Solving the mystery

Books

Easter Island, The Mystery Solved, by Thor Heyerdahl, published by Souvenir Press, London, UK Pounds 18.95; and “L’ile de Pacques,” by Pierre Loti, published by Editions Pierre-Olivier Combelles, France, FF 195.

Reviewed by Nicholas Rothwell

THOR Heyerdahl’s confidently-titled

account of western explorers’ attempts to unravel the history of Easier Island marks the culmination of a life-time of personal involvement with the Pacific’s remotest, most enigmatic haven Rapa-Nui, known by its natives by names of wild poetry: “Te-Pito-o-te- Henua”, “The Navel of the World”, or

Mata-Kile-Rangi", “Eyes looking at

heaven.”

This volume races through the history of discovery and settlement, includes a brief account of Heyerdahl’s pioneering 1955 expedition the visit which gave rise to the author’s captivating book Aku-Aku and concludes with the findings of his triumphal return in 1986.

Easter Island The Mystery Solved, occupies a peculiar niche, since it ming les popular history, the author’s own philosophical nursings on world peace and his tree-wheeling speculations about prehistoric oceanic voyagings; yet at the same time, it is printed in the format of a small coffee-table book, and the photo graphs it contains of Easter Island’s par ched-gieen fields, the open, sea stretch ing beyond the cliff-faces, and the res tored statues ga/ing inland, are of start

ling quality and compositional beauty.

1 hese images alone and Easter Is land is one of the rare places on this planet which seem to communicate their character freely to the camera lens make the book worthwhile, and summon up that sense of distant, brooding divin

ity communicated by an earlier explorer

of the Island, Katherine Routledge, who wrote in 1919: “Everywhere is the wind of heaven; round and above all are boundless sea and skv, infinite space and a great silence. The dweller there is ever listening for he knows not what, feeling unconsciously that he is in the antecham ber to something vet more vast which is just beyond his ken.”

Although Heyerdahl himself has in evitably become part of the modern legend ol the Pacific, thanks to his Kon liki exploits, and he has been involved with Pacific archaeology and ethnology ever since his Marquesan researchers of 1957-58, his prevailing thesis about pat terns of Pacific settlement that the cul tutes of America played a key role in the

colonisation of Easter Island remains controversial among more mainstream researchers in the field.

This book links the argument to the history of the study of Easter Island, for it unfolds a narrative of the invasions and arrivals of the past two centuries, balanced by an account of the author’s own life and beliefs, and an exposition of his theories. He makes a persuasive case for at least some contact from South America before the arrival of Polyne sians on Easter Island; among the evi dence marshalled is data from pollen re cords, genetic examinations of the blood of today’s Easter Islanders, and Heyer dahl's own interpretations of island myths and traditions.

Vet despite the considerable exuber ance and skill with which this case is made, at times Heyerdahl seems so ena moured of his visions of trans-oceanic, trans-cultural journeyings that he over states his argument, coming close to sug

gesting that Polynesian culture plaved lit

tle part in the shaping of Easter Island.

But travellers who visit both Tahitian sacred worship enclosures and Easter Is land’s majestic statues may sense more

similarity than Heyerdahl seems willing

to acknowledge between the two cul tures. Indeed, this book has been sax aged in scholarly reviews bv critics who claim Heyerdahl’s near-exclusive focus on American Indian seafaring leads him to neglect the ample evidence for Polynesian settlement, and for the links between Polynesian and Easter Island culture.

Nevertheless, Heyerdahl’s basic con tention that two waves of migrant populations came to Easter Island first Americans, later Polynesians cer tainly seems feasible. This twin-migration view has recently found support from a new linguistic study of the Island bv Robert Langdon and Darrell Trvon, which concludes that Polynesian speakers arrived in Easier Island in the earlv 17th century, about a 100 years before west ern contact, to find it inhabited bv ear lier settlers, probably from South America. 1 his, then, is the "mystery" Heyerdahl believes to have been solved bv his new book; in addition, he recounts another achievement of his latest expedition, which succeeded, thanks to the ingenuity of .i young Czech engineer, in managing to ‘walk a giant Easter Island monolith with the aid only of ropes, and levers, so providing a model lor the ancient stone carvers’ successful transportation of their enormous votive figures down the “im age roads" described by Captain Cook.

At times, Heyerdahl succeeds in com municating the sheer excitement of his

decades-long involvement with the Is land, and the haunting atmosphere that still exists in its crater-torn hills today.

But often, his narrative becomes a detec tive story of his quest for evidence of

trans-oceanic journeyings. Although he

warns that the mythical traditions of the Easter Islanders were corrupted by their contacts with westerners, he nevertheless relies on local tales to support the claims he favours, while discounting other, con

tradictory pieces of evidence.

His ultimate conclusion reduces the importance of Polynesian settlement of the Island to the following: “Ethnog raphic evidence thus indicates that the Polynesians were indeed brought to Eas ter Island, either with their consent or against their will, by navigators from a more culturally developed area of ancient Peru, using either force or cun

ning. Maybe the 19th century Europeans

were not the first to sail from Peru into the Pacific as slave raiders. Historv re peals itself.”

A constant theme of Heyerdahl’s glob al explorations has been the contention that cross-cultural contacts have been the hidden means of transmission of civilisa tion. systematically ignored bv the scien tific establishment. After a lifetime of unorthodox achievements, it is now Heyerdahl whose presentations of Easter Island culture will reach the common reader, while the endeavours of less known researchers, with their differing conclusions, will remain more obscure.

Strangely, the poignant sense of place

that infected Aku-Aku is little in evi dence in these pages, swamped as thev are bv theory and bv the internationalist concerns of the globe-trotting explorer.

Another book devoted to Easter Is land. of rather different character, has just been published in Europe: the jour nal kept bv the French Pacific author Pierre Loti, when, as a voting sailor in 1872, he visited the island. Loti's text, charmingly simple vet possessed of a re markable acuity, summons up a haunt ing sense of an island poised between

cultures, mediating between clashing

worlds the same sense that lingers still on the Chilean-governed island today.

Loti's blurry sketches and drawings also seem to capture the essence of what survived a century ago upon the "navel ol the world”. Enraptured bv what he found. Loti was in no haste to solve the “mystery" of the statues before his eves.

" Ihe island", lie recorded, "is dotted with tall, monstruous statues, the crea tions of we do not know what race today vanished or degenerated and its past remains an enigma."

Somehow, even I hor Heyerdahl's tinelx argued demystifications pale slightly before the youthful Pierre Loti's recollections of this “land halt fantasy, a country of dreams." □