In the South Pacific Ocean between America and Asia is Easter Island. A piece of land far from populated areas and torny sea roads would hardly have attracted anyone's attention, if not for the giant statues carved from volcanic tuff hundreds of years ago. There are no minerals or tropical vegetation on the island. The climate is warm, but not as mild as on the islands of Polynesia. There are no exotic fruits, no hunting, no smart fishing. Moai statues are the main attraction of Easter Island or Rapanui, as it is called in the local dialect.
Now the statues attract tourists, and they were once the curse of the island. Not only explorers like James Cook sailed here, but also slave hunters. The island was not homogeneous socially and ethnically, and bloody strife broke out among the population, the purpose of which was to fill up and destroy the statues belonging to the clan of enemies. As a result of landscape changes, civil strife, disease and food shortages, the island's population has practically disappeared. Only the interest of researchers and a slight softening of morals allowed those few dozen unfortunates who were found on the island by Europeans in the middle of the 19th century to survive.
The researchers ensured the interest of the civilized world in the island. Unusual sculptures have given food to scientists and not very minds. Rumors spread about extraterrestrial interference, disappeared continents and lost civilizations. Although the facts only testify to the extraterrestrial stupidity of the inhabitants of Rapanui - for the sake of a thousand idols, a highly developed people with a written language and developed skills in stone processing disappeared from the face of the Earth.
1. Easter Island is a real illustration of the “end of the world” concept. This edge, due to the sphericity of the Earth, can at the same time be considered the center of its surface, the “navel of the Earth”. It lies in the most uninhabited part of the Pacific Ocean. The nearest land - also a small island - is more than 2,000 km, to the nearest mainland - more than 3,500 km, which is comparable to the distance from Moscow to Novosibirsk or Barcelona.
2. In shape, Easter Island is a fairly regular right-angled triangle with an area of less than 170 km2... The island has a permanent population of about 6,000 people. Although there is no electrical grid on the island, people live in a rather civilized way. Electricity is obtained from individual generators, the fuel for which is subsidized by the Chilean budget. The water is either collected independently or taken from a water supply system built with a government subvention. Water is pumped from lakes located in the craters of volcanoes.
3. The climate of the island in digital terms looks just great: the average annual temperature is about 20 ° C without sharp fluctuations and a decent amount of rainfall - even in dry October there are several rains. However, there are several nuances that prevent Easter Island from turning into a green oasis in the middle of the ocean: poor soil and the absence of any obstacles to the cold Antarctic winds. They do not have time to influence the climate in general, but they cause trouble for plants. This thesis is confirmed by the abundance of vegetation in the craters of volcanoes, where the winds do not penetrate. And on the plain there are now only trees planted by man.
4. The island's own fauna is very poor. Of the land vertebrates, only a couple of lizard species are found. Marine animals can be found along the coast. Even the birds, which the Pacific islands are so rich in, are very few. For eggs, the locals swam to an island located at a distance of more than 400 km. There is fish, but it is relatively small. While hundreds and thousands of fish species are found near other islands in the South Pacific Ocean, there are only about 150 of them in the waters of Easter Island. Even corals off the coast of this tropical island are almost absent due to too cold water and strong currents.
5. People several times tried to bring “imported” animals to Easter Island, but each time they were eaten faster than they had time to breed. This happened with the edible Polynesian rats, and even with rabbits. In Australia, they did not know how to deal with them, but on the island they ate them in a couple of decades.
6. If there were any minerals or rare earth metals found on Easter Island, a democratic form of government would have been established there long ago. A popularly and repeatedly elected ruler would receive a couple of dollars per barrel of oil produced or a couple of thousand dollars per kilogram of some molybdenum. The people would be fed by organizations like the UN, and everyone, except the mentioned people, would be in business. And the island is as naked as a falcon. All the worries about him lie with the Chilean government. Even the flow of tourists that has increased in recent years is not reflected in any way on the Chilean treasury - the island is exempt from taxes.
7. The history of applications for the discovery of Easter Island begins in the 1520s. It seems that a Spaniard with a strange non-Spanish name Alvaro De Mendanya saw the island. Pirate Edmund Davis reported on the island, allegedly 500 miles off the western coast of Chile, in 1687. Genetic examination of the remains of migrants from Easter Island to other islands of the Pacific Ocean showed that they are descendants of the Basques - this people were famous for their whalers who plowed the northern and southern seas. The question was helped to close the poverty of an unnecessary island. The Dutchman Jacob Roggeven is considered the discoverer, who mapped the island on April 5, 1722, the day, as you might guess, Easter. True, it was obvious to the members of the Roggeven expedition that the Europeans had already been here. The islanders reacted very calmly to the skin color of the aliens. And the lights that they lit to attract attention indicated that travelers with such skin had already been seen here. Nevertheless, Roggeven secured his priority with properly executed papers. At the same time, Europeans first described the statues of Easter Island. And then the first skirmishes between the Europeans and the islanders began - they climbed onto the deck, one of the frightened junior officers ordered to open fire. Several Aboriginal people were killed, and the Dutch had to hastily retreat.
Jacob Roggeven
8. Edmund Davis, who missed at least 2,000 miles, with his news provoked the legend that Easter Island was part of a huge densely populated continent with an advanced civilization. And even after strong evidence that the island is actually the flat top of a seamount, there are people who believe in the legend of the mainland.
9. Europeans showed themselves in all their glory during their visits to the island. The locals were shot at by members of the expedition of James Cook, and the Americans who captured slaves, and other Americans who captured exclusively women in order to have a pleasant night. And the Europeans themselves testify to this in the ship's logs.
10. The darkest day in the history of the inhabitants of Easter Island came on December 12, 1862. Sailors from six Peruvian ships landed ashore. They mercilessly killed women and children, and took about a thousand men into slavery. Even for those times it was too much. The French stood up for the aborigines, but while the diplomatic gears were turning, only a little more than a hundred remained of a thousand slaves. Most of them were sick with smallpox, so only 15 people returned home. They also carried smallpox with them. As a result of illness and internal strife, the population of the island has decreased to 500 people, who later fled to the nearby - by the standards of Easter Island - islands. The Russian brig "Victoria" in 1871 discovered only a few dozen inhabitants on the island.
11. William Thompson and George Cook from the American ship "Mohican" in 1886 carried out an enormous research program. They examined and described hundreds of statues and platforms, and collected large collections of antiques. The Americans also excavated the crater of one of the volcanoes.
12. During the First World War, the Englishwoman Catherine Rutledge lived on the island for a year and a half, collecting all possible oral information, including conversations with lepers.
Katherine Rutledge
13. The real breakthrough in the exploration of Easter Island came after the expedition of Thor Heyerdahl in 1955. The pedantic Norwegian organized the expedition in such a way that its results were processed for several years. Several books and monographs have been published as a result of the research.
Tour Heirdal on the Kon-Tiki raft
14. Research has shown that Easter Island is purely volcanic in origin. Lava gradually poured out of an underground volcano located at a depth of about 2,000 meters. Over time, it formed a hilly island plateau, the highest point of which rises about a kilometer above sea level. There is no evidence that the underwater volcano is extinct. On the contrary, microcraters on the slopes of all the mountains of Easter Island show that volcanoes can sleep for millennia, and then surprise people like the one described in Jules Verne's novel “The Mysterious Island”: an explosion that destroys the entire surface of the island.
15. Easter Island is not a remnant of a large mainland, so the people who inhabited it had to sail from somewhere. There are few options here: the future inhabitants of Easter came either from the West or from the East. Due to the lack of factual materials in the presence of fantasy, both points of view can be reasonably justified. Thor Heyerdahl was a prominent "Westerner" - a supporter of the theory of the settlement of the island by immigrants from South America. The Norwegian was looking for evidence of his version in everything: in the languages and customs of peoples, flora and fauna, and even in ocean currents. But even despite his enormous authority, he failed to convince his opponents. The supporters of the "eastern" version also have their own arguments and proofs, and they look more convincing than the arguments of Heyerdahl and his supporters. There is also an intermediate option: the South Americans first sailed to Polynesia, recruited slaves there and settled them on Easter Island.
16. There is no consensus on the time of settlement of the island. It was first dated to the 4th century AD. e., then VIII century. According to radiocarbon analysis, the settlement of Easter Island generally took place in the XII-XIII centuries, and some researchers even attribute it to the XVI century.
17. The inhabitants of Easter Island had their own pictographic writing. It was called "rongo rongo". Linguists found that even lines were written from left to right, and odd lines were written from right to left. It has not yet been possible to decipher the "rongo-rongo".
18. The first Europeans who visited the island noted that local residents lived, or rather slept in stone houses. Moreover, despite poverty, they already had social stratification. The wealthier families lived in oval houses located near stone platforms that served for prayers or ceremonies. Poor people settled 100-200 meters further. There was no furniture in the houses - they were intended only for shelter during bad weather or sleep.
19. The main attraction of the island is the moai - giant stone sculptures made mainly of basalt volcanic tuff. There are more than 900 of them, but almost half remained in the quarries either ready for delivery or unfinished. Among the unfinished ones is the largest sculpture with a height of just under 20 meters - it is not even separated from the stone massif. The tallest of the statues installed is 11.4 meters high. The "growth" of the rest of the moai ranges from 3 to 5 meters.
20. Initial estimates of the weight of the statues were based on the density of basalts from other regions of the Earth, so the numbers turned out to be very impressive - the statues had to weigh tens of tons. However, then it turned out that the basalt on Easter Island is very light (about 1.4 g / cm3, approximately the same density has pumice, which is in any bathroom), so their average weight is up to 5 tons. More than 10 tons weigh less than 10% of all moai. Therefore, a 15-ton crane was enough to lift the currently standing sculptures (by 1825, all the sculptures were knocked down). However, the myth about the enormous weight of the statues turned out to be very tenacious - it is very convenient for the supporters of the versions that the moai were made by representatives of some extinct super-developed civilization, aliens, etc.
One of the versions of transportation and installation
21. Almost all of the statues are male. The vast majority are decorated with a variety of patterns and designs. Some of the sculptures stand on pedestals, some are just on the ground, but they all look into the interior of the island. Some of the statues have large mushroom-shaped caps that resemble lush hair.
22. When, after the excavations, the general state of affairs in the quarry became more or less clear, the researchers came to the conclusion: the work was stopped almost immediately - this was indicated by the degree of readiness of the unfinished figures. Perhaps the work stopped due to hunger, epidemic or internal conflict of residents. Most likely, the reason was still hunger - the resources of the island were clearly not enough to feed thousands of inhabitants and at the same time contain a large number of people engaged only in statues.
23. The methods of transporting the statues, as well as the purpose of the sculptures on Easter Island, are the subject of serious debate. Fortunately, the island's researchers do not skimp on experiments, both on site and in artificial conditions. It turned out that the statues can be transported both in the “standing” position, and “on the back” or “on the stomach”. This does not require a large number of workers (their number in any case is measured in tens). Complex mechanisms are not needed either - ropes and logs-rollers are enough. Approximately the same picture is observed in experiments on the installation of sculptures - the efforts of a couple of dozen people are enough, gradually lifting the sculpture with the help of levers or ropes. Questions certainly remain. Some of the statues cannot be installed in this way, and tests were carried out on medium-sized models, however, the principle possibility of manual transportation has been proven.
Transportation
Climb
24. Already in the 21st century, during excavations, they discovered that some of the statues have an underground part - torsos dug into the ground. During the excavations, ropes and logs were also found, clearly used for transportation.
25. Despite the remoteness of Easter Island from civilization, quite a lot of tourists visit it. We'll have to sacrifice a lot of time, of course. The flight from the Chilean capital Santiago takes 5 hours, but comfortable planes fly - the landing strip on the island can even accept the Shuttles, and it was built for them. On the island itself there are hotels, restaurants and some kind of recreation infrastructure: beaches, fishing, diving, etc. If it were not for the statues, the island would have passed for an inexpensive Asian resort. But who would then get to him halfway across the globe?
Easter Island airport
