EASTER ISLAND.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4812, 18 February 1925, Page 3

EASTER ISLAND.

MYSTERY OF THE PACIFIC.

MACMILLAN BROWN'S THEORY.

T.he Pacific has many mysteries, but none is quite so baffling as that of Easter Island. It is a mystery, too, that increases with knowledge; for to study the main mystery—the gigantic statuary and masonry, and the evidence of thousands of workers suddenly throwing down their hammers, chisels, and flies (all of stone), and never taking them up again—is only to discover subsidiary mysteries that so far have defied solution. The theory generally accepted as to the origin of the great frowning statues and cyclope/in masonry work is that Easter Island was selected as a mausoleum for departed Polynesian chiefs. In “The Riddle of tlic Paciffic,' Professor J. Macmillan Brown, Chanr cellor of the University of New Zealand, suggests that the island was the centre of a great populous archipelago, which has disappeared in some vast and comparatively modern subsidence. In 1576, when Juan Fernandez, the famous Spanish navigator,

was making a voyage from Callau to Valparaiso, he bore away to the •' south-west in order to avoid the baf- - fling winds and currents which made the voyage difficult all the year round. For a month he sailed southward, .and then he came to a strange land—-the lost archipelago ?—which he assumed to be the Great Southern Continent. - that so many voyagers had set out to ' find but had never succeeded in doing so up to that time. He saw tne mouths of great rivers, ami of white natives well clad—“and very different,’’ he says, “from those of Chile and Puru.” Fernandez went to Chile to refit his little ship, intending a serious voyage of discovery; meanwhile he would keep the finding of this land of great rivers and •'white, well-clad natives a profound secret. But death came before he could carry out this purpose. . j-rofeesor Brown does not discredit tins, though he pointt.s out that Fei* nandez was already obsessed with the idea that such an undiscovered land existed. Other navigators have reported the discovery of islands that seem to most certainly, have disappeared soon afterwards, flor though latitude and longitude were_ given U hits.not been possible to find any trace of them. This brings us to the time (possibly) when there was that sudden and mysterious cessation of .wiork on Easter Island. Had the workers learned of some cataclysm and fled panic-stricken to their great canoes—- ’ only to perish likewise ? They certainly were not natives, of Easter island, for the island would never have supported such a population as we must assume would be required to convert an island -ofl 30,000 acres into :>n immense mausoleum. Professor Brown inclined to the opinion that there was a hiatus between the ar- **■' rival of the present inhabitant's and <>C the disappearance of this great •ii'my of workers, engineers, and architects. There, had been burials (here before the sudden and mysterious exodus. He saw skeletons taken from the burial vaults, and he noted (he strong chins and the Caucasoid features which are so characteristic of the great statues. But all this throws no light on the main problem—the cause of the sudden cessation of work. * At the same ._t ! me it raises other problems just ais baffling. The statues were made out ofcomparatively soft material —a sort oH agglomerate of clay and rock. They* were intended to be, as far as it was humanly possible, everlasting memorials to the great dead. Why, then, were they made out of comparatively perishable material, whereas the great system of terraces was made out of immense blocks of the basalt accurately fitted together, and in most instances beautifully tooled ; but here and there showing rough, crude work, a< though ofl a later and less skilled hand. And why were the statues, in many instances, set upon their narrow bases in such a way that before many years had passed they must inevitably fall—as they have fallenthrough the ravages of wind and weather ? For scores of them, Professor. Brown says, were just set up on earth ( without even being dug in to give them stability. . Professor Brown ■ raises these questions, but does not answer them. In regard to the terraces, he takes it for granted that these were cut with primitive ■stone tools, fjuch as we know were used by the sculptors. He suggests that this might be done with, such primitive appliances aided by the use of sand and water as an abrasive, given sufficient time, labour, and concentration. To an archeologist .this may be a possible explanation, though surely not an entirely’convincing one. To an •. ngineer it might not be even ,a pos- ! i ible explanation, seeing that the material is adamantine in its hard)ies«^_so hard, indeed, that it could be worked only with tools made of a special quality of steel. This difficult point is admitted by Professor Brown. It would be strange if archeology should prove to have been completely at fault in regard to the connection between the memorial statues and the terraces. May-it not be that the terf. races—in the main, at any rate —are work of a civilisation that had perished ages and ages. ago ? A dim legend of a Lemuria, a great Pacific . continent, is of immemorial antiquity. The continent itself hats sunk beneath the. Pacific, but its highest peaks (some hold), may still be seen in rock-ribbed tropic islands of singular loveliness. Such a theory would have, at least, some geological justification. If true, it might explain away the anomaly of perishable memorial . ; statues being set up upon an imperishable base. It would mean that the statue makcivs found the terraces read to hand and so decided to make use of them. It inignt explain awav some other anomalies, too ; for if it be assumed that the terraces and '' sfatury arc contemporaneous, then there is evidence of the sculptors oh the one side and the terrace architects atm their engineers on the other being sometimes at explicable- cross purposes. However this might be, Easter Island would still remain “The

Mystery of the Pacific.” Professor Brown’s work, though concerned mainly with Easter Island, covers a much wider range than this, for in it he considers ethnological and lingual problems of the whole of the Polynesia. The work is profusely illustrated.