Axis of the World: The Search for the Oldest American Civilization

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THE REAL MYSTERY OF

EASTER ISLAND

This book pertains to a quite unusual, strange mystery, rooted very deep in our past. It is multidisciplinary, and encompasses facts referring to various continents. It compares archaeological discoveries, ethnological relations, and even the achievements of genetic research. But the stake is, I believe, well worth such a puzzle, for in the end a certain comprehensive picture—albeit one completely different from the standard academic truth— emerges. The picture is that of one of the strangest, almost unknown, yet probably the most interesting civilizations ever existing on our planet. It is different, although based on very solid, even unequivocal, evidence, and quite hard to debunk. It has simply been ignored for decades. It has to be emphasized: it is not the conclusions that are ignored, but the facts themselves.

This quest reveals remnants of a high civilization that was able to exert its influence almost on the scale of the entire planet, and did so with full consciousness. America (South America, to be exact) turned out to be not just one of these places, but a crowning achievement in a way. There are several keys to this strange riddle, lying in various parts of the world. In some instances they are inconspicuous, but perhaps that’s what makes them all the more interesting. Easter Island, in the southeastern Pacific, constitutes one of them.

I went there in March of 1999, although the word went doesn’t reflect all the drama of the undertaking. From the European perspective (I live in Poland), it’s almost the other end of the world. The flight from Madrid to Santiago de Chile alone was the longest non-stop flight that I ever experienced—aboard Iberia’s A340-300 (still one of the most state-of-the-art, long range planes ever made, by the way). It lasted over 13 hours! That wasn’t all, however. The final leg of the journey was the flight from the Chilean capital to the island–five more hours, almost reflecting the distance, let’s say, from Scotland to the eastern provinces of Canada. Why I’m writing about this?

Mainly because Easter Island is associated with the end of the world, the end of everything. It is the most remote and isolated place that one can imagine. It has become almost mythical in this sense.

This reflection is worth remembering for one simple reason. I would even dare to say that it is so simple, that it evades attention of the scientists: A very small island, the size of a not-too-large-city district, almost devoid of resources, the very symbol of isolation, that on the other hand created a sophisticated system of writing. This is an unquestionable milestone in development that, for instance, did not evolve in all of North America, despite a far longer period of time at the disposal of that continent. Isn’t something wrong with this picture? That’s a straightforward question that doesn’t require any research to ask.

Anyway, I started gathering information and eventually arrived there with a strong suspicion that the island is something more, part of a larger puzzle if you like.

But what is Easter Island like? Is there presently really any feeling of mystery hovering in the air? Well, my first impression after the arrival was pretty unpleasant. Although it was after dusk, the hot, humid and completely still air was almost overpowering. The temperature was in the mid-eighties range (around 30 ºC), but it is generally hard to sleep if there is no air conditioning in the hotel—I doubt if any have it. It is however a civilized land, even with access to the Internet via a satellite dish. The island is a sort of Chilean colony, around 2000 miles (3200 km) distant from its mainland and 27 degrees south of the equator. For this reason the flight is considered domestic and the national carrier, LAN-Chile, has a monopoly and dictates the prices. In this case the ticket was more expensive than for the stretch from Europe to Chile itself–$800. In the case of travel from the US the ratio would certainly be even more disadvantageous. One way out is to buy a combo ticket, i.e. together with the ticket from your country to Chile. By the way: the Chilean airline is excellent in every respect, generally better than the North American airlines. Occasionally LAN flies with their A340s also from Santiago to New Zealand and Sydney, as well as Aerolineas Argentinas–the Argentine carrier, from Buenos Aires (over the Antarctic). In the case of LAN, Easter Island is also a stopover on a flight to Tahiti, so there is an option of getting there that way too. Paradoxically, it makes the tiny airport on that piece of rock a truly cosmopolitan place. A lot of people stop there on their way from Asia to South America and I suspect that they outnumber the original inhabitants. So in this respect the industrial civilization has effectively stripped the island of its mysticism—or just reduced it a little bit.

Nevertheless the place definitely is attractive, regardless of whether someone is aware of the prehistoric context or not. Easter Island is a completely different kind of land than what we generally know. It’s a conglomerate of volcanic cones and lava fields, which one can see on almost every occasion. The most important are obviously the remains from ancient times—and not just the famous Moai statues—there are so many of them that the entire island with an area of 117 sq. km (around 45 square miles) is in fact a gigantic, open air museum in which, additionally, some exhibits are marked and described. Their number is so great that a week seems to be too short a time to stay. The island is an irresolvable, tiny dot on the map of the Pacific Ocean, but it’s definitely too large to make a round of it on foot. It resembles an almost perfect isosceles triangle, approximately 10 by 10 by 15 miles (17, 17 and 24 km respectively). One can see over 200 statues, although initially there were over 900 of them (!), and countless stone platforms called ahu. Some of them, like Ahu Vinapu are sheer marvels of precise treatment; natural and artificial caves in which the tablets covered with the rongo-rongo script have been found: reliefs, petroglyphs, ancient quarries where the monumental statues were carved out, as well—of course—as the breathtaking landscapes. Despite very poor vegetation—dominated by freshly green grass, there are also fragmentary forests—the views are picturesque. A look into the majestic, one kilometer-wide Rano Kao crater, filled with a lake, or the view from the surrounding cliff onto the turquoise ocean are the landscapes that one just will never forget. If we climb up on the centrally located Maunga Terevaka mountain (the island’s highest peak, 506 m above sea level—1660 feet), we will experience a truly mystical impression that indeed we are in the navel of the world—as the island’s original name reflects. In whichever direction we look, there is only the sky and the ocean stretching up to the horizon. As we can see, even the natural conditions favor the preservation of a certain mysterious aura surrounding the Easter Island.

This aura, however, is completely incompatible with the archeological reality—the mystery dormant or hidden somewhere on the island, stretching far beyond the questions connected with the problem of transporting the huge statues, some of which weigh up to 200 tons. Neither is it about the question of how such an amazing civilization could be created by a population limited to a couple of villages or hamlets—because such a population simply could not create it. It’s very hard to imagine the entire chain of events contributing to the development of any civilization to be taking place only there. The local soil, for example, is almost nonexistent, consisting only of porous lava which could hardly sustain any sophisticated agriculture. Frankly speaking, one could hardly imagine more disadvantageous conditions, never mind the tropical torpor and the omnipresent ants.

Almost all the researchers identify the riddle referring to this place with the way the stony statues were raised and transported. If we take into account their initial number (see above) and mass—most weigh up to 10 tons, with the record-holder, still lying in the quarry, weighing in at approximately 300 tons—then indeed it will turn out that a genuine problem exists. No doubt that is an unusual phenomenon, but it is not one deserving to be considered the number one riddle. Even when the conventional explanations sometimes seem far-fetched, it is only a matter of the magnitude of force applied (the number of people) and time. It’s a problem that cannot be ignored, but it shouldn’t overshadow the true top-rank challenges, and there are several of them.

The least trivial and most important question, the common motif, is this: where did the strange Easter Island culture come from? In turn, as far as the details are concerned, the local writing constitutes the crucial challenge in answering this question. However, it’s not only about the issue of decoding the hieroglyphs. The more important issue seems to be the fact that this writing is a mirror reflection of the writing used thousands of years ago in the Indus Valley area, in today’s eastern Pakistan. This fact has been known for eighty years and in spite of that, its importance somehow hasn’t come to the attention of academic archaeology yet. After all, the fact that traces of some closely related and hitherto unknown culture has been found on opposite ends of our planet—moreover traces that almost do not differ from each other—breaks all the stereotypes pertaining to the migrations of peoples, intercultural contacts, and above all the general knowledge of the Ancient Ones. The issue of navigational knowledge is just a modest example of this.

It’s just as if some day we would discover in Alaska a mirror reflection of the Egyptian Great Pyramid. All the foundations of Egyptology we could then, with a clear conscience, throw in the trash bin.

The fact mentioned above confirms quite an obvious conclusion that Easter Island’s culture did not originate on this piece of rock itself, but was brought here from elsewhere. That’s just the tip of the chain reaching far to the west and deep, to the very beginnings of human history. Deep? Or maybe we should look for these traces on the bottom of the ocean?

It’s plain to see that this story recalls all the legends of the lost Pacific continent, which say that several millennia ago there flourished some antediluvian, great civilization… Anyway, only the search for some older, greater culture may be considered as a sensible starting point for the understanding of Easter Island’s riddle, a riddle much broader and more important than it would seem at first glance. So let’s pass on to what we know of the history of this most isolated piece of land on our planet, surrounded by the vastness of the largest ocean.

Although the first modern European sailors visited this island as early as 1722, a lot of time had to pass before it could be brought closer to our world. The island had been discovered in the aforementioned year by a Dutchman named Jacob Roggeveen. Because it occurred on Easter Monday, he named it after that holiday and this name survived the test of time, which frankly speaking, is rather the exception to the rule. In later years occasionally it attracted various adventurers, who generally left very bad impressions behind.

Among others, as one of few territories not belonging to any country yet, the island seemed to be an ideal source of free labor—slaves, in other words. This illegal practice was initiated by the US schooner Nancy in 1805. Its crew kidnapped many Easter-Islanders to hunt seals, and numerous women were also abducted. When after more than a week they were released out of their cages, all of them jumped into the sea. It’s hard to say if they were heroic, i.e. committed collective suicide because of the humiliation, or if rather they just didn’t realize how big the world really is. In 1801 the American whaling ship Pindos anchored here, with an equally tragic outcome.

On the 12th of December, 1862, a flotilla of six Peruvian ships arrived with the intention of abducting people for guano mining (a very valuable fertilizer) on the islands off the coast of Peru. This time it ended up with a massacre, mostly of women and children. Around a thousand Polynesians were kidnapped, including the last scholars—priests, as well as the last king—Murata, along with his entire family. Peruvians are still not welcome on the island.

These practices were effectively terminated only in 1888, when Easter Island was proclaimed part of Chile, the country’s first and only overseas colony. Eventually it gained certain protection and presently is part of the Fifth Region. The first more or less comprehensive scientific reconnaissance of the island was also under Chilean auspices. It took place in 1870 with the arrival of the corvette O’Higgins, carrying teams of scientists and cartographers. They made the first map and brought to the continent the first tales of the mysterious statues and other artifacts that shocked the scientific world of the time (albeit the French La Perouse made some measurements, and sketches were also drawn as early as in 1786, but it was hardly a scientific activity and largely went unnoticed by science). It wasn’t imagined that such an unusual culture could develop on such a forgotten and remote piece of land, almost in the middle of the vast ocean.²

According to the legends of the Polynesian inhabitants, their ancestors arrived and settled there in ancient times, led by the first king, named Hotu Matua. There is a myth saying that these people moved on from a Maori land, lying on the continent of Hiva. Because it slowly submerged into the ocean, the king summoned up his men and told them to build ocean-going boats, in which they soon departed in the search of a new land. These legends were gathered by many researchers, but the best collection of them is probably the work of the Frenchman Francis Maziere, which was published in the 60s.¹ Maziere interprets it as a clear message referring to the lost Pacific continent, which—according to him—reached the Tuamotu archipelago in the east. The legends also say that the small island—Sala y Gomez lying some 100 miles off the coast of the Easter Island—was once connected with it by a land bridge. If it’s true, then it would mean that the colonization took place far, far earlier then it is commonly assumed.¹

Thor Heyerdahl, the famous Norwegian pioneer of the idea involving transoceanic contacts, came across some record of the Easter Islanders’ forgotten legends, including a legend describing the long-gone, sunken Pacific continent, the abode of the pre-civilization. This is one of its fragments:

The young man Tea Waka said:

—In the old times our land was large, very large.

Kuukuu asked him a question:

—Why it turned small then?

Tea Waka replied:

—Uwoke has lowered his stick on it. He has lowered his stick on the Ohiro town. Big waves raised and the land became small. It has been named Te-Pito-o-te-Henua. Uwoke’s stick was broken on the Puku-Puhipuhi mountain.

Tea Waka and Kuukuu talked about the Ko-te-Tomonga-o-Tea-Waka village (the place where Tea Waka has reached the shore). Then the Hotu Matua king came ashore and settled on the island. Kuukuu said to him:

—Once this land was greater.

The friend, Tea Waka said:

—The land sunk.

Then Tea Waka added:

—This town is now called Ko-te-Tomonga-o

Tea-Waka.

Hotu Matua asked:

—Why the land sunk?

—Uwoke did this, he has pushed the land—replied Tea Waka. The land was named Te-Pito-ote-Henua. When Uwoke’s stick was long, the land has collapsed into the abyss. Puku-Puhipuhi—that’s how the place where Uwoke’s stick was broken is now called.

—The Hotu Matua king said to Tea Waka:

—My friend, it was not Uwoke’s stick. It was the thunder of the Make Make god. Hotu Matua has settled on the island.³

According to textbook science Hotu Matua undertook his quest probably in the 12th century AD. The rub, however, is that according to the new research, Easter Island was inhabited earlier. Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian researcher and author of many unorthodox theories referring to the Pacific cultures, came accross— during excavations carried out in 1987—certain traces of human occupation dated a couple of centuries earlier. Probably these were remains of some simple buildings or rather huts.⁴ Legends at least partially clear up this mystery. According to them, initially there were two different tribes on the island. The first one was the Ha-nau-aa-epe—the long ears or long eared (please note the syllabic record, the syllables corresponded with the signs of writing). They were characterized by tall height, almost white skin and red hair. They supposedly were almost two meters tall (some 6.5 feet). They controlled the island and formed a ruling caste, and among other things, they didn’t work. The ruled tribe were in turn those whose ancestors can be encountered today: the Ha-nau-mo-moko—the short eared.

The statues were probably carved by the short eared under the command of the long eared, portraying actually the latter ones—which is rather evident. It can be seen not just from the length of their ears, but for example also from their facial features which seem to be closer (if we pass over the artistic manner) rather to the Europoidal type—taller faces with relatively long noses. Also their wigs are telling in this respect, as they are made from a red volcanic rock. The legend also explains why the statues raised along the shores have their faces turned toward the center of the island (or rather had, for after the uprising of the short-eared which terminated the history of this culture, all statues along the coast of the island were knocked over and were placed in their original positions only quite recently). Such an inward direction was supposed to guarantee protection of the interior, with the magic force—mana—against the destructive power of the ocean, so that it wouldn’t take the land away as it did with Hiva.¹

The first mention of the coexistence of the two races on the island came from Roggeveen, after his visit in 1722:

Some had their ears falling up to their shoulders and few of them actually had two white, large balls in their ears, as if some big decoration. (…)

Some locals served their gods more often and with greater dedication and zeal, which forces us to presume that they were priests, all the more that they wore distinctive marks, such as big balls hanging from their ears and had totally shaved heads.

Others, such as Maziere, pointed out to