Eastern Pacific “Mysteries”

Sharp Challenge to Some Theories About Easter Island

By A. C. Rowland

IHAVE just received a most welcome letter from Mr. Charles Reed, of Samoa, which I shall take pleasure in answering. He tells me that he is lost in the jungle of controversy among the scientists over Easter Island, and he asks me for a compass and map to get him out again.

My friend, Mr. Edmunds —who lived for 25 years on Easter Island when that unhappy speck of land swarmed with expeditions—has about the same opinion of scientists as have I.

It does not require much imagination to picture what would happen to a com pany of primitive people, headed by a bevy of priests, when cast on a bleak spot of land like Easter. The first thing a priest would think of would be an image of the principal god (such as they had back home) to bless the crops. The quarry of easily worked stone they found in an old crater, gave some priest the bright idea of erecting statues of all the gods in the pantheon. This pious under taking would keep the nation united and prevent them from incubating ideas which always lead to mischief.

Of course, the carrying out of the priestly plan required the work of many generations—after the manner of the cathedral building by our mediaeval ancestors. First, the principal gods were honoured by the fashioning of colossal images and stone platforms erected to support their dignity. Then followed the lesser gods who were given images of smaller stature. Then the demi-gods, and so on.

In the meanwhile, their constant battle with the sea in quest of food, taught succeeding generations to build more seaworthy boats, the set of currents and winds and, perhaps, some rudiments of navigation by the stars. In due time some venturesome navigator found the islands to the north-west and subsequent exneditions discovered the southern Tua motus.

A YEAR may have passed, or a cen tury, before a fleet of canoes, sail ing from one island of the northern Tuamotus to another, was blown by a boisterous maraamu (south wind) to the Marquesas.

When intelligence of this new discov ery reached Easter—as it eventually did —the exodus from that dismal land to the lush paradise in the north, was like the rush to the California goldfields, in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The half-completed statues in the quarry on Easter, and the tools scattered about, give evidence of eager haste to get away.

THE present inhabitants of Easter— according to their own legends—are the debris of a neo-Polvnesian wave which came, in comparatively recent times, from the Cook Islands through the Australs and southern Tuamotu islands. They neither have, nor ever did have, the foggiest idea of the origin of the images. When they had established themselves on Easter, these newcomers divided into groups and amused them selves by trying to destroy each other— a history which vindicates the wisdom of the old Sweet Potato priesthood.

The engraved wooden-tablets, which have sent the scientists on mirage-chas ing expeditions to Mohenjo-Daro, to primitive Egypt, and to the Lost Conti

nent of Mu, are (in my opinion) nothing more or less than mnemonic directives to prevent errors in ceremonies at the several marae. They served the same purpose as did the knotted coconut leaves which refreshed the memory of Ra’iatea priests. The celebrated Bous trophedon arrangement was to avoid any chance of skipping a line and thus com mitting the unpardonable sin of altering the sequence of invocations, chants, postures and offerings which in latter day Polynesia had become most com plicated.

Some crafty old Easter Island natives, with a lively expectation of liberal rewards of tobacco and pareu cloth, have given visiting scientists alleged transla tions of these mystical characters graven on the tablets. But inasmuch as no two native savants agree as to their inter pretation. the scientific college is still in a whirl of controversy over their origin and meaning.

There being no coconut leaves on Easter to knot, some clever priest invented a system of arbitrary characters and engraved them on wooden tablets to aid his memory—that is all there is to it, in my judgment.

There was no form of ideograph, sylla bic or alphabet writing in the South Pacific from the dawn of time until the missionaries taught the miracle to the people of the islands.

WHEN one studies the history, the legends and traditions of Central Polynesia, he becomes conscious of the almost total isolation of the Mar quesas from the sister archipelagoes of that area.

It is true that most of the legend and poetry which have come down to us date from the neo-Polynesian period. There is every reason to believe that the neo- Polynesian wave never reached the Mar

quesas; or, if it did, was repulsed by the fierce warriors of those impregnable fortress-like islands. Yet echoes from the palae-Polynesian period are equally silent.

In the roster of palae-Polynesian gods who were summoned to the great Pa’i- Atua ceremony at Opoa, in the days when Ra’iatea was the Sacred Isle, no ghostly messenger was despatched to

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Nu’uhiva (the Marquesas). Nor was there, among the fleet assembled from every corner of Polynesia to attend that august ceremony, a ship from the Mar quesas Islands.

The most likely explanation of all this is that from a very early period the Marquesans were looked upon as non conformists and heretics. They had established on the fertile Marquesas a new and more happy Olympus for their gods, when the first palae-Polynesians came to the Central Pacific.

There is much evidence of pre-Poly nesian elements in the religion, the lan guage and the culture of Eastern and Central Polynesia. Perhaps these primi tive influences had in the Polynesian colony on the Marquesas, established usages not acceptable to the priesthood of Ra’iatea. Moreover the all-powerful hierophants of Opoa could not brook a rival Olympus so near at hand. Unable to crush these heretics by force of arms, they laid them under interdict and excommunication.

This theory has the virtue of providing appeasement to warring advocates of both South American and Indonesian origins of migrations into the Central Pacific. There is also the suggestion that scientists would not waste their time should they seek in the East the solu tion of problems which, hitherto, have baffled them.

WE have in the Gambier Islands a modern Easter Island where, under similar conditions, vast religious edifices and public works have been erected by a primitive people inspired by religious zeal.

On Mangareva and its sister island, Akamaru, as much stonework was fash ioned and piled up in a generation as was carved and put in place on Easter Island during the course of centuries.

The church at Mangareva—a great edi

fice, with massive twin towers, 75 full paces by 23 paces in measurement, and built wholly of rock faced with white coral lime —stands on a platform of huge coral slabs, 110 yards long by 50 yards across. This building could accommo date 1,000 persons seated in orderly rows, or double that number standing.

At Roruru, on Mangareva, was built a nunnery, under the scarped face of Mount Duff. A massive and towering rock wall —its face long, its sides reach ing back to the precipice—surrounds it.

Stone roads composed of slabs laid by hand lead over the countryside.

On the island of Akamaru is another large church, having twin towers—one surmounted by a cross, the other by a statue of the Holy Virgin and Child.

These structures do not complete the catalogue of stone structures erected on the several Gambier Islands during the period of one generation.

The assertions by the scientists as to the resources and population necessary to have fashioned and erected the images and platforms on Easter Island are absurd. The further assertion by scien tists that, because the South Americans of the Inca period were landlubbers, no migration into the islands of the South Pacific from the west coast of South America was possible, is likewise absurd.

WE have also in the Gambier Islands an example of how seacraft and knowledge of navigation can be lost.

When the Gambier Islands were first visited by Europeans, the art of fashion ing canoes had become forgotten. The vast lagoon, in which the several Gam bier Islands lie, had within its depths and around its shores all that was neces sary to sustain the life of the islands. To navigate its calm waters only rafts were necessary. And so a race of islanders, whose ancestors were the greatest marin ers in all human history, forgot how to

fashion a simple canoe.

The Inca civilisation was agricultural, commercial and self-contained by virtue of the resources of the plateaux, the interior valleys and the metals of the mountains. Does that prove that the pre-Inca South Americans were not in a measure dependant on the resources of the sea and were, therefore, learned in the art of ship-building and, by conse quence, gifted with some knowledge of navigation?

The average young cub (and many of the old bruins as well) of the scientific fraternity under-estimates the mental capacity and resourcefulness of those members of primitive races, who were the leaders or medicine-men. Through all ages, the culture, the aspirations, the common weal of races and nations have been moulded and directed by a few who were more enlightened or forceful than the average of the mass.

Easter Island is no mystery if we examine it in the light of the most obvi ous possibilities.