Rapa Nui
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==The sunken continent== | ==The sunken continent== | ||
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To the nineteenth century eye Easter island was a mysterious treeless place with a vast quarry containing hundreds of abandoned incomplete statues, wide stone roads leading down the island and into the deeps below and ignorant locals whose explanation of the movement of the statues was that they walked from the quarry to their appointed sites across the island. | To the nineteenth century eye Easter island was a mysterious treeless place with a vast quarry containing hundreds of abandoned incomplete statues, wide stone roads leading down the island and into the deeps below and ignorant locals whose explanation of the movement of the statues was that they walked from the quarry to their appointed sites across the island. | ||
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This all fitted together as the theory of Mu, the great lost southern continent whose only remains were a small island which was once a mountain peak with a large statue quarry. | This all fitted together as the theory of Mu, the great lost southern continent whose only remains were a small island which was once a mountain peak with a large statue quarry. | ||
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Mu and the idea of Rapa Nui as being the remnant of a larger submerged inhabited land is now deprecated as a scientific theory, because while the island would have been larger during the low sea levels of the last ice age, sea level is no longer believed to have altered during the time it has been inhabited: | Mu and the idea of Rapa Nui as being the remnant of a larger submerged inhabited land is now deprecated as a scientific theory, because while the island would have been larger during the low sea levels of the last ice age, sea level is no longer believed to have altered during the time it has been inhabited: | ||
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In the 1930s Metraux visited the island and identified the "roads" as natural lava flows. | In the 1930s Metraux visited the island and identified the "roads" as natural lava flows. | ||
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Mapping of the toppled statues had established that the current coastline is almost circled by statue complexes (ahus), indicating that the statues were likely to have been placed when sea levels were much as they are today. | Mapping of the toppled statues had established that the current coastline is almost circled by statue complexes (ahus), indicating that the statues were likely to have been placed when sea levels were much as they are today. | ||
| − | + | The main statue producing quarry is now considered to have been demarcated into many different clan areas, littered with hundreds of incomplete statues abandoned after encountering inclusions of harder rock. While the previous concept of the quarry as one vast production line implied far more statues than are known, the modern interpretation of the site is not inconsistent with the number of known statues, and a sunken continent is no longer required to explain the size of the quarry. | |
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==Were the statue builders Polynesian?== | ==Were the statue builders Polynesian?== | ||
Revision as of 02:31, 20 July 2010
Rapa Nui, sometimes known in English as Easter island, is a volcanic island in the south eastern Pacific ocean, and one of the most isolated inhabited islands on earth. It was first settled by Polynesians in the first millennium CE, who in their geographic isolation developed a unique variant of Polynesian culture, which after a statue building phase, entered a final pre/early contact phase that featured a religious trial by ordeal, the birdman contest by which they reserved scarce wild bird eggs for the clan of that years winning birdman. Aside from their iconic statues (an outsize variant of wider Polynesian culture), their shortage of wood and abundance of workable stone prompted a strongly lithic culture which, despite the depredations of century sheep farmers who rearranged much of the archaeology into stone walls, and late twentieth century airport builders who reused much of the worked stone from one end of the island as hardcore for the islands unusually long runway; have left us a large archaeological legacy including petroglyphs (especially of vulvas), unusual dryland agricultural adaptations, fortified cave complexes and the aforementioned statues.
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Contact
Apart from a possible visit by pirates, Rapa Nui's first contact with European "civilisation" was a visit by the Dutch on the 5th of April 1722. Without the consent of the islanders the Dutch attempted to rename Rapa Nui after a religious festival they were celebrating, an act of disrespect that still has repercussions to this day. Due to a combination of western diseases, slave raids, civil war, famines and possibly ecological degradation, its inhabitants, the Rapa nui suffered a population decline of 99% or more in the first century and a half of European contact. They have since partially reversed the population decline, but their contemporary culture has been greatly altered by the demographic bottleneck and christianisation that came close to extirpating their unusual culture.
Its isolation, distinctive large Moai statues, mysterious unique and until recently untranslatable Rongorongo writings, lack of historical records, iconic status in popular culture, dramatically changing scientific theories and cultural definition of incest that severely restricts marriage choices among the Rapa nui, have made it an irresistible lure for pseudo historians, pseudo archaeologists, slave raiders, missionaries and sundry adventurers.
Some of the irrational pseudo archaeology associated with the island started out as scientific theories, but continued and even expanded on the theory after newer finds had disproved the original scientific thesis. Others rely on a selective use of material that has the effect of both denying the ingenuity of the Rapa nui, and of downplaying or even denying the horrific crimes carried out against them, and then there's the extraterrestrial stuff.
The sunken continent
To the nineteenth century eye Easter island was a mysterious treeless place with a vast quarry containing hundreds of abandoned incomplete statues, wide stone roads leading down the island and into the deeps below and ignorant locals whose explanation of the movement of the statues was that they walked from the quarry to their appointed sites across the island.
This all fitted together as the theory of Mu, the great lost southern continent whose only remains were a small island which was once a mountain peak with a large statue quarry.
Mu and the idea of Rapa Nui as being the remnant of a larger submerged inhabited land is now deprecated as a scientific theory, because while the island would have been larger during the low sea levels of the last ice age, sea level is no longer believed to have altered during the time it has been inhabited:
In the 1930s Metraux visited the island and identified the "roads" as natural lava flows.
Mapping of the toppled statues had established that the current coastline is almost circled by statue complexes (ahus), indicating that the statues were likely to have been placed when sea levels were much as they are today.
The main statue producing quarry is now considered to have been demarcated into many different clan areas, littered with hundreds of incomplete statues abandoned after encountering inclusions of harder rock. While the previous concept of the quarry as one vast production line implied far more statues than are known, the modern interpretation of the site is not inconsistent with the number of known statues, and a sunken continent is no longer required to explain the size of the quarry.
Were the statue builders Polynesian?
Proximity to megalithic cultures in South America, combined with theories of a lost southern continent and now largely abandoned ideas of "primitive" and "advanced" peoples prompted various speculations as to whether the contemporary polynesian inhabitants of the island were the descendants of the statue builders, or whether the original statue builders had been supplanted by a later Polynesian migration. Evidence for the South American case included similarities of stoneworking technique between the island and various Inca and pre inca sites, and biological links such as the sweet potato and the reeds which grow in lakes on the island and in lake Titicaca in the Andes.
The Routledge expedition of 1914/5 excavated a number of the partially buried statues, and discovered patterns of marking that are lost from the exposed statues. Mrs E Scoresby Routledge was able to make a number of water colour drawings of elderly islanders in the islands leper colony, until modern DNA analysis reaffirmed the link between the modern Polynesian islanders and the statue builders, her water colours of the tattooed posteriors of elderly Rapa nui, and her observation of the similarity of these designs to the markings on the backs of the excavated statues was the key proof of cultural continuity between the statue builders and the modern Rapa nui (as the missionaries had stopped tattooing in 1862 during the christianisation of the island this appears to have been the last opportunity for a scientist to make such records).
In the 1930s Metraux was able to compare the Inca and Rapa Nui stonemasonry, and identified that a supposedly similar style was actually quite different with the Inca shaping whole blocks to precision fits and the Rapa Nui only having done a veneer.
Not withstanding this, Thor Heyerdahl led a large expedition to the island in the 1950s to promote his theories of early oceanic travel. Though several of the archaeologists in his team did genuine scientific work, his promotion of the South American theory does not help his own scientific reputation. Though it did sell a lot of books.
Subsequent biological analysis has established the species of reed on the island as a different species to the one growing in Lake Titicaca. The sweet potato however is still considered by biologists to be a South American species, and therefore an indication of early and undocumented communication between Polynesia and South America. However its ubiquity in Polynesian agriculture combined with Rapa Nui's late settlement and subsequent isolation would tend to indicate that the sweet potato had reached Polynesia before the settlement of Rapa nui.
Trees
The island's lack of trees was a problem to early chroniclers as they couldn't see how the statues could have been moved round the island without the use of wood for levers and rollers, and the islanders own explanation that the statues walked was thought unhelpful (the vast majority of the statues are carved from tuff, a rock that only occurs in one quarry on the island).
This has naturally attracted the interest of pseudo historians and others with theories of exotic machinery.
Pollen analysis of the sediments in the crater lakes has now established that the island was densely forested with a relative of the chilean wine palm, this pollen declines after 1200 CE and disappears in 1650. Further evidence for these trees includes impressions from past volcanic eruptions and rat chewed nuts found in caves.
This and evidence of episodic famine on the island has prompted more recent eco collapse theories along the lines of "they cut down all the trees to move statues". Though prevailing scientific theories are that the trees were unable to reproduce due to rats eating the germinating nuts.
But it has enabled archaeologists and others to run various tests as to the best way to transport concrete blocks of the size and weight of a Moai. After various experiments with rollers, travois and levers the prevailing theory is that the islanders simply used ropes and a rocking motion, so that just as one moves a fridge around a kitchen the statues were walked across the island.