Easter Island: Book Reviews by Horst Cerni

“La Tierra de Hotu Matu’a”

(English version: “Island at the Center of the World”) by Father Sebastian Englert

The dominant authority of Easter Island during the 20th century was Father Sebastian Englert, a Franciscan Catholic priest. He had left Germany in 1922 to work with the Mapuche and Araucaria Iindians in Southern Chile. In 1936 he was appointed as missionary priest to Easter Island, where he worked until his death in 1969. He diligently studied the ancient customs and practices of the Easter Island population, learning their language and gaining their confidence.

Based on conversations with old islanders, he describes the prehistoric cataclysm which destroyed a Pacific continent and created most of the islands of Polynesia, including Easter Island. This cataclysm was also the reason for the first migrants under Rey Hotu Matu’a to find a new island to settle on. This king is credited with good leadership and for directing the carving and erection of the massive monoliths. Father Englert studied the Moais and Ahus and carefully marked each location and particularity..

Many of the stories of the old history are written down word by word, and Father Englert realized that the old islanders not only have a good memory but also rich fantasies. He describes the significance of different petroglyphs and cave drawings and cultural and religious practices. He was intrigued by the complex language, especially the “talking tablets” - the written record of Hotu Matu’a. Several versions exist and Father Sebastian learned from old islanders that there were tablets dealing with history, others honoring the god Make Make, and some with instructions. Although unable to decipher these symbols, Father Sebastian prepared a dictionary of the Rapa Nui language which was to appear as a separate book.

Much of the life on Easter Island was dominated by superstitions and religious practices to appease the gods. According to legend, there were about 80 “Aku-aku” - Spirits of Another World, - which had permanent dwellings in different parts of the island and were favorable spirits to the inhabitants, but hostile to outsiders.There were no priests as such, but there were men and women who claimed to understand celestial happenings and interpreted them, and they practiced witchcraft. There was only one religious festival which honored the god Make Make at the time the first egg of the Manu Tara bird was fetched.

Father Englert studied all aspects of island life and of individual islanders. It is difficult to summarize in a few words the dramatic and complex history of these people who had suffered abductions, slavery and civil war for centuries. He summarized his findings in this book which has become a classic reference work for any researcher of the history and ethnography of the island.

“Aku-Aku” by Thor Heyerdahl (Published in many languages)

 

Thor Heyerdahl had become famous when in 1947 he demonstrated with his Kon-Tiki raft that it would have been possible for the ancient people of Peru and Bolivia to reach Polynesian islands on a raft. In 1955 he started another expedition in support of this hypothesis and went to Easter Island (- on a ship), the loneliest island in the world. Even though the distances to other Polynesian islands were very great, he argued that if the Incas managed to reach one island in the South Pacific, then why not also another further away.

He was accompanied by scientists and qualified archeologists who dug deep into the ground to find evidence of early civilizations. They started with the big stone sculptures, the Moais, and their platforms, the Ahus. and managed to demonstrate how these giants could have been carved with simple stone tools, then erected and transported to a place several miles away. He got islanders to erect a Moai by putting layers of stones underneath it until it stood, and then they moved it with ropes - little by little.

He interviewed islanders, but their knowledge of their history was very limited and often clouded in folklore and superstition. He received a lot of help and guidance from the Capuchin priest Father Sebastian Englert, who had studied the culture and its mysteries for over three decades and spoke the local language.

He wanted to know why all of a sudden all the work stopped. There were conflicts because of overpopulation and insufficient food, but a major uprising occurred when the “short ears” didn’t obey the “long ears” anymore who were the rulers and demanded removal of stones to clear the land for agriculture and the carving of ever larger moais. The Long Ears retreated to their area of Poike and built a deep ditch and filled it with wood. But they were betrayed and the Short Ears entered the area and pushed the inhabitants into the ditch and set fire to it. Only three Long Ears survived. Several archeologists didn’t believe the story and felt that the ditch was a natural formation. So Heyerdahl started digging in several spots and did find ashes and burnt remains.

Thor Heyerdahl was satisfied that he had found answers to many of the mysteries of Easter Island and its history. Yet he wanted to examine some further areas which could have been of significance in the settlement of Easter Island. He therefore took his expedition also to Pitcairn, the closed inhabited island at a distance of 1,920 km. He was well received by the 60 descendants of the mutineers of the M/S Bounty. He found evidence of a temple platform and some small stone figures with some likeness to a moai. Unfortunately, most was destroyed. The expedition then continued to Mangareva where they only found a painting of a destroyed sculpture.

Their final stop was Rapa Iti - the small Rapa (island). Here they cleared the remnants of a fortress. This fortification was built for defense, but it may have been copied from an Inca temple.

At the end of the book, Heyerdahl discusses with his “Aku-Aku”- his guardian spirit - the likelihood of Incas having sailed to Polynesia, including Easter Island.

Newsweek called the book “Fascinating scientific whodunit”, and another reviewer said “It is science, adventure, human warmth, excitement, suspense.

Fantastica Isla de Pascua

(English version: “Mysteries of Easter Island”) By Francis Mazière

 

Francis Mazière took a long 160 day sailing trip from France to Polynesia in 1964 and describes his adventurous journey. He felt particularly welcome on Easter Island because of his nationality and being married to a Tahitian woman, who could converse with the islanders in their language. He therefore considered having better insights and access to local people than previous researchers.

He recounts the sad history of how the islanders - the Pascuense - were mistreated by most visitors from the original Dutch discoverers in 1722 and to the Chilean annexation in 1888, when the Chilean Navy took over the administration. They restricted locals to stay within the town of Hanga Roa and leased the entire island to an English company for agricultural exploitation. The local population could only get a small ration of meat and needed permission to leave the town to work.

Maziére explored the various archeological sites and discovered mysterious holes on Rano Raraku which might have served as a solar observatory or for transportation purposes with ropes. He wondered how in all of Polynesia only the Pascuense were able to develop a written language and suggested that there must have been a foreign influence - maybe even extraterrestrial? Through his wife, he learned about the secret family caves and the various sculptures hidden there. She talked extensively to one of the oldest Pascuense who told her (in a Tahitian vernacular which Francis didn’t understand) that “the inhabitants of Jupiter have regulated the arrangements of the planet, and only earth has people of different colors.” He was amazed at the complexity of the native culture and saddened that so much was lost and destroyed. And he realized that Easter Island will not be like a public museum and make all its mysteries known, but instead, maybe, it will die a second death.

El mensaje de los dioses

(English: “In Search of Ancient Gods”) by Erich von Däniken

Swiss author Erich von Däniken theorized that the Moais were built and erected with the help of extraterrestrial beings. He didn’t think that stone age people having only simple stone tools to work with could carve so perfectly these big sculptures, He made similar assertions about other archeological mysteries - like Stonehenge, the gigantic drawings at Nazca, or the Egyptian pyramids. He thought that ancient astronauts brought sophisticated tools and taught earthlinks to overcome mechanical problems and create immense structures. Scientists have not accepted his theories and consider it pseudo archeology. Von Däniken gives the immensity of the universe as one argument why humans cannot be the only intelligent creatures, But in view of recent NASA missions of the Webb and Hubble telescopes looking billions of light years into space, Däniken’s idea of extraterrestrials to travel such immense distances for a building project on earth is definitely far fetched. Nevertheless, his arguments provide interesting reading and the book is full of illustrations and photos of mysterious images which he interpreted to resemble astronauts or spaceships and distant galaxies. And who knows, like Englert and also Maziere suspected, maybe there was some outside influence (although, probably, from closer by).