Easter Island - What happened?

Article by: Hector Janse van Rensburg

There is a story that lies with easter island, an island over 2,000 miles away from any other civilization. This story is one of the strangest and most fascinating ever told.

It started approximately 1200 years ago, when a boatload of people from far away landed on the mysterious island. They would live on this island, and they would die on it.

Because this was so long ago, the people had no navigational tools, this meant that when they landed on the island, there was no knowing which way to set off again. Remember that this was over 2,000 miles away from the nearest piece of land, so sail in the wrong direction and there is no going back.

With nowhere to go, the people had to settle there, and it is what they did for the next few centuries that put them into the history books.

For reasons unknown to this day, the islanders created massive carvings of faces, as big as a house, each one identical, dotted along the shore of the island, as if calling for help. They didn't just make a few of them, there were hundreds of them!

Some people think that they built them so that passing ships would see them and rescue them, but one thing is for sure. The islanders had changed, all according to Darwin's theory that when animals where isolated they adopted totally new cultures, and the people living on Easter Island where a perfect example.

These faces were transported by logs, identical to rollers. How many rollers does it take to transport hundreds of 70 feet tall heads around? Lots. Every tree on the island. And because trees play a large part in keeping the earth together, and stop it eroding away, the earth eroded, and food became scarce due to crop failures. The clans turned on each other for food. Literally. They fought both over the resources available, and, wasting nothing, ate their enemies. The island, inhabitants, and the rock faces (known as moai), began to crumble. Literally.

All this lay undiscovered until 1722 when Dutch commander Jacob Roggeveen rediscovered the island and it's inhabitants, a discovery that would become one of the most mysterious of it's kind.

If you enjoyed this article, please give me a vote, thank you.

About The Author:Hector JvR, submitting yet another great article.