The mystery of Easter island

The mystery of Easter island PDF Author: Katherine Routledge
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
"The mystery of Easter island" by Katherine Routledge. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

The mystery of Easter island

The mystery of Easter island PDF Author: Katherine Routledge
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
"The mystery of Easter island" by Katherine Routledge. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

The Statues that Walked

The Statues that Walked PDF Author: Terry Hunt
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439154341
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
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? The prevailing accounts of the island’s history tell a story of self-inflicted devastation: a glaring case of eco-suicide. The island was dominated by a powerful chiefdom that promulgated a cult of statue making, exercising a ruthless hold on the island’s people and rapaciously destroying the environment, cutting down a lush palm forest that once blanketed the island in order to construct contraptions for moving more and more statues, which grew larger and larger. As the population swelled in order to sustain the statue cult, growing well beyond the island’s agricultural capacity, a vicious cycle of warfare broke out between opposing groups, and the culture ultimately suffered a dramatic collapse. When Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo began carrying out archaeological studies on the island in 2001, they fully expected to find evidence supporting these accounts. Instead, revelation after revelation uncovered a very different truth. In this lively and fascinating account of Hunt and Lipo’s definitive solution to the mystery of what really happened on the island, they introduce the striking series of archaeological discoveries they made, and the path-breaking findings of others, which led them to compelling new answers to the most perplexing questions about the history of the island. Far from irresponsible environmental destroyers, they show, the Easter Islanders were remarkably inventive environmental stewards, devising ingenious methods to enhance the island’s agricultural capacity. They did not devastate the palm forest, and the culture did not descend into brutal violence. Perhaps most surprising of all, the making and moving of their enormous statutes did not require a bloated population or tax their precious resources; their statue building was actually integral to their ability to achieve a delicate balance of sustainability. The Easter Islanders, it turns out, offer us an impressive record of masterful environmental management rich with lessons for confronting the daunting environmental challenges of our own time. Shattering the conventional wisdom, Hunt and Lipo’s ironclad case for a radically different understanding of the story of this most mysterious place is scientific discovery at its very best.

Easter Island

Easter Island PDF Author: Jennifer Vanderbes
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
ISBN: 0385336748
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
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. It is 1913. Elsa Pendleton travels from England to Easter Island with her husband, an anthropologist sent by the Royal Geographical Society to study the colossal moai statues, and her younger sister. What begins as familial duty for Elsa becomes a grand adventure; on Easter Island she discovers her true calling. But, out of contact with the outside world, she is unaware that World War I has been declared and that a German naval squadron, fleeing the British across the South Pacific, is heading toward the island she now considers home. Sixty years later, Dr. Greer Farraday, an American botanist, travels to Easter Island to research the island’s ancient pollen, but more important, to put back the pieces of her life after the death of her husband. A series of brilliant revelations brings to life the parallel quests of these two intrepid young women as they delve into the centuries-old mysteries of Easter Island. Slowly unearthing the island’s haunting past, they are forced to confront turbulent discoveries about themselves and the people they love, changing their lives forever. Easter Island is a tour de force of storytelling that will establish Jennifer Vanderbes as one of the most gifted writers of her generation.

Island at the End of the World

Island at the End of the World PDF Author: Steven Roger Fischer
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861894163
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
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. A small canoe with Polynesians brought the first humans to Easter Island in 700 CE, and when boat travel in the South Pacific drastically decreased around 1500, the Easter Islanders were forced to adapt in order to survive their isolation. Adaptation, Fischer asserts, was a continuous thread in the life of Easter Island: the first European visitors, who viewed the awe-inspiring monolithic busts in 1722, set off hundreds of years of violent warfare, trade, and disease—from the smallpox, wars, and Great Death that decimated the island to the late nineteenth-century Catholic missionaries who tried to "save" it to a despotic Frenchman who declared sole claim of the island and was soon killed by the remaining 111 islanders. The rituals, leaders, and religions of the Easter Islanders evolved with all of these events, and Fischer is just as attentive to the island's cultural developments as he is to its foreign invasions. Bringing his history into the modern era, Fischer examines the colonization and annexation of Easter Island by Chile, including the Rapanui people's push for civil rights in 1964 and 1965, by which they gained full citizenship and freedom of movement on the island. As travel to and interest in the island rapidly expand, Island at the End of the World is an essential history of this mysterious site.

Discoveries: Easter Island

Discoveries: Easter Island PDF Author: Catherine Orliac
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
ISBN: 9780810928343
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
A history of the remote island in the Pacific Ocean that was discovered by Dutch sailors on Easter Sunday, 1722, is pieced together by archaeologists and considers the mysteries of an awe-inspiring place filled with giant statues.

Easter Island

Easter Island PDF Author: Caroline Arnold
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618486052
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
Describes the formation, geography, ecology, and inhabitants of the isolated Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean.

Easter Island's Silent Sentinels

Easter Island's Silent Sentinels PDF Author: Kenneth Treister
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826352642
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
"This richly illustrated book of the history, culture, and art of Easter Island is the first to examine in detail the island's vernacular architecture, often overshadowed by its giant stone statues"--Provided by publisher.

The Mysteries of Easter Island

The Mysteries of Easter Island PDF Author: Jean-Michel Schwartz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9784871873079
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Easter Island is famous for its 887 monumental statues. Nobody really knows who made those statutes, or how or why. New Theories are being advanced, new studies made and new books published about this all the time.It is the only book that adequately explains how the giant statues were created and how they were transported. Basically, the statues were cut from the lips of the three volcanoes on the island. This still does not answer the question of how they were brought down to the water's edge.

Easter Island, Earth Island

Easter Island, Earth Island PDF Author: Paul Bahn
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442266562
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Easter Island, isolated deep in the South Pacific and now a World Heritage Site, was home to a fascinating prehistoric culture—one that produced massive stone effigies (the moai) and the birdman cult—and yet much of the island’s past remains shrouded in mystery. Where did the islanders come from, and when? How did Rapa Nui culture evolve over the centuries? How, and why, did their natural environment change over time? Paul Bahn and John Flenley guide readers through the mysteries and enigmas of Rapa Nui, incorporating the records of early explorers, folk legends, and archaeological evidence along the way. They cover the island’s geological and environmental history and explore its flora and fauna, illustrating how human actions affected the natural environment of the island. This fourth edition draws in: recent DNA studies of ancient human and animal bones as well as plant remains; evolving understandings of how the moai were transported; and current efforts to reforest the island.

EASTER ISLAND

EASTER ISLAND PDF Author: JoAnne Van Tilburg
Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
"Since Easter Island (Rapa Nui) was first contacted by the Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen nearly three centuries ago, the people, culture and, most of all, the monolithic statues of this remarkable island have been seen by Westerners as an incredible puzzle, a riddle with no solution. At the heart of the so-called mystery of Easter Island stand the gigantic moai, the supreme sculptural achievement of the Rapa Nui people and, indeed, of all Polynesia. Re-erected upon their rectangular stone platforms, lying along ancient transport roads, hidden deep in seaside caves, or standing upon the slopes of Rano Raraku, where they were hewn from the living rock, the statues are palpable evidence of the genius and obsession of a people. How were they moved? What do they mean?" "Nearly 1,000 statues have been meticulously measured, drawn, mapped, and photographed by archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg and her Chilean and Rapa Nui colleagues over more than twelve years of dedicated research. Drawing on the insights that have been gained into sculptural techniques, design attributes, and formal variation, the author examines Rapa Nui prehistory in the context of new understandings of ecology and culture. Detailed drawings of statues by one of Rapa Nui's most talented artists, many published for the first time, reveal the fluidity of line and complexity of meaning encoded within these stone figures. Historical photographs from museum collections illustrate the vital role played by many Rapa Nui people in the documentation and preservation of their own culture. The latest methods of statistical analysis, computer imaging, and robotics programs are brought to bear upon the perplexing question of statue transport, and the author offers an exciting yet compellingly logical model of how a near-fourteen-ton statue could have been moved almost the entire length of the island." "Written by the foremost authority on the subject, this fascinating book is another important step toward unravelling "the mystery of Easter Island.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved