Kind: captions
Language: en
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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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