All language subtitles for Easter Island Origins ¦ Full Documentary ¦ NOVA ¦ PBS

[Music]

rapanui also known as Easter

Island this tiny little island in the

South Pacific is world famous for one

thing the moai moai are incredible the

moai is their first spot that people

sees these in IC stone giants stand like

Sentinels all around the island but what

was their

purpose and why have so many

Fallen it is easy to imagine that this

is the scene of some catastrophe where

things fell

apart for centuries Western researchers

have studied the moai trying to answer

these questions and they've come up with

their own theories but now new research

that looks beyond the moai is

challenging those

views in all the evidence that we saw we

were seeing signs of sustainability

there was really no evidence of collapse

and rapanui experts are reclaiming their

Heritage for you this kind be an ancient

abandoned Village for me is the place

where my family used to live genetics is

revealing surprising clues about the

origins of the Island's earliest

settlers when we first saw this we

thought maybe we did something

wrong from their incredible

engineering to their beautiful and

unique

writing some people say that they

contain

Legends the real story of rapanui is

finally coming to light Easter Island

Origins right

now on Nova

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most visitors come all the way to Easter

Island because of these stone

statues the

moai moai they are amazing and they're

outstanding and they are

unique constructed between 1300 and

sometime after the 1700s there are more

than 1,000 of these giant carved figures

scattered across the

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landscape cut from volcanic

rock some are more than 30 ft

High over time all of the moai have

fallen

down the 50 or so that are upright today

were put back up in recent

decades with their backs to the Sea they

stare in passively into the island arms

held rigidly by their sides

some stand on ceremonial platforms known

as

auu others are sunk into the

Earth but for the people who live on

rapanui Easter Island's true name the

moai are just the

beginning M are incredible but ran is so

much more than that and its Archaeology

is so much Rich than just

Mo the moai is the first spot that

people sees but behind the mo there is a

big

history everywhere you walk you can find

the remains of the past and that's why

for us everything is always important

not just the

moai our connection with each of the

archaeological sites has a direct

connection with family it's not a legend

it's not a myth it's not a madeup story

or something discovered by ecologists it

is something that belongs to us

one archaeologist who believes the story

of rapanui encompasses more than just

the moai is Sonia Hawa cardali born on

rapanui 70 years ago she has dedicated

her entire life to the history and

anthropology of the

island I feel sorry when they just

talking about the mo 70% of the island

is survey more than 25,000

archaeological site so that's mean not

only the SES this mean also how people

leave what they do the family and

everything Sonia wants to understand

more about the moai but she and other

rapanui Islanders see them as only part

of the puzzle there are bigger questions

to ask who are the ancestors of the

rapanui people where did they come from

and how did they survive and thrive in

this remote and hostile

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land the island of rapanui stands

alone the eastern most inhabited Rock of

the Polynesian Island chains it lies

approximately 2,000 mi from the tuamotu

archipelago of French Polynesia in the

west and Chile in the East 42,000

miles from

Hawaii only 14 M long by 7 Mi wide today

most of the roughly 8,000 inhabitants

live beneath an extinct volcano on the

western corner of the

island first encountered by the Dutch in

1722 it was claimed by the Spanish

nearly 50 years later then annexed by

Chile in

1888 but when the original rapanui

people first came to this land and where

from remains hotly

debated the general consensus is that

the first people to settle here were

Sailors from other Polynesian Islands

migrating East sometime around 1200

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CE we are Polynesians our life was the

canoe and our territory was the ocean

Polynesians we were populating and

colonizing Islands across the

Pacific that belief forms the heart of

rapanui identity

cherished by Elders like Carlos

Edmunds in ancient legends it is said

that in the month of October the rapanui

went out to sail their boats to new

lands I'm not surprised by anything

we're great Sailors and that is how we

arrived to the

island it is the Bedrock of rapanui oral

tradition

there's knowledge in the old people and

in the horal

history behind every Legend there's

knowledge there Legends handed down from

generation to generation tell how and

why their ancestors came to this land

they are retto even today by rapanui

performers dedicated to keeping the old

traditions

alive Haka went into a spirit dream

looking for a new land for the king till

he found the naval of the

world he tells the dream to the king who

summons seven Scouts and sends them in

the direction of the

dream to find and explore the

island hot and his wife follow in a ship

called how

IUI the scouts called down to him saying

Turn Back turn back this is a bad land

the weather changes all the time and our

crops cannot grow here hotu Mata

replies we came from a bad land where

the ocean kills the people with Great

Waves let's make of this a good land for

our

people that is the base of all our

history fortunately today Science And

scientists are helping us to show how

oral tradition was the first the most in

the real

history that oral tradition reflects a

deep and fundamental

Truth for settlers migrating from the

warm Tropical Islands of Western

Polynesia this wind swept lump of

inactive volcanoes in the Southeastern

Pacific was a bad land where their crops

could not

grow rapanui is a subtropical Island so

there's a big difference in climate to

the Tropical Islands for example of

French

Polynesia the problem was that some of

those tropical species just didn't grow

and didn't take because it's colder here

the first settlers of rapanui traveling

from the Polynesian Tropics would have

struggled to grow any plants they'

brought with

them one man who is fascinated by how

those settlers survived on this bad land

is head to

and you know what there there's not that

much material An Architect by trade het

started an office in 2014 to record

rap's Heritage through the

archaeological record at that moment

there were not many young researchers in

rapanui they're releasing the

we so head it turned to Terry hunt and

Carl Leo from the

USA we have been collaborating with Carr

and Terry for a long time and we have

done so many things together they were a

great support during this field works

and that was amazing because with car

ter we could map the rocks and at the

same time we could have the legend

behind them and that that is just

beautiful one of the sites they studied

was

aut which lies on the Northwestern coast

of the island and was a typical ancient

rapanui

settlement Central to its layout is the

AO a raised Stone

platform at aoeu there are five of these

some of them with more eyes and some

others without Fanning out from the AO

are the houses chicken coops and walled

Gardens known as

manavi and behind the houses lie the

fields that fed the

community for you this can be an ancient

abandoned Village for me is the place

where my family used to live and they

still are here this place is quite aive

for us so the approach of a rabano

researcher or any Pacific researcher

would be dramatically different from a

western

researcher rapanui and Western

researchers agree that the ancient

settlers were Polynesian but where did

those Pacific Islanders come

from some previous research suggested

that they came from the islands of East

Asia but in 1947 a Norwegian Explorer

named Thor hyal launched an expedition

called contiki intended to prove a

drastically different view of where the

Polynesians

originated toal proposed the idea that

the pisans actually originated in South

America to demonstrate this he managed

to build a boat or raft made of BSA as

South American Woods he made a Crossing

on this raft in a few weeks landing on

the Trot archipelago which is now in

French buia

his theory on South American Origins

flew in the face of known linguistic

evidence so hyal followed this up with a

series of archaeological expeditions to

rapanui but despite years of

investigating the island he could never

prove a definite link to South

America one rapanui archaeologist who

worked with him was Sonia Hawa

cardali I work with

toor for almost 10 years and for me it's

a honor work with him no matter

how we think about his theory never

forget that he is the one of the person

puts rapo in the map in Hell's day

experimental archaeology seemed the only

way to explore possible links between

Polynesia and South America but today we

can use DNA which is a powerful tool for

tracing human

ancestry so did the original settlers of

rapanui have links with South

America one geneticist who set out to

answer that question was Andres Moreno

Estrada genetics can be a powerful tool

to answer this big question about

whether rapanui people made contact or

not with Native Americans in prehistory

which has been a debate that has been on

on for

decades Andre's put together an

international team including researchers

from Hawaii and rapanui to study the DNA

of the people of

Polynesia and they reached out to the

community to gain the support of rapanui

Elders Community engagement is really

the essence of all these approaches when

you study human genetic diversity is all

about humans really it's a voluntary

participation so it's really key to talk

with the community beforehand and as we

carry out the research as well keep them

informed about the results of the study

collaborating with Andre is genetic data

analyst Alex

yanis what I really love about genetics

is it's essentially about participation

with the people whose story you're

telling it's their sample that's telling

the story stories like Bianca the

daughter of a Chilean father who moved

back from and Chile and wanted to know

if what her mother had told her was

true when I arriv here on the island

everyone told me I was Chilean I was a

mongre so that's why I did this study

because my mother taught us our

genealogy I am happy that Andre came to

do this work about the blood of the

rapanui where we descend

from so so that the rapanui know where

their current ancestors are

from Andre suggested we do the study to

know if we really have ancestry from

Polynesia it's absolutely important

since our ancestors know they are

Polynesian but if there's a study that

confirms it it's even more important

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an individual's DNA is contained within

23 pairs of chromosomes known as a

genome and that's your genetic

fingerprint when they began the research

Andre and his colleagues were expecting

the rapanui fingerprint to contain

markers showing mostly Polynesian

Spanish and Chilean ancestry since these

were the main colonists of the island in

the last 250

years to extract the DNA they take swabs

from their Volunteers in the field then

take it back to the lab in code storage

for

analysis DNA samples are loaded into a

sequencer so that we can get the pieces

of DNA that make up the whole Geno of

that

indiv this allows the researchers to

identify specific chains of DNA that can

be attributed to certain

groups red denotes Spanish

ancestry blue

Polynesian green

Chilean and yellow other

European the process is very rewarding

because participants are very interested

in knowing about their own genetic

Origins And when they see that actually

they have retained a lot of the polation

roots in their DNA it's something that

helps them to basically value and

identify their own

lineages most of the results help

confirm the Islanders beliefs about

their Polynesian Origins mixed with more

more recent colonists I just found out

the results I'm so mixed uh my mom is uh

from Chile and from England and and

Scotland and my father is an Islander

but he's also mixed with French and

other people so it's uh very interesting

to know where you come

from I'm very very very happy because

this is my mother's story and this study

from andr prove it scientifically but my

mother already said it a long long long

time ago since I was

born they did however find some pieces

of DNA that they didn't expect when we

first saw this we were really surprised

and so we thought maybe we did something

wrong we thought well let's double check

this these pieces of DNA seemed to have

their origins in South America but when

they tried to pinpoint The Source they

got a surprise they were quite different

from the more modern Chilean ancestry

found in some volunteers we compared it

to a panel of indigenous groups from

across the entire Pacific coast of South

America and the closest match was the

zenu

group The zenu are Native American

people who occupied the coast of

Colombia long before Chile annexed ranui

in 1888

how could their genetic markers wind up

in the DNA of modern

Polynesians and how many generations

back did they

go because each parent only hands down

half of its DNA to the next Alex was

able to figure out when that piece of

pre-colombian DNA had been incorporated

into Polynesian chromosomes by measuring

its length we can actually look at the

length of those individual pieces and

figure out how many generations ago this

combination of Native Americans and

Polynesians took place

the date they came up with was much

earlier than they expected we saw very

small pieces indicating that this

ancestry from the coast of Columbia

entered rapanui a long time ago actually

in a period around what we would call

the European Middle Ages around 1200

ad what's more the same identical DNA

segments were often seen in volunteers

from different Islands which means that

these segments came from the same

ancestors and since they came from the

same same answers we think that this

means there was a single contact event

between indigenous Americans from the

coast of Columbia and Polynesians this

means that a group of Polynesians met

somewhere with Native Americans had

descendants and more likely this never

happen

again by looking at the DNA of people on

other Polynesian Islands the team traced

The Telltale genetic markers back to the

marises and two Oto is and were also

able to plot a timeline of migration

across Eastern Polynesia to rapanui from

around 1100 Polynesian migrations spread

East into Tumo archipelago up to the

maresis and all the way down to mangara

and from there all the way out to

rapanui around

1200 looking closely at these particular

Islands there's something else they all

have in common something much bigger

than

DNA most of these islands the mar casus

rapanui and R have these very large

stone statues on them where the idea of

creating large stone statues comes from

we can't say and we can't say for sure

if these islands develop the idea

independently but the fact that they're

all existing together in the same

genetic cluster suggested to us that

this culture was developed once and

spread to all these

islands Sonia believes that even if this

culture developed within the Polynesian

Islands there was also some influence

from South America and behind the

spectacular AO of

tongariki she believes she has the

evidence to back up her

hunch we see the very good evidence of

influence of South americ this single

broken moai has its Hands Across its

body in a style that can be found in

ancient

Colombia if you compare with the South

America

is the same the hands and the

description of the arm the body is a

completely the the same there is no

doubt the influence of South America and

here we have the estr

evidence I I cannot lie you that that is

look like a normal

no no maybe if I am blind yes but uh

it's

but this is the only moai on the island

with arms across its body all others

have their arms by their

sides so it cannot prove that the

template for carving statues in stone

came from ancient Colombia though the

DNA suggests some ancient albat isolated

link what is provable is where the moai

were

created almost all of the statues

scattered around the island were carved

from the volcanic rock of ranu

Raku and on the slopes of its massive

crater about 400 statues can still be

found in various states of

completion high up on these slopes Carl

and Terry can see evidence of the skill

and Ingenuity of the rapanui stone

masons it's amazing being up this high

in the Quarry and all the work in

quarrying out of the Bedrock and statues

this big that way up here had to be

taken down the slope you can see several

moai being carved the large moai here

and there you can see the beginnings of

of moai up on the side as well high up

here in the Quarry yeah what we're

seeing is the aggregate of events that

occurred over 500 years of of activity

here at the Quarry not a final product

this is all the things that happened

here it's interesting because the Quarry

it's kind of a common area that's shared

and so there's an understanding that

everyone on the island every community

on the island has access to the resource

here

but Rock isn't just confined to the

Quarry all over rapanui rock is spread

across the

land to Western explorers like Captain

James Cook who visited the island in

1774 this looked like a

Wilderness the ground had but a Barren

appearance being a dry hard clay and

everywhere covered with

stones the early European visitors saw

crops being grown in stones and they

thought this was somehow pathetic

because they're expecting to see plowed

fields and the agriculture of

Europe how could the rapanui survive on

what appeared to be such a Barren

Wilderness but this wasn't what it

seemed the soils on rapanui are nutrient

pore there is an ingenious solution to

that and it's using Rock

mulch volcanic rock is packed full of

nutrients that bring new new life into

the world somehow the ancient ranui had

learned how to make the best of this

austere landscape by fertilizing their

fields with stones and using rocks in

cultivation will release nutrients into

the soil and make them available to the

plants Sonia also sees lots of evidence

that the rock strewn Wilderness

described by Captain Cook was actually

fertile Fields here you see a very nice

complex

and that's mean you have everything here

in the center part you can see they take

all the

rocks and what you see in in the

landscape around here is like a a garden

yeah this was not the first or last time

that Western misconceptions would color

the history of

rapanui right from their very first

encounter on April 5th 1722 the world

view of its European visitors would have

a profound effect on the island the name

Easter Island comes from the first

Europeans arriving here on Easter Sunday

the modern traditional name is rapanui

and the older traditional name is Tapo

tahena which really means the naval of

the world which probably reflects the

Island's isolation Andor its centrality

as the whole

world the first encounter between the

Dutch EXP explorers and the local

residents was marked by curiosity and a

tragic misunderstanding there was a lot

of interest in in the landing party

there was a lot of interest in the

construction of the ships people swam

out to the ships they went aboard they

measured every aspect of the ships and

the landing party was quite

substantial the Dutch Landing party

found themselves confronted by a

vibrantly painted man he performs what

they perceive as a very strange dance

and this strange dance was probably

really an important ritual that the

rapanui would have perceived as proper

in these people coming ashore to their

land he saw the possessions that the the

Dutch had the clothes the hats and the

guns and he reached for the

gun and several crewmen opened

fire so the very first encounter on the

shores of rapanui was overshadowed by 12

Islanders dead and many more

injured this story is a case of

misunderstanding a clash of cultures The

Islander is curious and wants to know

what the soldier has in his hands he

wants to hold it feel it meanwhile the

soldier is afraid he's trying to steal

the gun and put up a fight this is a

clash of two completely different

worlds The Clash of cultures that led to

this massacre would Prof L affect the

way that rapanui was perceived by

Western researchers in the centuries to

come Western preconceptions have colored

the view of rapanui in many ways seeing

the moai seeing The Monuments here they

can't imagine how uh people would move

them with no carts or wheels and because

they don't understand how it could have

been done it leads to Notions of the

mystery of Easter Island and the Mystery

is really just what visitors didn't

understand

just as with Captain Cook Western

visitors saw a Barren land covered in

rocks and devoid of the trees needed to

make wooden sleds or

Wheels but it wasn't always like this

researchers found pollen evidence in the

fossil record suggesting that 1,000

years ago much of this land was covered

in dense

forest one Millennium later the forest

have vanished so we have to ask the

question why

happens for many Western researchers the

answer lay strewn across the island at

sites like

autu triang St these are pieces of moai

the the large statues that once stood on

top of the AO I don't know how many the

statues are were here maybe four or five

it is easy to look at these Landscapes

when you see the AO when they're broken

down and statues that are fallen and

broken like this one here which has no

head just the body the head that's over

here to imagine that this is the scene

of some catastrophe where things fell

apart to Western eyes this was evidence

of a collapse of society so successive

generations of Western Scholars

constructed a

narrative it explained the barren Rock

strewn land the collapse of the moai and

The Disappearance of the

trees the clap story basically goes that

people got to an island that was filled

with trees palm trees other kinds of

trees as well sort of an Earthly

Paradise filled with food and

opportunities for for the people that

were here the moai building has often

been portrayed as some kind of frenzy as

some kind of competition between uh

different Clan groups where lots of

trees were cut down in order to

construct and to transport the mo

archaeologists had long investigated

stone monument building in places like

ancient Egypt westerners thought the

moai were probably moved on wooden sleds

or rollers pulled by hundreds of men

which required people and trees lots of

people and trees and these westerners

assumed that moai building had spiraled

out of control people here kind of got

into a moai Mania that they started to

make bigger and bigger statues and at

some point that overe exuberance of

statue construction ultimately depleted

the island of the resources needed to

make up mahu in the first

place according to this view moai

building deforested the island the soil

was starved of nutrients leaving a

Barren Rock strewn land then this Theory

goes things got worse the scarcity of

resources resulted in a societal

collapse the Island erupted into

intertribal Warfare and led to a very

impoverished population living on a

Barren

Island and the best evidence to prove

this was that all the statues had been

thrown to the ground so something

violent must have

happened and the one visible proof we

have today is all the statues that were

toppled during this

Wars this so-called collapse Theory

posited that the island once had more

than 10,000 inhabitants whose own Folly

triggered a collapse of the forest

ecosystem and reduced them to a mere

3,000 living on the

scraps for many Western Scholars it was

a compelling narrative a morality tale

for our times but for some researchers

this idea had one big problem when we

looked at the evidence on the ground we

simply didn't see evidence of warfare it

looks like this one is being dismantled

because we find some of these

construction elements in other features

over there for what were once considered

ruins at aut turn out to be evidence of

continuous use this is the head of Mo

that was part of the second AO in this

ceremonial complex in this second AO all

of the mo lay down in the back of the

platform that is because that seonu was

being dismantled to enlarge the first

one pieces of earlier moai were being

reused to create an even more

spectacular

AO from this particular AO we couldn't

say that there's evidence of collapse

there's evidence of transformation and

human societ is changing and that's

beautiful destruction is Recycling and

creation is part of a larger process and

in certain way this m reflects

up across the island what some Western

researchers had seen seen as evidence of

collapse didn't stand up to

scrutiny even the Island's caves long

seen as refuges against an enemy tribe

appear to be something very

different this is a great example of a

cave that has that construction where

they've taken a cave and added these

features to it yeah it's not a it's not

a refuge cave it's not a hiding place

it's a habitation so they made this nice

entrance with paving stones and

everything and they've used lots of

different materials like this panga

Stone manga are a kind of foundation

stone found in Elite houses the holes

bored into them acted as bases for the

wooden

struts the use of these pinga in cave

walls was argued to be evidence of some

last ditch defense against attack some

people think that this is evidence of

tearing down uh elaborate or Elite

houses and and reusing the stone out of

desperation but these stones are reused

everywhere we see the ReUse of these

panga Stones not only in things like

aahu but also in chicken houses the

haroa as well as Earth ovens so they're

really used in all kinds of context

people used the stone that was available

to them and some of that stone were

panga reusing and recycling Stone

materials here is really the

norm at another set of caves nearby he

Carl and Terry find yet more evidence of

a thriving

Community here the rapanui even used the

collapsed Lava Tubes as hot

houses fed by something rare on an

island of permeable volcanic rocks

an abundant supply of water in Caverns

deep within the caves in those caves we

can find fresh water it was one of the

largest water reservoirs so it's a very

rich part of the island so rapanui caves

weren't just simple refuges they were

complex Su dappled ecosystems that had

been used for centuries long before the

collapse That was supposed to have

driven people into

them nothing here in tahu or in the area

that we worked shows that H people were

struggling on the contrary they were

thriving we were seeing signs of

sustainability there was really no

evidence of

collapse even though Carl and Terry

found no direct evidence for collapse

they would not dismiss the idea without

more

research especially when it came to the

population of the island over time

they started by mapping all the moai on

one side of the

[Music]

island then moved on to the settlement

and resource sites our goal is really to

sort of characterize the settlement

systems and how people are distributed

across the landscape and use resources

there we've got a good sample of of the

communities but we're continuing to do

that as an ongoing basis they match

these with carbon dates from the sites

to build up a pattern showing when each

settlement was in

use then they ran them through a

computer model which converted the

carbon data into population numbers by

calculating the highs and lows of human

activity on the

island the results confirmed their

hunch it showed the population rise from

a small number of first settlers

continuing to grow steadily with no sign

of collapse at any

point the population could fluctuate

slightly but its average maximum is

probably around 3,000 probably what

Europeans encountered when they first

arrived on the island a maximum

population of 3,000 was much smaller

than the numbers cited in the western

collapse Story the collapse theory

proposed all kinds of numbers 7,000

10,000 15,000 even up to 30,000

population for this small island but

Carl Terry and their colleagues found no

evidence that there were ever that many

people living on rapanui the lack of

huge populations being on the island

sort of takes the wind out of the

collapse Theory because in fact there's

nothing from which to collapse there

isn't a large

population but if you don't have tens of

thousands of people living on the island

how could the rapanui build and

transport the

moai for some Western researchers

rapanui oral history suggested an

answer there many stories about

tuo some people say he was in charge of

the second boat that brought people

here others believe that he was the

great king who founded the

island but all agree that it was he who

made the moai kavak Cava

walk this actually referred to small

wooden statues but some westerners

thought it also described the stone

moai Tor hodell and his colleagues

attempted to move the statues upright to

effectively make them walk but the

experiment hadn't

worked so most experts still believed

that they were dragged on their

backs but when Carl and Terry analyzed

The moai Lying by the roads that led

from the Quarry they noticed something

significant these are impressive things

aren't they we're looking right here

at the reason why they were not

transported on logs on their backs

that's true how would they be in this

position face down and the neck broken

it makes no sense that just simply

doesn't happen if they're on their backs

on rollers they also notice a structural

difference between moai lying on the

road and those standing on the

aahu A moai on the AO has a flat base so

the statue stands straight up but most

of the moai lying on the road have

angled bases and Carl and Terry believe

that angle had a very specific

purpose Road Mo has to be shaped in a

way that can be transported they did it

by shaping their base so they lean

forward to enable them to walk this is a

great example of of the forward lean of

these transport moai so if you took the

statue and we could put it back up it

would be leaning really far forward it

means that as you rock it side to side

it falls forward across that front edge

and takes a step without that it would

just rock back and forth and not really

go anywhere and walking really describes

what these moai

did to test their theory in 2012 Carl

and Terry built a model of am Moi out of

concrete carefully mixed to match the

fragile density of the ancient statues

volcanic rock and made it

walk in our experiments we found it took

remarkably few people to move the statue

and we were terrible at it you know we

were the least expert of any people

who've ever moved to moai in the world

uh but we're able to do a 5 ton statue

with 18 people not all are convinced

that the moai

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walked but if they did trees were not

needed to move the moai and the raponi

continued to erect moai long after the

trees had died

out so why did the rapanui go to such

lengths to build them in the first place

what were the moai for

one tradition that might one day tell us

the answer is being lovingly preserved

by Luis hooki a park ranger on

Rapa L my name is Luis of the hooki

clan at the moment I'm carving rango

rango which is the tradition of our

forefathers of my father and right now

I'm following their

tradition I've been making Rango o

tablets for 25

years I like it because it's a tradition

that at a certain time the translation

was lost and now we must conserve it and

continue to make the

rongorongo rango rango is the

traditional writing system of the

rapanui it is inscribed onto wooden

tablets the process starts with

preparing the wood and sanding it

once it's sanded the wood is traced so

you can start to draw on it and then

after that you carve the rango

rango Luis is one of just a handful of

people still carving rango

rango he's doing this to help preserve

his

culture it's Unique and if we lose it we

lose part of the history of

rapanui no one knows how old rango rango

is of what it actually says but in a

secluded Monastery in Rome Sylvia

Ferrara is studying a remarkable wooden

artifact which might help answer those

questions this is the Anan CR tablet

it's made of wood and it's one of the 27

tablets written in this script which is

still undeciphered the isan CR tablet

was gifted to the bishop of Tahiti in

1869 by Catholic converts from

rapanui it is one of only 27

scattered across museums around the

world and the way its figures are

oriented suggests a very unusual reading

method what you need to do is turn the

tablet from one line to the next in

order to read it and this is a unique

feature of this writing system no other

script works in the same way all over

the world so it's really quite special

despite this unique system it has been

said that rango rango was in inspired by

European writing that's kind of a

degrading view of rapanui Ingenuity it's

not only simplistic but it's patronizing

it's one of the most unique and

beautiful forms of knowledge of Art in

the world nevertheless we have to face

critics or thoughts that we were copying

the glyphs in roro are clearly connected

to the art on the island you see the

glyph forms in petroglyphs they don't

imitate European writing in any sense to

put the debate to bed once and for all

Sylvia gained permission to radiocarbon

date this tablet the radiocarbon date

points in the direction of a 15th

century date which antecedes the arrival

of the Europeans by more than 200 years

Sylvia believes this might make rango

rango one of the few instances of

independently invented writing in the

world but what was Rango rangle for many

believe that it contains the secrets of

rapanui culture some people say that

they contain Legends or rhythms or

encrypted instructions of how to move

moai or develop some technologies there

are many many different theories about

it but what we do know is that they

contain

knowledge until rango rango surrenders

its Secrets researchers are using tried

and tested scientific methods to

understand why the moai and AO platforms

are located where they are when we we

look at the question of where AO are

located why are they located there why

are some of them very large and some of

them smaller why are there some AO in

the interior While most of them are on

the shoreline it's easy to describe them

as being religious certainly that's part

of the story but the question is why

would you invest so much energy in doing

these over and over

again they start started with a map they

marked out the locations of all the AO

on the east side of the island then they

began to compare them with the locations

of vital

resources they chose three as the key

sources of sustenance Rock Mo seafood

and fresh water but when they tried to

map the AO over the rock mules a simple

mismatch became glaringly obvious

there's Rock mulch everywhere across L

but we don't see a and moai everywhere

what we find is in fact that AO and moai

are in particular locations independent

of the of the mulch

itself next they looked at resources

from the

sea when you drive around the island you

see one after the other an AO with moai

all the way along the coast and of

course the coast has a lot of resources

fish shellfish other kinds of things

that would support

population but while the AO on the coast

match sea resources very well this

cannot expl the AO erected in the

interior of the

island that left one final

resource fresh

water most of the moai are along the

coastline with their backs to the Sea at

first glance that doesn't seem like a

good place to find fresh water but look

a little closer the water's fresh you

think this water is salty that it's sea

water but in fact this is a freshwater

seat a source of water that comes from

the interior of the island moves to the

underground and then comes out out at

the coast it's a place where uh rapanui

people access water for their daily

lives on a young volcanic island like

rapanui the rocks are very porous the

rainwater will enter the island and flow

through the porous Island and into lava

tubes Etc and will come down to the

level and float on top of saltwater and

then enter the ocean at low tide when

Captain Cook arrived in the island what

he saw was people drinking straight from

the ocean and he thought this is crazy

why would people do that what he

actually seeing is people drinking water

that comes from these freshwater seeps

that emerge right at the coast of the

island and when Carl and Terry compared

their map of AUM moai with a map of

freshwater sources they got a roughly

90% match in fact the locations of fresh

water are the best predictor of the

locations of AO throughout the island

for many this near-perfect match is not

surprising because AO are usually linked

with

settlement those hamlets or vill

are located in many cases close to water

sources which makes perfect sense that

the essentials for survival like your

crops and your drinking water is close

to where the people actually settle yet

for Carl and Terry it's the precise

location of the moai that is the key to

this Theory one of the interesting

aspects about renoi people is they lived

in a dispersed settlement pattern in

which people used the the landscape

around around the AO and sort of a wide

area but they're brought together at the

AO and the moai again and again the AO

not the settlements are closest to the

water so we find in fact the yaho and

the moai right next to the critical

resource because in fact that is the

heart of the

community it seems the moai acted as a

statement erected close to a community's

most vital

resource but rapanui tradition would see

this

differently they represent the soul of a

dead King so muai location and eventual

collapse is also related with an

evolution of a political and social

structure the statement is we're

honoring our

ancestors and they might even say to us

if we could time travel don't you honor

your ancestors in this

way looking at all the archaeological

evidence it seems more likely that

rather than a self-inflicted ecocide the

true collapse of rapanui society was

caused by outside

influences as time went on and the

evidence accumulated we realized that a

lot of what people thought was collapse

was something that actually happened

after Europeans arrived and it had an

entirely different cause and that was

the introduction of Old World

disease there was the small pox there

was the Spanish Flu a leprosy slave

trading it was difficult to live here

and it was more difficult to keep the

social structures and the life as the

way that we knew it over time we see

people sort of abandoning AO and moai

it's a loss of population they're just

fewer people because of the effects of

diseases so people are not attending to

the AO uh and rebuilding them in the way

that they did in the past things got

even worse in the 1860s Peruvian slave

Traders captured about a third of the

population on the island and forced them

onto their ships to work in

Peru there were protests even the

Vatican got involved and consequently

the companies were forced to return the

inhabitants to the

islands however these people had

contracted small parks on the American

continent only 15 people made it home

and this was enough for an epidemic of

small Parx break out

there by the time it was over there were

less than 200 rapanui Left

Alive the true story of rapanui is one

of survival against the odds by an

ingenious and resilient people who came

to a bad land and made it

good but that story has been

overshadowed by a western fascination

with the moai and for Sonia and Het that

is the true tragedy and Triumph of

rapanui if we look only the Moi we are

not making this place bigger and make it

a small do mean you don't believe in my

capacity as a human being if there's one

thing that I would like people take from

rapanui is that the history has been

narrated by a very selected group of

people there are different realities the

world is full of beautiful amazing

stories that deserve to be told and

people deserve to hear our history is

not unique we share with many islands

and we share a beautiful past a complex

present and many many tragedies in in

the Midway

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