuments is Rano Raraku, whose summit is twenty-two meters from the ground. At the base of the volcano, there is a huge platform formed of basalt blocks, another similar platform is located below, directly on the coast. Its length is fifty meters. The lower platform once housed fifteen stone idols. However, now they are all, with the exception of one, lying on the ground. The race of "short-eared", completely defeated the carriers of the mysterious culture of "long-eared", dumped their huge monuments, breaking stones from the foundation.
The mass of the largest idols reaches fifty tons. Stone hammers, axes and chisels were used to dislodge them, due to the fact that the locals did not know how to make tools from metal. The most incomprehensible is the way in which these statues were transported from the volcano to the sites located at its base, as well as at a considerable distance from it. After all, there were not many people on Easter Island to carry out the forced work. Therefore, it is believed that stone idols were transported with the help of small groups of local residents, using rigid cables made of reed or plant threads, wooden rollers and levers. Then they were installed vertically with a neat supply under their base of a stone embankment. But this business did not end. Now on the island, on which there is practically no vegetation cover, such monuments are everywhere you see. They are standing, lying, unfinished, or just started. Bloody civil war at the end of the 18th century. led to the collapse of these iconic sculptures. It should be noted that these statues were used not only as tombstones, they had a peculiar spiritual purpose, evidence of which was found on the rocky plateau of Orongo, which extends at the base of Rano Kao on the southwestern side of Easter Island. In that place, not far from the crater of the volcano, there are mysterious buildings without a hole for windows, erected from bulky stone blocks. And on the rocks around them a lot of incomprehensible images are minted.
Bird-man.
According to ancient legends, once a year the priests turned to God with a request to choose a new bird-man. The man chosen for this role was to organize a group of several guys and go with them to the stone dwellings and caves of Rano Kao. Once there, they waited (sometimes for months) until the island's gulls lay their eggs on a rock several hundred feet from the coast. Then the group, floating on the water, headed to the rock called Motunui. The first person to arrive immediately had to start looking for the egg, then wash it and bring it intact to the island. Having done this, he, filled with pride, gave the egg to the leader of the tribe, who, from that moment, acquired the status of bird-man. Clutching it in the palm of his hand, the head of the tribe danced along the entire southern coast of the island until he got to Rano Raraku. In this place, the leader had to live for twelve whole months next to the stone inhabitants on Rapanui. He lived there completely alone, spending time in prayer and meditation. For the rest of the Rapanui people, this place was forbidden, because the quarters of the respected master settled there. The main deity of this outlandish religion was Make-Make. At the same time, he has no resemblance either to the creator God known to us, or to the Creator of the entire Universe. He, his companion - the lord of the seagulls and three deities - the guardians of eggs and future descendants, demanded an offering of human sacrifices. It is possible that once upon a time cannibalism could well have existed on the island.
If you carefully study the legend of the bird-man and compare it with primordial knowledge, then a completely clear logical picture emerges. Suppose that, unlike our civilization, the ancient inhabitants of Easter Island did not have a materialistic perception, but lived with a predominance of spiritual values. Maybe because of this, some of the Europeans needed to destroy their culture in such a hurry?
Then it turns out that the election of the next bird-man (the bird is a symbol of the front essence) is nothing more than the choice of the most spiritually developed personality to perform important tasks (climate control, weather, seismic activity, perhaps even the solution of planetary tasks). For this, he recruited a group of young men to form a circle of power. In this case, it is logical to assume what they were doing while being together in the cave - they studied, were intensively engaged in spiritual practices, spiritual self-development, and self-disclosure. When the group was ready, something like an exam or a test for the possession of certain properties related to understanding the structure of the world (the symbol is the world egg) was appointed. After that, this bird-man set to work with the largest ahu Rano Raraku. This is confirmed by the symbols inscribed on many statues, perhaps it is worth taking a closer look at them to study the signs with which the bird-man worked.
The connection between the worship of the bird-man and the massive stone idols is proved by the images inscribed on the backs of most of the statues. These drawings depict skeletons, ghosts, deities, but most often - a bird-man. In 1722, the cult of worship of demigod and huge statues was promoted in full, but after the landing of the "short-eared" tribe on Rapanui, everything changed dramatically. Legends tell of several large boats, on which there were about three hundred men and, most likely, the same number of women. Scientists believe they fled the Rapaiti Islands after the outbreak of a terrible civil war or an incinerating drought.
From the AllatRa book:
Anastasia: A few more words about Easter Island. The local population retained beliefs that the ceremonial platforms ("ahu"), on which some stone statues are located, are a link between the visible and invisible (otherworldly) worlds, that the stone statues themselves ("moai") contain the supernatural power of their ancestors. The latter, according to beliefs, is supposedly capable of regulating natural phenomena and, accordingly, lead to a favorable result - the prosperity of the people ...
Rigden: Yes, there is nothing supernatural there. It's just that once upon a time there lived people who knew how and for what it was necessary to activate some signs. If their descendants had not lost the knowledge that they were given, then those living on that island would have better understood themselves and their elementary connection with other worlds. Usually for the chronicle, as a transfer of knowledge and legends to descendants, knowledgeable people put signs on stone statues, and themselves were often decorated with appropriate tattoos that had a special symbolic meaning. For ignorant people, these were drawings that did not mean anything at all, but inspired respect and fear of those who, in their opinion, "probably knew something special." Later, of course, there was an ordinary imitation.
Anastasia: Yes, but there are no signs on the stone heads and platforms on Easter Island.
Rigden: Who said that these heads have no continuation? Yes, let them dig deeper in those places, then maybe they will find what is hidden from their eyes. But that is not the question. Even if people find something interesting in signs and symbols, what will they do about it? With the domination of material thinking and the absence of Knowledge, at best, they will make a sensation in the media in order to attract more tourists to the island and make money. That's all. Knowledge is valuable for a spiritual seeker only when it is possible to use it and improve oneself, to provide spiritual help to other people. (page 443)
Letter and symbols.
It must be said that the culture of the islanders did not die with them. Along with the worship of the bird-man and massive idols, the tribe of "long-eared" also possessed writing skills. Therefore, it is natural that the "short-eared" managed to take advantage of them. In the first half of the 19th century, the last of the literate Ariki remained to rule on the island, he was called Ngaara, he was white-skinned and small in stature. The ruler accumulated a whole repository of symbolic tablets with hieroglyphs, and also taught the features of the sacred writing of rongo-rongo at school. Only a select few were provided for training him, for the rest of the inhabitants of the island it was the strictest prohibition. They had no right to even touch these tablets. And those who nevertheless were allowed to learn the rongo-rongo alphabet, which included several hundred characters, had yet another test. First of all, they had to get used to twisting rope knots and silhouettes that fit these hieroglyphs. Similar tests are also known in many other parts of the world.
From the AllatRa book:
“Anastasia: The importance of some signs, in my opinion, proves another fact of a kind of“ hunt ”for them. Take, for example, the story of the ancient writing of Easter Island. In that area, knowledge about signs and symbols, however, as well as their use in writing, disappeared quite recently, in the middle of the 19th century, when the "Western Civilization" broke into the island in the form of people who sailed on Dutch and Spanish ships. A Catholic missionary who visited the island told the world about the unusual writing of the island. The inhabitants of Easter Island kept their notes with special signs on wooden tablets, which were in almost every house. But, having opened the signs of Easter Island to the Europeans, this missionary and his followers at the same time did everything to destroy this writing, to burn it like a pagan heresy. And what is left of this very recently existing culture now? Several hundred huge sculptures-heads as high as a multi-storey building and weighing more than twenty tons, scattered throughout Easter Island, and a couple of dozen plaques - written monuments, which miraculously survived, as well as a staff and a breast ornament with letters. Moreover, the latter are scattered in various museums around the world. It seems that the world priests, having learned about these signs and symbols, did everything to destroy them, even though this was already actually a pitiful remnant of the once-past knowledge. "
Rigden: Well, the Archons do not sleep, they act. Well, someone who, but they understand what signs are, and even more so, what an activated sign is in work. (page 439)
Among the primitive settlers of Oceania, where established habits and traditions have not lost their true meaning, knot magic has become especially widespread. You can read about this in the one hundred and thirteenth chapter of the Koran. His modern interpreters explain this fact as witchcraft. In the old explanations, on the contrary, it is believed that the mention of knots in the Qur'an means sorceresses who knit magic figures, then blow on them and pronounce spells, which contributes to the attraction of evil. Moreover, in Arabia, such things were considered quite common in the pre-Islamic period. But today it is no longer possible to find either a Christian or an Arab who would understand anything in "lace witchcraft". But in those regions where traditional beliefs have not supplanted the worship of deities, as well as ancient and mystical customs, people still knit magic knots, which often fold into rather complex configurations. This is customary among peoples such as:
- Eskimos;
- Indians of North, Central and South America;
- all African peoples;
- island tribes of Oceania;
- native inhabitants of Australia and East Asia, including Japan.
In most cases, various rope shapes are made for fun. But at the same time, you can often hear how the aborigines, pulling a knitted silhouette from a cord on their fingers, pronounce ancient words with a magical meaning. Such witchcraft is especially developed in the isolated territories of the Melanesian archipelago, Micronesia, Polynesia, as well as among the American Indians.
At the moment, scientists are familiar with about three and a half thousand such figures. The material for their manufacture is an ordinary rope, the ends of which are tied, or a woven synthetic lace. In ancient times, tribes used animal veins, intestinal fibers, connected or twisted plant threads, and sometimes even long locks of human hair to obtain magical patterns.
Sometimes it happens that the ritual is based on the worship of spirits and mystical creatures. So, for example, the Eskimos are convinced of the existence of a soul in bound figures and are overly afraid of it, since, in their opinion, it can pose a danger to their lives. If someone plays with the ropes for too long or does it at an unauthorized time, then the characteristic rustling is heard in front of the dwelling, and at this moment inside the tent the light of the lamp begins to slowly fade away. And only the knowledgeable understand that the spirit of the connected figures is approaching in this way. At one time, he removed the insides from his dried up body and now he himself is engaged in knitting from dehydrated intestines. This process is accompanied by a sound similar to the rustling of paper.
An interesting fact is that the Navajo Indians, who settled in the northwest of the United States of America, are convinced that knotting arose in ancient times with the help of the Spider-Man tribe, and they later taught this craft to other people. A large number of peoples tie figures from laces in order to later donate them to their deities. But the inhabitants of the Gilbert Islands in Micronesia are sure that such silhouettes appeared at the time of the creation of the world.
A gift that gives passage to another world.
As one belief says: "When, at the origin of life, the heavens were cut off from the earth, the demigod rose and, while the sky was gradually" rising, "he tied eleven knots one after the other." On the Gilbert Islands, they are still familiar today, and cheat Maude even managed to capture ten of them.
Leading signs.
It becomes clear why scientists still fail to interpret ancient records that are more symbolic than alphabetical, especially if we consider that they have survived only partially. These symbols, which have succumbed to oblivion, explain the real details and mysteries of a much older culture. So far, only twenty surviving epistles have been studied. They are in museums in Germany, Belgium, Chile, USA, Russia, England and Austria.
If you do not take into account the interpretation of Hausen, in which there is a decoding of about five hundred characters, the meaning of the rongo-rongo hieroglyphs has not yet been revealed. In doing so, they provoke interesting conclusions. Similar scripts were common among the natives of northwestern India in the 4th millennium BC. Subsequently, their culture also disappeared. Some historians believe that certain components of this culture, including writing, came to Polynesia sometime in the 2nd millennium BC. Then the tribe of "long-eared" spread them to the island of Rapanui, where they rested for many centuries, and possibly millennia. This continued until the death of knowledgeable people and priests led to the emergence of unsolved mystery for today's researchers.
Any figure, woven from ropes, suited a certain melody that needed to be memorized, as well as a certain sign-drawing. These hieroglyphs were not letters or phrases, but at the same time they reflected some concepts and important thoughts. They were obtained with a volcanic glass chisel or grinded with a shark tooth. Each line was done from bottom to top. In this case, the lowest one was drawn from left to right, and the next one on the contrary. In addition, characters were drawn upside-down in every even line. Scientists gave the name bustrofedon to this kind of writing system. However, in world literature, this method is extremely rare. The mysterious writing remained unknown for a long time. Therefore, the Europeans were not immediately able to find out about it. The first information about it surfaced only in 1817, when Tepano Hausen began to study them in detail. He was quite amazed when he realized that only a small number of literate islanders can read the texts written on the tablets, but at the same time they retell their essence in their own words, using signs solely as a hint. The information that pops up from the tips was learned by heart, but everyone learned it in their own way.
Here is an interesting point from Wikipedia that clearly shows how the archons, through their people, in this case the priests, uprooted the Rongo-rongo culture. Thomson was told about an old man named Ure Va'e Iko. He assured that he understood most of the signs, since he took reading lessons. He was in charge of the last king from the dynasty of monarchs - Nga'ara, who had the ability to read at least one learned text and reproduce many songs, but did not know how to write in rongo-rongo. Having learned this, Thomson began to load the old man with various gifts and coins in the hope that he would tell what is written in the tablets. But Ure Va'e Iko didn’t agree, as Christian priests didn’t allow him to do it, intimidated him with death. After that, he fled. However, Thomson later took photographs of the mysterious tablets and, with great efforts, persuaded the old man to reproduce the text written on them. While Ure was talking, Alexander Salmon wrote down all the information under dictation, and a little later he translated it into English.
Mysterious notebook.
One day Thor Heyerdahl decided to visit a shack on Easter Island. The owner of the hut claimed that he had a certain notebook written by his grandfather, who was aware of the secret of kohau rongo-rongo. It displays the main hieroglyphs of ancient writing, as well as the decoding of their meaning, indicated in Latin letters. But when the scientist tried to study the notebook, Esteban immediately hid it. Shortly after this event, witnesses claim that they saw him sailing in a small boat to the island of Tahiti. Most likely, the notebook was also with him. Since then, no one has heard of Esteban. Therefore, what happened to the notebook is also not clear.
Once the missionaries noticed an amazing similarity between the writing that existed on Easter Island with the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. At the same time, it turned out that one hundred and seventy-five characters of the kohau rongo-rongo are absolutely identical with the outlines of Hindustan. And their similarity with the ancient Chinese writing was established by the Austrian archaeologist Robert Teldern in 1951. American and German scientists are convinced that the writing system that once existed in Polynesia was miraculously not lost and remained on Easter Island.
The unusual tradition of the natives to achieve drooping earlobes testifies to the reverence for the possibilities of keen hearing, which at one time was the main advantage of the Lemurians. It was they who could pick up sounds that are absolutely incomprehensible to a modern person.
Such an amazing rumor was also mentioned in the book "Fragments of a Forgotten History". There it was argued that such physical data arose due to the improvement of the spirit. They had access to sounds that we are not able to hear, and this was their happiness. It was in honor of such a gift that previous generations of Lemurians rewarded themselves with drooping earlobes. Thus, they wanted to be like their distant ancestors.
Creation of sculptures for the glory of the gods.
Behrens loved to talk about the rich vegetation of Easter Island, as well as the huge harvests of vegetables and fruits that were harvested every year. When he described the local inhabitants, he wrote the following: "Always vigorous, of a good physique, excellent runners, friendly, but extremely fearful. Almost each of them, having brought gifts, hurriedly threw them to the ground and immediately ran away, which is strength." As for the color of the skin, it has different shades - among them there are both blacks and completely white inhabitants, in addition, there are even redskins, which gives the impression that they are sunburned. Their ears are long and often reach down to the shoulders. Some have small white bars inserted into their lobes as decoration.
According to some statements, the amazing abilities of the Rapanui are the will of the gods. They made them such that they could be responsible for the part of the world to which they are fully deployed. The inhabitants of the island confirmed that their ancestors once long ago were engaged in the construction of the now-known monuments, as they had tremendous power. However, this is not currently permitted. Having heard this version, James Cook did not want to believe it and even formulated the key mysteries of the island - how the idols could have arisen and why they do not appear now.
However, the islanders do not support this proposal and talk about the bird-people, that is, the deities who descended to earth, installed and flew back. The images of people with wings found on the island serve as evidence of this version.
Thus, the Rapanui culture has long excited the minds of researchers with its uniqueness and mystery. Its envoys created unique stone monuments, which testifies to the high level of development of this civilization. All statues appeared between 1250 and 1500. Their known number today is eight hundred and eighty-seven idols. At the same time, practically nothing is known about the inhabitants of Easter Island themselves. Indeed, at the time of its discovery by Europeans in the 18th century, a backward race was discovered that could not make such monuments in any way. When the island was captured by slave traders in the 19th century, the last remnants of civilization were buried.
In an article that was featured in the journal Antiquity, archaeologists provided a detailed overview of arrowheads found in large numbers in virtually all parts of the island. According to the analysis carried out, they are absolutely unsuitable for military operations. This conclusion is due to the fact that the main purpose of a good weapon is to kill the enemy, and spears from the island can only injure a person, but not fatally. Therefore, most likely, these tips were used by local residents as tools for cultivating land, food and various tattoos on the body. Also, there is no evidence of large-scale and bloody wars on the island. So it can be argued that the death of the ancient culture is most likely due to the lack of resources and the transformation of the economic structure. In theory, the revival of civilization was very possible, but this was prevented by the arriving Europeans.
Research results.
After reviewing the materials of various researchers, scientists, simply looking for people, the impression was that there is interest in the island, but the catastrophic lack of true information leads the student either into the jungle of harmonious standard theories, or to the conclusion that we will never know the truth.
So, what we managed to find out:
1. There are several types of moai (statues) on the island, some recently put on pedestals, others are scattered around the island, others are partially buried in the ground, some very deep.
2. Also these statues differ in size and appearance, apparently made at different times.
3. At the moment, official science says that the Moai were created around 1200-1400 AD. And those that are in the ground up to the shoulders, just over time, skidded by the soil. How long does it take for nature to raise the soil level by 2-3 meters or more? Somehow it doesn't add up.
4. There are several traditions on the island that vaguely resemble the actions of people who had spiritual knowledge about man and the world (skin whitening, cult of the bird-man).
5. Despite the many mysteries and open opportunities to explore the island, local authorities do not conduct formal scientific research. Moreover, such research is taboo, excavations are prohibited, and the same is true with underwater research near the island. Researchers are awaiting a warning from the police or special services and a prison. There are many examples of this. Even that unearthed by Thor Heyerdahl has been buried. It turns out that someone is afraid that people will find out the truth kept by the island's artifacts and handwriting, familiar in many similar places around the world. The work of the archons deserves a detailed study so that, understanding the methods of their influence, which have not changed for centuries, it would be possible to identify them in the everyday life of society and bring them up for a nationwide review.
6. A very interesting question about the writing that was on the island and was destroyed so quickly with the arrival of the Europeans, in less than a century, almost no one remembered how to read and write their traditional signs and symbols. And those who still remembered the letter fled from the researchers like fire. Apparently taught by bitter experience.
7. From what has been said, it becomes obvious that before the appearance of Europeans, there was an ancient culture on the island, which kept true knowledge and not only kept, but also actively used it. For example, "plasticine" stone processing technology (when the stone for processing became plastic like plasticine), cutting and transportation of multi-ton stone statues, three-layer ahu (platforms), the lower layer is lined with polygonal masonry, like many other megalithic structures on different continents. The very fact of creating statues and installing them around the perimeter of the island suggests that there was a need (at least of the local population), and as we have already found out, these were knowledgeable spiritual people, this need could be associated with the creation of certain conditions for the whole world, or some part of it. Since "moai have the power of the northern winds and are responsible for the side of the world that they look into." It could be both climatic conditions and spiritual, perhaps Rigden Djappo will find it necessary and reveal to us the true purpose of the statues and their sacred meaning.
Thus, even now, many secrets of Easter Island remain unsolved and it is possible that the answers to the questions of interest to scientists have already been lost forever. However, while research is underway, people do not lose hope of solving the puzzle created many centuries ago.
Prepared by Alex Ermak (Kiev, Ukraine)
The natives who greeted the Dutch sailors on Easter Sunday, 1722, seemed to have nothing to do with the giant statues of their island. Detailed geological analysis and new archaeological finds allowed solve the riddle these statues and learn about the tragic fate of stonecutters.
The island fell into disrepair, his stone sentries fell and many of them drowned in the ocean. Only the pitiful remnants of the mysterious army managed to get up with outside help.
Briefly about Easter Island
Easter Island, or Rapanui in the local dialect, is a tiny (165.5 sq km) piece of land lost in the Pacific Ocean halfway between Tahiti and Chile. It is the most isolated inhabited (about 2000 people) place in the world - the nearest Town (about 50 people) at 1900 km, on Pitcairn Island, where in 1790 a rebellious bounty team.
Rapanui coastline decorated hundreds of frowning idols-natives call them "moai". Each is hewn from a single piece of volcanic rock; the height of some is almost 10 m. All the statues are made according to the same pattern: a long nose, drawn-out earlobes, a gloomily compressed mouth and a protruding chin over a stocky torso with hands pressed to the sides and palms lying on the stomach.
Many "moai" are installed with astronomical precision... For example, in one group, all seven statues look to the point (photo on the left) where the sun sets on the evening of the equinox. More than a hundred idols lie in the quarry, not completely hewn or almost finished and, apparently, waiting to be sent to their destination.
For more than 250 years, historians and archaeologists could not understand how and why, with a shortage of local resources, the primitive islanders, completely cut off from the rest of the world, managed to process giant monoliths, drag them kilometers over rough terrain and put them vertically. Many more or less have been offered scientific theories, and many experts believed that Rapanui was at one time inhabited by a highly developed people, possibly an American bearer, who died as a result of some kind of catastrophe.
Uncover the secret the island allowed detailed analysis of samples of its soil. The truth about what happened here can serve as a sobering lesson for people from every corner of the planet.
Born sailors. Once Rapanui hunted dolphins from canoes, hollowed out of palm trunks. However, the Dutch who discovered the island saw boats made of many fastened planks - there were no longer any large trees.
The history of the discovery of the island
On April 5, on the first day of Easter in 1722, three Dutch ships under the command of Captain Jacob Roggeven stumbled upon an island in the Pacific Ocean that was not mapped. When they dropped anchor on its eastern shore, a few natives came up to them in their boats. Roggeven was disappointed, The boats of the islanders, he wrote: "Bad and fragile ... with a light frame, sheathed with many small planks"... The boats were flowing so hard, the rowers had to bail out the water every now and then. The landscape of the island also did not warm the captain's soul: "His desolate appearance suggests extreme need and sterility.".
Conflict of civilizations. Easter Island idols now adorn museums in Paris and London, but these exhibits were not easy to obtain. The islanders knew each "moai" by name and did not want to part with any of them. When the French removed one of these statues in 1875, the crowd of natives had to be held back with rifle shots.
Despite the friendly behavior of the brightly colored natives, the dutch went ashore, ready for the worst, and lined up in battle square under the amazed gaze of the owners, who had never seen other people, not to mention firearms.
Soon the visit darkened tragedy... One of the sailors fired. Then he claimed that he allegedly saw the islanders raise stones and make threatening gestures. On Roggeven's orders, the "guests" opened fire, killing 10-12 owners on the spot and wounding the same number. The islanders fled in horror, but then returned to the shore with fruits, vegetables and poultry - to appease the fierce aliens. Roggeven noted in his diary an almost bare landscape with rare bushes no higher than 3 m.On the island he named after Easter, interest was aroused only unusual statues (heads) that stood along the coast on massive stone platforms ("ahu").
At first, these idols shocked us. We could not understand how the islanders, who did not have strong ropes and a crowd of construction timber for making mechanisms, nevertheless were able to erect statues (idols) at least 9 m high, moreover, rather voluminous.
Scientific approach. French traveler Jean François La Perouse landed on Easter Island in 1786, accompanied by a chronicler, three naturalists, an astronomer and a physicist. After 10 hours of research, he suggested that the area was wooded in the past.
Who were the Rapanui people?
People only settled on Easter Island around 400. It is believed that they sailed on huge boats from Eastern Polynesia. Their language is close to the dialects of the inhabitants of the Hawaiian and Marquesas Islands. The ancient fishhooks and stone adzes of the Rapanui found during excavations are similar to the tools used by the Marquis.
At first, European sailors met naked islanders, but by the 19th century they were weaving clothes themselves. However, family heirlooms were valued more than ancient crafts. Men sometimes wore headdresses made from feathers of birds long extinct on the island. The women wove straw hats. Both of them pierced their ears and wore bone and wood ornaments in them. As a result, the earlobes were pulled back and hung down almost to the shoulders.
Lost Generations - Answers Found
In March 1774 the English captain James Cook discovered on Easter Island about 700 emaciated from the malnutrition of the natives. He suggested that the local economy was badly damaged by the recent volcanic eruption: many stone idols that fell from their platforms spoke about this. Cook was convinced that they were hewn out and placed along the coast by the distant ancestors of the present Rapanui.
“This time-consuming work convincingly demonstrates the ingenuity and perseverance of those who lived here during the era of the creation of the statues. The current islanders are almost certainly not up to this, for they do not even repair the foundations of those that are about to collapse. "
Scientists only recently found answers to some riddles "moai". Analysis of pollen from sedimentary deposits accumulated in the marshes of the island shows that it was once covered with dense forests, thickets of ferns and bushes. All this was teeming with a variety of game.
Investigating the stratigraphic (and chronological) distribution of the finds, scientists found in the lower, most ancient layers of the pollen of an endemic tree close to the wine palm, up to 26 m high and up to 1.8 m in diameter.Its long, straight, unbranched trunks could serve as excellent rollers for transportation of lumps weighing tens of tons. Also found was the pollen of the plant "hauhau" (triumfetta semi-three-lobed), from the bast of which in Polynesia (and not only) make ropes.
The fact that the ancient Rapanui people had enough food follows from the DNA analysis of food residues on the unearthed dishes. The islanders grew bananas, sweet potatoes, sugarcane, taro, yams.
The same botanical data show a slow but sure destruction of this idyll... Judging by the content of swamp sediments, by 800 the area of forests was decreasing. Wood pollen and fern spores are displaced from later layers by coal, evidence of forest fires. At the same time, the woodcutters were working more and more actively.
The shortage of wood began to seriously affect the way of life of the islanders, especially their menu. A study of fossil trash heaps shows that at one time the Rapanui people regularly ate dolphin meat. Obviously, they got these animals floating in the open sea from large boats hollowed out of thick palm trunks.
When the ship's forest was gone, the Rapanui lost their "ocean fleet", and with it dolphin meat and ocean fish. In 1786, the chronicler of the French expedition La Perouse wrote that in the sea the islanders hunted only mollusks and crabs living in shallow waters.
The end of the "moai"
Stone statues began to appear around the 10th century. They probably personify Polynesian gods or deified local leaders. According to Rapanui legends, the supernatural power of "mana" lifted the hewn idols, led them to the designated place and allowed them to wander at night, guarding the peace of the manufacturers. Perhaps the clans competed with each other, trying to hew out "moai" larger and more beautiful, and also put it on a more massive platform than competitors.
After 1500, the statues were practically not made, Apparently, on the devastated island there were no trees left, necessary for their transportation and lifting. Since about the same time, palm pollen has not been found in swamp sediments, and dolphin bones have not been thrown into the trash heaps. The local fauna is also changing. Disappear all native land birds and half of sea birds.
Food is getting worse and the population, which once numbered about 7,000, is declining. Since 1805, the island has been suffering from raids by South American slave traders: they take away some of the natives, many of the rest suffer from smallpox picked up from strangers. Only a few hundred Rapanui survive.
Easter Island residents erected "moai" hoping for the protection of the spirits embodied in the stone. Ironically, it was this monumental program that led their land to environmental disaster... And the idols rise as eerie monuments to thoughtless management and human recklessness.
“Giant multi-ton idols have been defeated. Broken, overturned face down or no heads at all, they are scattered all over the island, as a silent testimony to the catastrophe that once happened here. ", - tells the traveler Leonid Kruglov, participant of the project of the Russian Geographical Society round the world trip on the barge "Sedov".
Polynesian marker
Opened by the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeven on Easter Day, April 5, 1722, the island is located three and a half thousand kilometers from the coast of South America. The distance to the nearest inhabited islands of Polynesia is almost two thousand. Having discovered an inhabited island, Roggeven wondered: where did people come from on this piece of land in the middle of the ocean, where he and his team traveled for 19 days by ships from the coast of Chile. The answer was found at the end of the 20th century by geneticists from the University of Cambridge. They examined the remains of people who lived on the island from 1100 to 1868. People from different regions of the world have a specific genetic trait, or marker, as scientists call it. Biologist Erika Hagelberg has discovered a Polynesian marker in the islanders' DNA.
Primitive sculptors
The Polynesians settled on an island they called Rapa Nui around AD 700-900. NS. How many there were is unknown, but by the beginning of the XIV century the population had reached 15,000. This is the conclusion reached by archaeologists who have discovered the remains of the foundations of several hundred dwellings. The surface of the island was divided into about 12 territories that belonged to different clans. According to legend, there was a class division on Rapa Nui. The leaders of the clans came from the "long-eared" (they deliberately pulled out the earlobes) and constituted the ruling elite of the island. The rest of the inhabitants belonged to the "short-eared". As the legend says, it was the ancestors of the "long-eared" who first came to the island. They, called to protect Rapa Nui, were immortalized in stone by the inhabitants of the island. Ancient sculptors carved sculptures from rocks with primitive obsidian chippers. Then they were moved to the shores of the island, where they were installed on stone platforms - ahu, facing the territories of their clans.
The primitive inhabitants of Easter believed that in the eyes of the idols there was a magical power that protected their lands. The heads of some colossi were decorated with cylinders made of red tuff. Why this was done is unknown. Moai reached 10 meters in height, their weight ranged from 50 to 270 tons. It took months to make one statue.
Friendly clans
“Moai were carved in Rano Raraku, the crater of Terevaka volcano, located in the east of the island. Obsidian axes were made in the Puna Pau quarry in the south. Red "caps" were also created there. Ahu platforms are scattered around the perimeter of the island. This suggests that the clans were not at war with each other, but acted together. The island was like a statue manufacturing plant. All these places can be bypassed in a couple of hours by car. But how did the locals overcome this distance with a load of several hundred tons? " - tells the traveler Leonid Kruglov.
To solve this puzzle, the researchers tried to move the idols both vertically and horizontally. But how exactly the Polynesians acted is impossible to figure out. One fact leaves no doubt: for any method, the ancients needed ropes and levers that could only be made from wood.
Paradise corner
“The nature of the island is very sparse. Mostly shrubs and grass grow, ”says Leonid Kruglov. The first Europeans saw a similar picture.
At the end of the 20th century, geographer John Flenley of Massey University of New Zealand studied the silt of the Rapa Nui lakes and swamps. In the lower layers, Flenley discovered spores of the Chilean wine palm - the world's largest palm tree, reaching a meter in diameter and 20 meters in height. Later, archaeologist Katrin Orliak, having examined 30,000 pieces of charred wood found on the island, revealed another fifteen species of plants as powerful as a palm tree.
Paleontologist David Stedman examined about 7,000 bird bones from excavated garbage piles. He discovered that the island used to be home to six species of birds and a place where more than 25 other species of seabirds lay their eggs. In addition, Stedman found numerous dolphin remains. Unlike other islands in Polynesia, Rapa Nui is not surrounded by coral reefs, so there were no fish off the coast. The islanders had to go out to sea, where they could only hunt dolphins. All these discoveries testified to one thing - the Polynesians settled in a piece of paradise: dense forests that protect from the Pacific winds and provide material for arranging life, an abundance of birds and dolphins, which guaranteed food. But one day something went wrong.
Ecological catastrophy
Scientists have established: as soon as the Polynesians settled on the island, they immediately began to cut down trees. Wood was required to make canoes and was used as fuel for fires, on which food was cooked and the bodies of the dead were burned. But the bulk of the trees went into making levers to move the statues.
French archaeologist Catherine Orliak, having carried out radiocarbon analysis of wood remains, determined that the islanders stopped using wood as fuel in the middle of the 17th century, finally switching to grass and other small plants. This means that in seven centuries the Polynesians have completely uprooted the forest.
The last statue
The forest was gone - the raw materials for making canoes were gone, and it became impossible to hunt dolphins. The birds stopped flying to Rapa Nui, and the islanders ate those that lived there long ago. Without tree roots, the topsoil eroded away - it became difficult to grow vegetables. Food supplies were running low, but instead of coming to their senses in time and stop destroying their home, people continued to erect moai using the remnants of ropes and wooden levers. “The Rano Raraku quarry contains the largest statue of the island. Its length is more than 20 meters, weight is about 180 tons. Scholars suggest that this statue was the last work of the islanders. She is like a cry of despair addressed to the ancestors. But, apparently, people could no longer or did not want to extract it from the rock, ”says Leonid Kruglov.
Fall of idols
The last statues were erected at the beginning of the 17th century. Spearheads found by scientists are dated to the same period. This can only mean one thing: people have passed from peace to war. Hunger gave birth to cruelty. According to local legend, the "short-eared" unleashed their anger on the "long-eared", called upon to protect Ra-pa-Nui from all misfortunes, but failed to cope with this task. The islanders fought not only with their leaders, but also with the spirits of their ancestors, imprisoned in moai. “Most of the statues on the island were knocked over with their faces down. It was a deliberate destruction of idols, ”Kruglov said.
By the end of the 17th century, the war ended with the victory of the short-eared. The losing elite was completely destroyed. And with it the cult of the moai disappeared. At the beginning of the 18th century, by the time the Dutch arrived, 2000–3000 people lived on the island. They were well fed and quite friendly. Having vented their anger on the gods and leaders, the "short-eared" laid down their arms and took up the plow again. “The remains of stone gardens have been preserved on the island. Most of them are made from shards of moai statues. The stones strengthened the soil, protecting the crops from the winds. Sweet potatoes, yams and sugarcane are growing again. But the destroyed forest could not be returned, ”says Leonid Kruglov.
After the invasion of Peruvian slave traders in the 1860s and the ensuing smallpox epidemic, only a few hundred descendants of the first settlers remained in Rapa Nui. Today Easter Island is home to about 4,000 people, mostly from Chile and other Pacific islands.
“Not far from the Rano Raraku quarry, I met a man in native clothes. Seeing that I was filming the idols on the camera, he grabbed the knife and menacingly pointed at me, then at the moai. I hastened to leave. In the city of Hanga-Roa, they explained to me that this man is a descendant of ancient settlers. He rarely appears in public, - says Leonid Kruglov, - but prefers to live the way his ancestors lived. Perhaps he is the only one who still honors the history of the island. For the rest of the inhabitants, giant idols today are only tourist sites. In the last century, Europeans returned some moai to the pedestals. Travelers come to gaze at them as the only evidence of the existence of an ancient civilization that once signed its own death warrant. ".
