Where is Easter Island located? Easter Island: “Mysterious Rapa Nui What is Fr. Easter

Easter Island - a tiny piece of lava, with its outlines resembling a Napoleonic cocked hat, for thousands of miles around it is embraced by the ocean, sky and silence. 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, which lies beyond our perception.”


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 of stone giants, some of which lie, staring at the zenith, while others tower over the island, looking into an unknown distance.



One of the famous mathematicians noticed that life on earth is an immense realm of approximate values. It seems that this thesis demonstrates quite convincingly 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 the scientific world has today.


Interest in this tiny volcanic formation, lost in the vastness of the ocean, does not weaken over 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 the mysterious island, where the inhabitants "built no castles, no palaces, no dams, no wharves. They carved gigantic humanoid figures from stone, tall as a house, heavy as wagon, dragged many of them through the mountains and valleys, and installed on powerful terraces in all parts of the island ... "


The tireless craving of the ancient inhabitants of the island for carving huge stone figures, the largest of which is as high as a seven-story building 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). But the next archaeological expedition each time opens more and more new statues.

One of the explorers of the island, Pierre Loti, described his impressions of the stone giants as follows: “What kind of human race do these statues belong to, with slightly upturned noses and thin protruding lips, expressing either contempt or mockery.

Instead of eyes, only deep depressions, but under the arch of wide noble brows, they seem to look and think. 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 Mazier became the owner of a human figure made of wood, which, in terms of 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? "The locals can't explain anything," wrote Francis Maziere. "They tell such an intricate mishmash of legends that you might think they never knew anything and that they are not descendants of the last sculptors at all."


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 the elderly 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 stone figures are images of the gods was said by Katherine Raupledge. 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 war 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..."


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 paid attention to the eye-catching disproportion between giant statues, quarries of truly cyclopean proportions and modest residential buildings of local residents.


"The obvious disproportion of the ahu with the overthrown statues in comparison with the remains of the houses was striking. The statues towered over the village, fixing their gaze on it. These giants, turned with their backs to the sea, 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 for centuries has been rains, is deprived of many 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.

The very obtaining 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 makes us 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 was only after 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 Maziere, “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 no written language has been found on the Polynesian islands.

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.
However, 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!"

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 appease 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.

Recently, two hypotheses have been most widely used: the hypothesis of the American origin of the Polynesians and the Polynesian culture (to which a number of scientists 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 of 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 island's civilization 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, there was a dissipation of the initial level of passionarity, which ultimately led to the 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.

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. Below it is the boundary of the fault of giant tectonic plates, which, as it were, divide 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 attracts scientists from all over the world here, which is why planes with tourists land at the local airport twice a week. 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 traffic, 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.
Publication author

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) (Pascua, Rapa Nui), a volcanic island in the eastern Pacific Ocean 165.5 square kilometers. Height up to 539 meters. Belongs to Chile. The population is about 2 thousand people. Fishing. Sheep breeding. The remains of the disappeared culture of the Polynesians (stone sculpture, tablets covered with letters). The administrative center is Hanga Roa. Discovered by the Dutch navigator I. Roggeveen in 1772 on the day of Easter.

Easter Island is said to be one of the most secluded places in the world. This tiny island of volcanic origin is no more than 24 kilometers in size, lost in the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles from the nearest human civilization. It is located 3600 km west of the Chilean city of Valparaiso.

Everything connected with the island is shrouded in mystery. Where did its first inhabitants come from? How did they even find this island? How and why were over 600 giant stone statues carved?

The first Europeans to set foot on the island on Easter Sunday 1772 were Dutch sailors, who gave the island its name. They found that representatives of three different races peacefully coexist on the island. There were blacks, redskins and, finally, completely white people. They behaved very kindly and friendly.

The most fascinating and mysterious discovery on Easter Island was still the giant stone statues, called moai by the locals. Many of them reach a height of 4 to 10 meters and weigh up to 20 tons. Some are even larger, their weight exceeds 90 tons. They have very large heads with a heavy protruding chin, long ears and no legs at all. Some have red stone UshapkiF on their heads (it is believed that these are leaders deified after their death).

Easter Island photo

Secrets of Easter Island

Easter Island: where is located

Easter Island is an island in the South Pacific Ocean, the territory of Chile (together with the uninhabited island of Sala y Gomez, it forms the province and commune of Isla de Pascua as part of the Valparaiso region). The local name of the island is Rapa Nui (rap. Rapa Nui). Area - 163.6 km².

Along with the archipelago, Tristan da Cunha is the most remote inhabited island in the world. The distance to the continental coast of Chile is 3514 km, to Pitcairn Island, the nearest inhabited place, is 2075 km.

Easter Island on the world map

How to Get to Easter Island

There are two ways to get to the island, both of which are expensive. The first is on a tourist yacht or cruise ship, which sometimes come here. You can go on an independent trip and call at the port in a couple of weeks.

The second way is air. The island has an airport that receives flights from the Chilean capital Santiago, Tahiti and Lima. The flight schedule depends on the time of year. For example, from December to March, you can only fly once a week. In other months - twice a week. The flight from Santiago takes about 5 hours.

The only way to get to Easter Island from Russia is by plane. Tickets are not cheap. You can buy from Moscow before Easter with transfers, you can buy from Moscow - St. Petersburg to North America, then to South America, and from there until Easter, you can immediately go to South America, and from there until Easter. In any case, you will have to spend money on a ticket. There is also a very good option when airlines offer special offers and reduce the cost of air tickets by half or even three times.

Easter Island: video

The most beautiful places for Easter

Aerial view of Easter Island

Easter Island is the most remote inhabited island in the world. The nearest mainland is Chile, 3,700 kilometers away. Administratively, the island is part of the Chilean region of Valparaiso - in 1888, Chile annexed this territory.

About 5,000 people live on the famous island, a little more than half of them are indigenous people. Area - 164 sq. km. The island has the shape of a regular triangle.

There are no harmful industries here. The water around the island is clean and clear. But at the same time, the flora and fauna are not very diverse, which is inherent in many island formations in the Pacific Ocean. And lovers of only a beach "bounty vacation" are better off not flying here. This is a place for romantics and the curious.

Who discovered Easter Island?

The island was once covered in lush forests. The first settlers appeared here around 300 AD. They presumably came from the French Polynesian islands.

And the first European who saw the mysterious and now world-famous idols-idols was the Dutchman Jacob Roggeven. It was he, on Easter Sunday, 1772, who discovered a distant land in the ocean. It is to him that the island owes its modern name. The local name is Rapa Nui. Soon James Cook also visited the islands.

Easter Island was rediscovered for the world and our contemporaries in the middle of the last century by the famous Norwegian traveler Thor Heyerdahl.

How to get to Easter Island

The flight from Santiago takes 5 hours. The flights are carried out by the Chilean airline LAN Airlines, the Santiago-Tahiti flight with a stopover at Mataveri Airport on Easter Island. You can also get here from the capital of Peru, Lima. Flights are regular, in contrast to shipping traffic. There is only one pier for small ships on the island.

On the island itself, tourists move around in rented cars, bikes, taxis and on foot. The distances are small - by car from one side of the island to the other you can get in 30 minutes, and go around it all in a circle in one and a half to two hours.

Hanga Roa "capital" of Easter Island

In addition to the airport, the administrative center of the island has several 3 and 4 star hotels, shops, restaurants, a post office, schools and a church. Almost the entire population of the island lives here and is employed in the tourism industry. There are only two streets in the town, without numbering of houses - all the inhabitants know each other. Prices on the island "bite", which is not surprising - after all, almost everything has to be imported.

Easter Island Attractions - Moai

The main attraction of this amazing corner of the earth is stone statues scattered all over the island - Moai, as they are called here. There are about a thousand idols on the island. Some are up to 20 meters high. All but seven, whose gaze is turned to the ocean, are arranged so that they look inside the island.

The idols were made from compressed volcanic ash in quarries inside the island. There are many guesses and versions about how the statues were transported around the island. Everyone who visited the "factory" of idols does not leave the feeling that the work stopped just yesterday, and not many centuries ago.

• Ahu Rano Raraku (300 moai), ahu Tongariki (15 moai) and a ritual site, ahu Ature and ahu Naunau are the most interesting places for tourists to visit.

• Anakena bay and beach is the most beautiful and largest of the few island beaches.

Every year at the end of January, the Tapati Rapa Nui festival is held on the island. It is accompanied by chants, dances and traditional competitions of local residents - the Rapanui people.

About the whole process in detail. Let's now turn to the "heads" and go to Easter Island

Easter Island, occupying 117 sq. km. -: it is located in the Pacific Ocean at a distance of more than 3700 km. from the nearest continent (South America) and 2600 km from the nearest inhabited island (Pitcairn).

In general, there are many secrets in the history of Easter Island. Its discoverer, Captain Juan Fernandez, fearing competitors, decided to keep his discovery, made in 1578, a secret, and after some time he accidentally died under mysterious circumstances. Although whether what the Spaniard found was Easter Island is still unclear.

After 144 years, in 1722, the Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen stumbled on Easter Island, and this event took place on the day of Christian Easter. So, quite by accident, the island of Te Pito o te Henua, which in the local dialect means the Center of the World, turned into Easter Island.

Interestingly, Admiral Roggeven with his squadron did not just sail in this area, he tried in vain to find the elusive land of Davis, an English pirate, which, according to his descriptions, was discovered 35 years before the Dutch expedition. True, no one, except Davis and his team, has ever seen the newly discovered archipelago.

In 1687, the pirate Edward Davis, whose ship was carried away far to the west from Copiapo, the administrative center of the Atacama region (Chile), by sea winds and the Pacific current, noticed land on the horizon, where the silhouettes of high mountains loomed. However, without even trying to find out whether it was a mirage or an island not yet discovered by Europeans, Davis turned the ship around and headed towards the Peruvian current.

This "Davis Land", which much later became identified with Easter Island, reinforced the conviction of cosmographers of that time that there was a continent in this region, which was, as it were, a counterbalance to Asia and Europe. This led to the fact that brave sailors began to search for the lost continent. However, it was not possible to find it: instead, hundreds of Pacific islands were discovered.

With the discovery of Easter Island, it became widely believed that this is the continent eluding man, on which a highly developed civilization existed for thousands of years, which later disappeared into the depths of the ocean, and only high mountain peaks survived from the continent (in fact, these are extinct volcanoes). ). The existence of huge statues on the island, moai, unusual Rapanui tablets only reinforced this opinion.

However, modern study of adjacent waters has shown this to be unlikely.

Easter Island is located 500 km from a seamount range known as the East Pacific Rise on the Nazca Plate. The island is located on top of a huge mountain formed from volcanic lava. The last volcanic eruption on the island occurred 3 million years ago. Although some scientists suggest that it happened 4.5-5 million years ago.

According to local legends, in the distant past, the island was large. It is quite possible that this was the case during the Pleistocene ice age, when the level of the World Ocean was 100 meters lower. According to geological studies, Easter Island was never part of a sunken continent.

Easter Island's mild climate and volcanic origin should have made it a piece of paradise, far from the troubles that plague the rest of the world, but Roggeven's first impression of the island was that of a devastated area covered with dried grass and scorched vegetation. There were no trees or bushes to be seen.

Modern botanists have found on the island only 47 species of higher plants characteristic of this area; it is mainly grass, sedge and ferns. The list also includes two types of dwarf trees and two types of shrubs. With such vegetation, the inhabitants of the island had no fuel to keep them warm during the cold, wet and windy winter. The only domestic animals were chickens; there were no bats, birds, snakes or lizards. Only insects were found. In total, about 2,000 people lived on the island.

Residents of Easter Island. Engraving from 1860

About 3,000 people live on the island now. Of these, only 150 people are purebred Rapanui, the rest are Chileans and mestizos. Although, again, it is not entirely clear who exactly can be considered purebred. After all, even the first Europeans who landed on the island were surprised to find that the inhabitants of Rapanui - the Polynesian name of the island - are ethnically heterogeneous. Admiral Roggeven, familiar to us, wrote that white, swarthy, brown and even reddish people lived on the land he discovered. Their language was Polynesian, a dialect that had been isolated since about 400 AD. e., and characteristic of the Marquesas and Hawaiian Islands.

Approximately 200 giant stone sculptures - "Moai", located on massive pedestals along the coast of the island with miserable vegetation, far from the quarries, seemed completely inexplicable. Most of the statues were placed on massive plinths. At least 700 more sculptures, in varying degrees of completion, were left in quarries or on ancient roads connecting the quarries with the coast. It seemed that the sculptors suddenly left their tools and stopped working..

Distant craftsmen carved "moai" on the slopes of the Rano-Roraku volcano, located in the eastern part of the island, from soft volcanic tuff. Then the finished statues were lowered down the slope and placed along the perimeter of the island, at a distance of more than 10 km. The height of most idols is from five to seven meters, while later statues reached up to 10 and up to 12 meters. Tuff, or, as it is also called, pumice, from which they are made, resembles a sponge in structure and crumbles easily even with a light impact on it. so that the average weight of "moai" does not exceed 5 tons. Stone ahu - platforms-pedestals: reached 150 m in length and 3 m in height, and consisted of pieces weighing up to 10 tons.

At one time, Admiral Roggeven, recalling his journey to the island, claimed that the natives made fires in front of the moai idols and squatted next to them, bowing their heads. After that, they folded their arms and swung them up and down. Of course, this observation is not able to explain who the idols really were for the islanders.

Roggeven and his companions could not understand how, without the use of thick wooden rollers and strong ropes, it was possible to move and install such blocks. The islanders had no wheels, no draft animals, and no other source of energy than their own muscles. Ancient legends say that the statues walked by themselves. There is no point in asking how this actually happened, because there is still no documentary evidence left. There are many hypotheses for the movement of "moai", some are even confirmed by experiments, but all this proves only one thing - it was possible in principle. And the inhabitants of the island moved the statues and no one else. That's what they did it for? This is where the divergences begin.

It is also surprising that in 1770 the statues were still standing, James Cook, who visited the island in 1774, mentioned the lying statues, no one had noticed anything like this before him. The last time the standing idols were seen was in 1830. Then the French squadron entered the island. Since then, no one has seen the original statues, that is, those erected by the inhabitants of the island themselves. Everything that exists on the island today was restored in the 20th century. The last restoration of fifteen "moai", located between the Rano-Roraku volcano and the Poike Peninsula, took place relatively recently - from 1992 to 1995. Moreover, the Japanese were engaged in restoration work.

In the second half of the 19th century, the cult of the bird-man also died. This strange ritual, unique for all Polynesia, was dedicated to Makemake, the supreme deity of the islanders. The Chosen One became his earthly incarnation. Moreover, interestingly, the elections were held regularly, once a year. At the same time, servants or warriors took the most active part in them. It depended on them whether their master, the head of the family clan, Tangata-manu, or a bird-man would become. It is this rite that owes its origin to the main cult center - the rocky village of Orongo on the largest volcano Rano Kao in the western tip of the island. Although, perhaps, Orongo existed long before the emergence of the Tangata-manu cult. Traditions say that the heir to the legendary Hotu Matua, the first leader who arrived on the island, was born here. In turn, hundreds of years later, his descendants themselves gave the signal for the start of the annual competition.

In spring, the messengers of the god Makemake, black sea swallows, flew to the small islands of Motu-Kao-Kao, Motu-Iti and Motu-Nui, located not far from the coast. The warrior who first found the first egg of these birds and delivered it by swimming to his master received seven beautiful women as a reward. Well, the owner became a leader, or rather, a bird-man, receiving universal respect, honor and privileges. The last Tangata-manu ceremony took place in the 60s of the 19th century. After the disastrous pirate raid of the Peruvians in 1862, when the pirates enslaved the entire male population of the island, there was no one and no one to choose a bird-man.

Why did the natives of Easter Island carve "moai" statues in a quarry? Why did they stop doing this? The society that created the statues must have been significantly different from the 2,000 people that Roggeveen saw. It had to be well organized. What happened to him?

For more than two and a half centuries, the mystery of Easter Island remained unsolved. Most theories about the history and development of Easter Island are based on oral tradition. This happens because no one still can understand what is inscribed in written sources - the famous tablets "ko hau motu morongorongo", which roughly means - a manuscript for recitation. Most of them were destroyed by Christian missionaries, but even those that survived could probably shed light on the history of this mysterious island. And although the scientific world has been agitated more than once by reports that ancient writings have finally been deciphered, when carefully checked, all this turned out to be not a very accurate interpretation of oral facts and legends.

A few years ago, paleontologist David Steadman and several other researchers carried out the first systematic study of Easter Island in order to find out what its plant and animal life was like before. As a result, data appeared for a new, surprising and instructive interpretation of the history of its settlers.

According to one version, Easter Island was inhabited around 400 AD. e. (although radiocarbon data obtained by scientists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo of the University of California (USA) during the study of eight samples of charcoal from Anakena indicate that the island of Rapa Nui was inhabited around 1200 AD, ) The islanders grew bananas, taro, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, mulberries. In addition to chickens, there were also rats on the island, who arrived with the first settlers.

The period of manufacture of statues refers to 1200-1500 years. The number of inhabitants by that time ranged from 7,000 to 20,000 people. To lift and move the statue, several hundred people are enough, who used ropes and rollers from trees that were available at that time in sufficient numbers.

The painstaking work of archaeologists and paleontologists has shown that about 30,000 years before the arrival of people and in the early years of their stay, the island was not at all as deserted as it is now. A subtropical forest of trees and undergrowth rose above shrubs, grasses, ferns and turf. Tree daisies grew in the forest, hauhau trees that can be used to make ropes, and toromiro, which is useful as fuel. There were also varieties of palm trees, which are not now on the island, but there were so many of them before that the foot of the trees was densely covered with their pollen. They are related to the Chilean palm, which grows up to 32 m and a diameter of up to 2 m. Tall, without branches, trunks were ideal material for skating rinks and canoes. They also provided edible nuts and juice, from which the Chileans make sugar, syrup, honey and wine.

The relatively cold coastal waters supported fishing in only a few places. The main marine prey were dolphins and seals. To hunt them, they went out to the open sea and used harpoons. Before the arrival of people, the island was an ideal place for birds, because they did not have any enemies here. Albatrosses, boobies, frigatebirds, fulmars, parrots and other birds nested here - a total of 25 species. It was probably the richest breeding ground in the entire Pacific.

Around the 800s, the destruction of forests began. Increasingly, layers of charcoal from forest fires began to occur, there was less and less wood pollen and more and more pollen appeared from grasses that replaced the forest. Not later than 1400, palm trees completely disappeared, not only as a result of cutting down, but also because of the ubiquitous rats, which did not give them the opportunity to recover: a dozen surviving remains of nuts preserved in the caves had traces of rat bites. Such nuts could not germinate. The hauhau trees did not completely disappear, but there were not enough of them to make ropes.

In the 15th century, not only palm trees disappeared, but the entire forest as a whole. It was destroyed by people who cleared areas for gardens, cut down trees for the construction of canoes, for making skating rinks for statues, for heating. The rats ate the seeds. It is likely that the birds died out due to polluted flowers and reduced fruit yields. The same thing has happened that happens everywhere in the world where the forest is being destroyed: most of the inhabitants of the forest are disappearing. All kinds of local birds and animals have disappeared on the island. All coastal fish were also caught. Small snails were eaten. From the diet of people by the 15th century. dolphins disappeared: there was nothing to go to sea on, and there was nothing to make harpoons from. It turned into cannibalism.

Paradise, opened to the first settlers, 1600 years later became almost lifeless. Fertile soils, abundance of food, plenty of building materials, sufficient living space, all the possibilities for a comfortable existence were destroyed. By the time Heyerdahl visited the island, there was a single toromiro tree on the island; now it is no more.

And it all started with the fact that a few centuries after arriving on the island, people began, like their Polynesian ancestors, to install stone idols on platforms. Over time, the statues became larger and larger; their heads began to adorn red 10-ton crowns; a spiral of competition unfolded; rival clans tried to outdo each other by displaying health and power like the Egyptians building their gigantic pyramids. On the island, as in modern America, there was a complex political system for the distribution of available resources and the integration of the economy in various areas.

An 1873 engraving from the English newspaper Harper Weekly. The engraving is signed: "Easter Island Stone Idols Festival Dancing Tatoos" (Festival of tattooed dancers at the stone idols of Easter Island).

The ever-increasing population harassed the forests faster than they could regenerate; vegetable gardens occupied more and more space; the soil devoid of forest, springs and streams dried up; the trees that were spent on transporting and raising the statues, as well as on the construction of canoes and dwellings, turned out to be insufficient even for cooking. As birds and animals were destroyed, famine set in. The fertility of arable lands decreased due to wind and rain erosion. Droughts have begun. Intensive breeding of chickens and cannibalism did not solve the food problem. Statues with sunken cheeks and visible ribs, prepared for moving, are evidence of the onset of famine.

With food scarce, the islanders could no longer support the chieftains, bureaucracy, and shamans who ran society. The surviving islanders told the first Europeans who visited them how the centralized system was replaced by chaos, and the warlike class defeated the hereditary chiefs. On the stones appeared images of spears and daggers made by the warring parties in the 1600s and 1700s; they are still scattered throughout Easter Island. By 1700 the population was between a quarter and a tenth of its former size. People moved to caves to hide from their enemies. Around 1770, opposing clans began to overturn each other's statues and cut off their heads. The last statue was overturned and desecrated in 1864.

As the picture of the decline of the Easter Island civilization emerged before the researchers, they asked themselves: - Why did not they look back, did not realize what was happening, did not stop before it was too late? What were they thinking as they cut down the last palm tree?

Most likely, the catastrophe did not happen suddenly, but stretched out over several decades. The changes taking place in nature were not noticeable for one generation. Only old people, looking back at their childhood years, could grasp what was happening and understand the threat posed by deforestation, yet the ruling class and masons, fearful of losing their privileges and jobs, treated the warnings in exactly the same way as today's loggers in the US Northwest: "Work is more important than the forest!"

The trees gradually became smaller, thinner and less significant. Once the last fruiting palm tree was cut, and the young shoots were destroyed along with the remnants of shrubs and undergrowth. No one noticed the death of the last young palm tree.

The flora of the island is very poor: experts count no more than 30 species of plants growing on Rapa Nui. Most of them were brought from other islands of Oceania, America, Europe. Many plants that were previously widespread on Rapa Nui have been exterminated. Between the 9th and 17th centuries, there was an active felling of trees, which led to the disappearance of forests on the island (probably before that, palm trees of the Paschalococos disperta species grew on it). Another reason was the eating of tree seeds by rats. Due to unsustainable human activities and other factors, the resulting accelerated soil erosion caused great damage to agriculture, resulting in a significant reduction in the population of Rapa Nui.

One of the extinct plants is Sophora toromiro, whose local name is toromiro (rap. toromiro). This plant on the island in the past played an important role in the culture of the Rapanui people: it was used to make "talking tablets" with local pictograms.

The trunk of a toromiro, with a diameter of a human thigh and thinner, was often used in the construction of houses; spears were also made from it. In the 19th-20th centuries, this tree was exterminated (one of the reasons was that the young growth was destroyed by sheep brought to the island).

Another plant on the island is the mulberry tree, whose local name is mahute (rap. mahute). In the past, this plant also played a significant role in the life of the islanders: white clothes, called tapa, were made from the bast of the mulberry tree. After the appearance of the first Europeans on the island - whalers and missionaries - the importance of mahute in the life of the Rapanui people decreased.

The roots of the ti plant (rap. ti), or Dracaena terminalis, were used to make sugar. Also, this plant was used to make a powder of dark blue and green, which was then applied to the body as tattoos.

Makoi (rap. makoi) (Thespesia populnea) was used for carving.

One of the surviving plants of the island, which grows on the slopes of the Rano Kao and Rano Raraku craters, is Scirpus californicus, used in the construction of houses.

In recent decades, a small growth of eucalyptus has begun to appear on the island. In the XVIII-XIX centuries, grapes, banana, melon, sugar cane were brought to the island.

Before the Europeans arrived on the island, the fauna of Easter Island was mainly represented by marine animals: seals, turtles, crabs. Until the 19th century, chickens were bred on the island. The species of local fauna that previously inhabited Rapa Nui have become extinct. For example, the species of rat Rattus exulans, which in the past was used by the locals for food. Instead, rats of the species Rattus norvegicus and Rattus rattus were brought to the island by European ships, which became carriers of various diseases previously unknown to the Rapanui.

Now 25 species of sea birds nest on the island and 6 species of land birds live.

Moai statistics are as follows. The total number of moai is 887. The number of moai that are installed on the pedestals ahu (Ahu) is 288 (32 percent of the total). The number of moai that stand on the slopes of the Rano Raraku volcano, where the moai carving quarry was located, is 397 (45 percent of the total). The number of moai that lie scattered throughout the island is 92 (10 percent of the total). Moai have different heights - from 4 to 20 meters. The largest of them stand alone on the slope of Rano Raraku volcano.

They are up to their necks immersed in sedimentary rocks that have accumulated on the island over the long history of this piece of land. Some moai stood on stone plinths called ahu by the natives. The number of ahu exceeds three hundred. The size of ahu is also different - from several tens of meters to two hundred meters. The largest moai, nicknamed "El Gigante", is 21.6 meters high. It is located in the Rano Raraku quarry and weighs approximately 145-165 tons. The largest moai standing on a pedestal is located on Ahu Te Pito Kura. He has the nickname Paro (Paro), his height is about 10 meters, and his weight is about 80 tons.

Mysteries of Easter Island.

Easter Island is full of mysteries. Everywhere on the island you can see the entrances to the caves, stone platforms, grooved alleys leading directly to the ocean, huge statues, signs on the stones.

One of the main mysteries of the island, which has haunted several generations of travelers and researchers, is completely unique stone statues - moai. These are stone idols of various sizes - from 3 to 21 meters. On average, the weight of one statue is from 10 to 20 tons, but among them there are real colossi weighing from 40 to 90 tons.

The glory of the island began with these stone statues. It was completely incomprehensible how they could appear on an island lost in the ocean with sparse vegetation and a "wild" population. Who carved them, dragged them ashore, put them on specially made pedestals and crowned them with weighty headdresses?

The statues have an extremely strange appearance - they have very large heads with a heavy protruding chin, long ears and no legs at all. Some have "caps" of red stone on their heads. What human tribe belonged to those whose portraits remained on the island in the form of moai? A pointed, raised nose, thin lips, slightly protruding, as if in a grimace of mockery and contempt. Deep notches under the superciliary arches, a large forehead - who are they?

Clickable

Some statues have necklaces carved in stone, or a tattoo made with a chisel. The face of one of the stone giants is dotted with holes. Perhaps in ancient times, the sages who lived on the island, who studied the movement of heavenly bodies, tattooed their faces with a map of the starry sky?

The eyes of the statues look to the sky. Into the sky - the same as when centuries ago, a new homeland was opened for those who sailed from beyond the horizon?

In earlier times, the islanders were convinced that the moai protected their land and themselves from evil spirits. All standing moai are turned to face the island. Incomprehensible as time, they are immersed in silence. These are the mysterious symbols of a bygone civilization.

Sculptures are known to have been extruded from the volcanic lava at one of the island's extremities, and then the finished figures were carried along three main roads to the places of ceremonial plinths - ahu - scattered along the coastline. The length of the largest now destroyed ahu was 160 m, and on its central platform, about 45 m long, there were 15 statues.

The vast majority of statues lie unfinished in quarries or along ancient roads. Some of them are frozen in the depths of the crater of the Rano Raraku volcano, some go beyond the crest of the volcano and seem to be heading towards the ocean. Everything seemed to stop at one moment, engulfed in a whirlwind of an unknown cataclysm. Why did the sculptors suddenly stop their work? Everything is left in place - stone axes, and unfinished statues, and stone giants, as if frozen on the way in their movement, as if people just left their work for a minute and could not return to it.

Some of the statues, previously set on stone platforms, are knocked down and split. The same applies to stone platforms - ahu.

The construction of ahu required no less effort and art than the creation of the statues themselves. It was required to make blocks and lay down an even pedestal from them. The density with which the bricks are adjacent to each other is amazing. Why the first axy were built (their age is about 700-800 years) is still unclear. Subsequently, they were often used as places of burial and perpetuation of the memory of leaders.

Excavations carried out on several sections of ancient roads, along which, presumably, the islanders carried multi-ton statues (sometimes over a distance of more than 20 kilometers), showed that all roads clearly bypass flat areas. The roads themselves are V or U-shaped hollows about 3.5 meters wide. In some areas there are long connecting fragments, shaped like a curb stone. In some places, pillars are clearly visible, dug in outside the curbs - perhaps they served as a support for some kind of device like a lever. Scientists have not yet established the exact date of the construction of these roads, however, according to the researchers, the process of moving the statues was completed on Easter Island by about 1500 BC.

Another mystery: simple calculations show that for hundreds of years a small population could not have been able to carve out, transport and install even half of the existing statues. Ancient wooden tablets with carved letters were found on the island. Most of them were lost during the conquest of the island by Europeans. But some of the plaques have survived. The letters went from left to right, and then in reverse order - from right to left. For a long time it was not possible to decipher the signs inscribed on them. And only at the beginning of 1996 in Moscow it was announced that all 4 surviving text boards had been deciphered. It is curious that in the language of the islanders there is a word denoting slow movement without the help of legs. Levitation? Was this fantastic method used when transporting and installing the moai?

And one more riddle. Old maps show other territories near Easter Island. Oral traditions tell of the slow sinking of the earth under water. Other legends tell about catastrophes: about the fiery staff of the god Uvok, which split the earth. Couldn't larger islands or even a whole continent with a highly developed culture and technology have existed here in ancient times? They even came up with the beautiful name Pasifida for him.

Some scholars suggest that there is still a certain clan (order) of Paschals that keeps the secrets of their ancestors and hides them from the uninitiated in ancient knowledge.

Easter Island has many names:

Hititeairagi (rap. Hititeairagi), or Hiti-ai-rangi (rap. Hiti-ai-rangi);

Tekaouhangoaru (rap. Tekaouhangoaru);

Mata-Kiterage (rap. Mata-Kiterage - translated from Rapanui "eyes looking at the sky");

Te-Pito-te-henua (rap. Te-Pito-te-henua - "navel of the earth");

Rapa Nui (rap. Rapa Nui - "Great Rapa"), a name mainly used by whalers;

San Carlos Island, so named by Gonzalez Don Felipe in honor of the King of Spain;

Teapi (rap. Teapi) - so called the island of James Cook;

Waihu (rap. Vaihu), or Waihou (rap. Vaihou), - this name was also used by James Cook, and later Forster Johann Georg Adam and La Perouse Jean Francois de Galo (the bay in the northeast of the island is named after him);

Easter Island, so named by the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen because he discovered it on Easter Day 1722. Very often, Easter Island is called Rapa Nui (translated as "Big Rapa"), although it is not of Rapanui, but of Polynesian origin. Such

The name of the island was due to the Tahitian navigators who used it to distinguish between Easter Island and Rapa Island, which lies 650 km south of Tahiti. The very name "Rapa Nui" has caused a lot of controversy among linguists about the correct spelling of this word. Among

English-speaking specialists use the word "Rapa Nui" (2 words) for the name of the island, the word "Rapanui" (1 word) - when it comes to the people or local culture.

Easter Island is a province within the Valparaiso region of Chile, headed by a governor accredited to the Chilean government and appointed by the president. Since 1984, only a local resident can become the governor of the island (the first was Sergio Rapu Haoa, a former archaeologist and museum curator). Administratively, the province of Easter Island includes the uninhabited islands of Sala y Gómez. Since 1966, the settlement of Hanga Roa has elected a 6-member local council every four years, headed by a mayor.

About two dozen police officers operate on the island, mainly responsible for security at the local airport.

There are also armed forces Chile (mainly the Navy). The current currency on the island is the Chilean peso (US dollars are also in circulation on the island). Easter Island is a duty-free zone, so tax revenues to the island's budget are relatively small. To a large extent, it consists of subsidies from the government.

colossus (height 6 m) after the excavation of Easter Island (after: Heyerdahl, 1982

By the way, this prop was thrown into the sea during the filming of the next movie on the island. So there were no underwater statues.

Here's another theory of how things should look like.

Uniqueness easter islands manifests itself in an ambiguous opinion about him. That is, on the one hand, people know everything about this place, on the other, nothing at the same time. Its enigmatic stone statues are still silent witnesses of an ancient and unknown culture. But who and how could create these monumental sculptures from rocks?

A bit of geography. Easter Island is located in the southeastern Pacific between Chile and Tahiti (Figure 1). Local natives dubbed it - Rapanui or Rapa Nui (Rapa Nui). Easter is the most remote island on the globe. The distance to the nearby piece of land in the west is two thousand ninety-two kilometers, and in the east - two thousand nine hundred and seventy-one kilometers. It is formed in the form of a triangle, on each edge of which there are extinct volcanoes.

The area of ​​the island is about one hundred and sixty square kilometers. Easter Island is recognized as the highest point above sea level. It is located on a huge hill, which was called the East Pacific Rise. In view of this, Thor Heyerdahl wrote that the closest land that the locals see is the Moon.

The capital of the island, as well as its only city, is the city of Anga Roa. The island has its own flag (Fig. 3) and its coat of arms (Fig. 4).

Interestingly, Easter Island has / had several names: Vaihu, Mata-ki-te-Ragi, San Carlos Island, Rapanui, Teapi, Tekaouhangoaru, Te Pito-o-te-henua, Hititeairagi, Easter Island.

Some legends claim that Easter Island was once part of one large country (many consider it to be a surviving part of Atlantis). This looks quite plausible, since today at Easter a lot of evidence was found confirming these legends: the island has roads leading directly to the ocean, a large number of underground tunnels have been dug, originating in local caves and paving the way in an unknown direction, as well as other less significant information and amazing finds.

Interesting data on underwater research of the ocean floor near Easter Island are given by the Australian Howard Tirloren, who arrived here with Cousteau. He said that having arrived here in 1978, they studied the bottom around the island in sufficient detail. Anyone who went down in a bathyscaphe will confirm that the mountains under water, even at a shallow depth, are quite unusual in appearance: some of them even had holes made, resembling window connectors. And once Jacques-Yves Cousteau found one unfamiliar deep-sea depression in the vicinity, where after he dived for another three days. When he returned, he wanted to explore this depression even more scrupulously. Cousteau did not manage to see anything in full, but according to him, the silhouettes of the walls are visible at the bottom, forming something like a section of a large city. However, because of the people serving in the political police of DINA, which was supervised by Pinochet himself, nothing came of it. According to Tirloren, they were forced to endorse non-disclosure documents, and also demanded to stop research, so all work was stopped. But what could be unusual in this cavity? Why the Chilean state security is so afraid of scientists remains a mystery. After the Pinochet regime, this issue was raised again, but to no avail. Thus, this fact does not rule out the possibility that a significant part of Easter Island sank during some kind of catastrophe.

In 1973-1977, several American oceanologists studied oceanic depressions near Easter Island, namely, near the Sala y Gomez ridge. As a result, they discovered sixty-five underwater peaks and agreed with the hypothesis of the existence of an unknown archipelago, which was in the area tens of thousands of years ago, and then sank into the water. But all subsequent studies were frozen for no good reason at the request of the Chilean government. The "Island of Mysteries" still does not make it possible to unravel its mystery.

The obtained geophysical data confirm that the coast of Southeast Asia is slowly sinking into the ocean. Maybe this subsidence once happened faster and at one moment, like Atlantis, it went deep into the depths of the ocean, including Pacifida with its huge population and original culture, traces of which are still found on Easter Island? And the various tablets with inscriptions and monuments of art are nothing more than the surviving evidence of an ancient vanished civilization? After all, according to the testimony of the first inhabitant of Easter Island, Eiro, all buildings contain wooden planks or sticks containing some kind of hieroglyphs and symbols. Basically, these are images of unknown animals, which the natives continue to paint with stones to this day. Each image has its own designation; but in view of the fact that they make such products on very rare occasions, this suggests that these hieroglyphs are only the remains of ancient writing. That is, the natives are only trying to follow old customs, without trying to find any meaning in this.

Macmillan Brown, in his research, even tried to find out the approximate date of the death of Pacifida. In his opinion, this phenomenon could have occurred in the interval between 1687, when the English sailor Davis examined a large ledge near Easter Island, and 1722, when Admiral Roggeven found nothing in this place except for a small island. The cataclysm that had happened was evidenced not only by the unexpectedly stopped work in the quarries on Rano Raraku. In many areas of Easter Island, spacious roads are paved that end in the ocean. Does this mean that these paths end deep under water? Can it be possible to find new evidence of a lost culture on the seabed?

There is one thing that completely destroys this hypothesis, and that is the question of chronology. At what point did the landmass in the Pacific Ocean begin to sink? Three hundred years ago, or three thousand, or perhaps even three hundred thousand? Or is this number in the millions? Geological and geophysical data indicate that the deepening of the land and the collapse of the Pacifida happened just in the ancient period. The fauna and flora of such islands as the Galapagos, New Zealand, Fiji, formed from the mainland, but many centuries ago they were part of one huge continent. This led to the discovery of fossils here that have long disappeared and are no longer found anywhere on the globe. Similarly, at one point, the Australian continent broke away from Asia. Land sinking at the location of Easter Island has not occurred since that ancient period.

Chubb's geological and oceanographic surveys near Easter confirmed the fact that he did not sink a millimeter, and at the time when the monuments were erected, the coastline was as stable as it is today. This argument was repeated by the Swedish expedition, which established the geological stability of the island, which lasts at least a million years.

Studying the issue of the emergence of the island itself, the author got the impression that many scientists do not aim to understand or reveal the truth, but pursue the goal of defending their own point of view, to prove what is beneficial for them. Or, moving in an absolutely impartial search, they encounter postulates that are currently imposed on society as official ones, but at the slightest check they are bursting at the seams. This forces one to turn one's research from the straight path to the thorny straight official wilds. It is not difficult to pay attention to the fact that most researchers evaluate the available artifacts only from the point of view of the dominance of matter over spirituality, and nothing else.

In the process of studying the topic, a number of questions arose. Why do scientists, faced with inexplicable archaeological artifacts and at the same time with the same incomprehensible behavior of authorities that openly ban research, do not sound the alarm for everyone possible ways and do not try to convey the obvious to the public? Why don't they build hypotheses in which there would be a place for all findings and facts, and not just convenient or understandable? How can one sometimes come up with theories so that they do not seem crude to the public? Are they really not interested in learning about the past of their planet, or simply there is no free time due to everyday problems? Who really needed to build multi-ton statues on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, place them around the perimeter of the island facing the ocean, paint with ornaments and patterns? What was so special about their writing that when the first Europeans who visited the island saw it, they began to hastily eradicate it from the local population, so much so that in forty years almost none of the Rapanui could not only write, but also read their home signs? It can be objected that this was by chance and that this 18th century was a very long time ago, well, but why are excavations and studies not being carried out at the state level now? Why, if you now approach the statue behind the fence, will a person be threatened with a prison? And why did UNESCO ban the excavation and study of the underground part of the statues? Another curious fact is that almost all modern researchers of the original culture of Easter Island claim that it is impossible to find out its true meaning or decipher the script, and all that is read is ordinary everyday texts.

The people exterminated for half a century.

Fifty years later, in 1722, the Englishman James Cook and the Frenchman La Perouse visited Easter Island. Since then, the situation has changed greatly. Many plains have been abandoned. Once chubby inhabitants vegetated in poverty, and statues filled with grandeur were almost all dumped and lying on the ground. The ancient cult was erased from memory. From the famous race of "long-eared" there are only a few representatives, most likely, their death is associated with rivals - "short-eared", who not only destroyed the tribe, but also their inherent culture. As a result of the events that took place on Easter Island, an entire era ended, which lasted more than one century, and possibly even a millennium. What this period was, has remained an unsolved mystery for many. Roggeven and his assistants were unable to find out almost nothing about her. Captain Cook, La Perouse and the Spaniards, who discovered this island in the second half of the 18th century, showed no curiosity about the ancient artifacts, they were only looking for new territories that could be developed and used as colonies. By the time European researchers finally awakened interest in the cultural heritage of other peoples, only silent witnesses of its majestic past remained on Easter Island - these are huge and breathtaking statues. Now they have been thrown off their bases, on the edge of the crater there was only an abandoned temple and several strange wooden tablets with unknown hieroglyphs. The number of local residents decreased not only because of the ongoing internecine wars. In 1862, slave traders from Peru broke in here, they captured and took out about nine hundred people, including the last king. The captives were sent to mine fertilizer in the Atacama Desert. Later, three hundred more inhabitants of the island were captured and sent to Tahiti for hard labor on the plantations. When, on Easter, a show war began, arranged by Dutroux-Bornier at the request of a French company, the remaining inhabitants and the missionaries who lived there fled. Subsequently, they moved to the Gambier archipelago, located in a more westerly direction. Thus, the population of the island in fifteen years decreased from two and a half thousand to one hundred and eleven people! Therefore, those few people who decided to stay did not remember anything about the age-old customs of their forefathers.

Interesting facts about the inhabitants of the island (Fig. 6). According to H. P. Blavatsky, the multi-colored skin of the local natives indicates that different peoples mixed up on Easter Island, which include the Lemurians (the third hereditary race) and the Atlanteans (the fourth hereditary race). This information is contained in the Secret Doctrine of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, where Easter Island is mentioned as the habitat of some of the earliest generations of the third race. An unexpected volcanic eruption and upheaval of the ocean floor sank it, along with all the monuments and culture. At the same time, the island remained untouched, as proof of the existence of Lemuria. There is another interpretation - the territory of Easter was occupied by several Atlanteans, who, fleeing from the cataclysm that occurred in their area, settled in the rest of Lemuria, but not for long, since it was subsequently destroyed by a volcanic eruption and lava that collapsed. Thus, it becomes clear that the ancestors of the black Lemurians, as well as the red-skinned and light-skinned Atlanteans, mixed up in this territory.

The blow that destroyed the culture of the ancient people.

A large number of scientists have made great efforts to reconstruct the culture of the Easter population piece by piece. But the resulting picture was incomplete. The researchers were lucky to find out that on this small piece of land, only one hundred and eighteen square kilometers in size, there are two centers of culture:

Rano Raraku Quarry;
Sanctuary of Orongo on the border of the volcanic mountain Rano Khao.

At the same time, Rano Raraku also has a volcano crater, on the southern side of which there are ancient quarries. In them, huge sacred statues were subsequently carved out of the porous rock of the rocks. This mountain still keeps the consequences of a terrible civil war. A large number of statues remained unfinished, at various stages of completion. For some, only the first outlines are observed, for others, for readiness, it is enough to work with a chisel several times in order to freely dissociate them from the rock and move them. The rest are standing or lying around and are already prepared for shipment. One of the most massive finished monuments is Rano Raraku, the top of which is twenty-two meters from the ground. At the base of the volcano there is a huge platform formed from basalt blocks, another similar platform is located below, directly on the coast. Its length is fifty meters. The lower platform once housed as many as fifteen stone idols. However, now they are all, except for one, lying on the ground. The “short-eared” race, which completely defeated the carriers of the mysterious “long-eared” culture, toppled their huge monuments, breaking stones from the foundation.

The mass of the largest idols reaches fifty tons. Stone hammers, axes and chisels were used to carve them, due to the fact that the locals did not know how to make tools from metal. The most incomprehensible is the way in which these statues were transported from the volcano to sites located at its base, as well as at a considerable distance from it. Indeed, on Easter Island there were not a large number of people to perform forced labor. Therefore, it is possible to think that stone idols were transported with the help of small groups of their local residents, using rigid cables made of reed or vegetable threads, wooden rollers and levers for this. Then they were installed vertically with a neat supply of stone mounds under their base. But this business did not end. Now, on an island with little to no vegetation, such monuments are everywhere to be seen. They are standing, lying, unfinished or just begun. Bloody civil war at the end of the 18th century. caused the collapse of these iconic sculptures. It should be noted that these statues were not only used as tombstones, they had a peculiar spiritual purpose, evidence of which was found on the rocky plateau of Orongo, extending at the base of Rano Kao in the southwestern side of Easter Island. In that place, not far from the crater of the volcano, there are mysterious buildings without a hole for windows, erected from bulky stone blocks. And on the rocks around them, a lot of incomprehensible images are minted.

Bird-man.

As ancient legends say, once a year the priests turned to God with a request to choose a new bird-man. The man chosen for this role was to organize a group of several guys and go with them to the stone dwellings and caves of Rano Kao. Once there, they waited (sometimes more than one month) until the seagulls living on the island lay their eggs on a rock that is several hundred feet away from the coast. Then the group, floating on the water, headed for the rock, called Motunui. The first person to arrive immediately had to start searching for the egg, then wash it and bring it to the island intact. Having done this, he, filled with pride, gave the egg to the leader of the tribe, who, from that moment on, acquired the status of a bird-man. Clutching it in his palm, the head of the tribe danced along the entire southern coast of the island until he got to Rano Raraku. In this place, the leader had to live for twelve whole months next to the stone inhabitants on Rapanui. He lived there completely alone, spending time in prayer and meditation. For the rest of the Rapanui, this place was forbidden, because the chambers of the respected gentleman settled there. The main deity of this outlandish religion was Make-Make. At the same time, he has no resemblance either to the Creator God known to us, or the Creator of the entire Universe. He, his companion - the lord of seagulls and three deities - the guardians of eggs and future descendants, demanded the offering of human sacrifices. It is possible that once upon a time cannibalism could well exist on the island.

If you carefully study the legend of the bird-man and compare it with primordial knowledge, then a completely clear logical picture emerges. Suppose that, unlike our civilization, the ancient inhabitants of Easter Island did not have a materialistic perception, but lived with a predominance of spiritual values. Maybe because of this, some of the Europeans needed to destroy their culture so hastily?

Then it turns out that the election of the next bird-man (the bird is a symbol of the front essence) is nothing more than the choice of the most spiritually developed person to perform important tasks (controlling climate, weather, seismic activity, perhaps even solving planetary problems). For this, he recruited a group of young men to form a circle of power. In this case, it is logical to assume what they were doing while they were together in the cave - they studied, were intensively engaged in spiritual practices, spiritual self-development, self-disclosure. When the group was ready, something like an exam or a test for possession of certain properties related to understanding the structure of the world was assigned (the symbol is the world egg). After that, this bird-man set to work with the largest ahu Rano Raraku. This is confirmed by the symbols inscribed on many statues, perhaps it is worth taking a closer look at them to study the signs with which the bird-man worked.

The connection between the worship of the bird-man and massive stone idols is proved by the images drawn on the backs of most of the statues. These drawings depict skeletons, ghosts, deities, but most often - a bird-man. In 1722, the cult of worship of a demigod and huge statues was fully promoted, but after the landing of the “short-eared” tribe on Rapanui, everything changed dramatically. The beliefs tell of several large boats, on which there were about three hundred men and, most likely, the same number of women. Scientists believe that they fled the Rapaiti Islands after the start of a terrible civil war or a sizzling drought.

From the AllatRa book:

Anastasia: A few more words about Easter Island. The local population retained beliefs that the ceremonial platforms ("ahu"), on which some stone statues are located, are a link between the visible and invisible (other worlds) worlds, that the stone statues ("moai") themselves contain the supernatural power of ancestors. The latter, according to beliefs, is supposedly able to regulate natural phenomena and, accordingly, lead to a favorable outcome - the prosperity of the people ...

Rigden: There is nothing supernatural there. It's just that once people lived here who knew how and why certain signs should be activated. If their descendants had not lost the knowledge that was given to them, then those who now live on that island would better understand themselves and their elementary connection with other worlds. Usually for the chronicle, as a transfer of knowledge and legends to descendants, knowledgeable people put signs on stone statues, and often decorated themselves with appropriate tattoos, which had a special symbolic meaning. For ignorant people, these were drawings that meant absolutely nothing, but inspired respect and fear for those who, in their opinion, “probably knew something special.” Later, of course, ordinary imitation began.

Anastasia: Yes, but there are no signs on the stone heads and platforms that are on Easter Island.

Rigden: And who said that these heads have no continuation? Yes, let them dig deeper in those places, then maybe they will find what is hidden from their eyes. But that's not the point. Even if people find something interesting by signs and symbols, what will they do with it? With the dominance of material thinking and the absence of Knowledge, at best, they will make a sensation in the media in order to attract more tourists to the island and earn money. That's all. Knowledge is valuable for a spiritual seeker only when they can be used and improve oneself, provide spiritual assistance to other people. (page 443)

Letter and symbols.

I must say that the culture of the islanders did not die with them. Along with the worship of the bird-man and massive idols, the tribe of "long-eared" also had writing skills. Therefore, it is natural that the "short-eared" managed to take advantage of them. In the first half of the 19th century, the last of the literate Ariki remained to rule on the island, he was called Ngaara, he was white-skinned and small in stature. The ruler accumulated a whole repository of symbolic tablets with hieroglyphs, and also taught the features of the sacred script rongo-rongo at the school. Only a select few were allowed to study with him; for the rest of the inhabitants of the island, this was the strictest ban. They were not even allowed to touch these tablets. And those who were still allowed to learn the rongo-rongo alphabet, which included several hundred characters, had yet another test. First of all, they had to get the hang of twisting rope knots and silhouettes that fit these hieroglyphs. Similar tests are also known in many other parts of the world.

From the AllatRa book:

“Anastasia: The importance of some signs, in my opinion, proves another fact of a kind of “hunting” for them. Take, for example, the story of the ancient writing of Easter Island. In that area, knowledge of signs and symbols, however, as well as their use in writing, disappeared quite recently, in the middle of the 19th century, when “Western civilization” broke into the island in the form of people who sailed on Dutch and Spanish ships. A Catholic missionary who visited the island told the world about the unusual writing of the island. The inhabitants of Easter Island kept their records with special signs on wooden tablets, which were in almost every house. But, having opened the signs of Easter Island to Europeans, this missionary and his followers at the same time did everything to destroy this writing, burn it as a pagan heresy. And what is left now of this very recently existing culture? Several hundred huge sculptures-heads as high as a multi-storey building and weighing twenty tons, scattered all over Easter Island, and a couple of dozen tablets - written monuments that have miraculously survived, as well as a staff and breast decoration with inscriptions. Moreover, the latter are scattered in various museums around the world. It seems that the world priests, having learned about these signs and symbols, did everything to destroy them, even despite the fact that these were already actually miserable remnants of once past knowledge.

Rigden: Well, the Archons do not sleep, they act. Already someone who, but they understand what signs are and, moreover, what an activated sign is in work. (page 439)

Among the primitive settlers of Oceania, where established habits and traditions have not lost their true meaning, knot magic has become especially widespread. This can be read in the one hundred and thirteenth sura of the Qur'an. Its modern interpreters explain this fact as witchcraft. In ancient explanations, on the contrary, it is believed that the mention of knots in the Koran means sorceresses who knit magical figures, then blow on them and pronounce spells, which contributes to the attraction of evil. At the same time, in Arabia, such things were considered quite common in the pre-Islamic period. But today it is no longer possible to find either a Christian or an Arab who would understand anything about "lace witchcraft." But in those regions where traditional beliefs have not supplanted the worship of deities, as well as ancient and mystical customs, people still knit magical knots, which often develop into quite complex configurations. This is common among peoples such as:

• Eskimos;
• Indians of North, Central and South America;
• all African peoples;
• island tribes of Oceania;
• native inhabitants of Australia and East Asia, including Japan.

In most cases, various rope figures are made for fun. But at the same time, one can often hear how the natives, stretching a knitted silhouette from a lace on their fingers, pronounce ancient words with a magical meaning. Especially such witchcraft is developed in the isolated territories of the Melanesian archipelago, Micronesia, Polynesia, as well as among the American Indians.

At the moment, scientists are familiar with about three and a half thousand such figures. The material for their manufacture is an ordinary rope, the ends of which are tied, or a woven lace made of synthetics. In ancient times, the tribes used animal veins, intestinal fibers, connected or twisted plant threads, and sometimes even long curls of human hair to obtain magical patterns.

Sometimes it happens that the ritual is based on the worship of spirits and mystical creatures. So, for example, the Eskimos are convinced of the existence of a soul in connected figures and are overly afraid of it, since, in their opinion, it can be a danger to their lives. If someone plays with the ropes for too long or does it at an inadmissible time, then a characteristic rustling is heard in front of the dwelling, and at this moment, inside the tent, the light of the lamp begins to slowly fade. And only those who are aware understand that the spirit of the connected figures is approaching in this way. At one time, he removed the insides from his dried-up body and now he is engaged in knitting from dehydrated intestines. This process is accompanied by a sound similar to the rustling of paper.

It is curious that the Navajo Indians, who settled in the northwest of the United States of America, are convinced that knot knitting originated in ancient times with the help of a tribe of spider people, and they later taught this craft to other people. A large number of peoples tie figures from laces, so that later they can be presented as a gift to their deities. But the inhabitants of the Gilbert Islands in Micronesia are sure that such silhouettes appeared at the time of the creation of the world.

A gift that gives passage to another world.

As one legend says: “When, at the beginning of life, the heavens were cut off from the earth, the demigod rose and, while the sky gradually “rise”, he tied eleven knots one after the other.” On the Gilbert Islands, they are still familiar today, and Maude even managed to capture ten of them.

Leading signs.

It becomes clear why scientists to this day have not been able to interpret the ancient records, which are more symbolic than alphabetic, especially considering that they are only partially preserved. These forgotten symbols explain the real details and mysteries of a much older culture. Only twenty surviving epistles have now been studied. They are in museums in Germany, Belgium, Chile, USA, Russia, England, and Austria.

If we do not take into account the interpretation of Hausen, in which there is a decoding of about five hundred characters, the meaning of the hieroglyphs rongo-rongo has not been disclosed so far. In doing so, they provoke interesting conclusions. Similar writings were common among the natives of northwestern India in the 4th millennium BC. Subsequently, their culture also disappeared. Some historians believe that certain components of this culture, including writing, came to Polynesia somewhere in the 2nd millennium BC. Then the tribe of "long-ears" spread them to the island of Rapanui, where they rested for many centuries, and possibly millennia. This continued until the death of knowledgeable people and priests led to the emergence of an unsolved mystery for today's researchers.

Any figure woven from ropes was suitable for a certain melody, which had to be memorized, as well as a certain sign-drawing. These hieroglyphs were not letters or phrases, but at the same time they displayed some concepts and important thoughts. They were obtained using a chisel made of volcanic glass or turned with a shark tooth. Each line was done from the bottom up. At the same time, the lowest one was drawn from left to right, and the next one was vice versa. In addition, the signs were drawn upside down in every even line. Scientists have given the name boustrophedon to such a peculiar writing. However, in world literature, this method is extremely rare. The mysterious writing remained unknown for a long time. Therefore, the Europeans could not immediately find out about it. The first information about it surfaced only in 1817, when Tepano Hausen took up their detailed study. He was very surprised when he realized that only a small number of literate islanders can read the texts written on the tablets, but at the same time they retell their essence in their own words, using the signs solely as a clue. The information that popped up from the clues was learned by heart, but everyone learned it in their own way.

Here is an interesting point from Wikipedia that clearly shows how the archons, through their people, in this case the priests, uprooted the Rongorongo culture. Thomson was told about an old man named Ure Wa'e Iko. He assured that he understood most of the signs, as he took reading lessons. He was the head of the last king of the dynasty of monarchs - Nga'ara, who had the ability to read at least one learned text and play many songs, but at the same time did not know how to write rongo-rongo. Having learned this, Thomson began to load the old man with various gifts and coins in the hope that he would tell what was written in the tablets. But Ure Wa'e Iko did not agree, since the Christian priests did not allow him to do this, intimidating him with death. After that, he ran away. However, Thomson later took photographs of the mysterious tablets and, with great effort, persuaded the old man to reproduce the text written on them. While Ure was telling, Alexander Salmon wrote down all the information from dictation, and a little later he translated it into English.

Mystery notebook.

Once Thor Heyerdahl decided to visit a shack on Easter Island. The owner of the hut claimed to have a notebook written by his grandfather, who was aware of the secret of kohau rongo-rongo. It displays the main hieroglyphs of ancient writing, as well as the decoding of their meaning, indicated in Latin letters. But when the scientist tried to study the notebook, Esteban immediately hid it. Shortly after this event, witnesses claim that they saw him sail away in a small boat to the island of Tahiti. Most likely, the notebook was also with him. Since then, no one has heard anything about Esteban. Therefore, what happened to the notebook is also not clear.

Once, the missionaries noticed an amazing similarity between the writing that existed on Easter Island and the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. At the same time, it turned out that one hundred and seventy-five signs of kohau rongo-rongo are absolutely identical with the inscriptions of Hindustan. And their similarity with ancient Chinese writing was established by the Austrian archaeologist Robert Teldern in 1951. American and German scientists are convinced that the script that once existed in Polynesia was miraculously not lost and remained on Easter Island.

The unusual tradition of the natives to achieve drooping earlobes testifies to the reverence for the possibilities of acute hearing, which at one time was the main advantage of the Lemurians. It was they who could capture such sounds that are absolutely incomprehensible to a modern person.

Such an amazing rumor was also mentioned in the book Fragments of a Forgotten History. It was argued that such physical data arose due to the improvement of the spirit. They had access to sounds that we are not able to hear, and this was their happiness. It was in honor of such a gift that earlier generations of Lemurians rewarded themselves with drooping earlobes. Thus, they wanted to be like their distant ancestors.

Creation of sculptures for the glory of the gods.

Behrens liked to talk about the rich vegetation of Easter Island, as well as about the huge harvests of vegetables and fruits that were collected every year. When he described the local inhabitants, he wrote the following: "Always cheerful, well-built, excellent runners, friendly, but extremely shy. Almost every one of them, having brought gifts, hastily threw them to the ground and immediately ran away with all his strength." As for the color of the skin, it has different shades - among them there are both black-skinned and completely white inhabitants, in addition, there are even red-skinned ones, which makes it seem that they were burned in the sun. Their ears are long and often reach to the shoulders. Some, as a decoration, have small white bars inserted into the earlobes.

According to some statements, the amazing abilities of the Rapanui people are the will of the gods. They made them such that they could be responsible for that part of the world to which they are fully deployed. The inhabitants of the island confirmed that their ancestors once upon a time were engaged in the construction of the now known monuments, as they possessed great power. However, this is not currently allowed. Hearing this version, James Cook did not want to believe it and even formulated the key mysteries of the island - how the idols could have arisen and why they do not appear now.

However, the islanders do not support this proposal and talk about bird-people, that is, deities who descended to earth, installed and flew back. The images of people with wings found on the island serve as evidence of this version.

Thus, the Rapanui culture has long excited the minds of researchers with its unusualness and mystery. Her envoys created unique stone monuments, which testifies to the high level of development of this civilization. All statues appeared between 1250 and 1500. Their known number today is eight hundred and eighty-seven idols. At the same time, almost nothing is known about the inhabitants of Easter Island themselves. Indeed, at the time of its discovery by Europeans in the 18th century, a backward race was discovered that could not make such monuments. When the island was captured by slave traders in the 19th century, the last remnants of civilization were buried.

In an article published in the journal Antiquity, archaeologists provide a detailed overview of the arrowheads found in large numbers in almost all parts of the island. According to the analysis, they are absolutely unsuitable for military operations. This conclusion is due to the fact that the main purpose of a good weapon is to kill the enemy, and spears from the island can only injure a person, but not mortally. Therefore, most likely, these tips served the locals as tools for cultivating the land, food, and applying various tattoos to the body. There is also no evidence of large-scale and bloody wars on the island. So it can be argued that the death of the ancient culture is most likely due to a lack of resources and the transformation of the economic structure. Theoretically, the revival of civilization was very possible, but this was prevented by the arrival of Europeans.

Research results.

After reviewing the materials of various researchers, scientists who are simply looking for people, the impression is that there is interest in the island, but the catastrophic lack of true information leads the student either into the jungle of harmonious standard theories, or to the conclusion that we will never know the truth.

So what we found out:

1. There are several types of moai (statues) on the island, some recently placed on pedestals, others are scattered around the island, others are partially buried in the ground, some are very deep.

2. Also, these statues differ in size and appearance, apparently they were made at different times.

3. At the moment, official science says that the Moai were created around 1200-1400 AD. And those that are in the ground up to their shoulders, just covered with soil over time. How long does it take for nature to raise the soil level by 2-3 meters or more? Somehow it doesn't fit.

4. There are several traditions on the island that remotely resemble the actions of people who had spiritual knowledge about man and the world (skin whitening, the cult of the bird-man).

5. Despite the many mysteries and open opportunities to explore the island, the local authorities do not conduct official scientific research. Moreover, such research is taboo, excavations are prohibited, and the same is true with underwater research near the island. Researchers are waiting for a warning from the police or special services and a prison. There are many examples of this. Even what Thor Heyerdahl unearthed is covered up. It turns out that someone is afraid that people will find out the truth that the artifacts of the island and the handwriting that is familiar in many similar places around the world keep. The work of the archons deserves a detailed study so that, understanding the methods of their influence, which have not changed for centuries, it would be possible to identify them in the daily life of society and bring them to the public review.

6. A very interesting question about the writing that was on the island and so quickly destroyed with the arrival of the Europeans, in less than a century, almost no one remembered how to read and write their traditional signs and symbols. And those who still remembered the letter fled from the researchers like fire. Apparently taught by bitter experience.

7. From what has been said, it becomes obvious that before the advent of Europeans, there was an ancient culture on the island that kept true knowledge and not only kept it, but also actively used it. For example, the “plasticine” stone processing technology (when the stone for processing became plastic like plasticine), cutting and transporting multi-ton stone statues, three-layer ahu (platforms), the lower layer is lined with polygonal masonry, like many other megalithic buildings on different continents. The very fact of creating statues and installing them around the perimeter of the island suggests that there was a need for this (at least for the local population), and as we have already found out, these were knowledgeable spiritual people, this need could be associated with the creation of certain conditions for the whole world, or some part of it. Since "moai have the power of the north winds and are responsible for the side of the world in which they look." It could be both climatic conditions and spiritual ones, perhaps Rigden Djappo considers it necessary and reveals to us the true purpose of the statues and their sacred meaning.

Thus, even now, many of the mysteries of Easter Island remain unsolved, and it is possible that the answers to the questions of interest to scientists have already been lost forever. However, while research is underway, people do not lose hope of solving the puzzle created many centuries ago.

Prepared by: Alex Ermak (Kyiv, Ukraine)