What really happened on Easter Island?

Hundreds of iconic moai statues stand testament to the vibrant civilization that once inhabited Easter Island, but there are far fewer clues about why this civilization mysteriously vanished. Did they shortsightedly exhaust the island's resources? Were they decimated by European illnesses and slave trade? Or did stow-away rats devastate the native ecosystem? Such theories have spread widely, but recent evidence shows that the truth is not as simple as any one of these alone.

"These different interpretations may be complementary, rather than incompatible," said Dr. Valentí Rull. "In the last decade, there's been a burst in new studies, including additional research sites and novel techniques, which demand that we reconsider the climatic, ecological and cultural developments that occurred." Rull is a senior researcher of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona, Spain, and the lead author of an overview on the holistic reassessment of Easter Island history.

Until recently, the evidence has been limited. Prior sedimentary samples--commonly used as historical records of environmental change--were incomplete, with gaps and inconsistencies in the timeline. Furthermore, past interpretations relied heavily on pollen alone, without incorporating more faithful indicators of climate change. Due to this uncertainty, many fundamental questions remain, not only about why the culture disappeared, but also precisely when these events occurred and how this civilization developed in the first place.

Using the latest analytical methods, Rull and his collaborators are beginning to shed light on many of these questions. Complete sedimentary samples now show a continuous record of the last 3000 years, showing how droughts and wet seasons may have influenced the island's population. Sea travel depended on such weather patterns, resulting in periods of cultural exchange or isolation. Rainfall also impacted native palm forests, with droughts potentially contributing to the island's eventual deforestation. Radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis of artifacts and human remains are also showing where the inhabitants lived on the island, what they farmed and ate, and the influence of cultures beyond their Polynesian ancestors.

"These findings challenge classical collapse theories and the new picture shows a long and gradual process due to both ecological and cultural changes. In particular, the evidence suggests that there was not an island-wide abrupt ecological and cultural collapse before the European arrival in 1722," said Rull.

There is much work yet to be done before this mystery is solved, but it is clear that neither environmental nor human activities are solely responsible for the events on Easter Island. Only a combined approach that encompasses climate, ecology, and culture will fully explain how this ancient civilization went extinct.

The article is published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2016. “What really happened on Easter Island?”. EurekAlert. Posted: April 7, 2016. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/f-wrh040716.php

Using Lasers to Reveal the Secrets of Lost Civilizations

ON THE ISLAND of Rapa Nui—more commonly known as Easter Island—the monolithic statues known as moai rest on the slopes of a collapsed volcano called Rano Raraku. Native inhabitants carved these figures between the 13th and 16th centuries, archaeologists believe, as sacred embodiments of departed ancestors. Nearly nine hundred moai exist on the island, and many were moved long distances from the Rano Raraku quarry site, positioned as if to protect the land.

Today, you can still go visit the Easter Island statues, reveling in the effort it must have taken to construct and move them to their current positions. Other ruins, though, you may never have the chance to see with your own eyes. In recent months, ISIS has essentially bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, destroying artifacts that date back to the 13th century BC. And they’re currently knocking on the door of the 2,000-year-old Syrian city of Palmyra.

In a world that consistently threatens humans’ valuable archaeological heritage, new digital preservation technologies can offer a small (very, very small) comfort.CyArk, a nonprofit organization in California, has digitally captured many sites and objects, including those ancient maoi on Rapa Nui, through LiDAR (light detection and ranging) data. The three-dimensional scanned images are helping the island’s modern inhabitants record their cultural history for posterity—and aiding researchers in their study of the past.

LiDAR isn’t so different from radar or sonar—it sends out pulses of electromagnetic radiation (in this case light, in the visible spectrum or very close to it) and analyzes it as the beams return. That analysis can detect the elevation of surfaces within a few centimeters. LiDAR is used to spot damage from natural disasters, to estimate the amount of carbon stored in an Alaskan forest and even to see London in new and weird ways.

It’s possible that these records will become crucial historical documents, if researchers can store them frequently enough. Consider the moai again: Accounts from Western explorers, recorded 50 years apart, indicate thatlife and politics on Rapa Nui changed dramatically during the 18th century. The island suffered intense civil wars, as deforestation and overpopulation took their toll. In the strife, moai were toppled and defaced, and thousands of people were killed. So much more of island’s ancient Polynesian history could have been preserved if LiDAR images were collected before that period of devastation.

Archaeologists have increasingly turned to LiDAR in recent years to survey their areas of interest, and some are explicitly working to make sure that they have a record of places that seem in imminent danger of being destroyed. As valuable as the work is, it’s no replacement for preservation in the first place. A point cloud just doesn’t quite match the real thing.
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Reference:

Venton, Danielle. 2015. “Using Lasers to Reveal the Secrets of Lost Civilizations”. Wired. Posted: May 20, 2015. Available online: http://www.wired.com/2015/05/lidar-archaeology/

Obsidian artefacts help researchers understand historic land use on Easter Island

Long before the Europeans arrived on Easter Island in 1722, the native Polynesian culture known as Rapa Nui showed signs of demographic decline. However, the catalyst has long been debated in the scientific community. Was environmental degradation the cause, or could a political revolution or an epidemic of disease be to blame?

A new study by a group of international researchers, offers a different explanation and helps to clarify the chronological framework. The investigators expected to find that changes coincided with the arrival of the Europeans, but their work shows instead that the demise of the Rapa Nui culture began prior to that. Their findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“In the current Easter Island debate, one side says the Rapa Nui decimated their environment and killed themselves off,” said Chadwick, a professor in UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Geography and the Environmental Studies Program. “The other side says it had nothing to do with cultural behaviour, that it was the Europeans who brought disease that killed the Rapa Nui. Our results show that there is some of both going on, but the important point is that we show evidence of some communities being abandoned prior to European contact.”

Obsidian

Chadwick joined archaeologists Christopher Stevenson of Virginia Commonwealth University, Cedric Puleston of UC Davis and Thegn Ladefoged of the University of Auckland in examining six agriculture sites used by the island’s statue-building inhabitants. Their research focused mainly on the three sites for which they had information on climate, soil chemistry and land use trends as determined by an analysis of obsidian spear points.

The team used flakes of obsidian, a natural glass, as a dating tool. Measuring the amount of water that had penetrated the obsidian’s surface allowed them to gauge how long it had been exposed and to determine its age.

The study sites reflected the environmental diversity of the 63-square-mile island situated nearly 2,300 miles off the west coast of Chile. The soil nutrient supply on Easter Island is less than that of the younger Hawaiian Islands, which were also settled by the Polynesians around the same time, 1200 A.D.

The first site the researchers analysed was near the northwest coast. Lying in the rain shadow of a volcano, it had low rainfall and relatively high soil nutrient availability. The second study site, on the interior side of the volcanic mountain, experienced high rainfall but had a low nutrient supply; the third, another near-coastal are in the northeast, was characterized by intermediate amounts of rainfall and relatively high soil nutrients.

Abandoned areas before European contact

“When we evaluate the length of time that the land was used based on the age distribution of each site’s obsidian flakes, which we used as an index of human habitation, we find that the very dry area and the very wet area were abandoned before European contact,” Chadwick said. “The area that had relatively high nutrients and intermediate rainfall maintained a robust population well after European contact.”

These results suggest that the Rapa Nui reacted to regional variations and natural environmental barriers to producing sufficient crops rather than degrading the environment themselves. In the nutrient-rich centre where they could produce food well, they were able to maintain a viable culture even under the threat of external factors, including European diseases such as smallpox, syphilis and tuberculosis.

“The pullback from the marginal areas suggests that the Rapa Nui couldn’t continue to maintain the food resources necessary to keep the statue builders in business,” Chadwick concluded. “So we see the story as one of pushing against constraints and having to pull back rather than one of violent collapse.”
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Reference:

Past Horizons. 2015. “Obsidian artefacts help researchers understand historic land use on Easter Island”. Past Horizons. Posted: Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/01/2015/obsidian-artefacts-help-researchers-understand-historic-land-use-on-easter-island

Study suggests history of Rapa Nui on Easter Island far more complex than thought

A team of researchers with members from the U.S., Chile and New Zealand has uncovered evidence that contradicts the conventional view of the demographic collapse of the Rapa Nui people living on Easter Island, both before and after European contact. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes how they conducted obsidian hydration dating of artifacts from the island to trace the history of human activity in the area and what they found in doing so.

For many years, Earth scientists and others have used Easter Island and its inhabitants, the Rapa Nui, as a lesson in what can happen when a parcel of land is overpopulated and thus overused—resources diminish and the people starve to death (or resort to cannibalism as some have suggested). But now, the researchers with this new effort suggest that thinking may be wrong.

Scientists believe Polynesians first settled on Easter Island sometime around 1200 AD—over the course of the next several hundred years the settlers became the Rapa Nui, famous for the massive maoi statues that were erected. Over that time period, the people cut down most of the trees on the northern part of the island and a lot of the other vegetation. That led to the loss of nutrient rich topsoil due to erosion and the idea that the people began to starve to death.

To better understand what actually occurred both before and after Europeans arrived in the 1700's, the researchers used a technique known as obsidian hydration dating on artifacts found at various sites on the northern part of the island where the Rapa Nui lived. That allowed them to gain insights into how the land in that area had been used during different time periods. From that they were able to construct a timeline that showed where the people were living over the course of hundreds of years. And that, the researchers report, showed that rather than a population crash due to starvation, there were population shifts that reflected changing weather patterns. Some areas did see population losses before European contact, and some actually saw initial gains afterwards. The population did see a dramatic decline, of course, sometime thereafter as the Rapa Nui people became exposed to European diseases such as smallpox and syphilis and as many were taken and sold into slavery. This means, the team concludes, that there is little evidence of population collapse prior to European contact.
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Yirka, Bob. 2015. “Study suggests history of Rapa Nui on Easter Island far more complex than thought”. Phys.org. Posted: January 6, 2015. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2015-01-history-rapa-nui-easter-island.html

New evidence challenges theories of Rapa Nui collapse

Dr. Mara Mulrooney, assistant anthropologist at Bishop Museum in Honululu, conducted a six year study on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) concerning the island’s theoretical civilisation collapse. Her findings now challenge these previous ideas, which have claimed that the islanders “self-destructed” before Europeans first visited in 1722.

Results from her doctoral dissertation are published in the December issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Debunking the popular view

As popularised in Jared Diamond’s 2005 book Collapse, Rapa Nui is often viewed as a prime example of what happens when people lose sight of what they are doing to their environment. According to the popular narrative, the Rapa Nui people committed “environmental suicide” by deforesting their island home. However, Dr. Mulrooney and colleagues are starting to construct a more positive scenario.

“The new picture that emerges from these results is really one of sustainability and continuity rather than collapse, which sheds new light on what we can really learn from Rapa Nui,” said Mulrooney. “Based on these new findings, perhaps Rapa Nui should be the poster-child of how human ingenuity can result in success, rather than failure.”

Continued use

Dr. Mulrooney analysed over 300 radiocarbon dates from across the island, including 15 dates from new excavations in the northern area of the island. These new findings, along with the re-analysis of previously collected dates, showed that large tracts of Rapa Nui’s interior continued to be used for agricultural production of foods like sweet potatoes and taro, even after European contact with the island. This directly challenges the previous belief that these areas were abandoned as the island chiefdom supposedly collapsed.

These results, together with recent results from Dr. Mulrooney’s colleagues Thegn Ladefoged, Ph.D. (University of Auckland), Christopher Stevenson, Ph.D. (Virginia Commonwealth University), and Sonia Haoa (an archaeologist from Rapa Nui), who have been analysing the ancient gardens of the island, suggest that the Rapa Nui people managed to transform their island home into a more productive and sustainable environment.

These new findings suggest that it was not until the fatal impacts of European contact in the 18th century that Rapanui society experienced a real societal collapse due to introduced diseases.
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References:

Past Horizons. 2014. “New evidence challenges theories of Rapa Nui collapse”. Past Horizons. Posted: December 13, 2013. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/12/2013/new-evidence-challenges-theories-of-rapa-nui-collapse

Rats! Diet of Easter Islanders Revealed

The inhabitants of Easter Island consumed a diet that was lacking in seafood and was, literally, quite ratty.

The island, also called Rapa Nui, first settled around A.D. 1200, is famous for its more than 1,000 "walking" Moai statues, most of which originally faced inland. Located in the South Pacific, Rapa Nui is the most isolated inhabited landmass on Earth; the closest inhabitants are located on the Pitcairn Islands about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) to the west.

To determine the diet of its past inhabitants, researchers analyzed the nitrogen and carbon isotopes, or atoms of an element with different numbers of neutrons, from the teeth (specifically the dentin) of 41 individuals whose skeletons had been previously excavated on the island. To get an idea of what the islanders ate before dying, the researchers then compared the isotope values with those of animal bones excavated from the island.

Additionally, the researchers were able to radiocarbon date 26 of the teeth remains, allowing them to plot how the diet on the island changed over time. Radiocarbon dating works by measuring the decay of carbon-14 allowing a date range to be assigned to each individual; it's a method commonly used in archaeology on organic material. The research was published recently online in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

The researchers found that throughout time, the people on the island consumed a diet that was mainly terrestrial. In fact, in the first few centuries of the island's history (up to about A.D. 1650) some individuals used Polynesian rats (also known as kiore) as their main source of protein. The rat is somewhat smaller than European rats and, according to ethnographic accounts, tasty to eat.

"Our results indicate that contrary to previous zooarchaeological studies, diet was predominantly terrestrial throughout the entire sequence of occupation, with reliance on rats, chickens and C3 plants," the researchers write in their journal article, noting that the resources from C3 plants (or those that use typical photosynthesis to make sugars) would have included yams, sweet potatoes and bananas.

Rats, not fish

The islanders' use of rats was not surprising to the researchers. Archaeological excavations show the presence of the Polynesian rat across the Pacific. The Polynesian form commonly travels with humans on ocean voyages and, like any other rat, multiplies rapidly when it arrives on a new island. In some cases, the rats were probably transported intentionally to be used as food, something supported by ethnographic accounts stating that, in some areas of Polynesia, rats were being consumed at the time of European contact. Additionally, previous research has suggested the rats were at least partly responsible for the deforestation of Rapa Nui.

What was more surprising to the researchers was the lack of seafood in the diet of the islanders. "Traditionally, from Polynesian cultures you have a heavy predominance of using marine products, especially in the early phase of colonization," said Amy Commendador, of the Idaho Museum of Natural History at Idaho State University, in an interview with LiveScience.

One reason for the lack of seafood may have to do with the island's location and topography, Commendador said. The northern end contains steep cliffs and would be difficult to fish from. Additionally, the island's southerly latitude makes it somewhat cooler and may affect fishing. "Because of their geographic location and climate conditions, there just weren't as many marine products for them to get," Commendador said.

Rats should not be underestimated in their value as a resource, study co-author John Dudgeon, also at Idaho State University, told LiveScience. They could eat anything and multiply rapidly within a few generations. For the people who lived on Rapa Nui, "it was probably easier to go get a rat than it was to go get a fish," Dudgeon said.

Fish elites?

Though the study results showed the islanders' diet was mainly terrestrial, a few individuals, dating after A.D. 1600, appeared to have been eating more fish than the others.

These fish eaters may have lived on a part of the island where the fishing was easier, Commendador suggested. Another possibility the team raises in their paper is that access to marine resources varied due to the social and political constraints people faced. For the islanders, eating fish might have been a mark of "higher status" individuals, an elite person who was allowed more plentiful access to seafood.

Statues facing inland

One curious coincidence is that most of the Moai, the statues erected by the islanders, face inland rather than out to sea. Now, this new research suggests the people of the island also turned inland, rather than to the sea, to get their food.

Commendador and Dudgeon don't think any direct relationship between the Moai statues and the islanders’ diet exists. Previous research has suggested the statues were positioned facing inland due to ancestor worship, so that the statues could watch over their descendents.

Another, more speculative, idea is that by having the statues facing inland, the islanders were also "saying we're turning inwards and not turning outward," Dudgeon said. While this probably doesn't relate to the islanders' decision to eat rats rather than fish, it shows the mindset the people of Rapa Nui may have developed before the arrival of Europeans. Their lifestyle as well as their diet may have become focused on the land rather than the sea.
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References:

Jarus, Owen. 2013. “Rats! Diet of Easter Islanders Revealed”. Live Science. Posted: September 25, 2013. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/39926-easter-islanders-ate-rats.html

Easter Island's 'Walking' Stone Heads Stir Debate

An idea suggesting massive stone statues that encircle Easter Island may have been "walked" into place has run into controversy.

In October 2012, researchers came up with the "walking" theory by creating a 5-ton replica of one of the statues (or "moai"), and actually moving it in an upright position, and have published a more thorough justification in the June issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. If the statues were walked into place, then the islanders didn't need to cut down the island's palm trees to make way for moving the massive carvings, the researchers argue.

The findings may help dismantle the traditional storyline of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui: that a "crazed maniacal group destroyed their environment," by cutting down trees to transport gigantic statues, said study co-author Carl Lipo, an anthropologist at California State University, Long Beach.

But not everyone in the field is convinced. While some experts find the demonstration persuasive, others think it's unlikely the large statues could have been walked upright on the island's hilly, rough terrain.

Ancient enigma

Rapa Nui's majestic rock statues (also known as Stone Heads of Easter Island) have been a mystery since Europeans first arrived in the 1700s on the island, located in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Chile. Though the island was filled with a giant palm forest when Polynesians first arrived in the 13th century, the first European explorers found massive megaliths on a deforested, rock-strewn island with just 3,000 people.

In the past, archaeologists proposed that a lost civilization chopped down all the trees to make paths to roll the megalithic structures horizontally for miles on top of palm trees used as "rolling logs" of sorts, from the quarries where they were created to ceremonial platforms. That transport method would have required many people, and led to deforestation and environmental ruin that would've caused the population to plummet.

Walking statues

But Lipo and his colleagues wondered whether that made sense. For one, other archaeological evidence in villages suggested the island's population was never that large, and the palm trees, essentially hardwood with a soft, foamy material inside, would be crushed by the rolling statues, Lipo said.

Along the road to the platforms are moai whose bases curved so they couldn't stand upright, but instead would topple forward, meaning the ones in transit would have to be modified once they reached the platform. That made the researchers wonder why the statues weren't made to stand upright in the first place if they were meant to be rolled  into place, not walked, Lipo said

And the statues found on the roads to the platforms all had wider bases than shoulders, which physical models suggested would help them rock forward in an upright position.

To see whether the statues may have been walked, the team transformed photos of one 10-foot-tall (3 meters) statue into a 3D computer model, and then created a 5-ton concrete replica. Last October, on a NOVA documentary, the team tried walking the replica, using people holding ropes on each side to rock the statue forward and back on a dirt path in Hawaii.

The statue moved easily.

"It goes from something you can't imagine moving at all, to kind of dancing down the road," Lipo told LiveScience.

The movers walked the replica about 328 feet (100 m) in 40 minutes; from this demonstration and assuming the ancient builders would have been somewhat of experts at their jobs, Lipo suspects they would have moved the Rapa Nui statues about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) a day, meaning transport would have taken about two weeks.

In the new paper, the team hypothesizes the builders carved the statues'  bases so they would lean forward, as it would've been easier to rock a statue with a curved bottom back and forth. Then, the builders would have flattened the bases to stand the statues upright once they reached the ceremonial platforms.

No collapse

The findings suggest that relatively few people were needed to move the statues. As a result, the idea of a massive civilization collapsing because of their craze to build statues needs a rethink, Lipo said.

Instead, Lipo's team believes the population was probably always small and stable.

The Polynesian settlers did cause deforestation, through slashing-and-burning of the forest to make way for sweet potatoes and through the rats inadvertently brought to the island that ate palm nuts before they could sprout into new trees. But that deforestation didn't cause the civilization to die out: The palm trees were probably not economically useful to the islanders anyway, Lipo said.

Controversial conclusion

"It's an entirely plausible hypothesis," said John Terrell, an anthropologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, who was not involved in the study.

The combination of physics, archaeological evidence, satellite imagery of the roads, and human feasibility makes their story compelling, Terrell told LiveScience.

But not everyone is convinced.

The walking hypothesis relies on particular statue geometry; namely, that all the statues had wider bases than shoulders when they were moved, said Jo Anne Van Tilburg, the director of the Easter Island Statues Project, and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study.

Her research of 887 statues on Rapa Nui has found much more variation in this ratio, even in statues found in transit to their ceremonial platforms.

In 1998, Van Tilburg and others from the Easter Island Statues Project used a similar replica to show that moving the statues horizontally along parallel logs could work as well.

"I don't think you have to invent a very awkward, difficult transport method," Van Tilburg told LiveScience.

What's more, Rapa Nui's prepared roads were rough and uneven, and the statues would have been moved over hilly terrain, said Christopher Stevenson, an archaeologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, who was not involved in Lipo's study.

By contrast, "in the NOVA exercise it was like an airport runway," Stevenson said.

And the replica the team moved is on the small side for statues — some of which are up to 40 feet (12 m) tall and weigh 75 tons. It's not clear the method would work for something much larger, Stevenson said.
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References:

Ghose, Tia. 2013. “Easter Island's 'Walking' Stone Heads Stir Debate”. Live Science. Posted: June 7, 2013. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/37277-easter-island-statues-walked-there.html?cmpid=514627

Hoa Hakananai’a – Rapa Nui statue tells a new story

A team of archaeologists from the University of Southampton have used the latest in digital imaging technology to record and analyse carvings on the Rapa Nui (Easter Island) statue Hoa Hakananai’a.

James Miles, Hembo Pagi and Dr Graeme Earl from the Archaeological Computing Research Group at the University of Southampton teamed up with archaeologist Mike Pitts to examine the statue at the Wellcome Trust Gallery in the British Museum.

Dr Earl explains: “The Hoa Hakananai’a statue has rarely been studied at first hand by archaeologists, but developments in digital imaging technology have now allowed us to examine it in unprecedented detail.”

Hoa Hakananai’a was brought to England in 1869 by the crew of HMS Topaze and is traditionally said to have been carved around AD1200. Rapa Nui is home to around 1,000 similar statues, but Hoa Hakananai’a is of particular interest because of the intricate carvings on its back.

It is popularly believed that around AD1600 the Rapa Nui islanders faced an ecological crisis and stopped worshipping their iconic statues. They turned instead to a new birdman religion, or cult. This included a ritual based around collecting the first egg of migrating terns from a nearby islet, Motu Nui. The ‘winner’, whose representative swam to the islet and then back with the egg, was afforded sacred status for a year.

Hoa Hakananai’a survived this shift in religious beliefs by being placed in a stone hut and covered in carved ‘petroglyphs’, or rock engravings, depicting motifs from the birdman cult. As such, it may be representative of the transition from the cult of statues to the cult of the birdman.

The team from the University of Southampton examined Hoa Hakananai’a using two different techniques: Photogrammetric Modelling; which involved taking hundreds of photos from different angles to produce a fully textured computer model of the statue, capable of being rotated in 360 degrees; and Reflectance Transformation Imaging; a process which allows a virtual light source to be moved across the surface of a digital image of the statue, using the difference between light and shadow to highlight never-seen-before details.

James Miles, a PhD student at Southampton, comments: “Despite the wonders of modern technology, creating accurate, detailed geometric models of these kinds of complex surfaces remains a painstaking task. We have more work to do but the virtual versions already provide a more interactive way of studying Hoa Hakananai’a.”

Using these techniques, the team made some fascinating discoveries, perhaps the most significant being the apparently simple recognition that a carved bird beak is short and round, not long and pointed as previously described: this allowed the two birdmen on the back to be marked as male and female, unlocking a narrative story to the whole composition relating to Rapa Nui’s unique birdman cult. They also realised that the statue is one of the few on Easter Island that did not stand on a platform beside the shore. It is now believed to have always stood in the ground, where it was found, on top of a 300 metre cliff.

Pitts comments: “Study of the tapering base suggests that rather than being the result of thinning to make it fit into a pit, as often suggested, it is more likely part of the original boulder or outcrop from which it was carved. This may also explain why, as we now see it in the British Museum, it appears to lean slightly to the left – its uneven end resulted in its being incorrectly set into its 19th century plinth.”

Other observations from the digital imaging include:

When it was half-buried by soil and food debris, small designs known as komari, representing female genitalia, were carved on the back of the head.

At a later date, the whole of the back was covered with a scene showing a male chick leaving the nest, watched by its half-bird, half-human parents – the story at the heart of the birdman ceremony, recorded in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

A round beak on the right birdman in the scene described above. This can be read as a sign of female gender, and confirmation of the male / female bird ‘parents’. The female birdman is matched by the female komari on the right ear of the statue, and the male on the left by a paddle on the left ear – a symbol of male authority.

A rounded shape near the lower part of the right birdman, possibly the egg the male chick hatched from. Another possibility is the ring clutched in the two birdmen’s arms has been re-imagined as an egg.

Faint indications of fingers around the navel, which may have once been more prominent, but later removed. It’s hoped the imaging carried out by the University of Southampton’s Archaeological Computing Research Group will open new debate on the significance of the engravings of Hoa Hakananai’a.

The photogrammetry model was created with Agisoft PhotoScan software and analysed in MeshLab; the RTIs were made and viewed with open source software produced by Universidade do Minho and Cultural Heritage Imaging, using equipment funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.
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References:

Past Horizons. 2013. “Hoa Hakananai’a – Rapa Nui statue tells a new story”. Past Horizons. Posted: April 12, 2013. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2013/hoa-hakananaia-rapa-nui-statue-tells-a-new-story

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) & Moai Statues

Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island (a name given to it by Europeans), is located in the southeast Pacific and is famous for its approximately 1,000 carvings of moai, human-faced statues. The island measures about 14 miles (22 km) by 7 miles (11 km) at its furthest points and it is often said that it can be traversed by foot in a single day. The volcanic island is the most isolated inhabited landmass on Earth. The closest inhabited land is the Pitcairn Islands, located about 1,200 miles (1,900 km) to the west. Chile, the closest South American country, is located about 2,300 miles (3,700 km) to the east.

he famous carvings are massive, up to 40 feet (12 meters) tall and 75 tons in weight. They were decorated on top with “Pukao,” a soft red stone in the shape of a hat. The statues also have torsos buried beneath the heads.

Recent analysis of radiocarbon dating from the island indicate that Rapa Nui was first settled around A.D. 1200, a period in which Polynesians voyaged to the east Pacific and perhaps also to South America and California.

According to legend, a chief named Hotu Matu’a, having learned of Rapa Nui from an advance party of explorers, led a small group of colonists, perhaps no more than 100 people, to the island.

Their place of origin is a mystery and may have been the Marquesas Islands, located 2,300 miles (3,700 km) to the northwest of Rapa Nui. Another suggestion is Rarotonga, located 3,200 miles (5,200 km) to the southwest of the island. In any case, the voyage would have been an arduous one that may have involved tacking against the wind.

A deforested environment

When people first came to Rapa Nui, around 800 years ago, they would have found the island overgrown with palm trees, among other vegetation. In the centuries that followed Rapa Nui was deforested until, by the 19th century, the landscape was utterly barren.

How this occurred is a matter of debate. When people arrived at Rapa Nui they brought with them (whether intentionally or not) the Polynesian rat, a creature that reproduces rapidly and which the Polynesians sometimes consumed. This species had no natural enemies on the island and may have played a major role in deforestation.

The popular claim that the island’s palm trees were felled to create devices to move the moai statues is probably incorrect. According to ancient stories the statues “walked” from the quarries to their place on stone platforms (known as ahu) and, indeed, research has shown that two small teams using ropes can move the statues vertically. A recent demonstration of this was recorded on a YouTube video (below) by Terry Hunt, a University of Hawaii professor, and Carl Lipo, a professor at California State University Long Beach.

It is also noted by Hunt and Lipo that the deforestation of the island may not have led to a food crisis. They point out in their book, "The Statues that Walked" (Free Press, 2011) that abundant rocks on the island allowed for the construction of stone-protected gardens known as “manavai.” These stone gardens would have been supported by lithic mulching, a process by which minerals from rocks fertilize the soil.

The people of the island, it appears, had enough food not only to build and move statues, but also to develop a written script, today known as Rongorongo, which researchers are still trying to decipher.

Moai mystery

In their book, Hunt and Lipo provide more evidence for the idea that the statues were moved vertically. They note the presence of pathways or “roads” that lead from quarry sites to moai locations in the southeast, northwest and southwest parts of the island.

“The evidence on the ground revealed that roads were not part of some overall planned network. Rather they are the remnants of paths that moai transporters took as they walk the statues across the landscape,” they write.

While this helps explain how the statues were moved around the island, it doesn’t explain why. Scholars don’t know what the reasons were for creating the statues, but they have noted several features that provide clues.

The statues on their platforms can be found ringing almost the entire coast of the island. Remarkably, despite their seaside location, every single one of the moai appears to face inland and not out to sea, suggesting that they were meant to honour people or deities located within Rapa Nui itself.

Construction of the moai statues appears to have stopped around the time of European contact in 1722, when Dutch explorers landed on Easter Day. Over the next century the moai would fall over, either intentionally pushed over or from simple neglect. Why construction was abandoned is another mystery. It’s known that disease ravaged the island’s people after contact and that the islanders had a desire for European goods. Early explorers recorded that hats were particularly popular among the people of the island.

Regardless of what the moai were intended for, and why construction of them stopped, today the popularity of the statues is higher than ever. Many statues have been re-erected on their ahu bases and Rapa Nui now has a population of more than 5,000 people, its hotels and facilities supporting a thriving modern tourism industry.
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References:

Jarus, Owen. 2012. “Easter Island (Rapa Nui) & Moai Statues”. Live Science. Posted: October 16, 2012. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/24021-easter-island-rapa-nui.html

Hidden treat: The Easter Island heads also have BODIES

The enduring image in the public's mind of the mysterious heads on Easter Island is simply that - heads.

So it comes as quite a shock to see the heads from another angle - and discover that they have full bodies, extending down many, many feet into the ground of the island.

(Source: EISP.org)

The Easter Island Statue Project has been carefully excavating two of 1,000-plus statues on the islands - doing their best to uncover the secrets of the mysterious stones, and the people who built them.

Project director Jo Anne Van Tilburg said: 'Our EISP excavations recently exposed the torsos of two 7m tall statues.

'Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of visitors to the island have been astonished to see that, indeed, Easter Island statues have bodies!

'More important, however, we discovered a great deal about the Rapa Nui techniques of ancient engineering.'

Among their discoveries, the team have discovered:

*The dirt and detritus partially burying the statues was washed down from above and not deliberately placed there to bury, protect, or support the statues

*The statues were erected in place and stand on stone pavements

*Post holes were cut into bedrock to support upright tree trunks

*Rope guides were cut into bedrock around the post holes

*Posts, ropes, stones, and different types of stone tools were all used to carve and raise the statues upright

The remote island - one of the remotest in the world, tucked away in the South Pacific Ocean - was once home to a Polynesian population, whose history remains mysterious.

They likely sailed to the islands in canoes - a 1,500-mile journey over the open waters, and then, once they landed, they began relentessly carving the stone statues.

This led to their own downfall: By the time Europeans discovered the island in the 1700s, the population had decimated nearly all the trees in the island to help with the statue construction, and the knock-on effect on the island's ecology led to their decline.

The team also discovered that ceremonies were certainly associated with the statues.

On the project website, Van Tilburg said: 'We found large quantities of red pigment, some of which may have been used to paint the statues.

'Finally, and perhaps most poignantly, we found in the pavement under one statue a single stone carved with a crescent symbol said to represent a canoe, or vaka.

'The backs of both statues are covered with petroglyphs, many of which are also vaka. A direct connection between the vaka symbol and the identity of the artist or group owning the statue is strongly suggested.'

Visit the official website.
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References:

Wrenn, Eddie. 2012. "Hidden treat: The Easter Island heads also have BODIES".The Daily Mail. Posted: May 25, 2012. Available online: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2149846/Hidden-treat-The-Easter-Island-heads-BODIES.html

Did Easter Islanders Mix It Up With South Americans?

The scattered islands of the vast Pacific Ocean were settled by seafarers who set out from the eastern coasts and islands of Asia and traveled thousands of kilometers by boat. Meanwhile pre-Columbian South America was populated by people who crossed a now-vanished land bridge far to the north. Did these two groups ever meet in the New World? There's a good chance of that, according to a new study, which finds evidence that Easter Islanders may have reached South America and mixed with the Native Americans already there.

University of Oslo immunologist Erik Thorsby first began analyzing the people of Easter Island in 1971 to see if he and colleagues could detect traces of an early contribution of Native Americans to Polynesians. He believes that his recent finds may show that Native Americans may have accompanied Polynesians from the coast of South America to Easter Island before the arrival of Europeans.

The island, also called Rapa Nui, is a remote and rocky place 3700 kilometers west of the coast of South America. The people were forcibly deported to Peru in the 1860s and enslaved; therefore, evidence of mixed Polynesian and Native American genes may stem from this time. But Thorsby was able to use blood samples from the islanders, collected since the 1970s, to examine their DNA for particular genetic markers.

As expected, the majority of markers pointed to genes common in other Polynesians. But human leukocyte antigens—a group of genes that encode proteins essential to the human immune system—in the samples showed that a few individuals had a type, or allele, found among only Native Americans. The alleles in question were found on two different haplotypes—a set of alleles inherited by an individual from a single parent—in unrelated individuals. This and other circumstantial genetic evidence suggests that the alleles are older and were introduced centuries before the islanders were sent to Peru by Europeans, Thorsby reports today in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. "The results of our studies suggest that Polynesians visiting South America in the 1400s to 1500s may have taken some American Indians with them upon their return" back to Easter Island, he said in an e-mail from there, where he is conducting further research. That conclusion, he adds, is "speculative."

Scholars have seen some other hints of contact between Polynesians and the people of the New World. Some plants, such as the sweet potato, originated in the Andes Mountains but apparently spread across the Pacific Ocean before the arrival of Columbus. Researchers have noted hints of linguistic and artistic similarities between the western South American and the Polynesian culture. But definitive archaeological evidence is lacking. Finding genetic proof of Native American and Polynesian mixing prior to Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492 would demonstrate that Polynesians had the capacity to reach South America.

Still, Thorsby's assertion is being greeted with polite skepticism from one scholar familiar with Easter Island's past. "It is good to see this kind of research, but a definitive answer isn't really possible given the lack of chronological control," says archaeologist Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii, Manoa, who has worked extensively on the island. He says that Thorsby's data don't preclude the possibility that the mixing between these groups occurred later, after Europeans arrived. "Native American genes reaching Rapa Nui with European contact cannot be ruled out." He says what's needed to prove the theory are skeletons that predate the European arrival in 1722. But so far, most of the few remains seem to be later. "The odds are not great" of finding ancient human bones that might yield DNA, he adds. Thorsby acknowledges that more DNA studies of ancient material are needed but remains hopeful that he can clinch the case.
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References:

Lawler, Andrew. 2012. "Did Easter Islanders Mix It Up With South Americans?". Science. Posted: February 6, 2012. Available online: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/02/did-easter-islanders-mix-it-up-w.html

Easter Islanders lived in harmony with nature until Westerners arrived

The serene faces of Easter Island have always jarred with the preception of their creators who were said to have caused their own downfall through infighting and over exploitation of natural resources.

Now one researcher believes the artworks of the island paint a different picture of the islanders - a peace loving race in harmony with nature and each other.

Dr Karina Croucher from The University of Manchester believes that looking at the artwork as a whole shows a self-sufficient population at peace with itself and nature.

The archaeologist's research backs a growing body of opinion which casts new light on the people living on the island of Rapa Nui, named "Easter Island" by its discoverers in 1722.

“Easter Islanders’ ancestors have been unfairly accused by Westerners of being primitive and warlike, for toppling statues - or moai - and for over-exploiting the island’s natural resources,” she said.

But the art which adorns Easter Island’s landscape, volcanoes and statues, body tattoos and carved wooden figurines, when examined together, show a different picture of what the islanders were like, according to Dr Croucher.

“The carved designs - including birds, sea creatures, canoes and human figures - mimic natural features already visible in the landscape and show their complex relationship to the natural environment,” she said.

“They were a people who saw themselves as connected to the landscape, which they carved and marked as they did their own bodies and the moai statues.

“These people must have had a sophisticated and successful culture – until the Westerners arrived - and it is time we recognise that.

“Early expedition accounts repeatedly show the islanders produced a trading surplus – they were successful and self sufficient.

“It must have been quite a place to live: I imagine the sounds of the carvers dominating the soundscape as they worked on the rock.”

Dr Croucher believes that it was westerners bringing disease, exploitation and slavery which put paid to the ancient civilisation.

“Rather than a story of self-inflicted deprivation, I agree with the view that substantial blame has to rest with Western contact, ever since Easter Island’s first sighting by Jacob Roggeveen in 1722.

“Visitors brought disease, pests and slavery, resulting in the tragic demise of the local population and culture.

“There is little archaeological evidence to support the history of internal warfare and collapse before contact with the outside world.”

Easter Island’s 19th Century history is a sad one: slave raids in 1862 reduced the Island’s population A few islanders survived slavery and were returned home, bringing with them small pox and other diseases.

The missionaries converted the remaining population to Christianity, encouraging them to abandon their traditional beliefs.

Even then, several hundred inhabitants were driven off the island to work on sugar plantations in Tahiti. By 1877, a population of just 110 people was recorded.

“The statues and rock art, although difficult to date with certainty, are the result of a population which flourished on the island until outside contact set the tragic course for the Island’s demise," she said.
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References:

Alleyne, Richard. 2010. "Easter Islanders lived in harmony with nature until Westerners arrived". Telegraph. Posted: August 2, 2010. Available online: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7922498/Easter-Islanders-lived-in-harmony-with-nature-until-Westerners-arrived.html