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Easter Island MysteryBy Kenneth KavanaghImagine an Olympic-sized swimming pool, empty of swimmers. Now imagine a tiny green pea bobbing up and down in the middle of it and you begin to get some idea of Easter Island’s place in the World. Known to the locals as Rapa Nui, the Chilean dependency is the most remote, inhabited place on Earth. Standing on top of the tiny triangular island, pinned to the South Pacific on each corner by extinct volcanoes, you can see why: all that is visible is the blue ocean. In fact, Easter Island is so remote that with the curvature of the Earth, the nearest landmass you can see from here is the Moon.
Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site most tourists are respectful of the statues, but earlier visitors weren’t so careful and one maoi bears the scar of graffiti left by one of Captain Cook’s shipmates. I rented a car, essential to see the sights, and found myself standing a couple of miles southwest of the island’s only town, Hanga Roa, surrounded by flat grassy moors, home to wild horses, hawks and lizards, looking up at Rano Raraku. This is the quarry from where all the maois were carved. On the slopes of the quarry scores of statues in varying states of readiness wait patiently for their completion.
For centuries the mystery of how the islanders managed to do this and, just as importantly, why they bothered, has been hotly debated. To some the answer was obvious: extra-terrestrials had visited the island and formed the statues in their own shape. Others, notably the famed Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, looked for a more mundane explanation. He proved that the maois could be erected and transported across the island if they were rolled on logs The only problem with Heyerdahl’s proposal was that ever since the Dutch landed on the island on Easter Sunday, 1722 the European and American visitors had reported the lack of trees on the island. So there would have been no logs. Today there are plenty of banana trees, coconut palms and eucalyptus woods, but scientists and historians now think that at one time Rapa Nui was more densely forested than it is now. They think they have solved the ancient mystery of Easter Island. The theory goes that the statues were erected as representations of deified ancestors to protect the island, over the six centuries that they were carved the priests, chiefs and stonemasons became obsessed with making the statues larger and more impressive – one unfinished maoi is 20 metres in length and weighs up to 150 tonnes. In their frenzy the islanders sacrificed the last of their trees to move their gods to their final resting places on the island’s shores.
Soon the old maois were replaced with a new cult; that of the Birdman. One island elder was crowned chief for a year if his champion won a competition that involved swimming through shark-infested waters to retrieve the first laid bird’s egg of the year. The chief would allocate the scarce resources fairly and so, according to the theory, peace and prosperity eventually returned to the island, until they were “discovered” by the outside world. Today a whole range of half man half bird images are on sale in the island’s many tourist shops along with maoi t-shirts and miniature wooden carving. Tourism is the backbone of the economy now, but the islanders contact with the outside world has historically not been happy: within half an hour of the Dutch turning up on that Easter Sunday dozens of the islanders lay shot dead on the beaches. Their lot did not improve: syphilis, smallpox and slave traders followed. It is only recently that the islanders have had their land returned to them and there is still a call on the island for Chile to make reparations for what the islanders believe to be injustices.
“Would the islanders really have been so stupid as to cut down their last tree? It doesn’t make sense. You can see the whole island from this point. Whoever took an axe to the last tree would have known what he was doing. He would have known that without the trees they wouldn’t be able to repair their fishing boats.” And that’s perhaps the biggest attraction of Rapa Nui. Regardless of the scientific tests and theories, the island still retains an appealing enigmatic air, challenging the visitor to come up with their own answer to the mystery. Travel tips
The only regular scheduled flights toEaster Island is provided by Lan Chile, part of the One World Alliance, which stops to and from Santiago de Chile and Tahiti. Flights are not cheap, but with a Lan Chile international ticket or a One World partner ticket it may be possible to get a discount. www.lanchile.com Apart from the crops grown on the island, everything is shipped over from the Chilean mainland, so the island is expensive compared to South America. There is a well-stocked supermarket, bars, internet cafes a hospital and post office available and a cash machine accepts most credit and debit cards. Photographs: K Kavanagh |
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TM
You can expect a typical Polynesian
warm welcome when you arrive, but this is not a place where you would come
for a luxurious holiday. The accommodation is clean and functional, the pubs
and nightclubs, although friendly, are not cutting edge. But then, people do
not come here for the nightlife and luxury. Most visitors want to see the
maois, the famous Easter Island statues which date back some 1,000 years.
Hundreds of the statues, icons of exotic travel, dot the island. Each of
them is unique – differing in expression, height or weight.
With the soft volcanic rock, the
statues would have been relatively easy to carve. Transporting the giants
to their final vantage points, sometimes up to 20km away, without damaging
them was the tricky part. 
With the trees gone, soil erosion
followed and the crops were washed away. The islanders starved and turned on
the gods that they had relied on for protection, abandoning the statues and
toppling those that had been erected. A grisly period of internecine war and
cannibalism seems to have followed.
Standing on the highest peak of the
island, Patricio my guide and I look over the windswept land and discuss the
new scientific solution to the mystery of Easter Island. “I don’t believe a
word of it,” he said. 
If you are not inspired by the
enigmatic island, there are plenty of other activities on offer to keep the
visitor occupied for a few days, including quadbiking, horse riding and
cycling. There are also a clutch of diving schools in the harbour willing to
take beginners and master divers onto the nearby coral reefs.