Wednesday, December 03, 2003
Happy Easter
Easter Sunday 1722, and a rabble of Dutch explorers, no doubt kitted out in big pointy orange hats, and wooden shoes landed an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean roughly the size of Jersey.
Within minutes of landing, they upset their hosts somewhat by dispatching no fewer than 10 natives (though to be fair, I dont think the natives were trying to sell them souvenirs at the time). This was Rapa Nui´s first contact with the outside world for centuries. The Dutch were aghast to find an island dotted with hundreds of huge stone statues and a people that was not quite as backward as they had initially expected.
It is now thought as a result of DNA testing that the Islanders originally came from Polynesia, (much to the annoyance of the Norwegian Thor Heyrdahl who sailed all the way from South America on a coconut husk to prove his crackpot therory). Why and how had they built the figures is still purely conjecture, but by those who don't believe in magic it is thought they were carved out of the volcanic rock using obsidian stone, and dragged by hundreds of people on wooden rollers.
At one point the local communityy numbered around 12,000, and they must all have been hard at work building and moving these stone Moai, of which there are nearly 1000, some of which stand 10 meters tall, weigh 80 tons and are twice the height of Stone Henge.
The reason for this obsession seems to be the Polynesian tradicion of ancestor worship, and it is ironic that this seemed to have led to their demise. The production of these statues required the use of more wood than the island could sustain, and sometime in the 1600s when the last palm tree had been felled, the islanders were no longer able to cook, build boats to fish, and of course the bird population that a large percentage of their diet had comprised of had flown proverbially south. The result was an all out civil war that saw all the statues toppled, and most of the population slain by. Those remaining were of course wiped out by slavery and smallpox, and now all the 3,800 inhabitants of this strange but magical island are of Chilean decent.
For my part I wandered around like a Japanise tourist frantically taking pictures, and absorbing the unmistakable magic of a place which really has a spacial feel to it. If you are ever in this part of the world, and if you are there is not that much choice, drop by and see for your self what ignorance of the environment can do!
Cheer up you misserable bastard!
¶ 3:46 am
Easter Sunday 1722, and a rabble of Dutch explorers, no doubt kitted out in big pointy orange hats, and wooden shoes landed an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean roughly the size of Jersey.
Within minutes of landing, they upset their hosts somewhat by dispatching no fewer than 10 natives (though to be fair, I dont think the natives were trying to sell them souvenirs at the time). This was Rapa Nui´s first contact with the outside world for centuries. The Dutch were aghast to find an island dotted with hundreds of huge stone statues and a people that was not quite as backward as they had initially expected.
It is now thought as a result of DNA testing that the Islanders originally came from Polynesia, (much to the annoyance of the Norwegian Thor Heyrdahl who sailed all the way from South America on a coconut husk to prove his crackpot therory). Why and how had they built the figures is still purely conjecture, but by those who don't believe in magic it is thought they were carved out of the volcanic rock using obsidian stone, and dragged by hundreds of people on wooden rollers.
At one point the local communityy numbered around 12,000, and they must all have been hard at work building and moving these stone Moai, of which there are nearly 1000, some of which stand 10 meters tall, weigh 80 tons and are twice the height of Stone Henge.
The reason for this obsession seems to be the Polynesian tradicion of ancestor worship, and it is ironic that this seemed to have led to their demise. The production of these statues required the use of more wood than the island could sustain, and sometime in the 1600s when the last palm tree had been felled, the islanders were no longer able to cook, build boats to fish, and of course the bird population that a large percentage of their diet had comprised of had flown proverbially south. The result was an all out civil war that saw all the statues toppled, and most of the population slain by. Those remaining were of course wiped out by slavery and smallpox, and now all the 3,800 inhabitants of this strange but magical island are of Chilean decent.
For my part I wandered around like a Japanise tourist frantically taking pictures, and absorbing the unmistakable magic of a place which really has a spacial feel to it. If you are ever in this part of the world, and if you are there is not that much choice, drop by and see for your self what ignorance of the environment can do!
Cheer up you misserable bastard!
¶ 3:46 am
