EASTER ISLAND

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 130, 6 June 1929, Page 13

EASTER ISLAND

IMAGE FOE DUNEDIN

"RIDDLE OF THE PACIFIC"

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.) ' pTJNEDIN, This Day. ( Through the Fels Fund, the Dunediu Museum has secured one of the famous Easter Island statues. Only five of these have been removed. Three are in the British - Museum, one in Washington, and one in Berlin; These carved figures are of great antiquity.

Easter Island, a little island about midway between the Cook Islands and Valparaiso; is famous for its archaeological remains, which have proved to be a veritable "riddle of the Pacific." On it are found immense platforms built of large cut Btones, fitted together without cement. Nearly all are built upon headlands and on the slope towards .the sea. The walls on the seaside are, in some of the platforms, nearly 30 feet highland from 200 to 300 feet long, by about 30 feet wide. Some of the squared stones are as much as 6 feet long. On the land side of the platform there is a broad terrace with large pedestals, upon which once stood colossal stone images of human beings. On some 'platforms were as many as adozen images, but these have mostly been thrown from their pedestals. The largest of these images measures 37 feet in height. The average height, however, is from 14 feet to 16 feet, whilst some are as small as 4 feet. One statue, eight feet in height and weighing four tons, is now in the British Museum. A remarkable feature about these statues is the head, the top 6£ which has been cut flat to receive a crown made of a reddish vesicular tuff found in a crater about eight- miles from the quarry where the images were hewn. A number of these crowns, not unlike bowler.hats in shape, lie ready for removal from the crater, some of the largest being over 10 feet in diameter.' Other striking features about tho images are their long and broad, flat noses,.: arid the ,thin-lipped, supercilious cast, of the faces. The images themselves are all cut' from a grey trachytic lava found at. the east end of the island. To get them into position on the platforms' froitt the quarry in which they were cut must, have been a.task involving stupendous labour. When these images were made, why and by whom, has been intriguing scientists ever since Easter,lsland was discovered over 200 years/ago. The present inhabitants of Easter Island know nothing Of the construction of these remarkable monuments. The only implement ever discovered on the island is a kind of stone chisel, but it seems to be an impossible kind of tool for the work,., ,There is every evidence, too that the work of making and erecting the statues .was suddenly interrupted, borne lie half-finished in the quarry and others have been found near the platform, ready apparently for erection. Many theories have been advanced as to the origin of these statues, and it is thought by some that Easter Island may be the remnant of an old Continent But no theory as. yet advanced can claim general credence; and, the Easter Island statues must be looked upon as one of the. unsolved -mysteries; of the world A Kind of. picture, writing has been louna on the island, but,' as it cannot be translated, .it throws no light on ;the subject. ': ;■ ;