The Enigmas of Easter Island

Los Enigmas de la Isla de Pascua
Los Enigmas de la Isla de Pascua

Easter Island, located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and the most isolated inhabited place of the planet, hides one of the most intriguing mysteries of archaeology. In this volcanic island of only 163.3 sqare kilometers and a population of no more than 4000 people, we can count around 900 statues called moai; statues with an average of 4 1/2 meters of height and a weight of 14 tons, although some can reach 21 meters of height and more that 80 tons.

But why were they built, or how they were transported from the quarry where they were sculpted are not the only enigmas of this unusual place. The origins of the rapanui people, their language, their still undeciphered writing, petroglyphs, their burials and –above all– their strange cults and beliefs, make this place one of the most challenging to historians.

The author, who lived on the island for almost two months walking and studying it from corner to corner, gives us in this work a complitation of all the relevant investigations made to date about Rapa Nui and its past. Theories and hypothesis of the different scholars, the myriad of questions still to be answered and –why not– his own deductions, born from calmly reflecting between those archaeological remains, from intimate conversations with the islanders and from the vast documentation used.

An essential book for anybody wishing to dive into the mysteries and wonders that this place, called by its inhabitants the “Navel of the World”, still hides.

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