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Content Tip
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Write
Travel Articles to share your travel experiences and
inspire others to visit such places.
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The Strange Monuments of Easter Island
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Easter Island, or
Rapa Nui called by Rapanui people is a Polynesian island which is a tiny
speck of volcanic rock located in the south eastern Pacific Ocean, at the
southeastern most point of the Polynesian triangle. On Easter Sunday, 1722
Easter Island was named by its first recorded European visitor, the Dutch
explorer Jacob Roggeveen and his group, who was searching for Davis or
David's island.
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The island's official
Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, is Spanish for "Easter Island".
These European seafarers who landed on Easter Island in the beginning of
the eighteenth century could scarcely believe their eyes .This little plot
of earth 2250 miles from the coast of Chile had hundreds of strange
colossal statues scattered about all over the island.
These monumental statues
called moai, some of which are between 33 and 66 ft high still stare
challengingly at the visitor even today. These statues weigh as much as 50
tons and it seems quite impossible how they were shaped and cut through
like butter from the steel-hard volcanic rock by the Rapanui people.
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Thor Heyerdahl's
investigations from the charcoal remains of these mysterious statues dates
to about 400 A.D., but it is still not been proved whether the fire-places
and remnants of the bones had any connection with the stone colossi.
Strangely, Heyerdahl discovered hundreds of unfinished stone statues on
the edges of the crater; thousands of stone implements and tools lay
around as if work has been abandoned quite suddenly. The inhabitants of
this isolated island are more familiar with the moon and stars than any
other country. |
Strange wooden tablets,
covered with undeciphered
hieroglyphics, found on some of the statues, burnt by the first European
missionaries, had some clues about the origin of these huge statues.
Fortunately there are at least 10 fragments of those tablets in all the
museums in the world, but none of the inscriptions have been deciphered
yet.
The important question
here is the origin of these statues.
History tells us that
the inhabitants of this island were able to move the stone on wooden
rollers to their present site seems quite far-fetched since to cut
move and cut these statues would have involved a huge population,
with an abundant supply of food, but the island scarcely can have
provided food since it is a tiny speck of volcanic stone. We are
riddled by the fact that who had cut these statues out of the rock
let alone transporting them. How
were they dressed, polished and erected? These puzzling questions
are still to be answered.
Last but not the least, an
orally transmitted legend of this island tells us that flying men with
staring big eyes landed and lit fires in ancient times as this legend is
confirmed by sculptures of these creatures.
Contributing Writer :
Anurag
Ghosh is a freelance writer with a knack for writing articles
based on science, history and arts. Email: angsh_123@yahoo.com
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