ON EASTER ISLAND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20958, 22 February 1930, Page 27

ON EASTER ISLAND.

i HUGE STONE STATUES,

UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES

The expedition being fitted out by Eldredge R. Johnson, of Moorestown, N.J., to explore the mystery of Easter Island in the Pacific, 2300 miles west of Valparaiso, is. of course, not the first effort of natural scientists to determine the origin of the extraordinary archaeological remains which have made thie little islet famous (says the Christian Science Monitor in an editorial). Only 13 miles long by seven miles wide, volcanic in character, with little or no timber, few streams, and a population, mainly native, of fewer than 300, this island holds more than 600 huge stone busts, some of them 70ft in height, and carefully planned and executed stone platforms, carved with inscriptions in an alphabet unknown and thus far uudeeiphered. Who were the people who constructed these colossal memorials? The tools with which the work was done, stone chisels, lie in many cases beside the half-completed work, as though the ' sculptors were frightened away by some disaster. No metal tools have been found, and the fact that where the lava, from which the statues are cut, contained a lump harder than the stone chisel which did the cutting, the lump was left standing on the body of the statue like a wart, would seem to prove the lack of anything more efficient than flint or. obsidian chisels, EARLY EXPLORERS.

The island first became known to peoples of Western Europe when on Easter Sunday in, 1722 a Dutch navigator named Roggewein discovered it. It was visited again, by the redoubtable Captain Cook in ,1773. There are those who have studied the relics of the ancient civilisation who believe that, had these navigators gone inland, particularly to the crater of the extinct volcano, they might have found the natives at work at their sculptures. , Unfortunately, neither of them explored the island or left any record as to the size of its population. It does not seem that these colossal works could have been carried out in such numbers except n . um erpua people equipped with some bj of handling heavy bodies, yet the island as it exists to-day could not possibly support more than the few hundred who now occupy it. NEW ZEALANDER'S VISIT. 1913 an expedition under the authortlt o R r ßiah Museum, headed by W. Booresby Routledge and his wife, was despatched to make a thorough scientific inquiry inter the relics on the island and their origin. Unhappily, they got there just in time to encounter the backwash of the World War, for the island was for a time made the base of the German fleet of Admiral yon Spec, later destroyed by the British. The English explorers, therefore, fled after a comparatively brief inquiry into the relies. Even at that their report is the most important one we have of a scientific character, bearing on this problem. ; Some RvmL ye£ V ra m! a H r , Professor Macmillan Brown, of Christchurch, New Zealand, also the island, and made a report to a scientific society. The Christian science Monitor at the time quoted him as saying:— . These monuments are standing to-day just as they stood hundreds of years,ago huge images fashioned rudely in human te f>b stone platforms. dnn L OO lm agca and between 400 and 500 platforms which circle the island. ;Some of the statues are of imfW*lS i ully 70 feet' in and tiiejr stand there, sphmxhke; mysterious, looking out to sea just as they looked in those days when for some mysterious reason the men who fashioned them, who in some marvellous manner drew them over miles of rough and hilly country, abandoned their work and never returned to

Not long after Professor Brown's visit, the mystery of the island was still £urther enhanced by a report, widely printed that it had disappeared following an earthquake which shook Chile and the floor of tile South Pacific. This report, however, was ultimately proved to be incorrect, and the island with all its colossal images now ditfon* s^udies American expe-

POSBIBLE EXPLANATION. The most reasonable speculation as to the way in which these huge images, seemingly so much beyond the power of the present, sparse population, came into being, is that the present island is but a mountain peak, all that remains of a once large and populous territory, submerged at some prehistoric time by volcanic actmn. It is hardly probable that any investigation conducted purely on land and limited .to a study of the existing memorials, can produce new information. If the American expedition can be fully equipped for deep-sea sounding—and perhaps for such a study of the bottom, of the ocean where the water is not too deep as Professor Wilham Beebe has been making in the Caribbean—some evidence may be obtained; of similar images or works of stone submerged in its surrounding waters. _ If so, the theory of a once populous region, suddenly plunged beneath the sea. would seem to be .readily substantiated. / ,