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.

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.

The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania

The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania PDF Author: Ethan E. Cochrane
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199925070
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
"The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania presents the archaeology, linguistics, environment and human biology of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. First colonized 50,000 years ago, Oceania witnessed the independent invention of agriculture, the construction of Easter Island's statues, and the development of the word's last archaic states."--Provided by publisher.

Island of Secrets

Island of Secrets PDF Author: Jacek Machowski
Publisher: Robert Hale
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description


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.

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.

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.

Among Stone Giants

Among Stone Giants PDF Author: JoAnne Van Tilburg
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9780743244800
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
A portrait of the first woman archaeologist to work in Polynesia documents Routledge's experiences on Easter Island, beginning with the launch of the 1913 Mana Expedition and continuing with her emersion into local customs and beliefs and battle with schizophrenia.

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.

Collapse

Collapse PDF Author: Jared Diamond
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141976969
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times