- The Statues that Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island: 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?
- Easter Island: 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.
- Island at the End of the World: The Turbulent History of Easter Island: On a long stretch of green coast in the South Pacific, hundreds of enormous, impassive stone heads stand guard against the ravages of time, war, and disease that have attempted over the centuries to conquer Easter Island. Steven Roger Fischer offers the first English-language history of Easter Island in Island at the End of the World, a fascinating chronicle of adversity, triumph, and the enduring monumentality of the island’s stone guards.
- Mysteries of Easter Island (South America Series): The myths and statues of Easter Island remain one of the world’s most intriguing unsolved mysteries. Where do they come from? How were they carved? Who erected them? How were they erected? Why were they toppled? What is the Birdman Cult? What happened to the population of Easter Island? These are all questions that have been asked. Join a couple who have visited most of the island of the Pacific as they unravel the secrets of Easter Island.
- The Mystery of Easter Island: We set to work to excavate some of the statues which stood on the slope of the Raraku mountain. The natives were entirely indifferent whether they worked or not, but by paying high wages and giving any quantity of mutton, we were able at this time to get a certain amount of precarious labour for digging and camp work. The whole lot, including my maid-servant, went in for every week-end to the village, and it was always a matter of anxiety to know whether they would ever return. -from Chapter XII Western anthropology’s first in-depth look at an isolated culture is also a daring adventure story of around-the-world travel. In February 1913, archaeologist Katherine Routledge set sail on a custom-built yacht-with a small crew and the support of British Association for the Advancement of Science, the British Museum, and the Royal Geographical Society-for Easter Island, where she embarked up the first effort to catalogue the island’s mysterious statues, interview the natives, and document their culture, folklore, and traditions. Her scholarship is impeccable-this 1919 work is still considered foundational-but her lively writing and her practical perspective make this a delightful read that thrill armchair travelers and amateur ethnographers alike.
- A Companion To Easter Island (Guide To Rapa Nui): The essential guidebook to this mysterious and enigmatic island, and the only book about Easter Island written by someone who actually lives here. This guidebook includes the island’s history, culture and all of its significant archaeological sites. It also contains all of the practical information needed for your visit, including island activities and up-to-date restaurant and shopping recommendations. It will also tell you the best times to visit the sites in order to get the optimal light for photography and to avoid the crowds, as well as many other ‘local’ tips that no other guidebook will tell you. Contains over 100 color photos of Easter Island, as well as color maps of both the island and the one town, Hanga Roa.
- Among Stone Giants: The Life of Katherine Routledge and Her Remarkable Expedition to Easter Island (Lisa Drew Books): Katherine Routledge is a central figure in the history of Easter Island, one of the world’s most remote and mysterious locales. Born to a wealthy and prestigious English Quaker family in 1866, Katherine rebelled against Victorian values, becoming one of the first female graduates of Oxford University and the first woman archaeologist to work in Polynesia. From 1913 to 1915, Katherine and her husband, Australian adventurer William Scoresby Routledge, led the Mana Expedition to Easter Island, where Katherine conducted the first ever excavations of the island’s world-famous stone statues. Katherine collected vast quantities of new information, and through interviews with dozens of elderly men and women, she was able to save the history of the island, whose population was struggling back from the brink of extinction. Without Katherine’s extraordinary efforts, Easter Island’s traditional beliefs and customs would have been forever lost. Many of Katherine’s papers were thought to be lost until they were discovered by Jo Anne Van Tilburg, the contemporary world’s leading authority on the Easter Island statues. In this compelling biography, Dr. Van Tilburg brings her unique expertise to Katherine Routledge’s discoveries and to her turbulent life. The result is an exciting personal story, set against the drama of Katherine’s remarkable exploration of one of the most intriguing archaeological sites in the world.
- The Enigmas of Easter Island: Easter Island, an unimaginably remote volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean, produced one of the most fascinating and yet least understood prehistoric cultures, a people who vanished but left behind the giant statues known around the world. Who were these people 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 that still retains many of its mysteries. This book provides a wealth of new material, including much information only recently discovered and not available in any other book for general readers. One of the most mysterious places on the planet, Easter Island has been an object of intense fascination since rediscovered by European explorers. Attractively illustrated with numerous photographs throughout the book, The Enigmas of Easter Island is the finest volume ever written on this inscrutable and tantalizing isle, the latest word on one of the world’s great conundrums.
- Easter Island, Earth Island: A myth-shattering study of the enigmatic Easter Island civilization uses new archeological evidence to unlock the mysteries of the island’s massive effig and its bizarre “birdman” cult. By the author of Images of the Ice Age.
- Rapa Nui. Rapa Nui is the only movie that has ever been filmed about the civilization that once populated Easter Island. It was filmed in 1994, directed by Kevin Reynolds, produced by Kevin Costner, and starred by Jason Scott Lee, Esai Morales and Sandrine Holt. The main plot revolves around a love story between Nora (Jason Scott Lee) and Ramana (Sandrine Holt), who belong to the two rival tribes that once lived on the island, the Long Ears and the Short Ears. The Short Ears were the working class, and they built the moai while being ordered by the Long Ears, who held the power. Only the members of the Long Ear tribe had the right to participate in the annual competition that determined who would be named the new Birdman, and therefore would govern the island for a year. Nora, one of the contenders, falls in love with Ramana, a girl belonging to the Short Ear tribe. But this love can only triumph if he wins the competition and if she agrees to spend several moons locked within a cave. The story tells a very summarized version of the collapse of the collapse of civilization on Easter Island. It shows the food scarcity and the massive cutting of trees for the construction and transportation of moai from the Rano Raraku quarry to their corresponding ahus.
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