EASTER ISLAND

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 147, 6 June 1936, Page 15

EASTER ISLAND

AGE OF THE FIGURES poR more than 200 years Easter Island has been counted among the world’s mysteries, and around its giant stone faces staring up into the sun strange and stimulating legends have been built. Pierre Loti was largely responsible, says a writer in the New York Times. It was he who in 1872 gave authority to travellers' tales and led the world to believe that this little island with its "monstrous faces” was the remnant of a sunken continent long ago inhabited by a great civilised people. That was the poet’s story. Now the scientists have had their turn. The conclusions of a Franco-Belgian expedition which spent five months on the island do not in the least bear out his ideas. These scientists were no less impressed than Loti by the strange figures and faces. They were no less impressed than the English buccaneer Davis, who discovered them in 1686 and first spread the story throughout the world of an island where images of the gods of the heathen were carved In stone blocks thirty and forty feet high. Rapa Nui was the Island's name then, but Admiral Roggeven named it Easter Island because lie reached it on Easter Day, 1772. Cook paid it a visit in 1744. La Perouse and others went to see its wonders, and with every visit the story of the wonder grew. It was the kind of story that challenged every scientific mind; after long planning the Franco-Belgian expedition set out in January, 1934, under the leadership of Charles Watelin and patronised by the French Ministry of Marine. Professor Watelin died at Tierra del Fuego and Dr. A. Metraux, director of the Institute of Ethnography of Tucuman and member of the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadero in Paris, took charge. Assisted by Henri Lavachery, curator of the Museum of Art in Brussels, he carried out the researches. In his office in the Trocadero Museum, Dr. Metraux quietly stated his reasons for rejecting the Loti theory. As usual bis explanation was very simple. First of all, said Dr. Metraux, the statues are not so old as they have been believed to be. It is very difficult to assign a definite age to than, but the study of information and records from various sources led to the conclusion that the Island was not inhabited before the thirteenth century. Supporting this theory is the discovery that the statues are made of a very friable volcanic stone. Effect of Rains. The heavy rains which pour down at times for days and days on the island have so smoothed and rounded the surface of the sculptor’s work as to give the Impression that the stone was cut at least a thousand years before our era. Even now, Dr. Metraux added, the natives prefer to carve statues .out of stone Instead of wood, because it is soft and easy to work. The second point to explain was the purpose of those statues. It is certain now that they were made to decorate vast tombs seventy-five metres in length by ten metres in width. Those tombs were called "Ahu” (heap of stones). Each village had its own. The figures in stone represented old chiefs and brilliant ancestors, but only some of them had been carried out of the quarries and placed in position. The big ones, still upon the slopes of the volcano Rano Ranakau, were devoted to the religion of the “birdman,” which, with its special rites, disappeared in 1880. The islanders are now fervent Christians. The problem of the transportation of stones weighing ten tons and more was a very simple one. Some centuries ago Easter Island was covered with thick grass and the population was much more numerous than now. So it was quite easy to draw the statues along the slopes, sliding them on the grass. The plausibility of this explanation is indicated by the fact that the biggest statue, weighing about fifty tons, was not moved, and that in Marquesas Islands some statues were left at the place they were made, the slopes being too steep to negotiate. In Easter Island only one monument ten metres high Is to be found outside the quarry where it was hewn. Those placed In position are only two or three metres high. The third point attacking the legend is the discovery of tools in the grass and the presence of stones underpinning the huge figures. Those stones are like the ones used by natives, until 1850, In building their huts. It was said for a long time that only one of the sculptor’s tools had been found. Dr. Metraux says that hundreds are still to be picked up at the toot of the statues: stone knives, stone axes, and so on. A Century Ago. It was said, too, that the present Inhabitants of Easter Island know nothing of the construction of the tombs and the statues. The Franco-Belgian expedition was able, however, to collect indications from natives that the Latest, figure was erected in their great-grandmother's days —that is to say, at the beginning of the last century. Most of the stone figures erected on the tombs were pulled down during the wars between the villages of the north and south side of the Island. But when Cook came to the island, he saw them still standing. The concluding argument of those who believed in the theory of an ancient continent now disappeared, which was repeated by Loti after his stay in the island as midshipman of La Flore, was that there existed a road leading to the sea. Every glorious land sunken amid fantastic waves has a road leading to the sea In the legend of Atlantis there art. always such roads. In Easter Island declared Dr. Metraux, the so-called road is only a slope summarily paved and leading to a lake. The depth of the ocean all around seems, too, to the scientific mind sufficient to prove that the island comes out of the sea and is not the remains of an old continent that, has been engulfed. In putting all these facts together De. Metraux and his colleagues have reached the conclusion that the Easter Island legend was principally built up by imagination working on uncontrolled material. As an example, the famous writing on pieces of wood—the "speaking woods” as they are called—appeared to be merely a complicated mnemonic system having a magic origin, and presenting some analogy with Indian signs. The study of those "speaking woods” will perhaps, Dr Metraux thinks, soon betray the last secret of the Island, and the legend will then be definitely exploded. Meanwhile the natives are steadily destroying the great enigmatic figures and carving smaller ones out ol the fragments to sei! to tourists.