Summary
Easter Island, an unimaginably remote volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean, produced one of the most fascinating and yet least understood prehistoric cultures. Who were its inhabitants, and where did they come from? Why, and equally intriguingly, how did they erect the giant stone statues found all over the island? John Flenley and Paul Bahn tackle these and a host of other questions, introducing us along the way, to the bizarre birdman cult found in the island's art, and the recently deciphered Rongorongo script engraved on wooden boards. The Enigmas of Easter Island combines a wealth of new archaeological evidence, intriguing folk memories, and the records of Captain Cook and other early explorers, to reveal how the island's decline may stem from an ecological catastrophe. The result is a fascinating portrait of a civilization which still retains many of its mysteries. Book jacket. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.
Publishers Weekly Review
Theorists have invoked everything from restless spirits to extraterrestrials and anti-gravity to explain Easter Island's giant stone statues. The reality, according to this comprehensive reconstruction of the island's history, now in its second edition, is more prosaic. The megaliths were carved by humans from the island's soft volcanic stone to commemorate prestigious ancestors, express clan pride and demarcate "a sacred border...between 'home' and 'out there'"-and because on Easter Island there "was little else to do" but carve stone. In addition to the mechanics of sculpting, dragging and erecting the idols, Bahn (Written in Bones; The Cambridge Illustrated History of Archaeology; etc.) and ecologist Flenley cover other aspects of the island's vanished culture, from the remarkable seafaring skills of the Polynesians who settled the island to the prevalence of phallic, vulval and birdman motifs in the islanders' eccentric artistic stylings. Above all, they see Easter Island's saga as a cautionary tale of mankind's "eco-stupidity." As the Polynesians and the rats they brought with them decimated the once verdant forests, the island withered into a treeless desert stalked by famine, violence and possibly cannibalism-a microcosm illustrating the consequences of resource depletion for an all too finite Earth. The authors develop an occasionally cumbersome scholarly apparatus as they delve into the minutiae of archaeology, linguistics, sediment cores and pollen analysis and fence with academic rivals, especially with Kon-Tiki voyager Thor Heyerdahl, whose theory of settlement from South America receives a lengthy, scathing rebuttal. But in dispelling the mythology of Easter Island, they show us a society that is all the more interesting for being recognizably human. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc.
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Author Biography
John Flenley: Professor of Geography at Massey University, New Zealand, and Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, is a world authority on the ecology of tropical rainforests. He was the first to publish evidence that Easter Island was once forested Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.
Table of Contents
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List of Illustrations |
xv |
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List of Plates |
xix |
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Introduction: European Discovery |
1 |
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1 The Island and Its Geography |
9 |
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The Landscape |
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Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.
