Easter Island - history riddles. The secrets of Easter Island have been solved: Scientific confirmation of reality. The Davis Land Mystery

Thor Heyerdahl

“I am interested in archeological topics - the history of excavations, descriptions and photographs of finds. V. Karelsky, Ivanovo.”

The sculptures at the foot of the Rano Raraku volcano are half buried in the soil.

Archaeologists have found a previously unknown type of statue.

The observatory at the top of the Rano Kao volcano was surrounded by religious buildings with images of a bird-man carved into lava outcrops.

The first settlers were excellent at processing basalt blocks. This type of masonry was the earliest on Easter Island.

Kneeling statue on Easter Island (Early period).

Kneeling statue in Tiahuanaco (Peru).

Excavations have refuted the assumptions; there is no soil layer on the island.

Lifting the statue. The statue is almost straight.

“I am interested in the history of peoples, archaeology,” writes Comrade. Bessonova from Perm.

V. Pulatov (Odessa) asks to talk about ancient Cyclopean structures.

There are a lot of letters in which our readers ask us to systematically publish articles on history and archeology in the journal. We are posting an excerpt from an article by the famous foreign researcher T. Heyerdahl about his excavations on Easter Island. The full article will be published in the book “Science and Humanity. 1963."

The major land masses bordering the Pacific Ocean were inhabited by ancient Asians long before the first sailors sailed into the central Pacific Ocean in search of unknown ocean islands. Having the simplest seafaring means, ancient man from the Asian continent penetrated through Indonesia to the southeast - to Australia and Papua Melanesia, and through the Bering Sea region to the northeast - to North, then Central and South America. This happened many thousands of years BC. Thus, immigrants from Asia populated the entire Pacific coast long before ships were created that could take advantage of or withstand the winds and currents that dominate the vast expanses of the gigantic ocean, which covers half the circumference of the globe.

The last vast area to be settled by humanity was a world of ocean islands in the center of a vast watery plain. Not long before our era, Aboriginal ships flocked to this part of the ocean, taking the discoverers to all the uninhabited islands, where they lived in safety and isolation until the Europeans discovered the way to America, and then, with the wind and currents, rushed to discover, or rather , rediscover, the islands of the Great Ocean.

The most secluded of these islets was the one which its first inhabitants called Te Pito-o-te-Henua - "Navel of the Earth", and Roggeveen, the European who rediscovered it in 1722, christened it Easter Island - in honor of the day when sailed here. Coming close to the shore, the Dutch, to their surprise, saw people whom they considered primitive representatives of Stone Age culture. These people lay face down on the ground, with their heads towards the rising sun. Bonfires were lit in front of huge humanoid statues. Grandiose cylinders made of red stone were erected on the heads of the majestic idols. Hundreds of such sculptures towered over a treeless island, where not even trees were visible that could be used to transport and lift the statues.

These humble idolaters and their ever-present huge monuments were surrounded by a barren, rocky plain with occasional patches of cultivated land where sweet potatoes and bananas grew. Above them rose the trawl- and fern-covered slopes of extinct volcanoes, the dead craters of which were the only reservoirs of fresh water on the island. On all sides of the island, sheer cliffs fell into the sea, onto which the surf crashed; underneath them there were very few places suitable for landing on the shore.

Created before the appearance of man on Earth by an underwater volcanic eruption, this piece of land rose lonely from the abyss of the ocean in the path of currents eternally moving from South America - 2 thousand miles from here to the east, past the nearest inhabited island - 1,600 miles to the west, and from there to the shores of Asia - another 7 thousand miles.

Naturally, scientists and the general public in general were faced with the question: how did civilization originally get to this highly isolated island?

They began to solve this problem in an indirect way at the end of the last century, by starting to study the oral traditions of the islanders. In the first half of this century, a primary archaeological survey of the island took place, and the study of the local population, its culture and language began.

By the beginning of the second half of this century, neither systematic archaeological excavations nor collection of samples for pollen analysis had yet been carried out on Easter Island. This omission on the part of scientists is explained by the fact that we are talking about an extremely barren island, on which, it would seem, enough humus could not accumulate to hide the traces of ancient cultures. The researchers believed that due to the lack of soil there was nothing to excavate. In addition, the remote position of Easter Island led scientists to conclude that immigrants from Asia could have reached it only as a last resort and, therefore, its period of habitation should be shorter than that of any other Pacific island.

Both of these assumptions did not seem reasonable to the author of the article. In 1937-1938, while conducting research in the Marquesas Islands, I noticed how, as a result of the activities of man and his domestic animals, the island of Motane had already in historical times changed from being covered with dense tropical forest to being devoid of almost all vegetation except grass. Until paleobotanical studies were carried out on Easter Island, we could not judge whether or not there was a forest on the island before the arrival of Europeans.

Further, since immigrants from Asia populated all the continents bordering the Pacific Ocean before the arrival of man on Easter Island, it could not be said with certainty that the first transoceanic voyage to Easter Island necessarily took the longest route, against the trade winds and westward currents, and not the shortest route - from nearby South America, with favorable winds and currents. If people moved from South America, then it is very likely that they encountered Easter Island earlier than others; in this case, it has been inhabited for a relatively long time.

Before our excavations on Easter Island in 1955-1956, only two archaeological expeditions visited here. The first, a private English expedition in 1914 led by Mrs. K. Rutledge, did not include professional archaeologists and did not attempt stratigraphic excavations. Nevertheless, K. Routledge's popular book of travelogues is replete with important observations and was until recently the main source of information about the archeology of the surface strata of Easter Island.

In 1934, a Franco-Belgian expedition arrived on the island, but the French archaeologist died on the way, and the only remaining archaeologist A. Lavacherie concentrated his efforts on studying the petroglyphs. At the same time, the French ethnographer A. Metro conducted ethnographic observations of modern islanders. In addition, Capuchin missionary S. Englert, who has lived on Easter Island since 1935, studied the archeology of surface layers and ethnography.

Lacking data for scientific dating, the first explorers of Easter Island purely speculatively concluded that man could have reached this secluded eastern outpost no earlier than the 12th century (Metro), the 13th century (Lavacherie), the 14th century (Routledge) or the 16th century (Englert).

There was no unanimity in solving the famous Easter Island riddle. Routledge and Englert argued that the island showed traces of cultural stratification (stratification) and that ancient stone structures could be divided into two types. They came to the conclusion that two different cultures came to this piece of land one after another, and saw confirmation of this in local legends. Objecting to them, Lavacherie and Metro said that there were no signs of stratification on the island, that the local archeology was homogeneous, that there was only a purely Polynesian culture on the island. They rejected the Easter legends, declaring that they were deliberately composed to explain the origin of the large ditch - the same ditch that, according to legend, people dug for a huge defensive fire. Metro and Lavacherie considered the moat to be a natural formation.

The enormous engineering work carried out by the first inhabitants of Easter Island captured Routledge's imagination, and she concluded that the problem remained mysterious. However, Metro solved the riddle simply. He suggested that the Polynesians, accustomed to wood carving, having arrived here from the wooded islands in the west, did not find wood on treeless Easter Island and therefore switched to stone processing, very quickly developing the world's most advanced technique of megalithic masonry (megaliths are ancient structures made of large stones) and erected the largest sculptures of all created by any of the Neolithic peoples of the Earth.

There was no consensus on how the ancient sculptors transported and raised gigantic statues, why these idols were created and why the Easter people did not worship the Polynesian gods Tana and Tangaroa, but professed a completely different religion, and also why they did not use common Polynesian products.

It was obvious that the surface of Easter Island could not tell the whole story of the dramatic events and cunning plans carried out on the most secluded island in the world. To delve deeper into the mystery and search for hidden clues to the mysterious past of the Easter people, I decided to bring a team of qualified archaeologists to the island and conduct the first stratigraphic excavations; Despite the prevailing belief that there was no soil on the island, I hoped to find something beneath the surface. An important task was to study the stratification of the architecture, as well as to collect coal samples at key points on the island for radiocarbon analysis.

There is not a single stream on barren Easter Island, but rainwater accumulates in three extinct volcanoes - Rano Kao, Rano Raraku and Rano Oroi. For many centuries, the wind carried pollen from island vegetation into open crater lakes; the study of the well-preserved fossil pollen layered here should have helped to reconstruct the history of the Easter flora. To do this, a number of wells up to eight meters deep were laid along the edges of lakes Rano Kao and Rano Raraku. The specimens were subsequently examined and identified by Professor W. H. Selling, head of the paleobotanical department of the National Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

Pollen research has shown that when - even before our era - man first set foot on these shores, the now treeless Easter Island was covered with trees and shrubs of numerous species. There were streams on the island, and the surface of the fresh crater lakes was not yet covered with aquatic vegetation; palm trees and virgin forest rose around the lakes.

But then a man appeared. Studying pollen samples, we see how the primary forest was cleared, and the lake surface was gradually occupied by aquatic plants that had only now appeared. With the arrival of man, for the first time, polygonum was planted along the shores of fresh water bodies, a typically South American plant that was used as a medicinal plant by Andean residents and Easter people. Along with it, the extremely important totora reed, also a typically South American freshwater plant, not known either in the Old World or on other Pacific islands, came to the island. With their appearance, the flora of the island began to change dramatically. Both plants spread quickly and soon partially covered most of the crater lakes with a floating carpet.

At the same time, people began to burn the first bonfires on the island, and a little later the vegetation began to disappear. For the first time, ash particles are mixed with previously clean soil and pollen residues. They indicate limited forest fires that the aliens started to clear areas for residential buildings and places of worship. The original forest disappeared, its place was taken by bizarre temples and monuments made of durable stone. These structures, later destroyed or covered by others, have given us the most reliable clues for studying the level of culture of the first islanders and the subsequent local evolution.

The four archaeologists of our expedition - E. N. Ferdon, W. Melloy, A. Shelsvold and K. S. Smith - began with excavations of housing and cult platforms. And all of them, independently of each other, discovered the alternation of two different cultures with different architecture and different religious views. These cultures were replaced by war and a period of decline - this was immediately before the first Europeans appeared on Easter Island. Radiocarbon dating has shown that man came to Easter Island at least a thousand years earlier than modern science assumed.

Three successive periods in the archeology of Easter Island have been called: Early, Middle and Late.

Early period

The people who first reached Easter Island clearly came from an area where they were engaged not so much in wood carving as in stone processing. They cut down trees to get to the rocks. These early settlers were already skilled stonemasons. They were excellent at processing huge blocks of solid basalt. The slabs in the masonry, which had a square, triangular or polygonal shape, nevertheless fit together so tightly that it was impossible to insert knife blades between them. Excavations have shown that this type of masonry was the earliest on Easter Island, and not the latest, not the end of local evolution, as Metro speculatively concluded.

This sophisticated megalithic technique was not known on any of the thousands of Pacific islands further west. We see such perfection, such technique and style only in the specialized stone-masonry culture of ancient Peru, on the mainland, which is the closest neighbor of Easter Island to the east. The purpose of the Easter buildings was more aesthetic or cultic than functional, and subsequent generations of islanders were either unable or unwilling to develop the unique high art of the early Easter era.

The first settlers used their skills to build huge platforms like altars needed for solar worship. The traditionally laid out, smoothly polished facade was very precisely astronomically oriented in relation to the point of sunrise at the time of the summer solstice or equinox.

Interest in the movement of the sun was also manifested in the fact that on the top of Rano Kao, the highest volcano on the island, the first Easter people built a solar observatory, specially adapted to mark the annual movement of the sun. This observatory was completely covered with earth, and we discovered it during excavations led by Ferdon. The observatory was surrounded by a religious structure with solar symbols carved into lava outcrops. Easter rituals were accompanied by the lighting of bonfires. It is believed that the solar cult and solar observatories are not characteristic of Polynesian culture - they are also most typical of ancient Peru, both Inca and pre-Inca times.

In the solar observatory, and in the cleared and leveled areas behind the wide, astronomically oriented megalithic platforms, the early inhabitants of Easter Island erected large humanoid stone sculptures. These sculptures were markedly different from the more impressive busts that later made the island famous and were unknown to science until excavations revealed their existence. Here's one type: a small, flattened, quadrangular head with shallowly carved facial features - huge bulging eyes, puffy cheeks, arched eyebrows leading to a Y-shaped nose. The second, no less traditional type: a rectangular column, on the sides of which a full-length human figure was outlined in relief, with short legs and arms lowered so that the fingers meet below the navel. Third type: realistic sculpture of a kneeling man sitting on his heels; hands rest on knees, oval face with goatee turned to the sky.

No other island had such sculptures, but all three types are characteristic of Tiahuanaco, the cult center of sun worshipers in pre-Incan Peru.

The fourth and final variety served as the prototype for the large sculptures of the next Easter period. This variety represents a purely local style and evolution; there are no sculptures similar to it either on the mainland or on other islands.

We still don’t know exactly when exactly man first saw the wooded shores of Easter Island. But carbon dating shows that around 380, skilled military engineers supervised extensive work to create a powerful defensive structure at its eastern end. Bordered by sheer cliffs, the Poike Peninsula was cut off from the rest of the island by a specially dug ditch 12 feet deep, about 40 feet wide and almost 2 miles long. Gravel and earth thrown out of the ditch formed a defensive rampart with passages for counterattacks. If we discard the assumption that the first settlers of Easter Island were preparing to defend themselves against enemies who might follow them across the ocean, we can only conclude that the island was inhabited long before such extensive work began.

Previous expeditions, without conducting excavations, considered this sand-filled ditch to be a natural depression in the area, although Easter legends persistently indicated that the ditch was dug by the legendary “long-eared” for defense.

We still know very little about these first inhabitants of Easter Island, but we do know that they brought with them a highly developed culture, which naturally developed outside the island and which must have been traced in the surrounding areas. As we have already seen, this early imported culture was very distinctive, different from other Pacific island cultures known to us.

Middle period

Around 1100, as Carbon dating shows, the original Easter culture came to an abrupt end. Some of the ancient temples and other structures, including the solar observatory, were abandoned for a long time and fell into disrepair. But then they were again occupied by people and rebuilt according to a different plan, using a completely different masonry technique. The reason for this break is still unknown. Perhaps the entire island was abandoned by humans during this interregnum, or perhaps local wars reduced the population of the Early Period until only a handful of people remained living in remote areas. In any case, after a long break, the previous buildings were occupied by a different culture, with different religious ideas; began what we call the second, or Middle, period in the history of Easter cultures.

At the beginning of this period, huge stone sculptures began to be made, which subsequently attracted the attention of the whole world to the small Pacific island. In this era, the main desire and fanatical passion of the Easter people was to carve out gigantic images of their ancestors, which were erected on ancestral tombs raised above ground level.

The sculptures of the Middle Period are distinguished by extremely long, drooping ears, reviving the memory of the legendary “long-eared”, who, according to the Easter people, created these statues until almost all of them were burned in the already mentioned defensive ditch during the war with the “short-eared”. Now there is only one clan living on the island, whose members consider themselves direct descendants of the “long-eared” - this is the Atan clan. Their origins are confirmed by all the islanders, as well as Englert's genealogical research.

The working methods of the “long-eared” sculptors were a hidden family secret, which was passed down from father to son for twelve generations. Thanks to the good, friendly relations of our expedition with the Easter people, the secret was revealed to us. It has been tested in practical experiments. According to the instructions of the eldest of the Atan brothers, one statue was sculpted, transported and installed on a pedestal. Archaeological research, combined with the stories of the Easter people and our experiments, made it possible to recreate the working methods of sculptors of the Middle Period.

The statues were hewn directly on the slopes of the crater using roughly made axes from hard andesite; To make work easier, the rock was watered with water from dried pumpkins. Beneath the loose, weathered surface layer, the rock was very hard, and it took about a year to make an average-sized statue. In the quarries, the smallest details of the face, hands, and body of the sculpture were processed, right down to the polishing of ear jewelry and long exquisite nails. But the back remained unfinished until the last moment and was connected to a stone bed like a keel.

Finally, having separated the giant's back, they lowered him down a steep slope using rollers and ropes. At the same time, it was often necessary to overcome steep terraces and niches that arose as a result of previous work. The statue was temporarily installed somewhere at the foot of the volcano. To do this, a ledge or hole was dug out of the accumulated layer of rubble from the quarries, where they placed the statue with their feet, supporting it in a vertical position with ropes. Now, for the first time, sculptors could start working on the back. It was hewn and polished as carefully as the rest of the figure. The front of the statue was not decorated with any patterns: just the torso. But relief symbols were often applied to the back - an arc resembling a rainbow, one or two rings.

Tradition says that the Easter sculptors, the discoverers of the island, were called Hanau-epe - “long-eared” - for their custom of lengthening their earlobes by hanging large disks from them. In contrast, the ancestors of the current population were called hanau-momoko - “short-eared”.

For karau-karau, that is, two hundred years, the “short-eared” humbly worked for the “long-eared”, participating in the construction of huge structures. Big ahoos appeared; From the quarries of Rano Raraku, increasingly larger statues were delivered to the graves that belonged mainly to the “long-eared ones.” Although mixed marriages occurred between the two peoples, only six of the many hundreds of sculptures on the ahu have short ears; all the rest have elongated lobes: they clearly depict “long-eared people.”

Further, the legend says that the two-century period of peaceful cooperation ended when the “long-ears” forced the “short-ears” to clear the entire Poike Peninsula in the east of stones. The work was already completed, and Poike, unlike the entire island, black from lava debris, was completely covered with green grass, then the “short-eared” were ordered to clean the rest of the island’s surface in the same way. But then their long-suffering came to an end. Their entire tribe, united, rebelled and drove the “long-ears” to the Poike Peninsula, where they took refuge behind a long defensive ditch, which they filled with brushwood so that a fire could be lit if the “short-ears” went on the attack.

A betrayal committed by an old woman from the Short-Ears tribe, who was married to one of the Long-Ears, allowed the Short-Ears detachment to bypass the ditch, while others simulated an attack from the front. While the “long-ears” were setting fire to a defensive fire, they were unexpectedly attacked from the rear and everyone was thrown into the fire. Of the adult men, only one, Ororoina, was spared; he was allowed to continue the line of “long-ears.”

According to legend, this happened twelve generations ago; genealogists believe it must have been around 1680. The names of the descendants of Ororoina have survived to this day, right up to the already mentioned living Atan family, whom the Easter people consider the only ones descended in the direct male line from the previously so powerful “long-eared” people.

Meanwhile, Europeans for a long time mistook the sand-covered ditch on Poik for a natural formation, and the legend about the fire was not trusted until our expedition carried out excavations there. Research has shown that this is a skillful construction of human hands. Coal and ash from a huge fire were found along the entire ditch; Radiocarbon analysis made it possible to date the samples to approximately 1676, which perfectly coincides with the vivid traditions of the Easter people.

The natives who greeted the Dutch sailors on Easter Sunday 1722 seemed to have nothing in common with the giant statues of their island. Detailed geological analysis and new archaeological finds have made it possible solve the mystery these sculptures and learn about the tragic fate of the stonemasons.

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 rise with outside help.

Briefly about Easter Island

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui in local parlance, 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) is 1900 km away, on Pitcairn Island, where the rebels found refuge in 1790 Bounty team.

The coastline of Rapa Nui is decorated hundreds of scowling native idols they 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 model: a long nose, drawn-out earlobes, a gloomily compressed mouth and a protruding chin over a stocky torso with arms pressed to the sides and palms resting on the stomach.

Many "moai" installed with astronomical precision. For example, in one group, all seven statues look at 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, primitive islanders, completely cut off from the rest of the world, managed to process giant monoliths, drag them for kilometers over rough terrain and place them vertically. A variety of more or less scientific theories, and many experts believed that Rapa Nui was at one time inhabited by a highly developed people, possibly a carrier of the American people, who died as a result of some catastrophe.

Uncover the secret of the island allowed detailed analysis of its soil samples. The truth about what happened here can serve as a sobering lesson for people around the world.

Born sailors. Rapanui people once hunted dolphins from canoes dug out of palm trunks. However, the Dutch who discovered the island saw boats made of many planks fastened together - there were no large trees left.

History of the discovery of the island

On April 5, Easter Day 1722, three Dutch ships under the command of Captain Jacob Roggeveen stumbled upon an island in the Pacific Ocean that was not shown on any map. When they dropped anchor off its eastern shore, a few natives sailed up to them in their boats. Roggeveen was disappointed, The islanders' boats, he wrote: “poor and fragile... with a light frame covered with many small planks”. The boats were leaking so much that the rowers had to bail out water every now and then. The landscape of the island also did not warm the captain’s soul: “Its desolate appearance suggests extreme poverty and barrenness.”.

Conflict of civilizations. Easter Island idols now adorn museums in Paris and London, but obtaining these exhibits was not easy. 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, a crowd of natives had to be held back with rifle shots.

Despite the friendly behavior of the brightly colored natives, the Dutch came ashore, prepared for the worst, and lined up in a combat square under the amazed gaze of the owners, who had never seen other people, not to mention firearms.

The visit soon turned dark tragedy. One of the sailors fired. Then he claimed that he allegedly saw the islanders lifting stones and making threatening gestures. The “guests,” on Roggeveen’s orders, opened fire, killing 10-12 hosts on the spot and wounding as many more. The islanders fled in horror, but then returned to the shore with fruits, vegetables and poultry - to appease the ferocious newcomers. Roggeveen noted in his diary an almost bare landscape with rare bushes no higher than 3 m. On the island, which he named in honor of Easter, interest was aroused only unusual statues (heads), standing along the shore 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 lot of construction wood for making mechanisms, were nevertheless able to erect statues (idols) at least 9 m high, and quite voluminous ones at that.

Scientific approach. French traveler Jean Francois La Perouse landed on Easter Island in 1786, accompanied by a chronicler, three naturalists, an astronomer and a physicist. As a result of 10 hours of research, he suggested that in the past the area was wooded.

Who were the Rapanui people?

People settled Easter Island only around the year 400. It is generally accepted 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. Ancient fishing hooks and stone adzes of the Rapanui people found during excavations are similar to the tools used by the Marquesanes.

At first, European sailors encountered naked islanders, but by the 19th century they were weaving their own clothes. However, family heirlooms were more valued than ancient crafts. Men sometimes wore headdresses made from the feathers of birds long extinct on the island. Women wove straw hats. Both of them pierced their ears and wore bone and wooden jewelry in them. As a result, the earlobes were pulled back and hung almost to the shoulders.

Lost Generations - Answers Found

In March 1774, an English captain James Cook discovered about 700 on Easter Island emaciated from the malnutrition of the natives. He suggested that the local economy had been badly damaged by the recent volcanic eruption: this was evidenced by the many stone idols that collapsed from their platforms. Cook was convinced: they were hewn out and placed along the coast by the distant ancestors of the current Rapanui people.

“This work, which took an enormous amount of time, clearly demonstrates the ingenuity and tenacity of those who lived here during the era of the statues’ creation. Today’s islanders almost certainly have no time for this, because they do not even repair the foundations of those that are about to collapse.”

Scientists only recently found the answers to some moai riddles. Analysis of pollen from sediments accumulated in the island's swamps shows that it was once covered with dense forests, thickets of ferns and shrubs. All this was teeming with a variety of game.

Exploring the stratigraphic (and chronological) distribution of finds, scientists discovered in the lower, most ancient layers 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 blocks weighing tens of tons. Pollen of the plant “hauhau” (triumphetta semi-three-lobed) was also found, from the bast of which in Polynesia (and not only) make ropes.

The fact that the ancient Rapanui people had enough food follows from DNA analysis of food remains on excavated dishes. The islanders grew bananas, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, taro, and yams.

The same botanical data demonstrates slow but sure destruction of this idyll. Judging by the contents of swamp sediments, by 800 the forest area was declining. Tree pollen and fern spores are displaced from later layers by charcoal - evidence of forest fires. At the same time, woodcutters worked more and more actively.

Wood shortages began to seriously affect the islanders' way of life, especially their menus. A study of fossilized garbage heaps shows that at one time the Rapa Nui people regularly ate dolphin meat. Obviously, they caught these animals swimming in the open sea from large boats hollowed out from thick palm trunks.

When there was no ship timber left, the Rapanui people lost their “ocean fleet,” and with it their dolphin meat and ocean fish. In 1786, the chronicler of the French expedition La Perouse wrote that in the sea the islanders only caught shellfish and crabs that lived 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 Rapa Nui legends, the supernatural power of “mana” raised the hewn idols, led them to a designated place and allowed them to wander at night, protecting the peace of the makers. Perhaps the clans competed with each other, trying to carve the “moai” larger and more beautiful, and also to place it on a more massive platform than its competitors.

After 1500, practically no statues were made. Apparently, there were no trees left on the devastated island necessary to transport and raise them. Since about the same time, palm pollen has not been found in swamp sediments, and dolphin bones are no longer thrown into garbage dumps. The local fauna is also changing. Disappear all native land birds and half sea birds.

The food supply is getting worse, and the population, which once numbered about 7,000 people, is declining. Since 1805, the island has suffered from raids by South American slave traders: they take away some of the natives, many of the remaining ones suffer from smallpox contracted from strangers. Only a few hundred Rapa Nui survive.

Residents of Easter Island erected "moai", hoping for the protection of the spirits embodied in the stone. Ironically, it was this monumental program that brought their land to an environmental disaster. And the idols rise as eerie monuments to thoughtless management and human recklessness.

The natives who greeted the Dutch sailors on Easter Sunday 1722 seemed to have nothing in common with the giant statues of their island. Detailed geological analysis and new archaeological finds made it possible to uncover the mystery of these sculptures and learn about the tragic fate of the stonemasons.

The island became desolate, its stone sentries fell, and many of them drowned in the ocean. Only the pitiful remnants of the mysterious army managed to rise with outside help.

Briefly about Easter Island

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui in local parlance, 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 place (about 2000 people) in the world - the nearest Town (about 50 people) is 1900 km away, on Pitcairn Island, where the rebellious Bounty crew found refuge in 1790.

The coastline of Rapa Nui is decorated with hundreds of frowning idols - the 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 model: a long nose, drawn-out earlobes, a gloomily compressed mouth and a protruding chin over a stocky torso with arms pressed to the sides and palms resting on the stomach.

Many "moai" are installed with astronomical precision. For example, in one group, all seven statues look at 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, primitive islanders, completely cut off from the rest of the world, managed to process giant monoliths, drag them for kilometers over rough terrain and place them vertically. Many more or less scientific theories were proposed, with many experts believing that Rapa Nui was at one time inhabited by a highly developed people, perhaps bearers of American pre-Columbian culture, who died as a result of some kind of catastrophe.

A detailed analysis of samples of its soil allowed us to reveal the secret of the island. The truth about what happened here can serve as a sobering lesson for people around the world.

Born sailors. Rapanui people once hunted dolphins from canoes dug out of palm trunks. However, the Dutch who discovered the island saw boats made of many planks fastened together - there were no large trees left.

History of the discovery of the island

Despite the friendly behavior of the brightly colored natives, the Dutch went ashore, prepared for the worst, and formed into a battle formation under the astonished gaze of their hosts, who had never seen other people, let alone firearms.

The visit was soon overshadowed by tragedy. One of the sailors fired. Then he claimed that he allegedly saw the islanders lifting stones and making threatening gestures. The “guests,” on Roggeveen’s orders, opened fire, killing 10-12 hosts on the spot and wounding as many more. The islanders fled in horror, but then returned to the shore with fruits, vegetables and poultry - to appease the ferocious newcomers. Roggeveen noted in his diary an almost bare landscape with rare bushes no higher than 3 m. On the island, which he named after Easter, the only things of interest were the unusual statues (heads) standing along the shore on massive stone platforms (“ahu”).

Scientific approach. French traveler Jean Francois La Perouse landed on Easter Island in 1786, accompanied by a chronicler, three naturalists, an astronomer and a physicist. As a result of 10 hours of research, he suggested that in the past the area was wooded.

Who were the Rapanui people?

People settled Easter Island only around the year 400. It is generally accepted that they arrived in huge boats from Eastern Polynesia. Their language is close to the dialects of the inhabitants of the Hawaiian and Marquesas Islands. Ancient fishing hooks and stone adzes of the Rapanui people found during excavations are similar to the tools used by the Marquesanes.

Lost Generations - Answers Found

In March 1774, the English captain James Cook discovered about 700 natives emaciated from malnutrition on Easter Island. He suggested that the local economy had been badly damaged by the recent volcanic eruption: this was evidenced by the many stone idols that collapsed from their platforms. Cook was convinced: they were hewn out and placed along the coast by the distant ancestors of the current Rapanui people.

Scientists have only recently found answers to some of the mysteries of the Moai. Analysis of pollen from sediments accumulated in the island's swamps shows that it was once covered with dense forests, thickets of ferns and shrubs. All this was teeming with a variety of game.

The fact that the ancient Rapanui people had enough food follows from DNA analysis of food remains on excavated dishes. The islanders grew bananas, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, taro, and yams.

The same botanical data demonstrate the slow but sure destruction of this idyll. Judging by the contents of swamp sediments, by 800 the forest area was declining. Tree pollen and fern spores are displaced from later layers by charcoal - evidence of forest fires. At the same time, woodcutters worked more and more actively.

The end of the moai

Stone statues began to appear around the 10th century. They probably represent Polynesian gods or deified local chiefs. According to Rapa Nui legends, the supernatural power of “mana” raised the hewn idols, led them to a designated place and allowed them to wander at night, protecting the peace of the makers. Perhaps the clans competed with each other, trying to carve the “moai” larger and more beautiful, and also to place it on a more massive platform than its competitors.

After 1500, practically no statues were made. Apparently, there were no trees left on the devastated island necessary to transport and raise them. Since about the same time, palm pollen has not been found in swamp sediments, and dolphin bones are no longer thrown into garbage dumps. The local fauna is also changing. All local land birds and half of the sea birds are disappearing.

The inhabitants of Easter Island erected “moai”, hoping for the protection of the spirits embodied in 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.

When mentioning this island, an association usually arises with huge stone idols, installed by no one knows who, how, when and why. However, on a small piece of land in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, so many different mysteries are concentrated that it would be more than enough for an entire continent.

The Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen, who set out from Amsterdam in search of the mysterious South Land, was perhaps not the first European to discover Easter Island. But he was the first to describe it and determine the coordinates. And the European name for the island was given by Roggeveen, whose ships moored to it on April 5, 1722. It was Easter Sunday.

The sailors were met by blacks, redskins and, finally, completely white people who had unusually long earlobes. The ship's log noted that local residents “lit fires in front of very tall stone statues with ...>, which amazed us, since we could not understand how these people, having neither timber nor strong ropes, were able to erect them.” .

The famous captain James Cook landed on the island half a century later, in 1774, and was no less amazed than Roggeveen, noting the incredible contrast between the giant statues and the wretched life of the indigenous population: “It was difficult for us to imagine how the islanders, deprived of technology, were able to install these amazing figures and, in addition, place huge cylindrical stones on their heads,” he wrote.

According to both Cook and Roggeveen, about 3,000 natives lived there, who called their island either Mata-ki-te-Ragi, which means “eyes looking at the sky”, or Te-Pito-o-te-henua, that is, “navel” Earth." Thanks to Tahitian sailors, the island is often called Rapa Nui (translated as “Big Rapa”) to distinguish it from the island of Rapa Iti, which lies 650 km south of Tahiti.

It is now a treeless island with infertile volcanic soil and a population of less than 5,000 people. However, before it was densely forested and full of life, witnessed by giant stone statues - moai, as the aborigines called them. According to local beliefs, the moai contains the supernatural power of the ancestors of the first king of Easter Island, Hotu Matu'a.

Strange, similar to each other, with the same facial expression and incredibly elongated ears, they are scattered throughout the island. Once upon a time, the statues stood on pedestals, facing the center of the island - this was seen by the first Europeans who visited the island. But then all the idols, and there are 997 of them, found themselves lying on the ground.

Everything that exists on the island today was restored in the last century. The last restoration of 15 moai, located between the Rano Raraku volcano and the Poike Peninsula, was carried out by the Japanese in 1992-1995.

On the slopes of this volcano there is a quarry where ancient craftsmen, using basalt cutters and heavy stone picks, carved moai from soft volcanic tuff. The height of most statues is 5-7 m, the height of later sculptures reached 10-12 m. The average weight of a moai is about 10 tons, but there are also much heavier ones. The quarry is full of unfinished statues, work on which was interrupted for an unknown reason.

The moai are located on massive ahu pedestals along the coast of the island at a distance of 10-15 km from the quarries. Ahu reached 150 m in length and 3 m in height and consisted of pieces weighing up to 10 tons. It is not surprising that these giants amazed European sailors, and then the world community. How did the ancient inhabitants of the island manage to do this, whose descendants eked out a miserable existence and did not give the impression of being heroes?

How did they drag fully finished, processed and polished statues through mountains and valleys, while managing not to damage them along the way? How did they perch them on the ahu? How did they then place stone “hats” weighing from 2 to 10 tons on their heads? And finally, how did these sculptors appear on the world's most inland inhabited island?

But these are not all the secrets of Rapa Nui. In 1770, they decided to annex the abandoned piece of land under the name of San Carlos to the possessions of the Spanish crown. When the leader of the Spanish expedition, Captain Felipe Gonzalez de Aedo, drew up an act of annexation of the island and signed it, the leaders of the local tribes also put their signatures under the text - they carefully drew some strange signs on the paper. As intricate as the tattoos on their bodies or the drawings on the coastal rocks. So, there was writing on the island?!

It turns out that there was. In every aboriginal dwelling there were wooden tablets with signs carved on them. The Rapa Nui people called their writing kohau rongorongo. Now in museums around the world there are 25 tablets, their fragments, as well as stone figurines, dotted with the same mysterious signs.

Alas, this is all that remains after the educational activities of Christian missionaries. And even the oldest inhabitants of the island cannot explain the meaning of even one sign, let alone read the text.

In 1914-1915 The leader of the English expedition to Rapa Nui, Mrs. Catherine Scoresby Roughledge, found an old man named Tomenika who was able to write several characters. But he did not want to initiate the stranger into the secret of Rongorongo, declaring that the ancestors would punish anyone who revealed the secret of the letter to the aliens. Catherine Routledge's diaries had barely been published when she herself suddenly died, and the expedition materials were lost...

Forty years after the death of Tomenica, the Chilean scientist Jorge Silva Olivares met his grandson, Pedro Pate, who inherited the rongo-rongo dictionary from his grandfather. Olivares managed to photograph the notebook with the words of the ancient language, but, as he himself writes, “the reel of film turned out to be either lost or stolen. The notebook itself has disappeared.”

In 1956, the Norwegian ethnographer and traveler Thor Heyerdahl learned that the islander Esteban Atan had a notebook with all the ancient writing signs and their meanings in Latin letters. But when the famous traveler tried to look at the notebook, Esteban immediately hid it. Soon after the meeting, the native sailed in a small homemade boat to Tahiti, and no one heard from him or the notebook again.

Scientists from many countries have tried to decipher the mysterious signs, but they have not succeeded so far. However, similarities were discovered between the writing of Easter Island and the hieroglyphics of Ancient Egypt, ancient Chinese picture writing and the writings of Mohenjo-Aaro and Harappa.

Another mystery of the island is related to... its regular disappearance. Only in the 20th century. Several amazing cases have been documented when he quite cleverly “hid” from sailors. So, in August 1908, the Chilean steamer Gloria, after a long voyage, was going to replenish its supply of fresh water there. But when the ship reached the point marked by the navigator, there was no island there!

The calculation showed that the ship had passed straight through the island and was now moving away from it. The captain ordered to turn back, but calculations showed that the Gloria was located right in the center of the island!

20 years later, a tourist liner was supposed to pass several miles from Easter Island, but it was nowhere to be seen even with the most powerful binoculars. The captain immediately sent a sensational radiogram to Chile. The Chilean authorities reacted quickly: a gunboat left the port of Valparaiso towards the mysterious place, but the island was again in its usual place.

During World War II, two German submarines were heading to Easter Island, where a refueling tanker was waiting for them. But there was neither a tanker nor an island at the meeting place. For several hours, the boats plowed the ocean in fruitless searches. Finally, the commander of one of the submarines decided to break the radio silence and got in touch with the tanker. They met only 200 miles from Easter Island, and the second submarine disappeared without a trace...

Many researchers assumed that the local population originated from India, Egypt, the Caucasus, Scandinavia and, of course, Atlantis. Heyerdahl hypothesized that the island was inhabited by settlers from Ancient Peru. Indeed, the stone sculptures are very reminiscent of the figurines found in the Andes. Sweet potatoes, common in Peru, are grown on the island. And Peruvian legends spoke of the battle of the Incas with the people of the northern white gods.

After losing the battle, their leader Kon-Tiki led his people west across the ocean. On the island there are legends about a powerful leader named Tupa who arrived from the east (perhaps this was the tenth Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui). According to the Spanish traveler and scientist of the 16th century. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, at that time the Incas had a fleet of balsa rafts on which they could reach Easter Island.

Using folklore descriptions, Heyerdahl built the Kon-Tiki raft from 9 balsa logs and proved that it was possible to overcome the distance between South America and Polynesia in ancient times. Nevertheless, the theory of the Peruvian origin of the ancient population of Easter Island did not convince the scientific world. Genetic analysis rather points to its Polynesian origin, and the Rapa Nui language belongs to the Polynesian family. Scientists also argue about the date of settlement, calling the time from 400 to 1200.

The possible history of Easter Island (according to later reconstructions) looks like this.

The first settlers erected small statues without “hats” made of stone on their heads, built ceremonial buildings and held festivals in honor of the god Make-Make. Then strangers arrived on the island. Because of their artificially elongated ears, they were nicknamed Hanau-eepe - “long-eared” (Heyerdahl argued that the long-eared ones were the Peruvian Indians who settled on the island around 475, and the aborigines were Polynesians).

Having settled on the Poike Peninsula, they initially lived peacefully, distinguished by their unique culture, the presence of writing and other skills. Arriving on Rapa Nui without women, the newcomers married representatives of the indigenous tribe, who began to be called hanau-momoko - “short-eared”. Gradually, the Hanau-Eepe settled the entire eastern part of the island, and then subjugated the Hanau-Momoko, which aroused hatred from the latter.

From this time on, the construction of stone giants with rough faces began, far from the previous realistic manner. The ahu platforms are constructed with less care, but now they are topped with statues with their backs facing the sea. Perhaps they were transported to the coast on wooden sleds lubricated with fish oil. At that time, most of the island was covered with palm trees, so there were no problems with wooden skating rinks.

But local residents, whom Thor Heyerdahl asked about how giant stone figures were transported in ancient times, answered him that they walked themselves. Heyerdahl and other enthusiasts have found several ways to transport stone idols in an upright position.

For example, with the help of ropes, the moai were tilted, resting on one of the corners of the base, and rotated around this axis using wooden levers. At the same time, groups of riggers used ropes to keep the block from tilting excessively.

From the outside it really seemed that the moai themselves were moving along the paved roads that were actually laid on the island. The problem is that the relief of the volcanic island is literally rugged, and it is not clear how to move multi-ton giants up and down the hills surrounding Rano Raraku.

Be that as it may, the moai were created, moved and placed on pedestals by hanau-momoko under the leadership of hanau-eepe. Such hard labor could not do without victims, and the population of the island, even in the best of times, according to scientists, did not exceed 10-15 thousand people. In addition, cannibalism was practiced on Rapa Nui.

The Rapanui people were a warlike people, as evidenced by the numerous clashes between local residents described in legends. And the defeated often became the main dish during the celebration of victory. Given the dominance of long-eared animals, it is not difficult to figure out whose fate was worse. And the short-eared one eventually rebelled.

The few long-eared ones fled to the Poike Peninsula, where they took refuge behind a wide ditch 2 km long. To prevent the enemy from overcoming the barrier, they cut down the surrounding palm trees and dumped them in a ditch to set them on fire in case of danger. But the short-eared ones in the darkness bypassed the enemies from the rear and threw them into the burning ditch.

All Hanau-Eepe were exterminated. The symbols of their power - the moai - were thrown off their pedestals, and work in the quarries stopped. This epoch-making event for the island probably occurred just shortly after the discovery of the island by Europeans, because at the end of the 18th century. The sailors no longer saw the idols standing on the pedestals.

However, by that time the degradation of the community had become irreversible. Most of the forests were destroyed. With their disappearance, people lost the building materials to make huts and boats. And since the best craftsmen and agronomists were destroyed with the extermination of the long-eared animals, life on Easter Island soon turned into an everyday struggle for existence, the companion of which was cannibalism, which again began to gain momentum.

However, missionaries fought quite successfully against the latter, converting the natives to Christianity. But in 1862, the island was invaded by Peruvian slave traders, who captured and carried away 900 people, including the last king. They destroyed some of the statues, after which many aborigines and missionaries who lived there fled from the island.

And diseases brought by pirates - smallpox, tuberculosis, leprosy - reduced the size of the island’s already small population to a hundred people. Most of the priests of the island died, who buried with them all the secrets of Rapa Nui. The following year, missionaries landing on the island found no signs of the unique civilization that had recently existed, which the locals placed at the center of the world.

by Notes of the Wild Mistress

Easter Island is a small piece of land among the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean. It belongs to Chile, its area is slightly more than 165 square kilometers, and the shape of the island resembles a triangle. The population, numbering about two thousand people, is engaged in sheep breeding and fishing.

Recently, tourism has begun to bring income to local residents. There are more and more people wanting to visit the island. What attracts tourists is that Easter Island is shrouded in unsolved mysteries.

Mysterious Island

This piece of land was discovered back in 1772, when Dutch sailors led by Captain Roggevahn first set foot on it. This happened on Easter Sunday, which is why the island began to be called Easter Island.

Local residents greeted the sailors very warmly. And the Dutch immediately had questions. Firstly, how did these friendly islanders end up here in the first place? Secondly, why are they so different: some are black, others are red, and, among them, white people. Thirdly, how and why do local residents disfigure their ears so much, the lobes of which are cut and greatly stretched. But the most amazing sight awaited the travelers ahead.

Giant stone statues

Roggevahn and his sailors were shocked to discover giant stone statues on the island, which the locals called moai. Most of these statues are between 4 and 10 meters tall. But some giants reach a height of more than 20 meters. The statues have large heads with prominent chins and long ears. No legs at all. Some of them are wearing red stone caps, others are without hats. Some stand on pedestals, others are buried up to their heads.

Now 887 of these statues have survived. They are still located throughout the island and continue to amaze tourists. The question of whether the small, helpless inhabitants of the island could have erected such giants as in the seventeenth century remains unanswered.

According to the stories of Dutch navigators, the aborigines discovered on the island worshiped the deity Mak-Mak. Wooden tablets with writing, called rongo-rongo, were found on the island. The letters were written either from left to right or vice versa. No one was able to decipher the inscriptions. It’s a pity, because they are the ones who could help reveal the secret of the statues and the origin of the inhabitants of Easter Island themselves.

Easter Island hypotheses

For now there are only hypotheses and assumptions. No other records were kept about the island, and oral histories of the islanders' culture became increasingly unclear and vague over time. There is evidence that the aborigines told Captain Cook that twenty-two generations had passed since the leader Hotu Matua led people to the island, but from where, they could not say anything.

According to one of the scientists' hypotheses, the inhabitants of the island sailed to it in canoes and began making statues, using the leaves of giant trees to transport them, and propping up the statues with the trunks of these trees. When Europeans arrived on the island, the entire forest had already been destroyed, and an environmental disaster led to the extinction of the population. Proof that the people of the island could have arrived from overseas can be seen in an ancient image of a boat found on one of the stones.

The famous Norwegian traveler Thor Heyerdahl was sure that the inhabitants of Peru moved to the island, reaching it on their balsa wood rafts. To prove his point, he even made an amazing journey, crossing the ocean with his crew on a homemade raft called the Kon-Tiki. But even if, at the beginning of our millennium, the inhabitants of what is now Peru really sailed to the island, could they have erected giant statues? Something is hard to believe.

What is more reliable - aliens or Atlantis?

Maybe those who claim that there were aliens here are right. Often it is the incredible that suddenly becomes obvious.

There is another interesting hypothesis. The statues were erected by the Atlantean people. They were up to 10 meters tall, and their ancient civilization flourished on the huge continent of Atlantis, of which only a piece remained - Easter Island. The rest sank into the ocean. And the inhabitants who were found by the Dutch expedition appeared on the island after the Atlanteans; perhaps they sailed from Peru.

The mystery of Easter Island will be revealed when the writing on the wooden tablets is deciphered. Or, suddenly, the legendary Atlantis will be discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

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