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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, 2,250 miles from the coast of Chile, they saw hundreds of colossal statues, which lay 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 ft high 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 colossi 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 over ten 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 been deciphered as yet. 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 fire-places and remains of bones had any connexion with the stone colossi. 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 civilisation. The islanders are more familiar with moon and 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 build by a vast army of workers using the 'heave-ho' method, a similar method would have been impossible on Easter Island for lack of manpower. A maximum of 2,000 men was not nearly enough to carve these colossal figures out of the steel-hard volcanic stone with rudimentary tools, even if they worked day and night. For at least a part of the population must have tilled the barren fields and gone fishing, and a few of them must have woven cloth and made ropes. No, 2,000 men alone could not have made the gigantic statues. And a larger population is inconceivable on Easter Island. Then who did do the work? And how did they manage it? And why do the statues stand round the edge of the island and not in the interior? What cult did they serve? Chapter Eight - Easter Island—land Of The Bird Men