Between Eurasia and Australia in the north and South and North America in the south lies the Pacific Ocean - the largest and deepest on Earth. It is here, scientists and mystics suggest, that you need to look for the ancient sunken continent - Pacifida.
Easter Island is surrounded on all sides by the ocean. Chile, which includes the island's territory, is 3703 kilometers, and Tahiti is 4500 kilometers. The island is very small, its area is only 163.6 square kilometers.
In 1578, the Spanish navigator Juan Fernandez set out in search of the unknown Southern Land. Due to the storm, the ship went off course and arrived at a strange island inhabited by white, richly dressed people, completely different from the inhabitants of Peru or the inhabitants of Chile.
The sailors decided that the goal was achieved, and returned to Chile to prepare for a serious expedition to an unknown land. The preparation was kept in secret, therefore, when Juan Fernandez suddenly died, no one could continue his work. The mysterious land was forgotten for many years.
In 1687, the English pirate Edward Davis discovered a low sandy coast south of Chile, and a long strip of land a few dozen kilometers to the west. However, the pirate did not go ashore.
In 1772, a small rocky island was noticed from the ships of the squadron of the Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeven. Since the day was a holiday, Easter, this name was given to the newly discovered land.
All seafarers seem to have seen different lands. But maybe it was still originally a large area of land, which was gradually flooded and changed its shape over the course of decades? Perhaps this land was nothing more than Pacifis, who was living out her last days?
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The hypothesis that Easter Island was previously part of the vast land mass on which representatives of a highly developed civilization lived, has a number of circumstantial evidence. The trail of a lost culture may be an original writing system - hieroglyphs of kohau rongo-rongo that have not yet been deciphered.
A lot of controversy is caused by the various found wooden figurines, petroglyphs, small plastic in stone and, of course, the famous giant stone moai sculptures.
All houses have wooden boards or sticks covered with some kind of hieroglyphic signs. These are the figures of animals unknown on the island; the natives draw them with sharp stones (obsidian). Each figure has its own name; but since they make such tablets on rare occasions, it makes me think that the signs - the remnants of ancient writing - were preserved with them according to the custom they follow, without looking for meaning in it."
Eugene Eyra, the first missionary to arrive on Easter Island
In addition, the islanders have rituals (for example, the rite of choosing the "bird-man") that are not practiced by any other Pacific people.
The Polynesians call Easter Island Rapa Nui, that is, Big Rapa, as opposed to Rapa Iti, that is, Small Rapa, an island located southwest of Easter. British traveler James Cook recorded the name "Waihu", but, most likely, this word was used not for the whole island, but only for its part.
The natives also called their island "Mata-ki-te-Rangi" (Eye of Heaven) and "Hiti-Ai-Rangi" (Land of Heaven). But most often the name "Te-Pito-o-te-Henua" was used, which translates as "The Navel of the Earth". Thor Heyerdahl believed that the island's self-name reflected its true position. A highly developed people lived here. It was from here that culture and scientific knowledge spread among other tribes of the islands of Oceania.
So, maybe, in fact, at first glance, a fantastic theory is confirmed? Was this tiny island once the center of a vast continent, the heart of a highly developed ancient civilization?
If Easter Island were part of the Pacifida, which once went under water, the memory of this, as well as of the grand catastrophe, would surely be preserved in myths, legends, and traditions. And such legends do exist.
True, it is necessary to make a reservation: most likely, these legends have little in common with ancient legends - in the 19th century, Peruvian slave traders attacked the island and took out all the men from there to be sold into slavery; at the request of the governments of England and France, the surviving islanders were returned to their homeland, but a smallpox epidemic broke out on the ship, and only 15 people survived; they brought the disease to Easter Island, and soon only 111 of the population remained.
And they, in turn, were very quickly and very deftly converted to Christianity, so that the last threads connecting the islanders with their ancient culture were cut off. Even ancient tablets with inscriptions were burned as "pagan" or safely hidden from prying eyes.
Later, the Bishop of Tahiti Jossan got several miraculously preserved wooden tablets. However, he "did not see writing on them that would connect separate concepts with each other." There was nothing like "animals unknown on the island" either.
Jossant did not find any convincing evidence that the tablets and the writing system belonged to antiquity. The bishop wrote:
“If they did exist, as Brother Eiro's message seems to indicate, one can only assume that they were all victims of the flame. How sad that none of the ancient tablets have reached us! Those that I saved clearly belong to a later time, and I am almost sure that they represent only the remains of the written language of the past, because we see on them only what is in the nature of this small island."
To date, attempts to decipher the writing of Easter Island have yielded no results. At the very least, this kind of research does not help answer the main question: was Easter Island part of a large Pacific continent?
Jossant interpreted one of the signs as an image of a rat. Thor Heyerdahl, in the same hieroglyph, saw a feline similar to a jaguar: "A round head with a fiercely open mouth, a thin neck and a strongly arched torso, resting on long bent legs." However, cats have never been found on Easter Island, so Heyerdahl suggested that the islanders' writing was of South American origin. The explorer von Hevesy "read" the same sign as "monkey", which gave him reason to associate the writing of Easter Island with an ancient civilization that existed about 5,000 years ago in the Indus River valley. There is also an opinion that this hieroglyph means a person.
Over the years, science has not come to an agreement on the correct interpretation of this sign.
However, the very fact of having a written language testifies to a lot.
The emergence of writing is a sure sign of the birth of a state. Once a single tribe is stratified into classes, it becomes necessary to regularly and accurately record facts, describe the events that are taking place. Consequently, if a letter existed on Easter Island, it means that there was also a state, at least primitive and incipient.
In 1913, Macmillan Brown, exploring the Pacific Islands, met with a tribe living in the small atoll of Woleai, Micronesia, at the opposite end of Oceania from Easter. The tribe numbered only 600 people. Five members of this tribe owned a unique script, not similar to any of the existing ones. It would be strange to assume that the creator of this letter is one of those five people.
Of course, there were cases when the aborigines of North and West Africa, as well as Alaska, invented their own writing, but only after becoming acquainted with the European letter writing, and in the new icons, elements of the Latin alphabet or outlines of objects of sale were guessed. The letters of the Voleai people were unique.
Brown was convinced that this writing was created by representatives of a large, well-organized community, residents of a large state that once existed in this part of the Pacific Ocean.
It turned out that on opposite ends of Oceania there lived two small peoples who possessed a distinctive script, which indicates the existence of a civilization and a state among them. Maybe Micronesia and Easter Island are the last oases where the remains of a dead highly developed civilization - Pacifida - have been preserved? Maybe they trace their history from this lost continent?
The gigantic stone statues of the moai - the famous symbol of Easter Island - are one of the planet's greatest mysteries. Moai (heads and bodies without legs) are monolithic, hewn from a single stone (from a single piece of compressed volcanic ash). They all share similar features: heavy square chins, elongated earlobes, and high foreheads.
However, each moai has a special, unique appearance, as if the sculptors were trying to convey a portrait likeness. Now the statues have empty eye sockets, but scientists have proven that moai once had eyes made of coral.
Most of the statues stand on the coast and look inland, but seven moai face the sea and are far enough from the water.
Scientists are heatedly debating whether moai represent images of humans or aliens from space.
The height of the moai ranges from 3 to 21 meters, and the weight is from 10 to 90 tons. An unfinished statue was found on the island - 20 meters high and weighing 270 tons. There are 997 moai on the island, 394 of which are unfinished and abandoned in the quarries.
Some of the statues were installed on ahu - special stone platforms, probably intended for some kind of ritual. The stone blocks are not fastened with any mortar, but they fit so precisely that it is impossible to insert even a thin knife blade into the gap between them. The heads of the statues are crowned with pucau - cylindrical caps made of red stones.
Moai were made in quarries located in the interior of the island, in the craters of volcanoes, and then delivered to the installation site. Some of the statues remained in the quarries. One gets the impression that work on the construction of the moai was hastily stopped, and the statues were abandoned to their fate.
Perhaps the reason for this was a natural disaster, a natural disaster, after which there was no one to continue working. Or maybe uninvited guests came to the island, again, people or aliens, who destroyed most of the indigenous population.
There are no rivers, streams or lakes on Easter Island. The source of fresh water is the volcano craters located along the edges of the island. They have several lakes with rainwater.
According to the official version, the giant statues were created by order of the ruling elite of the island - the so-called long-eared (it was they who had the very elongated earlobes - the aristocrats wore massive jewelry that stretched the lobes). Short-earedness was a sign of belonging to the poor strata, to the rabble - it was this very rabble that created moai by order of the rulers. In the 16th century, the short-eared revolts, which ended in victory, and stopped making moai.
However, how did the islanders, who did not know iron, hew out the statues of many tons and how did they manage to deliver them to the installation site? The natives claimed that the moai moved on their own. Perhaps the ancient inhabitants of Easter had telekinetic abilities and could force the statues to move through the effort of thought?
Thor Heyerdahl conducted an interesting experiment. He asked the last representatives of the long-eared clan to reproduce all the stages of the creation of the moai. A group of natives went to the quarry, where they used stone hammers to hew out the statue. Hammers, which quickly fell into disrepair, were immediately replaced with new ones.
The natives then moved the 12-ton statue to the site. The statue was dragged in a horizontal position, mobilizing for this a large group of assistants, then raised to a vertical position using a device made of stones and logs - stones were placed under the base of the statue, three logs were used as a lever.
The islanders who participated in the experiment told Heyerdahl that, although moai have not been built for a long time, the secrets of their creation are passed from mouth to mouth, from the elders to the younger, and the old people make the young people repeat what they heard over and over again until they are sure that the knowledge is firmly acquired …
In 1986, Heyerdahl, together with the Czech engineer and experimental archaeologist Pavel Pavel, set up another experiment. It turned out that a group of seventeen people were able to drag a vertically placed 20-ton statue, tied with ropes, by turning it over.
There is also an opinion that the islanders "brought" moai to the place of installation on a bed of rolling round logs.
So, in order to move the moai, you do not need to have extraordinary abilities, such a task is quite within the power of ordinary people, and even those who do not even know technical progress.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, according to European travelers who attended Easter, most of the moai statues stood upright. But something or someone threw the stone giants from their pedestals. And again, an obvious, at first glance, answer arises. The statues fell due to the outbreak of a natural disaster or the invasion of the conquerors, that is, for the same reasons for which the natives abandoned their work in the quarries.
According to the testimony of seafarers who visited Easter Island during the 18th-19th centuries, the statues fell gradually. Year after year, fewer and fewer statues remained that remained upright. In 1838, Admiral Dupétis-Toir reported nine standing moai, and soon all the stone giants of Easter Island were on the ground. Only the statues dug into the ground near the Rano Raraku quarry escaped this fate.
So who do the stone giants represent? And why were they created and placed on the seashore for decades, if not centuries?
The first answer that arises is that moai are figures of gods. Quite a reasonable hypothesis. True, there is one "but". Today, only 4888 people live on this small island. It is unlikely that in ancient times the population of Easter was significantly larger. It turns out that about every ten people there was one statue. Are there too many sacred images?
There is a version that stone moai are the ancestors of the Easter aborigines. This hypothesis explains why the statues have different heights: supposedly, the size of the moai reflects the merits of one or another ancient islander.
It is also believed that the moai were supposed to protect the island from the advancing sea: either as breakwaters, or as magical guards.
Finally, some researchers believe that Easter Island once served as a temple for guests from a parallel universe, where they performed cult rituals, and stone statues served precisely for these purposes. When, for unknown reasons, the window to the parallel universe slammed shut, work on creating new statues stopped.
