Native Flag of Easter Island - Reimiro

Easter Island is the world's most isolated inhabited island. It is also one of the most mysterious. Easter Island is roughly midway between Chile and Tahiti. The triangular shaped island is made mostly of volcanic rock. Small coral formations exist along the shoreline, but the lack of a coral reef has allowed the sea to cut cliffs around much of the island. The coastline has many lava tubes and volcanic caves. The only sandy beaches are on the northeast coast. Ovahe Beach, North Shore

The inhabitants of this charming and mysterious place called their land: Te Pito o TeHenua, 'the navel of the world.'

It sits in the South Pacific Ocean 2,300 miles west of South America, 2,500 miles southeast of Tahiti, 4,300 miles south of Hawaii, 3,700 miles north of Antarctica. The closest other inhabited island is 1,260 miles away - tiny Pitcairn Island where the mutineers of the H.M.S. Bounty settled in 1790.

Archaeological evidence indicates discovery of the island by Polynesians at about 400 AD. In 1722, a Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggeveen, sighted and visited the island. This happened to be on a Sunday, Easter Sunday to be precise, and the name stuck: Easter Island (Isla de Pascua in Spanish). What he discovered on Easter Island were three distinct groups of people, Dark skinned, Red skinned, and very Pale skinned People with red hair".

The Polynesian name of the island is Rapanui, which is a name given by a Tahitian visitor in the 19th century who says that the island looked like the Tahitian island of 'Rapa,' but bigger, 'Nui.' Inhabitants are of Polynesian descent, but for decades anthropologists have argued the true origins of these people, some claiming that ancient South-American mariners settled the island first.

What many early explorers who visited the island found, was a scattered population with almost no culture they could remember and without any links to the outside world. The Easter islanders were easy prey for 19th century slave traders which depreciated even more their precarious culture, knowledge of the past, and skills of the ancestors.

Easter Island is one of the youngest inhabited territories on Earth, and for most of its history it was the most isolated inhabited territory on Earth. Its inhabitants, the Rapanui, have endured famines, epidemics, civil war, slave raids and colonialism, have seen their population crash on more than one occasion, and created a cultural legacy that has brought them fame out of proportion to their numbers.

First Settlers

Early European visitors to Easter Island recorded the local oral traditions of the original settlers. In these traditions, Easter Islanders claimed that a chief Hotu Matu'a arrived on the island in one or two large canoes with his wife and extended family. They are believed to have been Polynesian.

There is considerable uncertainty about the accuracy of this legend as well as the date of settlement. Published literature suggests the island was settled around 300-400 CE, or at about the time of the arrival of the earliest settlers in Hawaii. Some scientists say that Easter Island was not inhabited until 700-800 CE. This date range is based on glottochronological calculations and on three radiocarbon dates from charcoal that appears to have been produced during forest clearance activities.

Moreover a recent study which included radiocarbon dates from what is thought to be very early material suggests that the island was settled as recently as 1200 CE. This seems to be supported by a 2006 study of the island's deforestation, which could have started around the same time. Any earlier human activity seems to be insignificant if there was any at all.

The Austronesian Polynesians, who first settled the island, are likely to have arrived from the Marquesas Islands from the west. These settlers brought bananas, taro, sugarcane, and paper mulberry, as well as chickens and Polynesian Rats. The island at one time supported a relatively advanced and complex civilization.

South American Links

The Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl believed that cultural similarities exist between Easter Island and South American Indian cultures which he suggested might have resulted from some settlers arriving from the continent.[6] According to local legends, a group of long-eared people called hanau epe arrived on the island sometime after the original inhabitants, introducing the stone carving technology and attempting to enslave the population.

Some early accounts of the legend place hanau epe as the original residents and the contemporary Easter Islanders as later immigrants coming from Oparo. After mutual suspicions erupted in a violent clash, the hanau epe were overthrown and exterminated, leaving only one survivor.

The fact that the sweet potato, a staple of the pre-contact Polynesian diet, is of South American origin, and that there is no evidence that its seed could spread by floating across the ocean, indicates that there must have been some contact between the two cultures.

Either Polynesians traveled to South America and back, or Indian balsa rafts drifted to Polynesia, possibly unable to make a return trip because of their less developed navigational skills and more fragile boats, or both. Polynesian connections in South America have been claimed to exist among the Mapuche Indians in central and southern Chile.

The Polynesian name for the small islet of Sala y Gómez (Manu Motu Motiro Hiva, "Bird's islet on the way to a far away land") east of Easter Island has also been seen as a hint that South America was known before European contacts. Further complicating the situation is that the word Hiva ("far away land") was also the name of the islanders' legendary home country. Inexplicable insistence on an eastern origin for the first inhabitants was unanimous among the islanders in all early accounts.

Jacob Roggeveen's expedition of 1722 gives us our first description of the islanders. They were "of all shades of color, yellow, white and brown" and they distended their ear lobes so greatly with large disks that when they took them out they could "hitch the rim of the lobe over the top of the ear".

Roggeveen also noted how some of the islanders were "generally large in stature". Islanders' tallness was also witnessed by the Spanish who visited the island in 1770, measuring heights of 196 and 199 cm.

DNA sequence analysis of Easter Island's current inhabitants indicates that the 36 people living on Rapanui who survived the devastating intercine wars, slave raids and epidemics of the 19th century and had any offspring, were Polynesian. Furthermore, examination of skeletons offers evidence of only Polynesian origins for Rapanui living on the island after 1680.

Mainstream archeology is skeptical about any non-Polynesian influence on the island's prehistory, but the discussion has become political.

Pre-European Society

According to legends recorded by the missionaries in the 1860s, the island originally had a very clear class system, with an ariki, king, wielding absolute god-like power ever since Hotu Matua had arrived on the island. The most visible element in the culture was production of massive moai that were part of the ancestral worship.

With a strictly unified appearance, moai were erected along most of the coastline, indicating a homogeneous culture and centralized governance. In addition to the royal family, the island's habitation consisted of priests, soldiers and commoners.

The last king, along with his family, died as a slave in the 1860s in the Peruvian mines. Long before that, the king had become a mere symbolic figure, remaining respected and untouchable, but having nominal authority.

Kings of Easter Island

For unknown reasons, a coup by military leaders called matatoa had brought a new cult based around a previously unexceptional god Make-make. In the cult of the birdman (Rapanui: tangata manu), a competition was established in which every year a representative of each clan, chosen by the leaders, would swim across shark-infested waters to Motu Nui, a nearby islet, to search for the season's first egg laid by a manutara (sooty tern).

The first swimmer to return with an egg and successfully climb back up the cliff to Orongo would be named "Birdman of the year" and secure control over distribution of the island's resources for his clan for the year. The tradition was still in existence at the time of first contact by Europeans. It ended in 1867. The militant birdman cult was largely to blame for the island's misery of the late 18th and 19th centuries. Each year's winner and his supporters short-sightedly pillaged the island after the victory. With the island's ecosystem fading, destruction of crops quickly resulted in famine, sickness and death.

European accounts in 1722 (Dutch) and 1770 (Spanish) reported seeing only standing statues, but by James Cook's visit in 1774 many were reported toppled. The huri mo'ai - the "statue-toppling" - continued into the 1830s as a part of fierce internecine wars. By 1838, the only standing moai were on the slopes of Rano Raraku and Hoa Hakananai'a at Orongo. In about 60 years, islanders had deliberately destroyed the main part of their ancestors' heritage. In modern times, moai have been restored at Orongo, Ahu Tongariki, Ahu Akivi and Hanga Roa.

European Contacts

The first recorded European contact with the island was on 5 April (Easter Sunday) 1722 when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen visited for a week and estimated there were 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants on the island (this was an estimate, not a census, and archaeologists estimate the population may have been as high as 10,000 to 15,000 a few decades earlier). His party reported "remarkable, tall, stone figures, a good 30 feet in height", the island had rich soil and a good climate and "all the country was under cultivation". Fossil pollen analysis shows that the main trees on the island had gone 72 years earlier in 1650.

The civilization of Easter Island was long believed to have degenerated drastically during the century before the arrival of the Dutch, as a result of overpopulation, deforestation and exploitation of an extremely isolated island with limited natural resources. The Dutch reported that a fight broke out in which they killed ten or twelve islanders.

The next foreign visitors (November 15, 1770) were two Spanish ships, San Lorenzo and Santa Rosalia, sent by the Viceroy of Peru, Manuel Amat, and commanded by Felipe González de Ahedo. They spent five days in the island, performing a very thorough survey of its coast, and named it Isla de San Carlos, taking possession on behalf of King Charles III of Spain, and ceremoniously erected three wooden crosses on top of three small hills on Poike. They reported the island as largely uncultivated, with a seashore lined with stone statues.

Four years later, in 1774, British explorer James Cook visited Easter Island, he reported the statues as being neglected with some having fallen down; no sign of the three crosses and his botanist described it as "a poor land". He had a Tahitian interpreter who could partially understand the language as it was Polynesian.

In 1786, the French explorer Jean François de Galaup La Pérouse visited and made a detailed map of Easter Island. He described the island as one tenth cultivated and estimated the population as a couple of thousand.

In 1804, the Russian ship, Neva, visited under the command of Yuri Lisyansky.

In 1816, the Russian ship, Rurik, visited under the command of Otto von Kotzebue.

In 1825, the British ship, HMS Blossom, visited and reported no standing statues.

Easter Island was approached many times during the 19th century, but by now the islanders had become openly hostile towards any attempt to land, and very little new information was reported before the 1860s.

Destruction of Society and Population

A series of devastating events killed almost the entire population of Easter Island in the 1860s.

In December 1862, Peruvian slave raiders struck Easter Island. Violent abductions continued for several months, eventually capturing or killing around 1500 men and women, about half of the island's population. International protests erupted, escalated by Bishop Florentin-Etienne Jaussen of Tahiti.

The slaves were finally freed in autumn, 1863, but by then most of them had already died of tuberculosis, smallpox and dysentery. Finally, a dozen islanders managed to return from the horrors of Peru, but brought with them smallpox and started an epidemic, which decimated the island's population to the point where some of the dead were not even buried.

Contributing to the chaos were violent clan wars with the remaining people fighting over the newly available lands of the deceased, bringing further famine and death among the dwindling population.

The first Christian missionary, Eugène Eyraud, arrived in January 1864 and spent most of that year on the island; but mass conversion of the Rapanui only came after his return in 1866 with Father Hippolyte Roussel and shortly after two others arrived with Captain Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier. Eyraud was suffering from phthisis (tuberculosis) when he returned and in 1867, tuberculosis raged over the island, taking a quarter of the island's remaining population of 1,200 including the last member of the island's royal family, the 13-year-old Manu Rangi. Eyraud died of tuberculosis in August 1868, by which time the entire Rapanui population had become Roman Catholic.

Dutrou-Bornier

Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier - arms dealer, gambler, bigamist, murderer, slave dealer, encourager of apostasy and alleged ship wrecker - was to have a long lasting impact on the island. He set up residence at Mataveri, aiming to cleanse the island of most of the Rapanui and turn the island into a sheep ranch. He married Koreto, a Rapanui, and appointed her Queen, tried to persuade France to make the island a protectorate, and recruited a faction of Rapanui whom he allowed to abandon their Christianity and revert to their previous faith. With rifles, a cannon, and hut burning, supporters ran the island for several years.

Dutrou-Bornier bought up all of the island apart from the missionaries area around Hanga Roa and moved a couple hundred Rapanui to Tahiti to work for his backers.

In 1871 the missionaries, having fallen out with Dutrou-Bornier, evacuated 275 Rapanui to Mangareva and Tahiti, leaving only 230 on the island. Those who remained were mostly older men. Six years later, there were just 111 people living on Easter Island, and only 36 of them had any offspring.

In 1876 Dutrou-Bornier was murdered in an argument over a dress, though his kidnapping of pubescent girls may also have motivated his killers.

From that point on and into the present day, the island's population slowly recovered. But with over 97% of the population dead or left in less than a decade, much of the island's cultural knowledge had been lost.

Neither his first wife back in France, who was heir under French law, nor his second wife on the island, who briefly installed their daughter Caroline as Queen, were to keep much from his estate. But to this day much of the island is a ranch controlled from off-island and for more than a century real power on the island was usually exercised by resident non-Rapanui living at Mataveri. An unusual number of shipwrecks had left the island better supplied with wood than for many generations, whilst legal wrangles over Dutrou-Bornier's land deals were to complicate the island's history for decades to come.

1878-1888

Alexander Salmon, Jr was the brother of the Queen of Tahiti, and the son of an English merchant adventurer, and a member of the mercantile dynasty that had bankrolled Dutrou-Bornier. He arrived on the island in 1878 with some fellow Tahitians and returning Rapa Nui and ran the island for a decade. As well as producing wool he encouraged the manufacture of Rapanui artworks, a trade that thrives to this day. It was this era of peace and recovery that saw the linguistic change from old Rapanui to the Tahitian-influenced modern Rapanui language, and some changes to the island's myths and culture to accommodate other Polynesian and Christian influences (notably, Ure, the old Rapanui word for "penis", was dropped from many people's names).

This era saw the first "archaeological" excavations on the island, in 1882 by the Germans on the SMS Hyäne and in 1886 the USS Mohican whose crew blew open Ahu Vinapu with dynamite.

Father Roussel made a number of pastoral visits in the decade, but the only permanent representatives of the church were Rapanui catechists including, from 1884, Angata, one of the Rapanui who had left with the missionaries in 1871. Despite the lack of a resident priest to regularly perform mass, the Rapanui had returned to Roman Catholicism, but there remained some tension between temporal and spiritual power as Father Roussel disapproved of Salmon because of his Jewish paternity.

Annexation to Chile

Easter Island was annexed by Chile on September 9, 1888 by Policarpo Toro, by means of the "Treaty of Annexation of the island" (Tratado de Anexión de la isla), that the government of Chile signed with the Rapanui people.

Until the 1960s, the surviving Rapanui were confined to the settlement of Hanga Roa and the rest of the island was rented to the Williamson-Balfour Company as a sheep farm until 1953. The island was then managed by the Chilean Navy until 1966 and at that point the rest of the island was reopened.

1914

1914 was an eventful year for the 250 residents of Easter Island. In March, the Routledge Expedition landed and began a 17 month archaeological and ethnographic survey of the island.

In June, after Mr Scoresby Routledge fired a Rapanui worker for stealing biscuits and the Rapanui revolted. Led from the Roman Catholic church by their Catechist Angata, who claimed to be acting on the instructions from God that she was receiving in her dreams, the Rapanui declared independence, crossed the wall and took hundreds of sheep and cattle. The revolt was quelled in August by the annual supply ship from Chile which then deported Angata's son.

In October, the German East Asia Squadron including the Scharnhorst, Dresden, Leipzig, Emden and Gneisenau rendezvoused off Hanga Roa before sailing on to Coronel and the Falklands.

In December, another German warship the commerce raider SMS Prinz Eitel Friedrich visited and released 48 British and French merchant seamen on the island, supplying much needed labour for the archaeologists.

Today

Since being given Chilean citizenship in 1966, the Rapanui have re-embraced their ancient culture, or what could be reconstructed of it

Mataveri International Airport is the island's only airport. In the 1980s, its runway was lengthened by the U.S. space program to 3,318 m (10,885 ft) so that it could serve as an emergency landing site for the space shuttle. This enabled regular wide body jet services and a consequent increase of tourism on the island, coupled with migration of people from mainland Chile which threatens to alter the Polynesian identity of the island. Land disputes have created political tensions since the 1980s, with part of the native Rapanui opposed to private property and in favor of traditional communal property.

On 30 July 2007, a constitutional reform gave Easter Island and Juan Fernández Islands the status of special territories of Chile. Pending the enactment of a special charter, the island will continue to be governed as a province of the Valparaíso Region.

History of Easter Island

Hotu Matu'a was the legendary first settler and ariki mau ("supreme chief" or "king") of Easter Island. Hotu Matu'a and his two canoe (or one double hulled canoe) colonising party were Polynesians from the now unknown land of Hiva (probably the Marquesas). They landed at Anakena beach and his people spread out across the island, sub-divided it between clans claiming descent from his sons, and lived for more than a thousand years in their isolated island home at the southeastern tip of the Polynesian Triangle.

Polynesians first came to Rapa Nui/Easter Island sometime between 300 CE and 800 CE. These are the common elements of oral history that have been extracted from island legends. Linguistic, DNA and Pollen analysis all point to a Polynesian first settlement of the island at that time, but it is unlikely that other details can be verified. During this era the Polynesians were colonizing islands across a vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Hotu Matua led his people from Hiva; linguistic analysis comparing Rapanui to other Polynesian languages suggests this was the Marquesas Islands.

It is said that Hau-Maka had a dream in which his spirit travelled to a far country, to help look for new land for King Hotu Matu'a. In the dream, his spirit travelled to the Mata ki te Rangi (Eyes that look to the Sky). The island has also been called "Te Pito 'o te Käinga", which means "the Center of the Earth." Both islands are commonly said to be Easter Island.

When Hau-Maka woke, he told the King. The King then ordered seven men to travel to the island from Hiva (a mythical land) to investigate. After they found the land, they returned to Hiva. The King and many more travelled to this new island.

Rapa Nui Mythology

When we think of Eastern Island we think of of huge stone carved figures, monoliths, that dot the coastline. They are called Moai - (pronounced moe-eye). Moai are statues carved of compressed volcanic ash on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The statues are all monolithic, that is, carved in one piece. However, less than about one-fifth of the statues that were moved to ceremonial sites and then erected once had red stone cylinders pukau placed on their heads. These "topknots," as they are often called, were carved in a single quarry known as Puna Pau.

About 95% of the 887 moai known to date were carved out of compressed volcanic ash at Rano Raraku, where 394 moai still remain visible today. Recent GPS mapping in the interior will certainly add additional moai to that count. The quarries in Rano Raraku appear to have been abandoned abruptly, with many incomplete statues still in situ.

However, the pattern of work is very complex and is still being studied. Practically all of the completed moai that were moved from Rano Raraku and erected upright on ceremonial platforms were subsequently toppled by native islanders in the period after construction ceased.

Although usually identified as "heads" only, the Moai are actually one piece figures with heads and truncated torsos.

The most widely-accepted theory is that the statues were carved by the Polynesian colonizers of the island beginning by about A.D. 1000-1100. In addition to representing deceased ancestors, the Moai, once they were erect on ceremonial sites, may also have been regarded as the embodiment of powerful living chiefs. They were also important lineage status symbols.

The moai were carved by a distinguished class of professional carvers who were comparable in status to high-ranking members of other Polynesian craft guilds. The statues must have been extremely expensive to craft; not only would the actual carving of each statue require effort and resources, but the finished product was then hauled to its final location and erected.

It is not known exactly how the moai were moved but the process almost certainly required human energy, ropes, wooden sledges and/or rollers. Another theory is that the moai may have been "walked" by rocking them forward.

By the mid-1800s, all the moai outside of Rano Raraku and many within the quarry itself had been knocked over. Today, about 50 moai have been re-erected on their ceremonial sites.

Ancient island legends speak of a clan chief called Hotu Matu'a, who left his original home in search of a new one. The place he chose is now known to us as Easter Island. When he died, the island was divided between his six sons and then, later, sub-dividied among their descendants.

The islanders may have believed that their statues would capture the chiefs' "mana" (supernatural powers). They may have believed that by concentrating mana on the island good things would result, rain would fall and crops would grow. The settlement legend is a fragment of what was surely a much more complicated and many-faceted, mythic sketch, and it has changed over time.

Ron Fisher in his work Easter Island Brooding Sentinels of Stone, mentions as one explanation for the statues that "two classes of people, the-so-called Long Ears and Short Ears, lived on the island. The Short Ears were enslaved by the Long Ears, who forced the Short Ears to carve the Moai. After many generations and during a rebellion, the Short Ears surprised the Long Ears killing them all, which explains the abrupt end of the statue-carving.

Long Ears

Some of the Moai face the sea
>
but most face inland to watch over the villages.

Many of the were buried up to their shoulders

and thereby appearing as disembodied heads.

All of the Moai were toppled in tribal wars about 250 years ago. Many have recently been rebuilt, construction beginning in the 1950's. They sit on rocky lava strewn about telling a story of fallen monuments of a long lost civilization who created them. The Moai were depictions of their ancestors. The Rapa Nui were ancestor worshipers and only had one diety - Make Make. The Moai were excavated for the first time by Thor Heyerdahl in the 1950's and were photographed at that time.

Ahu Akivi is an especially sacred place. Ahu Akivi is a sanctuary and celestial observatory built about 1500 AD which was the subject of the first serious restoration accomplished on Easter Island by archaeologists William Mulloy and Gonzalo Figueroa, with excellent results. As in the case of many religious structures on Easter Island, it has been situated with astronomical precision - it's seven statues look towards the point where the sun sets during the equinox.

Aligned with the moon

Ahu Akivi is an unusual site in several respects. A low ahu supports 7 statues all very similar in height and style. The site is odd in that it is located far inland and the statues were erected to face the ocean. The only site where this was done. Like other Easter Island sites the statues were found knocked off the ahu, lying face down in the ground. In 1960, Archeologist William Mulloy's team spent several months raising the statues to their original positions.

During the excavation and restoration of this site many cremation pits were uncovered behind the ahu. The pits contained fragments of bone, shells, fishing implements, and obsidian flakes. Whether sites like these were used regularly for cremations and or burials is not certain. At other sites skeletons have been found buried within the ahu structure, but these burials are believed to have occurred after the statues were toppled.

Folklore holds that its seven moai represent the seven young explorers that legend says the Polynesian King Hotu Matu'a dispatched from across the seas, probably from the Marquesas Islands, to find this new homeland for him and his people. They are among the few moai that face the sea.

These seven stone giants may well symbolize those seven explorers, but no one knows for sure. Just as no one knows what any of the moai really represent or why only a few of them face the sea.

The generally accepted theory is that these majestic stone statues were built to honor Polynesian gods and deified ancestors such as chiefs and other figures important in the island's history. Most of them are attributed to the 14th and 15th centuries, although some were erected as long ago as the 10th Century.

Their function, it is believed, was to look out over a village or gravesite as a protector. They may also have been status symbols for villages or clans.

The seven at Ahu Akivi each stand about 16 feet high and weigh about 18 tons. The tallest moai on the island exceed 30 feet. Moai in the range of 12 to 20 feet are common. Even the occasional tiny moai that you come across are at least 6 feet high.

The ahu of Easter Island vary in length - the longest one is 300 feet, while some that hold one moai are only several feet long. Each ahu has a stone masonry base that slopes upward to a high terrace upon which the moai rest. Some terraces are as high as 15 feet above ground level. All are fairly wide - the bases of the moai that stand upon them measure as much as 10 feet long by 8 or 9 feet wide.

The island's volcanic rock from which they were carved is softer and lighter than most other rock, but even the smallest moai weighs several tons. Some of the moai have been estimated to weigh as much as 80 to 90 tons.

Many of the moai - there are hundreds of them - are erected at sites miles from the quarry at which they were carved. How could so few people move them even a couple of feet, let alone several miles, and without breaking them?

And once they did move them, how did they erect them? Even today, using powerful cranes, it would be no simple task.

  Maoi on Easter Island  Google Videos

Giant statues give up hat mystery   BBC - September 6, 2009

Go on your own Easter Island adventure MSNBC - November 8, 2005

'Mata' reminded me of the Greek word Mati or Eye.

I discovered Matariki the Maori name for the constellation Pleiades or Seven Sisters. Literally it means "little eyes" mata riki or "eyes of god" mata ariki.

The Eye is the God, All Seeing Eye, Masonic Program, Lens of Time, the creational source through which consciousness experiences in physical reality.

Great Pyramid who is a priest bringing gifts when the Pleiades are rising.

The Old Rapanui name 'Mata Ura', 'The red eye' is the designation of Mars.

2012 is our program designation, return through the eye of consciousness in the alchemy of time.

Many Rapa Nui people believe that the statues were moved and erected by 'mana' a magical force. Great kings of a long-gone era simply used their mana to command the moai to move to the distant sites and stand there. Mana is a word and concept you hear frequently in South Seas lore. The people of Rapa Nui believed that the moai also possessed mana, which was instilled at the time their white coral eyes were put in place, and that the moai used their mana to protect the people of the island. Today none of the moai have genuine coral eyes - and thus the mana is no more.

The intervention of Extraterrestrials - the most infamous of these writers is Erich Von Daniken who suggests that a small group of 'intelligent beings' were stranded there and taught the natives to make 'robot-like' statues. His main thrust is that the stone from which the statues are made is not found on the island- a complete fabrication. This links with theories that Easter island was once part of the lost civilization of flying machines.

Other theories include - men sliding the moai along on layers of yams and sweet potatoes.

The generally accepted belief is that they were transported on sledges or log rollers and then levered erect using piles of stones and long logs.

Thor Heyerdahl, whose books Kon-Tiki and Aku-Aku stirred great interest in Easter Island, conducted an experiment showing that an upright stone statue could be moved using ropes, tilting and swiveling it along. But the experiment was conducted on a flat surface for only a short distance, and this theory, like Heyerdahl's theory that the islands of the South Pacific were settled from east to west from South America rather than from west to east from Southeast Asia, is not considered plausible.

All but a few of the moai of Easter Island were carved at Rano Raraku, a volcanic cone that contains a crater lake. It is an eerie spot. Scattered all around Rano Raraku are 394 moai in every stage of evolution. Some are fallen - a common sight around the island - and some appear to have only heads, although they are really full figures that have been nearly buried by soil over the centuries. For reasons that remain a mystery, it appears that the workers at Rano Raraku set down their tools in the middle of a multitude of projects - and the moai-building abruptly ceased.