Before dwelling on the numerous questions, the answers to which the researchers of this mysterious island have been trying to find out for centuries, let us briefly tell you what is reliably known about Easter Island.
Its area is only 118 sq. km, it arose due to volcanic activity, there are as many as seventy craters of extinct volcanoes on the island, and most of the island is protected, belongs to the National Park. Easter Island is located in a place remote from the centers of civilization - in the southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean. If you look from above, it resembles a triangle with sides of 16, 18 and 24 kilometers, from there it is far to get in any direction - to the coast of Chile about 3500 kilometers, to the nearest island - 2000 kilometers.
There is no island more distant from any continent - isn't it in this fact that one should look for answers to the many mysteries of a distant land? Living conditions are extreme - not a single tree grows here, only rare grass. There are no rivers, not even streams, there are only three small lakes in which rainwater accumulates, they are located in the craters of extinct volcanoes, and in the center there is a desert.
The climate is subtropical, warm from November to April, there are excellent sandy beaches and there is no rainy season. The only city with hotels and an airport is Hanga Roa. The island was named after Dutch sailors who landed on the first day of Easter week in 1722. He also has more exotic names - Rapa-Nui - Big Paddle, and also Te-Pito-o-Te-Henua - the Navel of the Universe, and Mata-Ki-Te-Range - the Eye that Looks into the Sky.
Now among the islanders there are representatives of various races: Caucasians, Negroids and representatives of the indigenous peoples of America. They are mainly engaged in fishing and sheep breeding. Despite the modest nature of nature, foreigners also love to visit here: people on this island find peace of mind and are charged with positive energy.
Further solid riddles. Starting with the question: where did the indigenous population come from on the island? Legends speak of the mysterious land of Khiva across the ocean, from where the first islanders came. But to the west or to the east of the island is the legendary land, no legends are reported. And this radically changes the idea of the probable ancestral home of local residents: either America, or Polynesia.
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In antiquity and the Middle Ages, geographers guessed that somewhere to the south of the equator there must be a whole continent, not yet discovered and waiting for its discoverers. There will certainly be found cities and peoples with a high culture.
To clarify this vexing point, in 1722 a small fleet of Dutch Admiral Jacob Roggeven, of three warships belonging to the Dutch West India Company, circled South American Cape Horn, heading east to west. The company - the customer of this enterprise, in addition to the thirst for geographical discoveries, was guided by completely commercial considerations - it was looking for new sources of raw materials and sales markets.
It moved first west of the coast of Chile, and then, heading north, the flotilla unexpectedly found land. The sailors decided that this is the mysterious continent. Soon, however, they had to restrain their appetites: it turned out that the open land is not a continent, but a lonely island, lost among the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean. Since this discovery was made on the Easter holiday, Jacob Roggeven named the island in honor of this holiday.
It was not so easy for sailors who were delighted with their discovery to get to the island. The ships cruised for three days in a row along the northern coast of the island, waiting out the strong surf that prevented them from landing. The boats were launched only on April 10, and about one and a half hundred discoverers landed on the island.
Here is how Karl-Friedrich Behrens, a participant in these events, a sergeant-militia from Mecklenburg, describes the landing and meeting with local residents in a book under the unusual title "The Southerner, or Detailed Description of a Journey Around the World", published in Leipzig in 1738:
“We went ashore in the name of God with a detachment of up to 150 people - the locals surrounded us so closely that we could not step a step and were forced to pave our way by force; and since many of them wanted to take our weapons for themselves, we had to open fire, which made some of them afraid and retreated away, but no more than ten steps, believing that our bullets would not reach further, and again gathered in a crowd. And we had to shoot them again. Then they came to pick up the dead and came up to us with gifts, fruits and all kinds of plants so that we would leave them alone."
Further, the observant traveler describes the rich flora of the island and the abundant harvests of fruits and vegetables that this land gave to its inhabitants. He also described the inhabitants of Easter Island:
“Invariably vigorous, well-built, with strong limbs, but without thinness, very agile in legs, friendly and malleable to affection, but also pretty shy: almost all of them, bringing their gifts, be it chickens or fruits, threw them on the ground and immediately ran away as fast as they could. Their skin is tanned, like gishpans, but some of them are black, and some are completely white; and there are still red-skinned among them, as if they were sunburned. Their ears are long, often reaching to the shoulders; and many have white pieces of wood inserted into their earlobes as special decorations.
Their body is painted (tattooed) with images of birds and various wonderful animals, one more beautiful than the other. Women usually have red paint on their faces … and they wear red and white robes and small caps on their heads, woven of reed or straw; they gathered around us, and sat down, and laughed, and were very friendly, while others called people from their homes to us and waved their hands to them."
However, perhaps the greatest impression on the eyewitness was made by the gigantic statues. In relation to them, the local residents, Sergeant Behrens realized that these were images of gods or idols. The curious Behrens wondered how these statues could have appeared, watching how the islanders “lit fires in front of very tall stone statues that amazed us”, and could not understand “how these people, having neither a drill tree nor strong ropes, were able to build them."
Modern scientists also only construct versions about the gigantic statues, “of which there is a fair amount on the entire coast; they (the islanders) prostrate themselves before them and pray. All these idols were carved out of stone in the form of people with long ears, crowned with a crown, but all this was carved with such skill that we could only be amazed.
Next to these pagan idols, or at some distance from them, large white stones, 20 to 30 paces long, are laid. Some of the worshipers, obviously, served as priests of these idols, for they prayed longer and more sincerely than others. One can also distinguish these priests from other priests by the fact that not only large white pieces of wood hang in their ears, but their heads are shaved off, that is, they are completely devoid of hair … They wear hats of white and black feathers, reminiscent of the plumage of a stork.
The original culture of the islanders did not wait for its researchers - ethnographers, who would carefully document and describe it. What happened in the next fifty years is not known for certain - most likely, an internecine war, as a result of which an archaic civilization perished.
Easter Island as it is
In 1774, the famous English navigator and traveler James Cook sailed to Easter Island, who was also looking for the legendary southern mainland. He found most of the statues thrown off and lying on the ground. Desolation reigned on this once prosperous island. Most of the fields were abandoned. The local residents were in poverty. “It was difficult for us to imagine how the islanders, deprived of technology, were able to establish these amazing figures and, in addition, put huge cylindrical stones on their heads,” the navigator wondered.
No less famous traveler Frenchman Jean François Laperouse, who arrived on the island in 1786, made a detailed map and indicated more accurate coordinates of Easter Island. He began to build versions of what happened here, that the former greatness was replaced by decline. He talked about "the trees that these inhabitants had the imprudence to cut down in very ancient times." Sloppiness and mismanagement of the population, according to La Perouse, were the reason for the decline that befell the island.
“A long stay on the Ile-de-France, which is very similar to Easter Island,” wrote La Pérouse, “taught me that gam trees never sprout, unless they are sheltered from sea winds by other trees or a ring of walls, and this experience allowed me to discover the reason for the devastation of Easter Island. The inhabitants of this island had less reason to complain about the eruption of volcanoes, long extinct, than about their own imprudence."
After La Perouse, for a long time, no one approached the mystery of the island. The Spaniards who arrived on the island at the end of the 18th century were not ethnographers or historians. They pursued economic goals. When European scientists started exploring the island, there were only famous statues, a temple on the edge of the crater of one of the island volcanoes and a few wooden tablets with inscriptions that the researchers have yet to decipher. So far, these mysterious hieroglyphic letters have only been partially read.
In the 19th century, the local population was subjected to devastating raids from the continent.
In 1862, the island survived the attack of the Peruvian slave traders, who captured and hijacked 900 people to extract guano in the Atacama Desert, including the last "ariki" (king). After some time, another 300 residents were captured and taken to the island of Tahiti to work on plantations.
From the next invasion of lovers of profit, not only the indigenous people fled, but even the missionaries who lived there. All of them went out of harm's way, to the Gambier Archipelago stretching west of Easter Island. The population losses were impressive: in a short period of time from 1862 to 1877, the number of inhabitants of the island fell from 2,500 to 111 people.
The rest could not clearly tell anything about the customs of their ancestors. Scientists have suggested that the authors of the statues on Easter Island were Polynesians who settled on this island between the 4th and 12th centuries.
The famous Norwegian traveler Thor Heyerdahl, who began to explore the island in the 1950s, put forward his version of the origin of the indigenous population. In his opinion, it was settled by settlers from Ancient Peru. There is evidence that the island was visited by the Incas on several occasions. The mysterious stone statues are very similar to those found in the South American Andes.
There are also agricultural arguments in favor of this version: the sweet potato, which is grown here, is common in Peru. However, the genetic analysis of the population of Easter Island carried out by scientists shows a different direction - the ancestors of the indigenous people were of Polynesian origin. The Rapanui language spoken by the islanders belongs to the family of Polynesian languages.
According to scientists, around 900 AD, several large boats arrived on Easter Island with several dozen Polynesians, who brought domestic animals and crops with them. An attractive island covered at that time with impenetrable forests appeared to their eyes.
There was everything you need for a completely comfortable life. The civilization thus emerged on the island is flourishing, which lasted from 1000 to 1500. During this era, the population of Easter Island increased to about twenty thousand people. At the same time, about 800 stone statues were cut down, created using stone tools from volcanic tuff in the Rano Raraku crater.
More than 230 statues have been transported in an as yet incomprehensible way from the crater over impressive distances and installed on stone platforms on the coast of the island. Almost 400 more statues, each of which weighed more than 100 tons, remained unfinished. The largest of the statues weighs 270 tons.
However, due to some events, the cutting down of the statues stopped. Presumably there was an internecine conflict. This is indicated by the thousands of obsidian arrowheads and darts discovered by scientists. The conflict caused the statues to be thrown from their pedestals. By the time Jacob Roggeven's squadron arrived on Easter Island, the island's population was about two thousand residents who survived the conflict.
But this is only the supposed path of Easter Island civilization. Whether it really was so, scientists have no certainty. As there are no exact answers to the question of what are the stone statues - moai. Their meaning, purpose, and most importantly - the method of delivery to the installation site.
Local residents assured that the moai protect them and their land from evil spirits. All standing statues are facing the island.
They were transported to their destination in finished form. Three main roads served this purpose. The plinths on which these statues were installed - ahu - stand along the coastline. The largest pedestal is 160 meters long with a central platform of about 45 meters. There were 15 statues on it.
However, the vast majority of the statues are not finished and lie in the quarries located along the ancient roads. Other statues are found in the Rano Raraku crater. Many statues remain unfinished and are in varying degrees of completion. Some have only outlined contours, while others lack only a few final touches when they could be separated from the rock to be taken to the installation site. Still others lie without waiting for dispatch. It seems that at one point something happened on the island that in one fell swoop stopped the creation of moai. The builders, as if on command, finished the work, leaving the tools of labor - stone axes, sledgehammers and chisels - right at their workplace.
Already installed statues, standing on their pedestals, were knocked down and smashed. Their platforms were also broken.
A separate genre that demanded the virtuosity of the ancient masters was the construction of platforms for the statues - ahu. The first ahu are approximately 700-800 years old. In the beginning, blocks were made from which an even pedestal was formed. The blocks were fitted one to one as tightly as possible.
Studies of the roads on which the platforms were moved yielded interesting results. In some places, pillars have been discovered that may have served as supports for levers with which the statues were dragged to the sea. The construction time of these roads was estimated only approximately - it is assumed that the transport of the statues was completed by about 1500.
The researchers hypothesize that these statues were delivered to the installation sites by small groups of people who used a simple technique in the form of strong ropes made of plant fibers, most likely reed, wooden rollers, levers, and set them in a vertical position by pouring stones under them …
The folklore of the inhabitants of this mysterious island has preserved information about the slow sinking of the earth under water, as well as about the catastrophes caused by the god Uvok, who once split the earth with his fiery staff. Perhaps the mainland with an ancient developed civilization or at least rather large islands were still somewhere nearby in ancient times?
Another mystery that has not yet been solved, however, which has a very real chance of being solved, is the mysterious writing on wooden tablets found on Easter Island. Only a small part of them reached us, much more died in the fire of conflicts between the islanders and uninvited guests from overseas. Preserved wooden planks - kohau, made of dark shiny toromiro wood. There are only 25 such tablets in museums around the world.
On these tablets are carved images of stars, spirals, lizards, frogs, turtles, as well as a character of local mythology - a bird-man with wings. They contain about 14 thousand hieroglyphs. The inscriptions on the tablets went from left to right, and then in reverse order. In the 1960s, almost all of them were published by the German ethnographer Thomas Barthel. Scientists have been trying to decipher the hieroglyphic letter of Rongorongo for more than 130 years.
One of the researchers of the language of the indigenous people, Stephen Fisher, studied related languages - Hawaiian, Samoan, Majorian, belonging to the same Polynesian group to decipher the inscriptions. After that, he collected all the data on Rongorongo and even descriptions of the traditions, rituals and beliefs of the inhabitants of Easter Island, for six years he met with all the specialists working in this language, and also got acquainted with the originals of tablets with inscriptions. The result of these efforts was the impressive work published in 1997 by the scientist about the object of his research. Some of the inscriptions were read by him.
For Fischer, the main source for studying the inscriptions was the rod from Santiago - a wooden scepter 126 centimeters long and 6.5 centimeters thick. More hieroglyphs are carved on it than on other artifacts containing the writing of the inhabitants of the island. This symbol of power belonged to one of the Arica - the leaders of the island population. In 1870, the baton was bought by IMF officers from Chile, and it was placed in the Natural History Museum in Santiago.
Fischer realized how to read the texts in 1993, during one of his visits to Chile and Easter Island. Looking through photographs with inscriptions, he drew attention to the fact that the text on the scepter is divided by vertical lines into almost a hundred unequal sections and that a certain hieroglyph was depicted to the right of each line.
The scientist concluded that the text should be read from left to right when he saw the following pattern: in one section, groups of hieroglyphs formed a single line, and in the other, two lines were occupied with the same hieroglyphs, and they broke off from the right edge. This means that the hieroglyph to the right of the dividing line begins the next section of the text. This provided the key to reading the texts. Further research made it possible to translate a fragment of the text from the wand from Santiago.
His preliminary translation is as follows. The image of the bird, followed by the images of the fish and the sun, means: "All Birds united with the Fish and gave birth to the Sun …" If the translation is correct, then the rod depicts the cosmogonic representations of the ancient inhabitants of Easter Island.
Archaeologists managed to reconstruct the very process of applying hieroglyphs to the surface of the wand from Santiago: the carver applied the hieroglyphs first with the help of sharp fragments of obsidian (volcanic glass), and then deepened the drawing with the help of a shark's tooth. The folklore of the islanders testifies that the wands were the first objects on which the text was applied.
Thomas Bartel praised Stephen Fisher's advances in language deciphering. By the way, it was Bartel who managed to clarify the meaning of another tablet: the inscriptions on it represent a calendar. However, scientists are still at the very beginning of the path of revealing one of the secrets of Easter Island.
The language of the inhabitants of Easter Island knew the word that defined slow movement without the help of the legs. In European languages, this word can be translated as "levitation". Perhaps this explains the centuries-old practice of moving huge statues around the island? And at the same time sheds light on perhaps the most mysterious story associated with Easter Island.
Another mystery of Easter Island that defies any intelligible explanation appeared to scientists at the end of the eighties of the XX century. Researchers from the Australian expedition led by Professor R. Myers carried out excavations in a small swamp, during which the remains of a medieval knight, sitting on a horse, were discovered. Swamps, thanks to the conserving properties of the peat in them, well preserve such artifacts that decay just being in the ground.
However, even if the find were made in a less favorable environment, the scientists would still see things that cannot be explained on Easter Island. The knight was dressed in armor that allowed him to determine his origin. He was a member of the Livonian Order, a knightly state in the Baltic states that existed in the 13th-16th centuries. In the rider's wallet were three gold Hungarian ducats from 1326.
It is also important that the rider was not buried. This was established by the nature of the location of the remains. Some researchers are inclined to believe that the appearance of a Livonian knight in the swamp of Easter Island can be regarded as a case of teleportation - a process in which an object moves from one place to another in a very short period of time, almost instantly. There is an assumption that this is one of the hidden skills of the mind.
Some similar cases have been recorded before. In 1620-1631, the novice Maria lived in one of the Spanish monasteries. Without leaving the walls of her native monastery for a long time, she managed to conduct missionary activities among the Indians of Central America. She did not hide this fact, since she kept a diary in which she recorded ethnographic information about the Indians. With a missionary purpose, she made about 500 instant transfers across the Atlantic Ocean.
Naturally, no one believed her stories until in 1631 the monastery was visited by the priest Alonso de Benavides from the Isolito mission in New Mexico, and with him several other clergymen. They confirmed Mary's information about the Indians. It also turned out that the nun presented the Indians with cups made in Spain especially for her monastery.
Now is the time to recall the words in the vocabulary of the indigenous inhabitants of Easter Island that denote movement without the help of legs.
Also an important fact: the knight found on the island was dressed in heavy armor. They are only worn during battle. Perhaps during the battle, the knight was in danger, and his consciousness opened some channels to other dimensions, which allowed him to move many thousands of kilometers, to the other end of the world, from the threatened danger. However, this did not save him. The rider fell into a swamp and sank to the bottom under the weight of his armor.
Easter Island is one of the most mysterious places on our planet. How long will it take to solve its many mysteries? And is it even possible?..
Author: A. V. Dzyuba
"Secrets and mysteries of history and civilization"