Chariots of the Gods: 50th Anniversary Edition by Erich von Daniken

Author:Erich von Daniken [von Daniken, Erich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ancient Mysteries, Controversial Knowledge, Alternative
ISBN: 9781101076125
Google: TRMepagkRcYC
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1999-01-01T16:45:09+00:00

8

Easter Island—Land of the Bird Men

The first European seafarers who landed on Easter Island at the beginning of the eighteenth century could scarcely believe their eyes. On this little plot of earth, 2,350 miles from the coast of Chile, they saw hundreds of colossal statues lying scattered about all over the island. Whole mountain massifs had been transformed, steel-hard volcanic rock had been cut through like butter, and 10,000 tons of massive rocks lay in places where they could not have been dressed. Hundreds of gigantic statues, some of which are between 33 and 66 feet high and weigh as much as 50 tons, still stare challengingly at the visitor today—like robots which seem to be waiting solely to be set in motion again. Originally these colossuses also wore hats; but even the hats do not exactly help to explain the puzzling origin of the statues. The stone for the hats, which weighed more than 10 tons apiece, was found at a different site from that used for the bodies, and in addition the hats had to be hoisted high in the air.

Wooden tablets, covered with strange hieroglyphs, were also found on some of the statues in those days. But today it is impossible to find more than ten fragments of those tablets in all the museums in the world, and none of the inscriptions on those still extant has yet been deciphered.

Thor Heyerdahl’s investigations of these mysterious giants produced three clearly distinguishable cultural periods, and the oldest of the three seems to have been the most perfect. Heyerdahl dates some charcoal remains that he found to about A.D. 400. It has not been proved whether the fireplaces and remains of bones had any connection with the stone colossuses. Heyerdahl discovered hundreds of unfinished statues near rock faces and on the edges of craters; thousands of stone implements, simple stone axes, lay around as if the work had been abandoned quite suddenly.

Easter Island lies far away from any continent or civilization. The islanders are more familiar with the moon and the stars than any other country. No trees grow on the island, which is a tiny speck of volcanic stone. The usual explanation, that the stone giants were moved to their present sites on wooden rollers, is not feasible in this case, either. In addition, the island can scarcely have provided food for more than 2,000 inhabitants. (A few hundred natives live on Easter Island today.) A shipping trade, which brought food and clothing to the island for the stonemasons, is hardly credible in antiquity. Then who cut the statues out of the rock, who carved them and transported them to their sites? How were they moved across country for miles without rollers? How were they dressed, polished, and erected? How were the hats, the stone for which came from a different quarry from that of the statues, put in place?

Even if people with lively imaginations have tried to picture the Egyptian pyramids being built by a vast army of

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