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"easter island: the birthplace of the world?"
by elizabeth you
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on a tiny volcanic island in the south pacific ocean, 4000 kilometers off of the coast of the south american nation of chile, enormous rock statues guard the coastline. they are the megaliths of easter island, mysterious remnants of a lost culture. in 380 a.d., settlers landed on this lush island and made it their own. over the next 1000 years, they erected over 600 giant stone statues, called moai, which stand up to 40 feet tall and weigh more than 80 tons. these statues were carved by rudimentary tools out of volcanic mountains and placed up to 14 miles away from the site of their creation at strategic vantage points on the outlying beaches and cliffs. eventually deforestation and wars led to famine, and the struggling inhabitants were picked off by disease, violence, and slave traders until nothing of their society remained except for the silent monuments.
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were these statues religious icons or gigantic warriors meant to scare off any sailors that might land on their island paradise? how did these primitive men chisel moai out of solid rock using only stone picks, then transport them to their resting places? according to island legend, the prehistoric inhabitants took years to carefully carve each giant statue, then the local priests ordered them to walk to their designated sites under their own power.
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the natives call this place rapa nui, which means the navel of the world. in ancient greece and many aboriginal cultures, the navel is where the soul dwells, and from where life begins. christian creationists argue that mankind was formed by god from dust, and when we die, we return to the dust from which we came. are these statues symbolic of the birth of man, or were the natives attempting to breath live into a new race of beings, as the christian church says that god breathed life into the first humans? some even suggest that the garden of eden was here at easter island, and when adam and eve were evicted, this lush paradise was off-limits.
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some scientists argue that the natives of rapa nui were incapable of creating and transporting the megaliths under their own power, and must have had the assistance of alien beings, in whose likeness the statues were created. they claim these alien gods were the creators of all of mankind or were our ancient ancestors who colonized earth with their own species or possibly a primitive being we call man that was transported here and evolved into the creatures we are today.
how easy it is to write off anything that we do not understand as the result of intervention of a higher power or alien visitors. mankind has always been driven to create bigger and better monuments, sometimes for the glory of the gods, but more often for the glory of themselves. from stonehenge and the easter island moai to the temples of ancient greece to the modern skyscrapers and monuments of every major city in the world, people are driven by an overpowering need to make their mark on the world. the moai could have been representations of the spirits the islanders worshiped, great leaders of their tribes, or simply symbols of their common man.
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in ten thousand years when our written language has become archaic and our histories have been worn away by time, what will the future inhabitants of our planets think when they look at the eiffel tower, the empire state building, or the washington monument? will they believe us too primitive to create such masterpieces? will they see signs of aliens and gods where only stone and steel exist? if our planet can weather the next millennia of war and ecological disaster, we can only hope that even if our fragile race is extinct or evolved beyond recognition, that our own megaliths will stand the test of time and proclaim as loudly as the maui of easter island that we were here, that we existed. and as long as our monuments remain, a part of us will remain as well.
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