It’s been 300 years since Europeans first arrived on the Pacific Island of Rapa Nui on Easter Sunday, 1722, calling it “Easter Island.” At the time, the indigenous population was tiny. But across the island were nearly one-thousand massive monolithic statues dotting the landscape. Ever since then the island has been the subject of speculation and debate. How were these immensely heavy stone statues moved? Who moved them? And what happened to the once robust native population there?
The West has made the island into a parable of human failure and ecological collapse. According to a theory widely popularized by Jared Diamond’s 2005 book Collapse, this remote civilization destroyed itself by cutting down trees needed to move the giant statues.
In “The So-called Mystery of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)”, producer Felix Poon debunks the racist “collapse” narrative and exposes the true tragedy that befell the people of this Pacific Island: decimation brought by European diseases and slave-raiders.
We also answer the question: who did move the giant monolithic statues of Rapa Nui, and how did they do it? As it turns out, the Indigenous Rapanui people’s oral history was right all along: the statues walked. We reflect on how it came to be that two white archeologists are widely credited for the “statue walking theory” as opposed to the Rapanui archeologist, Sergio Rapu Haoa, who discovered much of the evidence decades beforehand.
The above excerpt starts about halfway through the story. To listen to the full documentary, click here.
Featuring: Sergio Rapu Haoa, Carl Lipo, Terry Hunt, Sergio Mata’u Rapu, and Gina Pakarati
