One book I'm reading currently is The Enigmas of Easter Island by John Flenley and Paul Bahn. As you might guess, the presence on Easter Island of the imposing moai is a big reason for my interest.
Flenley and Bahn spend a lot of time discussing Thor Heyerdahl's theory that Easter Island was colonized from South America. They don't put a lot of stock in it, and if there's a consensus it seems to be that the Rapa Nui people are ultimately Polynesian.
Still, there's a lot of mystery about where their culture ultimately comes from. Due to the nature of the ocean currents surrounding it, Easter Island is difficult to get to by boat. The people had a lot of time on their own. They worked to survive in a place with a rather limited ecology, and they dreamed. Their myths became something new.
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When we first moved to Portland I'd become very interested in Thor Heyerdahl's explorations but had only been able to find a copy of Kon Tiki in New England. Imagine my delight when I found original editions of The Ra Expeditions and The Tigris Expedition on my first trip to Powell's. In the early 90s it still wasn't as easy to find anyone questioning mainstream archeological theories as it is today and Thor was a revelation to me. He was the first to my knowledge to suggest there was likely to have been a very much older sea going civilization that preceded written history and set about trying to prove his beliefs.
One of my favourite pictures is this one of the first Moai he and his team excavated in the mid-50s. That they weren't all simple torsos and heads came as a delightful surprise. That's Thor in blue.
There are many mysteries regarding Easter Island and exactly what occurred there, among them the similarity in
symbols seen in other ancient monuments - the only one of which that has been accurately dated being Gobekli Tepi since that pace was deliberately buried 11k years ago, a fact that allowed carbon dating.
Ancient Origins is a website I bookmarked as a regular place to visit years ago. One doesn't have to take everything presented there at face value but it's an entertaining and insightful online gazette. Similarly, Graham Hancock also provides some fascinating ideas about deep history in his books.
Heyerdahl's a fascinating figure, no doubt about it. He appears to have gotten a lot of his scientific curiosity and interest in other cultures from his mother. In his lifetime, which wasn't very long ago at all, there were much easier ways to travel the world than to sail the ocean currents on a handmade raft. That's something you only do if you want to see things up close. It was an admirable kind of wanderlust.
I hadn't known about Göbekli Tepe. The pictures of it are pretty astounding. It was built during what we'd still call the Neolithic era, but it seems to be a city, and the engravings are very well crafted. Easter Island was only settled within the last 2,000 years at the outside, so it's not likely there's a direct influence. But it's interesting that these symbols crop up in such different places. They mean something to people.
There's a lot going on at the Ancient Origins site. Yes, a lot of it seems to be speculative, with the evidence being scant and/or ambiguous. To their credit they appear to be upfront about this. Hancock I don't know as well but his topics are pretty broad.
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