Mysterious statues of Easter Island
The natives who greeted the Dutch sailors on Easter Sunday 1722 seemed to have nothing in common with the gigantic statues of their island. Detailed geological analysis and new archaeological finds have allowed solve the riddle these statues and learn about tragic fate stonemasons.
The island has fallen into disrepair, his stone sentries fell, and many of them drowned in the ocean. Only the miserable remnants of the mysterious army managed to rise with outside help.
Briefly about Easter Island
Easter Island, or Rapanui in the local dialect, is a tiny (165.5 sq km) piece of land lost in the Pacific Ocean halfway between Tahiti and Chile. It is the most isolated inhabited (about 2000 people) place in the world - the nearest town (about 50 people) is 1900 km away, on Pitcairn Island, where in 1790 a rebel The Bounty Team.
The coastline of Rapanui is embellished hundreds of frowning native idols They call them "moai". Each is hewn from a single piece of volcanic rock; the height of some is almost 10 m. All the statues are made according to the same pattern: a long nose, drawn earlobes, a darkly compressed mouth and a protruding chin over a stocky torso with arms pressed to the sides and palms lying on the stomach.
Many "moai" are installed with astronomical precision. For example, in one group, all seven statues look at the point (photo on the left) where the sun sets on the evening of the equinox. More than a hundred idols lie in the quarry, not completely hewn or almost ready, and, apparently, waiting to be sent to their destination.
For more than 250 years, historians and archaeologists could not understand how and why, with a shortage of local resources, primitive islanders, completely cut off from the rest of the world, managed to process giant monoliths, drag them kilometers over rough terrain and put them vertically. Many more or less scientific theories, and many experts believed that Rapanui was once inhabited by a highly developed people, possibly a carrier of the American one, who died as a result of some kind of disaster.
Reveal the secret The island has allowed detailed analysis of its soil samples. The truth about what happened here can serve as a sobering lesson for the inhabitants of any corner of the planet.
Born sailors. Once upon a time, the Rapanui hunted dolphins from canoes hollowed out of palm trunks. However, the Dutch who discovered the island saw boats made of many fastened boards - there were no large trees left.
The history of the discovery of the island
April 5, on the first day of Easter 1722, three Dutch ships under the command of Captain Jacob Roggeveen stumbled in the Pacific Ocean on an island that was not marked on any map. When they anchored at his east coast, a few natives sailed up to them in their boats. Roggeven was disappointed, Islanders' boats, he wrote: "bad and fragile ... with a light frame, sheathed with many small planks". The boats were flowing so hard, the rowers had to bail out water every now and then. The landscape of the island also did not warm the soul of the captain: "His desolate appearance suggests extreme poverty and barrenness".
The conflict of civilizations. The idols from Easter Island now adorn museums in Paris and London, but it was not easy to get these exhibits. The islanders knew each "moai" by name and did not want to part with any of them. When the French removed one of these statues in 1875, the crowd of natives had to be held back with rifle shots.
Despite the friendly demeanor of the brightly colored natives, The Dutch went ashore, ready for the worst, and lined up in a battle square under the astonished eyes of the owners, who had never seen other people, not to mention firearms.
The visit soon turned dark tragedy. One of the sailors fired. Then he claimed that he allegedly saw how the islanders raise stones and make threatening gestures. "Guests" on the orders of Roggeven opened fire, killing 10-12 hosts on the spot and injuring the same number. The islanders fled in horror, but then returned to the shore with fruits, vegetables and poultry - to propitiate the ferocious newcomers. Roggeven noted in his diary an almost bare landscape with rare bushes no higher than 3 m. only unusual statues (heads) standing along the coast on massive stone platforms (“ahu”).
At first, these idols shocked us. We could not understand how the islanders, who did not have strong ropes and a crowd of construction wood for the manufacture of mechanisms, nevertheless managed to erect statues (idols) at least 9 m high, moreover, quite voluminous.
Scientific approach. The French traveler Jean Francois La Perouse landed on Easter Island in 1786, accompanied by a chronicler, three naturalists, an astronomer and a physicist. As a result of 10 hours of research, he suggested that in the past the area was wooded.
Who were the Rapanui?
Humans settled Easter Island only around 400 AD. It is believed that they sailed on huge boats from East Polynesia. Their language is close to the dialects of the inhabitants of the Hawaiian and Marquesas Islands. The ancient fishhooks and stone adzes of the Rapanui found during excavations are similar to the tools used by the Marquesas.
At first, European sailors met naked islanders, but to XIX century they wove their own clothes. However, family heirlooms were more valued than ancient crafts. Men sometimes wore headdresses made from the feathers of birds long extinct on the island. The women wove straw hats. Both of them pierced their ears and wore bone and wooden jewelry in them. As a result, the earlobes were pulled back and hung down almost to the shoulders.
Lost generations - found answers
In March 1774 an English captain James Cook found about 700 on Easter Island emaciated from malnutrition of the natives. He suggested that the local economy was badly damaged by the recent volcanic eruption: this was evidenced by many stone idols that collapsed from their platforms. Cook was convinced that they were carved out and placed along the coast by the distant ancestors of the current Rapanui.
“This time-consuming work clearly demonstrates the ingenuity and perseverance of those who lived here during the statue-making era. The current islanders are almost certainly not up to it, for they do not even repair the foundations of those that are about to collapse.
Scientists only just found answers to some moai riddles. Analysis of pollen from sediments accumulated in the swamps of the island shows that it was once covered with dense forests, thickets of ferns and shrubs. All this was teeming with a variety of game.
Exploring the stratigraphic (and chronological) distribution of the finds, scientists found in the lower, most ancient layers the pollen of an endemic tree close to the wine palm, up to 26 m high and up to 1.8 m in diameter. Its long, straight, unbranched trunks could serve as excellent rollers for transportation of blocks weighing tens of tons. Also found was the pollen of the plant "hauhau" (triumfetta semi-three-lobed), from the bast of which in Polynesia (and not only) make ropes.
The fact that the ancient Rapanui people had enough food follows from DNA analysis of food remains on excavated dishes. The islanders grew bananas, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, taro, and yams.
The same botanical data show a slow but steady destruction of this idyll. Judging by the content of swamp sediments, by the year 800, the area of forests was declining. Wood pollen and fern spores are displaced from later layers by charcoal - evidence of forest fires. At the same time, lumberjacks were working more and more actively.
The scarcity of wood began to seriously affect the way of life of the islanders, especially their menu. The study of fossil garbage heaps shows that at one time the Rapanui people regularly ate dolphin meat. Obviously, they caught these animals floating in the open sea from large boats, hollowed out from thick palm trunks.
When there was no ship timber left, the Rapanui people lost their "ocean fleet", and with it dolphin meat and ocean fish. In 1786, the chronicler of the French expedition, La Perouse, recorded that in the sea the islanders mined only shellfish and crabs living in shallow water.
The end of the "moai"
Stone statues began to appear around the 10th century. They probably personify Polynesian gods or deified local leaders. According to the Rapanui legends, the supernatural power of "mana" raised the hewn idols, led them to the allotted place and allowed them to roam at night, guarding the peace of the makers. Perhaps the clans competed with each other, trying to carve out the "moai" larger and more beautiful, and also put it on a more massive platform than the competitors.
After 1500, statues were practically not made. Apparently, there were no trees left on the devastated island, which were necessary for their transportation and lifting. Since about the same time, palm pollen has not been found in swamp sediments, and dolphin bones are no longer thrown into garbage dumps. Changes and local fauna. Disappear all native land birds and half of sea birds.
Food is getting worse, and the population, which once numbered about 7,000 people, is decreasing. Since 1805, the island has been suffering from raids by South American slave traders: they take away some of the natives, many of the remaining ones are ill with smallpox picked up from strangers. Only a few hundred Rapanui survive.
Easter Islanders erected "moai", hoping for the protection of the spirits embodied in the stone. Ironically, it was this monumental program that brought their land to ecological disaster. And the idols rise as eerie monuments to thoughtless management and human recklessness.
Easter Island - a tiny piece of lava, with its outlines resembling a Napoleonic cocked hat, is embraced by the ocean, sky and silence for thousands of miles around. If, of course, we do not take into account the cries of seagulls and the monotonous rhythm of the ocean surf. As the tireless explorer of the island, Katherine Rowpledge, wrote, “the one who lives here is always listening to something, although he himself does not know what, and involuntarily feels himself on the eve of something even greater, lying beyond our perception.”
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Everywhere on the island are traces of a bygone past - in the long corridors of countless caves strewn with fragments of obsidian; on the slopes of volcanoes covered with the remains of an extinct culture; in the eye sockets stone giants, some of which lie, staring at the zenith, while others rise above the island, looking into the unknown distance.
One of the famous mathematicians noticed that life on earth is an immense realm of approximate values. It seems that this thesis convincingly demonstrates our ideas about Easter Island. So when it comes to the origin of the island, the origins of its ancient civilization, the purpose of the mysterious stone colossi and many other things that make up its many mysteries, it is always useful to remember the relativity of the knowledge that scientific world currently has.
Interest in this tiny volcanic formation, lost in the vastness of the ocean, does not weaken at all with time. And the number of publications about this place is growing year by year. It is difficult to say whether we are getting closer to the truth from this, but another thing is certain: Easter Island knows how to puzzle and surprise.
A similar feeling came to Thor Heyerdahl in the face of the exciting unknown when he studied mysterious island, where the inhabitants "did not build any castles, or palaces, or dams, or moorings. They carved gigantic humanoid figures from stone, tall as a house, heavy as a wagon, dragged many of them over mountains and valleys, and installed them on powerful terraces all over the island...
The tireless craving of the ancient inhabitants of the island for carving huge stone figures, the largest of which is seven-story building high and weighing 88 tons, has borne fruit: there are many hundreds of them on the island. They say about a thousand maoi (the local name for the statues. - Approx. Aut.). But the next archaeological expedition each time opens more and more new statues.
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One of the explorers of the island, Pierre Loti, described his impressions of the stone giants as follows: human race these statues belong, with slightly upturned noses and thin protruding lips, expressing either contempt or mockery. Instead of eyes only deep depressions, but under the arch of broad noble brows they seem to be looking and thinking. On both sides of the cheeks are protrusions depicting either a headdress similar to the cap of a sphinx, or protruding flat ears from five to eight meters long. Some are wearing necklaces inlaid with flint, others are adorned with carved tattoos."
The statues described by Pierre Loti are considered by a number of researchers of the island to be the most ancient. But besides these, there are sculptures of a different kind. "Every day we find statues of a different style - other people," wrote Francis Mazière, who visited the island with a scientific expedition in the mid-60s of the last century. They follow the life of the island. They and only they have open eyes. On the heads of these statues are huge red cylinders made of red tuff."
Thor Heyerdahl's expedition found a bearded figure in a seated posture. It was unlike other island sculptures, causing a lot of speculation about its origin.
The French explorer Francis Mazière became the owner of a human figure made of wood, which, by the nature of execution, was strikingly different from everything he had seen on the island before. This prompted the researcher to suggest that this figurine has nothing to do with Polynesian traditions and belongs to a different race.
Surprises await explorers in the labyrinths of island caves. Rock frescoes were found in one of them. One of them resembles a penguin with a whale's tail. The other depicts the head of an unknown creature. This is the head of a bearded man with the eyes of an insect. Deer antlers branch out from his skull. The islanders call him "Insect Man".
But what peoples created eyeless giants at the foot of the Raku-Raraku volcano? Who is the creator of the giants that stand along the coast? Whose hand painted the head of an "insect-man" in one of the caves? " locals can’t explain anything,” wrote Francis Mazière. “They tell such an intricate hodgepodge of legends that one would think that they never knew anything and that they are not descendants of the last sculptors at all.”
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A modern tourist who has visited the island, as a rule, as an "exotic dish" is presented with a story about the war of two island tribes - "long-eared" and "short-eared". The legend about the arrival on the island of Hotu-Matua, the leader of the ancestors of the current islanders, is still in use. "The land that Hotu-Matua owned was called Maori and was located in Khiva ... The leader noticed that his land was slowly sinking into the sea. He gathered his servants, men, women, children and old people and put him on two large boats. When they reached the horizon, the chief saw that the whole earth, with the exception of a small part of it, called the Maori, had gone under water.
In these stories, echoes of some long-standing events may have been preserved. Their fragmentary and nebula makes it impossible to even get close to the true history of the island. Even the purpose of the statues is not clear.
James Cook believed that the stone idols were built in honor of the buried rulers and leaders of the island. Professor Metro thought that the statues depict deified people. The American scientist Thomson believed that the statues are portraits of noble people, and another explorer of the island, Maximilian Brown, that they depict their creators. The fact that in the form of stone figures are images of the gods, said Katherine Raupledzh. Admiral Roggewan, without expressing himself in a definite way, noticed only that the locals made fire in front of the statues and, squatting down, bowed their heads.
Among Western researchers there is a "competitive" version of the purpose of the statues. According to her, the tribes that lived on the island were at enmity with each other for the right to be the first. And allegedly, prestige in this relentless struggle was won, among other things, by the number of statues carved by each rival tribe. Thus, according to this version, the statues are not even a goal, but only a means of self-affirmation of people.
It is unlikely that the “native” of the island, the old man Veriveri, would agree with such an interpretation, who once told Francis Mazier, as a sign of special trust, the following: “All maoi (statues) of Raku-Raraku are sacred and face the part of the world over which they have power and for who are responsible. That is why the island was given the name Te Pito-o-te-Henua, or the Navel of the Earth... Maoi, which face south, are different from the rest. They retain the strength of the Arctic winds..."
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Easter Island, Navel of the Earth.... But these are not the only names of the island. Our compatriot Miklukha Maclay recorded the following local name - "Mata-ki-te-Rangi". James Cook recorded several at once: "Vanhu", "Tamareki", "Teapi". The Polynesians called the island "Rapanui", and the islanders still call it "Te Pito-o-te-Henua".
Many who visited the island drew attention to the eye-catching disproportion between giant statues, quarries of truly cyclopean proportions and modest residential buildings of local residents.
"The clear disproportion of the ahu with the overthrown statues compared to the remains of houses was striking. The statues towered over the village, fixing their eyes on it. Turning their backs to the sea, these giants seemed to be called upon to support the courage of the captive people of the land lost in the ocean." So wrote Francis Mazière. He also owns these lines:
"The walls of the quarry, hollowed out in the shape of a crater, are located on a very steep slope, and a lot of work had to be done, not only in order to make cylinders from it (Maoi headdresses. - Approx. Aut.). And here, as elsewhere on the island, it seems as if the usual human scale did not suit those who worked in this career.
Meanwhile, Rapanui can hardly be called an ideal abode for the realization of titanic energy-intensive fantasies. To begin with, food and water resources on the island are limited. Fresh water, the main source of replenishment of which over the centuries has been rains, is deprived of many of the mineral salts necessary for the body - this is the result of water filtration during its passage through the spongy volcanic rocks of the island. The use of such water, according to experts, led to serious diseases.
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The very extraction of food required, apparently, huge energy costs. And, of course, it wasn't enough. This is evidenced at least by the fact that cannibalism was developed relatively recently on the island. According to reports, even two Peruvian merchants became victims of cannibals.
Most scientists have come to the conclusion that the first, unknown to us civilization, which was the creator of the Maoi, other colossi, was subsequently destroyed and assimilated by the second migration, the decline of which has been observed on Rapanui for at least the last three hundred years.
"On the island you can find traces of a prehistoric people," concludes Francis Maziere, "whose presence we begin to feel more and more and which forces us to reconsider all the data about time and ethics that science is now imposing on us..."
Let's go back to our days. In the early 60s of the last century, a powerful tidal wave that penetrated 600 meters deep into the island, some Maoi were thrown up to a distance of 100 meters. Work on the restoration of the statues began relatively recently - there was no appropriate lifting equipment. It wasn't until the Japanese company Tadano donated $700,000 and delivered a powerful crane to the island that things began to take off. Many overturned Maoi tsunamis have been raised this year. But the question arises: how did the ancient inhabitants of the island move the stone giants, the smallest of which weighs at least 35 tons? All the hypotheses that have arisen around this problem can be conditionally divided into three categories. Fantastic appeal to alien power. The rationalist approach relies on the use by the islanders of all kinds of ropes, gates, winches, rollers ... There is even a version according to which the statues moved along a several kilometers road covered with sweet potato puree, which made it slippery.
There is also a hypothesis of a mystical nature. According to the islanders, the statues moved through the spiritual power-mana, which was possessed by the leaders of their distant ancestors. “What if, in a certain era,” asks Francis Mazière, “people were able to use electromagnetic forces or anti-gravity forces? This assumption is crazy, but still less stupid than the crushed sweet potato story.”
Of course, you can assume anything, but in the face of a colossus 22 meters high, ordinary logic becomes powerless.
Easter Island is sometimes compared to a piece of lava, on which, without transitional steps, the most original art and the most mysterious writing in the world arose. The latter is a fact all the more significant because so far on Polynesian islands writing could not be found. On Easter Island, writing was found on relatively well-preserved wooden tablets, in the local dialect called kohau rongo-rongo. The fact that wooden planks survived the darkness of centuries is explained by many scientists by the complete absence of insects on the island. And yet most of them were eventually destroyed. But it was not the tree bugs accidentally introduced by a white man that were to blame for this, but the religious fervor of a certain missionary. The story goes that the missionary Eugene Ayrault, who converted the inhabitants of the island to Christianity, forced these writings to be burned as pagan. So even the tiny island of Easter had its own Herostratus.
Nevertheless, a certain number of tablets have been preserved. Today in museums and private collections of the world there are no more than two dozen kohau rongo-rongo. Many attempts have been made to decipher the contents of the ideogram tablets, but they have all ended in failure. As well as an attempt to explain the purpose of paved roads, the time of creation of which is lost in the mists of time. On the island of Silence - another name for the island - there are three of them. And all three end in the ocean. Based on this, some researchers conclude that the island was once much larger than it is now.
Near Rapanui is the tiny island of Motunui. These are several hundred meters of a sheer cliff, dotted with numerous grottoes. A stone platform has been preserved on it, on which statues were once installed, later thrown into the sea for some reason. “How could people build an ahu with Maoi there,” Francis Maziere reflects, “where we can’t even go by boat? Where it’s impossible to climb a rock? What mass transferred these multi-ton giants here? , and the theory of wooden skating rinks!"
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Was Easter Island once part of a larger landmass? Around this issue in the scientific world to this day, controversy does not subside. In the second half of the 19th century, scientists Alfred Wallace and Thomas Huxley, already well-known at that time, hypothesized that the population of Oceania, including the inhabitants of Easter Island, is a remnant of an "oceanic" race that lived on the now sunken continent.
Academician Obruchev generally supported this theory. He believed that when the continent began to gradually sink into the water, the population of the elevated territories began to carve stone statues and place them in the lowlands, in the hope that this would propitiate the gods and stop the onset of the sea. Sometimes this continent appeared in scientific hypotheses as Pacifida, sometimes as Lemuria.
The modern scientific world, with a few exceptions, perceives such hypotheses with a great deal of skepticism. But on the other hand, history knows many examples when, at first glance, a completely crazy idea turned out to be true. Recall at least the classic case with the hypothesis of "stones that fall from the sky." In 1790, a meteorite fell in Gascony. A protocol was drawn up, signed by three hundred eyewitnesses, which was sent to the French Academy of Sciences. But the "high Areopagus" called all this nonsense, since science was well aware that stones could not fall from the sky. But this is so, by the way.
IN Lately Two hypotheses are most widespread: the hypothesis of the American origin of the Polynesians and Polynesian culture (to which a number of scientists also include the Rapanui civilization) and the hypothesis of the settlement of the islands of Polynesia from the west. Thor Heyerdahl argued that Polynesia was inhabited by two migratory waves. The first came from the South American Pacific coast (the location of present-day Peru). Polynesia is due to settlers of Andean origin for the appearance of stone statues and hieroglyphic writing. The second wave came at the beginning of our millennium from the northwest coast North America. At one time, there was a rumor about the Vikings who sailed to Easter Island in ancient times and settled there. In some versions, they try to interpret the history of the civilization of the island from the position of ethnogenesis: allegedly, the first settlers, who had a high level of passionarity, were the only ones in all of Polynesia who knew writing. But gradually, century after century, the original level of passionarity was dissipated, which ultimately led to the obstruction and extinction of culture...
Will our knowledge of Easter Island become more accurate? In any case, a number of researchers, for example, our compatriots F. Krendelev and A. Kondratov, rely on this in their book Silent Guardians of Secrets. "The mysteries of Easter Island are one of the most burning and urgent problems of modern geology," they write. help find a solution to the problems over which ethnographers, archaeologists, and historians have struggled unsuccessfully.
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It must be said that today the "exact sciences" have brought a number of interesting data to the problems of the evolution of the island. Rapanui is located in a unique, in terms of geology, place. Under it is the boundary of the fault of giant tectonic plates, which, as it were, share the bottom of the ocean. The oceanic Nazca and Pacifica plates and the axial zones of underwater oceanic ridges converge to the island. Which gives another reason to think about the symbolic name of the island. This is really a kind of "Navel of the Earth".
Today, the main wealth of the inhabitants of Rapanui, of course, is the mysterious past of their small island. It is it that attracts scientists from all over the world here, which is why twice a week in local airport landing planes with tourists. At such hours, the life of the island, unhurried and monotonous, like the ocean surf, comes to life. A small terminal building is filled with multilingual polyphony: someone is looking for a guide, someone offers a car for rent, someone needs a hotel ... But a few hours pass, and again silence and peace reign over the island. The number of cars here can be counted on the fingers. And they, too, obey the general rhythm of unhurried existence. In these parts, the speed of 50 kilometers per hour looks like an unforgivable recklessness. Along the roads from time to time there are signs limiting the speed to 30 kilometers.
Easter Island isn't too rushed into the future. Modernity - air communication, the Internet, telephone communications- has a limited sphere of influence here. The true masters of the island are still silent stone guards, firmly holding their secrets in securely closed lips.
The publication is based on Russian and foreign materials about Easter Island.
by Notes of the Wild MistressEaster Island is a small piece of land in the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean. It belongs to Chile, its area is slightly more than 165 square kilometers, and the shape of the island resembles a triangle. The population, numbering about two thousand people, is engaged in sheep breeding and fishing.
Recently, tourism has become a source of income for local residents. More and more people want to visit the island. What attracts tourists is that Easter Island is shrouded in unsolved mysteries.
Mysterious Island
This piece of land was discovered back in 1772, when Dutch sailors, led by Captain Roggevan, first set foot on it. It happened on Easter Sunday, so the island became known as Easter Island.
The locals greeted the seafarers very friendly. And immediately the Dutch had questions. First, how did these friendly islanders get here in the first place. Secondly, why are they so different: some are black, others are red, and, among them, white people. Thirdly, how and why the locals disfigure their ears in such a way, the lobes of which are cut and greatly stretched. But the most amazing sight awaited travelers ahead.
Giant stone statues
Roggevan and his sailors were shocked to find giant stone statues on the island, which the locals called moai. Most of these statues are 4 to 10 meters tall. But some giants reach a height of more than 20 meters. At the statues big heads with a protruding chin and long ears. There are no legs at all. Some of them are wearing redstone caps, others are without caps. Some stand on pedestals, others are buried up to their heads.
Now 887 of these statues have been preserved. They are still located all over the island and continue to amaze tourists. The question whether the small, helpless inhabitants of the island could erect such giants as they did in the seventeenth century remains unanswered.
According to the stories of Dutch sailors, the aborigines found on the island worshiped the deity Mak-Mak. Wooden writing tablets called rongo-rongo were found on the island. Letters were applied from left to right, then vice versa. Nobody could decipher the inscriptions. It's a pity, because it is they who could help uncover the mystery of the statues and the origin of the inhabitants of Easter Island themselves.
Easter Island hypotheses
In the meantime, there are only hypotheses and assumptions. No other records were kept of the island, and oral accounts of the culture of the islanders became increasingly obscure and vague over time. There is evidence that the natives told Captain Cook that twenty-two generations had changed since the leader Hotu Matua brought people to the island, but from where, they could not say anything.
According to one of the hypotheses of scientists, the inhabitants of the island sailed to it in canoes and started making statues, using the leaves of giant trees for their transportation, and the statues were supported by the trunks of these trees. When Europeans arrived on the island, the entire forest had already been exterminated, and an ecological catastrophe led to the extinction of the population. Evidence that the people of the island could come from across the sea can be found on one of the stones ancient image boats.
The famous Norwegian traveler Thor Heyerdahl was sure that the inhabitants of Peru moved to the island, having reached it on their balsa wood rafts. In order to prove his point, he even made an amazing journey, sailing across the ocean with his crew on a makeshift raft called the Kon-Tiki. But even if, at the beginning of our millennium, the inhabitants of present-day Peru really sailed to the island, could they erect giant statues? Something hard to believe.
What is more reliable - aliens or Atlantis?
Maybe those who claim that there were aliens here are right. Often it is the unbelievable that suddenly becomes apparent.
There is another interesting hypothesis. The statues were erected by the people of Atlanta. They were up to 10 meters tall, and their ancient civilization flourished on the vast continent of Atlantis, of which only a piece remained - Easter Island. The rest sank into the ocean. And the inhabitants, who were caught by the Dutch expedition, appeared on the island after the Atlanteans, perhaps they sailed from Peru.
The mystery of Easter Island will be revealed when the letters on the wooden tablets are deciphered. Or, suddenly, the legendary Atlantis will be found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Everyone knows about Easter Island. Started in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean
a piece of volcanic land was discovered on April 6, 1722 by a Dutchman
Admiral J. Roggeven. The admiral and his men stayed on the island for only a day.
They were warmly greeted by tall, swarthy inhabitants, similar to Polynesians,
among whom the Dutch were surprised to see natives with almost black,
reddish and even completely white skin. A representative of the local leadership who visited the ship was also of a completely European appearance, who kept with
great dignity and differed from sailors except perhaps in exotic
savage attire and long, hanging to the shoulders of the earlobes, in
which were inserted some heavy white ornaments. unseen by
pomp with tattoos and the same ears flaunted here by many. But more
all the Dutch were struck by huge stone statues of a peculiar kind, in
many towering on the shore - how the natives could bring here,
was completely incomprehensible. On closer inspection, Roggeveen, obviously not very observant, decided that everything was explained very simply and that the idols were molded on the spot from clay, in which cobblestones were interspersed for beauty and strength. In front of some of them, the islanders kindled fires and respectfully raised and lowered their hands clasped together. On the morning of the next day, the travelers saw how the natives, surrounded by hundreds of fires, prayed to the rising luminary. Once again marveling at the customs and wonders of this amazing island, Roggeveen to further search for Southern terra incognita.
At first, the one who comes here sees just a slope overgrown with grasses and black
gray rocks. Some time later, he discovers that the rugged
rock cuts through which he has been climbing all this time, not just rocks
and that he is now, for example, standing on someone's vast hollow chest, and
nearby, in the thickets of fern, one can see a rising from the thickness of the stone
a characteristic profile with a characteristic nose and tightly pursed thin lips.
Gradually, the researcher begins to distinguish the surrounding forms and feel like a mouse who decided to walk around an empty house and was caught out of nowhere by the owners who appeared. But you don't have to be afraid. Unknown forces plunged these giants into a deep sleep hundreds of years ago. Something happened here shortly before the arrival of Europeans. There are also broken statues. There are those who did not finish due to unsuccessful
located xenolith of trachybasalt, not amenable to processing with axes
from the same material. The body of one unfinished moai and the rock from which
it has not yet been separated, a crack crosses - the trace of what happened is already in
historical time of the earthquake. But still most of the statues were not
completed for some other reason. Thousands of stone axes thrown at
cradles of unborn giants. Some ready-made
polished statues lie on a slope - they were clearly lowered down the slope to the plain, but for some reason they were also abandoned to their fate. There seems to be a distinct sense of distress in the very air, which has forced all work to stop suddenly. Some moai - those that are overgrown with lichen - have already died. So, in any case, say the islanders.
On small island Easter, lost in the vast expanses of the ocean, huge stone statues stand on the mountainside. With incomprehensible calmness they look at the sea and the land, and their mysterious contours, despite their simplification, begin to lure, bewitch, bewitch you. The more you indulge in such contemplation, the stronger this feeling becomes - a feeling of calm nobility, charm and mystery.
The whole picture is especially strong at sunset, when the huge black silhouettes of the monuments, illuminated by the fading rays of the sun, gradually stretch out against the magnificent iridescent background of the horizon.
Archaeologists and ethnographers describe Easter Island and its mysterious statues in different ways. But, even looking at the photographs, you are amazed by the stone giants erected on this tiny piece of land. According to the latest data, there are now about 900 statues left on the island, the average weight of which reaches several tons. All of them have been researched, studied, measured, but scientists still cannot give an exact answer to almost a single question: when were these stone idols, reaching 20 meters in height, erected? Who do they depict - living people, unknown gods or powerful spirits? How was it possible to carve these gigantic figures out of stone and who was able to drag them several kilometers to the seashore in order to hoist them on huge platforms "ahu"? Why was it necessary to carve huge cylinders of red stone (caps) in another place of the island and put them on the heads of statues?
Lots of unresolved questions. There is no definite information about the time of settlement of the island. The current name of the island was given by the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen, when he discovered it in 1772, the Indians themselves call their island Rapanui.
Some scientists call it the Pacific Atlantis: once the island broke up, and one part of it went under water. In calm weather, the flooded areas are clearly visible, but the time of the cataclysm has not yet been determined. The first settlers of the island could be Polynesians, ancient Peruvians and even tribes from South-East Asia. Professor A. Metro, who led the Franco-Belgian expedition to this island in 1934-1935, believed that the first inhabitants, led by the legendary leader Hotu Matua, arrived here in the XII-XIII centuries.
Linguist S. Englert attributes the settlement of the island to even later times, and the construction of giant statues (in his opinion) began in the 17th century, almost on the eve of the discovery of the island by Europeans. Famous Tour Heyerdahl believes that the island was already inhabited in V-VI centuries and the Indians from America were the first to arrive here. During the expedition, the scientist was primarily attracted by monumental statues (moai), and gradually he came to the conclusion that this region is the heritage of white bearded people. At the same time, T. Heyerdahl referred to the vague statements of some Incas: "And the locals said that the huge, now abandoned monuments were erected by the white gods who lived here before the Incas took power into their own hands." However, the risky voyage of the courageous Norwegian did not convince other scientists that the inhabitants of Polynesia and their culture originate from ancient Peru, and specifically from Tiahuanaco.
There are many other possible versions. For example, adherents of some mystical sects believe that the ancestral home of mankind - the mainland of Lemuria - died 4 million years ago, and Easter Island is a remnant of it. And Eric Daniken continues to stubbornly argue that the natives are the descendants of aliens.
The famous captain James Cook in 1774 saw (and was very surprised!) That the islanders were bad fishermen, they had wicker boats, although the inhabitants of other islands had long built dugouts. They lived in caves and did not even suspect that there were many other islands in the sea. They could not explain the purpose of their stone idols.
If Easter Island had a genealogy of rulers like those recorded on other islands of Polynesia, many of its secrets would have been revealed long ago. So who do these stone idols represent anyway? For what purpose did the islanders carve them?
Jacob Roggeveen called the statues idols. In his ship's log, he wrote: "As for their worship ... we only noticed that they kindled a fire in front of very high stone statues and squatted before them with their heads bowed. And then they folded their arms and swung them up and down ... On the head of each statue stood a basket filled with white-painted cobblestones.
James Cook recorded that the statues were erected by locals in honor of the buried rulers or leaders of the island, and other researchers believe that the giants of Easter Island marked the boundaries of sea and land. They are a kind of ritual "guardians" that prevent invasion from the sea. There was an opinion that there were also statues that served as boundary pillars marking the boundaries of the possessions of different clans, tribes.
Despite the hypotheses, secrets and mysteries, it is now possible to assume how it all happened. The mountain was the only place where these stone idols were built, or rather, cut down from the same mountain. The technique of "production" of the giants was so primitive that it is simply not necessary to talk about their unearthly origin.
In the crater of the Rano Raraku volcano, you can see all the stages of work on stone giants. First, the general contour of the statue was indicated. After this, the "sculptors" began to create the face and front of the torso, then moving on to the sides of the statue, finishing the long ears and hands with elongated fingers folded on the stomach. Following this, the rock was removed from all sides of the statue, and only in the lower part of the back was there a connection (like a stone keel) with the mother mountain - the Rano Raraku volcano.
Maybe the whole statue was entirely made in a quarry. Perhaps the treatment of the back and the back of the head took place only when the statue was lowered down to the foot of the volcano. Here, symbolic signs were applied to the back of the statue, such as a belt with rings, a bird-man, etc. And only when the stone giant was mounted on the “ahu” and crowned with a “hat”, the last detail of the statue was carved - the eyes, indicated by elliptical concave contours.
The idols were carved not one at a time, but in series. In order to make full use of the quarry, the "sculptors" cut down the statues, laying them on top of each other, using literally all the possibilities of the material. They carved them in profile, and obliquely, and even upside down. The ancient sculptors did not need to cut the monolith, because there was no monolith. They were perfectly able to distinguish cracks and used them to facilitate their work. Sometimes, between two fissures cutting through a series of volcanic layers, up to 8-12 statues of the same height and width were cut down. They differed only in thickness.
There are also many unfinished statues left in the quarry. Maybe the work was stopped for some reason? Or were they "defective" and not "unfinished" statues? Sculptors could already stumble upon a block during work big size, which they simply could not process with their tools. And there was plenty of stone around, And unfinished moai remained in the quarry. On the island you can see the whole "woodpile" of such statues.
Almost all research on Easter Island speaks of the fantastic size of the statues and their extreme weight. Thor Heyerdahl compares the weight of the statues to ten railroad cars and asks, puzzled: "How did they manage all this long before the era of technology?". And doesn't answer...
The largest statues reach a weight of 20 tons. Their movement is incomparable difficulties, if we remember that the surface of the island is cracked lava. About transportation stone statues a great many assumptions have been made, some of which are curious or simply delusional, others are difficult to accept. But still, the statues somehow moved from the quarry on the slopes of the Rano Raraku volcano to their "ahu" pedestals, often remote for many kilometers. And the first Europeans, who began to look here since 1722, found most of the moai overturned. Each of these questions gives rise to many versions, and not the last of them is the "cosmic" one - the myth of omnipotent aliens who created moai in their own image and likeness, long before the ancestors of its current inhabitants appeared on the island. There is also an opinion about the supernatural power "mana", with which the leaders of local tribes moved moai contrary to the laws of gravity.
Anything can be assumed, but in the face of a 22-meter finished statue (the height of a 7-story building), no logic can resist. The head and neck of the statue is 7 meters high and 3 meters in diameter, the length of the nose is more than 3 meters, the height of the body is 13 meters, and the weight is 50 tons! Even at present, there are not very many cranes in the world to cope with such a colossus.
The statues of Easter Island continue to amaze, delight, make you think: who, how and why made them? Various guesses give rise not only to hypotheses, but also myths, but not the ancient myths and legends of the islanders, but the real "myths from science." Some scientists believe that the statues were built by free people who were happy to work together. Others, on the contrary, suggest that thousands of slaves worked on the creation of these giants, like the one that was built by Egyptian pyramids. It is believed that the construction of one statue took from one to four months. The time factor did not matter on the island. Mobilize a large number of people to create a moai and deliver it to the platform was also not difficult. For the services of "sculptors" and workers paid with food, there was no money for Rapanui.
But now the stone idol has been carved, it must be separated from the rock ... How? The statue was separated from the rock, of which it was a part, using ordinary stones and patiently cutting down a layer of basalt. Then the statue was raised with the help of levers and ropes, placing small stones under it every time it was lifted off the ground. The ancient islanders did not use any metal tools.
But they still moved! In the light of theology and tectonics, it is likely that the statues moved along the mountainside by themselves under the influence of microseismic movements of the soil, due to its trembling, until they slipped into the place prepared for them. There is another version: the statues were lowered down along a pre-prepared earthen chute (hence the name of the Rano Raraku volcano - "Striped with trenches"). But these are only hypotheses and assumptions. And the islanders themselves, like two hundred years ago, unanimously claim that the statues - moai moved by themselves, with the help of the magic power of "mana" ... And from basalt pedestals, like many centuries ago, fantastically mysterious statues are mowed good-naturedly with coral eyes .
\from internet\
The Chilean Easter Island, located in the Pacific Ocean, is full of strange stone sculptures, the so-called moai idols. There are exactly 887 of them here. The height of individual statues exceeds 10 meters, and by weight they are in the region of 80 tons. Drawings are carved on the bodies, from which one can understand how the natives lived. For example, a long Indian boat that sails on the sea. In fact, moai are the patrons of the island. They, as the locals believed, guard it, therefore they constantly watch the natives, being turned to face exactly the island, and not the ocean. Some moai have a semblance of red stone caps.
How they got there, given their weight and antiquity, remained a mystery for a very long time. Since 2012, excavations began, and it was unexpectedly revealed that under the sculptures there was not earth, but, in fact, a continuation of the statues. Researchers from the Easter Island Sculpture Project group found this out.
According to Anna Van Tilburg, the head of the excavations, the body of the idol is quite comparable with the head - it is about 7 meters long. In fact, according to the scientist, even without excavations there were statues with bodies, simply, given their number, a maximum of 150 fell into the frame, where half of the idols had only heads and parts of the forearms, no more.
According to experts, initially no one buried the idols intentionally at all. It was just that the climate was changing on the island, so it turned out that they gradually sank underground. It is also known that they were specially painted with something red - apparently, for better preservation. In addition, several human graves were found not far from the idols.
Found during excavations and a number of mechanisms that made it possible to install giant colossi. Scientists found out that the idols were stretched in a lying position, and then they were turned over, placing them in a pre-dug hole, like a pillar. In order to guide the statue correctly, several ropes and tree trunks were used. Moai have many inscriptions on their backs.
Archaeologists suggest that local sculptors or those to whom the sculptures, in fact, belonged, could sign this way. It is known for sure that all stone idols were made in a special quarry, which was located in the central part of Easter Island.
When did it become known at all about the island and its strange inhabitants, who erect such statues? In 1687, the sea robber Edward Davis, trying to escape from Spanish justice, noticed a hill somewhere on the horizon. He did not have time to swim up to him, but later he told about him, and everyone thought that a new continent had been accidentally discovered. It was given the code name "Davis Land". Navigators were so interested in the new continent that many rushed to look for it, however, naturally, only islands were discovered.
In 1722, the Dutch military Jacob Roggeveen discovered some land on the horizon, which was called Easter Island, because then the holiday was celebrated. The local name of the territory is Rapa Nui, "the center of the world". When the island was discovered, it was first thought that it was the same "Davis Land", a lost continent where there were once signs of a highly developed situation, but everything was lost, because the mainland sank, leaving only the most high mountains. The moai discovered in Rapa Nui were thought to fully confirm this. In fact, Easter Island was never a sunken continent. This is just the top of a huge underwater hill, formed from the lava of a long-extinct volcano.
Actually, as almost always during colonization, the appearance of the Dutch did not bring anything good for the locals. Literally shortly upon arrival, several natives were killed by sailors, despite the fact that there were not so many of them on the island at all. Jacob Roggeven described the inhabitants of Rapa Nui as strong and tall people With big amount tribal elders in blue patterns, in yellow and dark pink clothes. All natives had dazzling white teeth, easily cracking them even strong nuts. Distinctive feature- heavy earrings in the ears, in which the lobes were very stretched and hung down. A similar shape of the ears was also found in stone idols. The locals lit bonfires in front of them and prayed as to deities. Actually, the natives claimed that these were their powerful and ancient leaders, who, after death, gained that same divine power.
According to genetic analysis, Easter Island was inhabited as early as 1200 by Polynesians who managed to swim across the Pacific Ocean in tiny, dilapidated boats when it was a difficult task for Europeans. They also created these stone idols in the period somewhere before 1500. Interestingly, even though those same statues were dragged with the help of trees, in fact, at the time the Dutch appeared on Easter Island, there were no trees, and of all living creatures, there were only chickens. According to one of the popular versions, the rats are to blame here, a protracted struggle with which led to the complete “bareness” of Rapa Nui.
For a long time it was believed that the natives themselves could not create such statues: it is very hard physically. There were various semi-fantastic versions of the appearance of stone idols on Easter Island. For example, one of them said that this is some ancient stone race, which, under the influence of climate, in fact, was paralyzed for centuries. According to another version, the statues are the work of aliens, very much so, according to ufologists who love to interfere in everything that happens on our Earth.
