Out to Solve Enigma of Easter Island

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 962, 3 May 1930, Page 20

Out to Solve Enigma of Easter Island

Riddle of a Vanished Race That Reared an Empire on Tiny Pacific Speck . . . Another Expedition to Attempt Solution of Fascinating Mystery .. .

HAR out in the broad Pacific, a thousand miles from anywhere, there is a treeless, riverless speck of land which holds one of the most mysterious riddles of mankind. Since Easter morning, 1722, when the Dutch Admiral Roggeveen sighted an uncharted isle and was astounded by rows of stone statuary 30 feet high fringing the beach, Easter Island has baffled the efforts of scientists to trace its unique and romantic story. Eldridge R. Johnson is organising an expedition on a scale never before attempted to uncover the secrets hidden in the remains of the vanished race that inhabited Easter Island. He recently signed a contract for a palatial yacht. The 265-foot craft will carry two seaplanes and a powerful radio system. It will have on its boat deck a great laboratory for the study of marine life, worked out during the last year by Mr. Johnson, all the features of a seagoing yacht with those of a houseboat. Mr. Johnsou will sail for Easter Tsland as soon as the boat is ready. He will gather a group of scientists who are experts in prehistoric and Polynesian civilisations and who are competent to interpret and compare whatever facts may be uncovered with what is already known of the early races that dominated South America and the Pacific Archipelago. Easter Island is about thirteen miles long and seven miles wide, covering an area of about fifty square miles. It is roughly shaped like a triangle, with three extinct volcanoes to make it appear more picturesque. There are no trees and no rivers, hut the grass is lush and green. The manager of a Chilean cattle ranch lives there with some 200 natives. It is 2,000 miles east of the South American coast and about 1,000 miles from any large islands on the west. The island is so small that its scanty vegetation could never have supported more than a few thousand persons. The size and number of the monuments on Easter Island indicate that they are the handiwork of thousands of men and that the stone carvings iind monuments must have been made by a people far advanced in the scale of early civilisation. Some of the many questions which arise to bewilder the scientists who have investigated the ruins are:Who were the vanished people that carved the gigantic stone images that cover Easter Island? Where did they come from and how did they vanish? How did they drag these huge statues, weighing tons, from the volcanic crater where they were quarried and mount them on high platforms? What terrific catastrophe suddenly ended this strange carving and construction? How could this bit of land have supported the huge army necessary for this sculpture and engineering work? The vanished race practised neither earth burial nor cremation. Scattered around the island, fringing the coast, are 260 ahu, or burial places—great stone platforms as mysterious in their way as the pyramids of Egypt. The average is fifteen feet high and some of them are 300 feet long. On top of these piles of hewn stone, fitted together with great skill, are the characteristic sculptures of the island. Many of the ahu were topped with from one to fifteen of the statues from three to sixty feet tall. Ou the top of these platforms the bodies of the dead were exposed to the sun and inside of the ahu were vaults for subsequent burial.

The largest platform was eight feet high, nine feet wide and 540 feet long. In front of each platform was a wide paved space, apparently designed to afford standing room for a considerable multitude.

The statues all conform to a distinct type, the figures being but halflength, with upturned faces, long ears and both bands meeting in front of the body. They vary in height from three to 66 feet, and while it was at one time supposed that they represented gods, ethnologists have come to the conviction that they were conventional portrayals of chiefs and other distinguished persons, some of them evidently women, and may be intended to represent the persons buried below them. After a period of exposure to the sun, the body of the deceased was lowered into a vault through an opening in the top of the platform. The opening was then closed with a lid weighing more than a ton.

Upon the head of each statue placed on the top of the ahu wrs fitted a cylindrical crown of bright red volcanic stuff, but when the first white men came most of the statues were prone and the crown scattered on the ground. Whatever catastrophe occurred stopped the work of the cairn and statue builders for all time. Great skill was exercised by these early sculptors in keeping the figures perfect in design and balance so that they were able to maintain their equilibrium in a standiug position. Concerning the origin of the statues there is no puzzle, for the workshop wherein they were made is to be seen on the island, with hundreds of other blocks of stone in various stages of completion. This is the bed of a cold volcano called Rana Roraka, which looms 1,327 feet above the southern coast.

This art factory or studio has a crater four-fifths of a mile in diameter, and its edge forms almost a perfect circle, broken only at a point on the south side through which the lava poured and found its way to the sea. Inside, the cliffs Were sliced into terraces by the miners, the grey compact lava being of a soft character and worked with comparative ease by the simple tools of the artisans. A count of the images brings the total up to 555, many of them lying unfinished outside of the crater, including the largest of all, a 70-foot monolith. Mans' of these stone monuments were- transported six miles to the coast over a road from the quarry. Sixty years ago one of the smaller statues was selected for removal to the British Museum. Its transportation over the relatively short distance, to the shore required the labour of 300 seamen and 200 natives, which only added to the mystery concerning how the ancient race, with perhaps no tools but levers and rollers, was able to move the tremendous monuments from the volcano to the various ahu. Many theories have been advanced as to the history of the island, including the conviction of conservative scientists that Easter Island is merely the pinnacle of a vast continent that gradually sank into the ocean. Another idea advanced is that Easter Island was never any larger, but that vast hordes of religious zealots came in boats and at the peak of religious enthusiasm and ecstasy worked in shifts and used complicated machinery to speed production. To others it seems ail inescapable conclusion that Easter Island was once the necropolis or burial place for the dead kings of a lost empire, consisting of a ring of archinelaeos. which ere the timber, the fibre and the food needed for the erection of the memorial works.

Some unprecedented upheaval must have occurred while the w-ork of carving and erecting the monuments was in progress thus explaining the ninetythree incompleted statues in the crater and 150 more outside, on the rim of Rana Roraka.

Sixty years ago -wooden tablets were found containing strange inscriptions which have baffled all the efforts of scientists at the work of translation. The present-day natives do not know the meaning of the figures and pictures which form this undecipherable writing.

Although the habitations on Easter Island were generally constructed of perishable material, there are remains of some which had a foundation of stone —a sort of kerbstone in which holes were drilled to provide support for the wooden framework, which w-ae* fashioned of poles. The ground plan of such houses was long and narrow —boat-shaped—and the houses were large enough to accommodate from ten to thirty persons. Also, there are

remains of stone chicken houses and round-chambered towers on the coast, which were presumably used as fishing lookouts. The natural caves were used extensively as habitations and some of them were supplemented by frontal walls.

Quite different from the above-men-tioned type of house are those in the “sacred” village of Orongo, located on a narrow and precipitous ridge, between cliff and crater, in the southwest corner of the island. This village contains 48 houses built entirely of stone, some of them more than 100 feet long, built like forts, with walls of hewn and fitted stone six feet thick, their interiors lined with stone slabs and painted with geometrical figures and mythical animals. Another mystery concerns the great number of skeletons found in caves formed by bubbles of volcanic gases,

scores of which are stuffed with human bones. A subterranean chamber of great size has been found containing nothing but skqlls. Some of the skulls were inscribed with peculiar marking, the meaping of which is as obscure as the story of the island. Other remains of the lost race include obsidian spearheads, fish hooks, paddles painted with strange designs, coronets of feathers — perhaps the ceremonial headpieces of the chiefs —adzet and chisels. There are no tools of metal extant, all of the work so far as known being done with stone chisels. The technique of the carvers seems to have been to design the image right in the side of the volcano and then cut the back away from the rock. The crowns were quarried in another crater, which yielded the reddish stone. Many of the scarlet hats intended for the heads of the monuments were found partially finished, with tools scattered about as though the work had been suddenly interrupted. There is a scientific theory that the race which produced the Easter Island sculptures was connected with the peoples of South America,. and a resemblance has been found between the stone busts and the work in the ruins of Tiahuanaca, near Lake Titicaca, in South America. It is believed that, both occupied portions of South America and the eastern groups of the South Pacific when the latter had a great land area. Some evidence has been found that the Easter Island race had an organised culture, with guilds of medicine men, witchcraft, sculpture and scholarship, but the attempts to link them with any other known people have not yet furnished suflicieut proof to stand the scrutiny of science and be accepted as fact. ! Besides the problems already enumerated, the Eldridge Johnson expedition will study one involving the atolls in the Polynesian group a considerable distance away. These coral inlets contain no stone, yet upon them are some of these large stone monuments, obviously hauled from the Easter Island crater. What was the means of transportation? On one of these coral piles is an archway made of two huge stone columns, each the size of a house, with another stone, equally large, resting on top of them. Surmounting the arch is an extremely large stone urn. Here again the prehistoric visitors accomplished a real engineering feat in erecting the arch after they had landed the pieces. Eldridge Johnson has never before been to Easter Island, but during recent years lie has read everything written about it. If tho mystery of Easter Island is to be solved before some new cataclysm removes it. to a possible watery grave, it is probable tffat the concentrated efforts of this expedition will throw* some new light upon the engrossing puzzle.