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The remains of unknown great cultures lie on nearly all the inhabitable South Sea islands. Survivals of a completely inexplicable yet obviously very advanced technology stare the visitor mysteriously in the face and literally entice him to speculate and theorise. We spent ten days on this tiny speck of volcanic rock in the South Pacific. The days are over when this island was only visited once every six months by a Chilean warship. We were taken there by a four-engined Lan Chile Constellation. There are no hotels there yet, so we spent the whole time in a tent. We had previously stocked up with provisions, which are scarce on the island. Twice the natives invited us to supper. We had baked salmon which they put in a hole in the earth and covered with glowing charcoal and many different kinds of leaves that form part of the secret recipes of the Rapanui housewives. We had to wait nearly two hours before the smouldering food was taken out. As a gourmet I must admit that finally palate and tongue were offered a feast that was really delicious, a pleasure that was on a par with the feast for the ears provided by the Rapanui islanders singing their folklore. The horse is still the means of transport on the island— except for one car, which belongs to the twenty-six-year-old mayor, Ropo, who is of medium height and chubby faced, and was elected democratically by his fellow-countrymen. Ropo is the uncrowned king of the island, although there are a ‘governor’ and a ‘police commissioner’ as well. Ropo comes from an old-established family and probably knows much more about Easter Island and its unsolved puzzles than all the other islanders put together. He and two of his assistants offered to act as our guides. The language of the Rapanui is rich in vowels: ti-ta-pe-pe-tu-ti-lo-mu. I do not speak it, so we conversed in a mixture of Spanish and English. When that failed, we tried to make ourselves understood with hands, feet and grimaces that must have been extremely funny to outsiders. There are many accounts of the history of Easter Island and just as many theories about it. After my ten days' researches I naturally cannot say what took place here in the remote past, but I believe I found some arguments to show what cannot have taken place. There is one theory that the ancestors of the present-day Rapanui chiselled the now world-famous statues from the hard volcanic rock during generations of arduous toil. Thor Heyerdahl, whom I respect highly, describes in his book Aku-Aku how he found hundreds of stone implements lying about in confusion in the quarries. From this mass find of primitive tools Heyerdahl concluded that an unknown number of men chiselled the statues here and then precipitately abandoned their work at some time or other. They threw down their tools and left them lying where Using a large number of islanders who worked for eighteen days, Heyerdahl erected a medium-sized statue by-means of wooden beams and a primitive but successful technique, and then moved it with 9 - Easter Island: An Inexhaustible Topic Particularly on Easter Island. they had been working.