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 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 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 Mysteries of Easter Island written by Jean-Michel Schwartz and published by . This book was released on 2011-07 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Easter Island is famous for its 887 monumental statues. Nobody really knows who made those statutes, or how or why. New Theories are being advanced, new studies made and new books published about this all the time.It is the only book that adequately explains how the giant statues were created and how they were transported. Basically, the statues were cut from the lips of the three volcanoes on the island. This still does not answer the question of how they were brought down to the water's edge.
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 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 The Secrets of Easter Island written by Jean-Michel Schwartz and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Aku Aku the secret of Easter Island written by Thor Heyerdahl and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Easter Island the Secret Knowledge written by Brien Foerster and published by . This book was released on 2018-12-05 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though believed by most people that Easter Island was first inhabited by Polynesians who arrived to the island about 1000 years ago, there is compelling evidence that at least one culture preceded them and had advanced tools or tool making capabilities. This is shown at sites like Vinapu, where the remains of a megalithic wall exists that is very similar to stone structures found in the highlands of Peru. Also, some of the large Moai figures (Easter Island heads) are in fact full bodied, and one in the quarry would have weighed 180 tons but was never finished. Explore with me the possibility that the history of Easter Island, located more than 2000 miles from any major landmass is truly an enigma that is slowly revealing its secret history.
Download or read book The Memory Code written by Lynne Kelly and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ancient, pre-literate cultures across the globe, tribal elders had encyclopedic memories. They could name all the animals and plants across a landscape, identify the stars in the sky, and recite the history of their people. Yet today, most of us struggle to memorize more than a short poem. Using traditional Aboriginal Australian song lines as a starting point, Dr. Lynne Kelly has since identified the powerful memory technique used by our ancestors and indigenous people around the world. In turn, she has then discovered that this ancient memory technique is the secret purpose behind the great prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge, which have puzzled archaeologists for so long.The henges across northern Europe, the elaborate stone houses of New Mexico, huge animal shapes in Peru, the statues of Easter Island—these all serve as the most effective memory system ever invented by humans. They allowed people in non-literate cultures to memorize the vast amounts of information they needed to survive. But how?For the first time, Dr. Kelly unlocks the secret of these monuments and their uses as "memory places" in her fascinating book. Additionally, The Memory Code also explains how we can use this ancient mnemonic technique to train our minds in the tradition of our forbearers.
Download or read book The Mysteries of Easter Island written by Jean Michel Schwartz and published by Avon Books. This book was released on 1975 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A French ethnologist writes about his nine-month expedition on Easter Island and correlates his findings with the work of earlier researchers.
Download or read book Mysteries and Discoveries of Archaeoastronomy written by Giulio Magli and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-04-09 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is divided into two parts. In the first, the reader is taken on an ideal ‘world tour’ of many wonderful and enigmatic places in almost every continent, in search of traces of astronomical knowledge and lore of the sky. In the second part, Giulio Magli uses the elements presented in the tour to show that the fundamental idea which led to the construction of the astronomically-related giant monuments was the foundation of power, a foundation which was exploited by ‘replicating’ the sky. A possible interpretive model then emerges that is founded on the relationship the ancients had with “nature”, in the sense of everything that surrounded them, the cosmos. The numerous monumental astronomically aligned structures of the past then become interpretable as acts of will, expressions of power on the part of those who held it; the will to replicate the heavenly plane here on earth and to build sacred landscapes. Finally, having formulated his hypothesis, Professor Magli returns to visit one specific place in detail, searching for proof. This in-depth examination studies the most compelling, the most intensively studied, the most famous and, until recently, the most misunderstood sacred landscape on the planet - Giza, in Egypt. The archaeoastronomical analysis of the orientation of the Giza pyramids leads to the hypothesis that the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren belong to the same construction project.
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.
Download or read book The Iconic Tattooed Man of Easter Island written by Adrienne L. Kaeppler and published by . This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: -Reveals the heretofore unknown identity of this 19th-century Easter Island (Rapa Nui) man, and the secrets hidden in his impressive tattoos -Body art reveals amazing insights into Easter Island history An impressively tattooed but unnamed Easter Island (Rapa Nui) man appears often in the pages of Pacific Island histories and museum catalogs. The Swedish ethnographer Dr. Knut Hjalmar Stolpe knew him only as Tepano, the Tahitian version of the Christian name Stephen. But what was his real Rapanui identity, and what can his life story tell us about the history of Easter Island? This book reveals his identity, who illustrated him, and how he transcended the tragic events of 19th-century Rapa Nui to become one of the most iconic faces of the Polynesian past. The authors summarize the history of tattoo as practiced by Rapanui artisans, link that history to island geography, and present rare barkcloth sculptures as a visual record of tattoo patterns. This title is the first in a new series on Polynesian Arts & Culture by Mana Press, in partnership with Floating World Editions. For a list of future titles, visit: www.FloatingWorldEditions.com. For more on Rapa Nui, the Mana Gallery and Mana Books, visit: www.eisp.org. An Introduction; The Tattooed Man; The Tattooed Man and Hoa Hakananai a: Rapa Nui, November 1868; The Geography of Rapanui Tattoo: Early Illustrations, Locales, and Key People; Rapanui Tattoo and Colonialism; Rapanui Tattoo Designs and Motifs; Discovering the Tattooed Man: Mataveri, April 1877; Knut Hjalmar Stolpe and Oscar Elkholm: Tahiti, May 1884; The Tattooed Man and Madame Hoare: Tahiti, circa 1870; Madame Hoare and Julien Viaud [Pierre Loti]: Tahiti, 1872; C. B. Hoare, Charles D. Voy, and Thomas Croft: Tahiti, 1873; Alphonse Louis Pinart: 1877; Constance Frederika Gordon Cumming and Alphonse Louis Pinart: 1877; Drawings by Julien Viaud [Pierre Loti]; Identifying Julien Viaud's [Pierre Loti's] Rapanui Subjects; Identifying the Tattooed Man: Viable Candidates; Acknowledgments; Map of Rapa Nui; Glossary; Notes; References.
Download or read book 20 Fun Facts About Easter Island written by Heather Moore Niver and published by Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP. This book was released on 1900-01-01 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On an island in the Pacific Ocean more than 1,000 miles from the nearest habitable location, ancient people constructed hundreds of enormous stone heads. No one is sure exactly how they moved the giant statues into place. In fact, no one really knows how people got there in the first place! Readers are sure to enjoy learning about the mystery surrounding Easter Island. Colorful images of the moai, flora, fauna, and more help transport readers to this amazing world wonder.
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 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.
