Easter Island or rather Rapa Nui as the islanders themselves tend to call it, is home to some of the strangest and most remarkable monuments to be found anywhere in the world.
Easter Island lies in the middle of the Pacific, 2000 miles from the nearest mainland in Chile, and is the most remote of all the islands to be settled in the first millennium AD by the Polynesians. But how did they come to erect these giant statues, and when, and how?
In March 2011 I spent six days on Easter Island with my wife as part of a ‘Round the World’ trip. We were fortunate enough to visit most of the main sights and photograph them, and here I want to display some of my photos and offer an insight into some of the current controversies about how and when they were erected.
On to Easter island!
Good reading!
Andrew Selkirk,
andrew@archaeology.co.uk