Download or read book Easter Island written by Jennifer Vanderbes and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this extraordinary fiction debut—rich with love and betrayal, history and intellectual passion—two remarkable narratives converge on Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world. It is 1913. Elsa Pendleton travels from England to Easter Island with her husband, an anthropologist sent by the Royal Geographical Society to study the colossal moai statues, and her younger sister. What begins as familial duty for Elsa becomes a grand adventure; on Easter Island she discovers her true calling. But, out of contact with the outside world, she is unaware that World War I has been declared and that a German naval squadron, fleeing the British across the South Pacific, is heading toward the island she now considers home. Sixty years later, Dr. Greer Farraday, an American botanist, travels to Easter Island to research the island’s ancient pollen, but more important, to put back the pieces of her life after the death of her husband. A series of brilliant revelations brings to life the parallel quests of these two intrepid young women as they delve into the centuries-old mysteries of Easter Island. Slowly unearthing the island’s haunting past, they are forced to confront turbulent discoveries about themselves and the people they love, changing their lives forever. Easter Island is a tour de force of storytelling that will establish Jennifer Vanderbes as one of the most gifted writers of her generation.
Download or read book A Companion to Easter Island written by James Grant Peterkin and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The mystery of Easter island written by Katherine Routledge and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-07-10 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The mystery of Easter island" by Katherine Routledge. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
Download or read book Island at the End of the World written by Steven Roger Fischer and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a long stretch of green coast in the South Pacific, hundreds of enormous, impassive stone heads stand guard against the ravages of time, war, and disease that have attempted over the centuries to conquer Easter Island. Steven Roger Fischer offers the first English-language history of Easter Island in Island at the End of the World, a fascinating chronicle of adversity, triumph, and the enduring monumentality of the island's stone guards. A small canoe with Polynesians brought the first humans to Easter Island in 700 CE, and when boat travel in the South Pacific drastically decreased around 1500, the Easter Islanders were forced to adapt in order to survive their isolation. Adaptation, Fischer asserts, was a continuous thread in the life of Easter Island: the first European visitors, who viewed the awe-inspiring monolithic busts in 1722, set off hundreds of years of violent warfare, trade, and disease—from the smallpox, wars, and Great Death that decimated the island to the late nineteenth-century Catholic missionaries who tried to "save" it to a despotic Frenchman who declared sole claim of the island and was soon killed by the remaining 111 islanders. The rituals, leaders, and religions of the Easter Islanders evolved with all of these events, and Fischer is just as attentive to the island's cultural developments as he is to its foreign invasions. Bringing his history into the modern era, Fischer examines the colonization and annexation of Easter Island by Chile, including the Rapanui people's push for civil rights in 1964 and 1965, by which they gained full citizenship and freedom of movement on the island. As travel to and interest in the island rapidly expand, Island at the End of the World is an essential history of this mysterious site.
Download or read book Where Is Easter Island written by Megan Stine and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unearth the secrets of the mysterious giant stone statues on this tiny remote Pacific island. Easter Island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles from anywhere, has intrigued visitors since Europeans first arrived in the 1700s. How did people first come to live there? How did they build the enormous statues and why? How were they placed around the island without carts or even wheels? Scientists have learned many of the answers, although some things still remain a mystery. Megan Stine reveals it all in a gripping narrative. This book, part of the New York Times best-selling series, is enhanced by eighty illustrations and a detachable fold-out map complete with four photographs on the back.
Download or read book The Statues that Walked written by Terry Hunt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monumental statues of Easter Island, both so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island’s barren landscape, have been the source of great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such monumental works? No such astonishing numbers of massive statues are found anywhere else in the Pacific. How could the islanders possibly have moved so many multi-ton monoliths from the quarry inland, where they were carved, to their posts along the coastline? And most intriguing and vexing of all, if the island once boasted a culture developed and sophisticated enough to have produced such marvelous edifices, what happened to that culture? Why was the island the Europeans encountered a sparsely populated wasteland? The prevailing accounts of the island’s history tell a story of self-inflicted devastation: a glaring case of eco-suicide. The island was dominated by a powerful chiefdom that promulgated a cult of statue making, exercising a ruthless hold on the island’s people and rapaciously destroying the environment, cutting down a lush palm forest that once blanketed the island in order to construct contraptions for moving more and more statues, which grew larger and larger. As the population swelled in order to sustain the statue cult, growing well beyond the island’s agricultural capacity, a vicious cycle of warfare broke out between opposing groups, and the culture ultimately suffered a dramatic collapse. When Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo began carrying out archaeological studies on the island in 2001, they fully expected to find evidence supporting these accounts. Instead, revelation after revelation uncovered a very different truth. In this lively and fascinating account of Hunt and Lipo’s definitive solution to the mystery of what really happened on the island, they introduce the striking series of archaeological discoveries they made, and the path-breaking findings of others, which led them to compelling new answers to the most perplexing questions about the history of the island. Far from irresponsible environmental destroyers, they show, the Easter Islanders were remarkably inventive environmental stewards, devising ingenious methods to enhance the island’s agricultural capacity. They did not devastate the palm forest, and the culture did not descend into brutal violence. Perhaps most surprising of all, the making and moving of their enormous statutes did not require a bloated population or tax their precious resources; their statue building was actually integral to their ability to achieve a delicate balance of sustainability. The Easter Islanders, it turns out, offer us an impressive record of masterful environmental management rich with lessons for confronting the daunting environmental challenges of our own time. Shattering the conventional wisdom, Hunt and Lipo’s ironclad case for a radically different understanding of the story of this most mysterious place is scientific discovery at its very best.
Download or read book Easter Island written by Caroline Arnold and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2004-10 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the formation, geography, ecology, and inhabitants of the isolated Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean.
Download or read book The Enigmas of Easter Island written by John Flenley and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-05-29 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Easter Island, an isolated speck in the Pacific Ocean, produced one of the most fascinating and yet least understood of ancient cultures. Who were the inhabitants of this unimaginably remote volcanic island? Where did they come from? What, and equally intriguing, how did they erect the giant stone statues found all over the island? And what became of their civilization? - ;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? Paul Bahn and John Flenley 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 only recently deciphered Rongorongo script engraved on wooden panels. 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 ecological catastrophe. The result is a fascinating portrait of a civilization which still retains many of its mysteries. This book, originally published in 1992, was hailed as the best account of Easter Island ever written. Now it has been brought substantially up to date with a wealth of new material. -
Download or read book Rongorongo written by Steven R. Fischer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive documentation of Rongorongo, Easter Island's enigmatic script and Oceania's only known pre-twentieth-century writing system. The author tells the full history of rongorongo's exciting discovery and the many attempts at a decipherment and provides full transcriptions of all the 25 surviving rongorongo inscriptions along with detailed photographs of nearly every incised artifact.
Download or read book EASTER ISLAND written by JoAnne Van Tilburg and published by Smithsonian Books (DC). This book was released on 1994 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Since Easter Island (Rapa Nui) was first contacted by the Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen nearly three centuries ago, the people, culture and, most of all, the monolithic statues of this remarkable island have been seen by Westerners as an incredible puzzle, a riddle with no solution. At the heart of the so-called mystery of Easter Island stand the gigantic moai, the supreme sculptural achievement of the Rapa Nui people and, indeed, of all Polynesia. Re-erected upon their rectangular stone platforms, lying along ancient transport roads, hidden deep in seaside caves, or standing upon the slopes of Rano Raraku, where they were hewn from the living rock, the statues are palpable evidence of the genius and obsession of a people. How were they moved? What do they mean?" "Nearly 1,000 statues have been meticulously measured, drawn, mapped, and photographed by archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg and her Chilean and Rapa Nui colleagues over more than twelve years of dedicated research. Drawing on the insights that have been gained into sculptural techniques, design attributes, and formal variation, the author examines Rapa Nui prehistory in the context of new understandings of ecology and culture. Detailed drawings of statues by one of Rapa Nui's most talented artists, many published for the first time, reveal the fluidity of line and complexity of meaning encoded within these stone figures. Historical photographs from museum collections illustrate the vital role played by many Rapa Nui people in the documentation and preservation of their own culture. The latest methods of statistical analysis, computer imaging, and robotics programs are brought to bear upon the perplexing question of statue transport, and the author offers an exciting yet compellingly logical model of how a near-fourteen-ton statue could have been moved almost the entire length of the island." "Written by the foremost authority on the subject, this fascinating book is another important step toward unravelling "the mystery of Easter Island.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Easter Island s Silent Sentinels written by Kenneth Treister and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This richly illustrated book of the history, culture, and art of Easter Island is the first to examine in detail the island's vernacular architecture, often overshadowed by its giant stone statues"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Easter Island Earth Island written by Paul Bahn and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Easter Island, isolated deep in the South Pacific and now a World Heritage Site, was home to a fascinating prehistoric culture—one that produced massive stone effigies (the moai) and the birdman cult—and yet much of the island’s past remains shrouded in mystery. Where did the islanders come from, and when? How did Rapa Nui culture evolve over the centuries? How, and why, did their natural environment change over time? Paul Bahn and John Flenley guide readers through the mysteries and enigmas of Rapa Nui, incorporating the records of early explorers, folk legends, and archaeological evidence along the way. They cover the island’s geological and environmental history and explore its flora and fauna, illustrating how human actions affected the natural environment of the island. This fourth edition draws in: recent DNA studies of ancient human and animal bones as well as plant remains; evolving understandings of how the moai were transported; and current efforts to reforest the island.
Download or read book A Short History of Progress written by Ronald Wright and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2004 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each time history repeats itself, so it's said, the price goes up. The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology, placing a colossal load on all natural systems, especially earth, air, and water — the very elements of life. The most urgent questions of the twenty-first century are: where will this growth lead? can it be consolidated or sustained? and what kind of world is our present bequeathing to our future?In his #1 bestseller A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have participated in but seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of triumph and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we recognize the experiment's inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome.
Download or read book The Last Tree on Easter Island written by Jared Diamond and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement. This is Jared Diamond's haunting account of visiting the mysterious stone statues of Easter Island, showing how a remote civilization destroyed itself by exploiting its own natural resources - and why we must heed this warning. Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured through the decades, becoming the classics of a movement. Together, these books show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world.
Download or read book Rapanui written by Grant McCall and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Captain Cook's voyages to Kevin Costner's 1994 film, Rapanui has captured the interest and imagination of many people. Most accounts of Rapanui (as the people of Easter Island call themselves and their land) describe a barren, empty landscape. This book places people prominently in that landscape. Grant McCall has spent more than two decades studying Rapanui and in this revised second edition he presents the details of how Easter Island came to be what it is today. Rapanui is the absorbing story of the survival of an ingenious population of scarcely 3,000 people who cling to the rocky home they love. The first part of the book offers the reader a concise outline of the latest discoveries in the prehistory and history of Rapanui. Later chapters on contemporary life flow around the familiar concepts of family and group, belief, earning a living, relations with one's kin and with strangers. The final chapter describes the most recent changes and concludes with ideas about what the next millennium might bring to the people of the world's most remote island.
Download or read book Easter Island written by José Miguel Ramiŕez and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Easter Island written by John Loret and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2003-08-31 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Easter Island, a World Heritage Site is still, after over 50 years since Thor Heyerdahl's work on the island, a fascinating area to explore and learn about a culture that has only remnants remaining, while documenting a marine ecology still mostly unknown. Easter Island: Scientific Exploration into the World's Environmental Problems in Microcosm presents the research results from three years of interdisciplinary expeditions to Easter Island. The primary objectives were to investigate the effects of human population growth on the ecology of the island and to discover whether any dramatic climatic changes such as a prolonged El Niño could have disrupted the island's fragile ecosystem. The interdisciplinary scientific team were mainly researching the paleontology, archaeology, climatology, and geophysics of the island. This book now brings together the results of the three expeditions, identifies new areas of research, and hopefully will continue to inspire aspiring scientists to revisit this amazing island to explore and demystify this timeless enigma of human history.
