394 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1936 



<:^od Make Make continued to take place. The last bird-man was 

 drawn, according to Thompson, in 1880. It may be recalled that the 

 house of the bird-man, the tomb reserved for him, was inside the 

 tayu surrounding the quarry whence came the statues and where the 

 oldest still stand. This is presumptive evidence in favor of a close 

 connection between the cult of Orongo and that of ancestors. Per- 

 haps sufficient importance has not been attached to the fact that 

 Orongo contains breccia sculptures from Rano Raraku,^ and that 

 it is from Orongo that there came the most perfect example of the 

 typical Easter Island statue, that at the British Museum. 



Take on the other hand all those manifestations of the plastic skill 

 of the Pascuans — the sculptures on stone and wood, the designs of 

 the rock-carvings and tablets, of the rock paintings and tattoo marks. 

 The technique varies witli the raw material, but the uniformity of 

 style is indisputable. 



The abrupt end, as it seems, of the activities of Rano Raraku has 

 been invoked both by the adherents of the theory of an age-old lost 

 civilization and by those who favor the idea of a dual Pascuan 

 culture. But the arrest of activity can be explained by simple, al- 

 most contemporary, causes. The exploitation of the volcano was con- 

 trolled by the clan of the Tupahotus, and, as everywhere in Poly- 

 nesia, by a group of specialists. It required only a war to partially 

 destroy the specialists — and tradition tells of many wars at the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century. An epidemic imported by the 

 whalers might equally be responsible ; today each vessel that arrives 

 brings some malady to the Pascuans. Finally, the Peruvian raids 

 (1859-61) are traditionally reported to have given the coup-de-grace 

 to the class of raaoris (experts). 



The fact that in 1886 the Pascuans had already forgotten how and 

 why their activities had been brought to a close, as well as other facts 

 about their culture — such as how the statues were transported, and 

 the meaning of the tablets — is no evidence of the antiquity of these 

 facts, nor does it justify an attribution to another culture. For we 

 have seen these same Pascuans refusing to admit that the stone adzes 

 could have been used to work wood; while it is certain that before 

 1860 iron must have been very rare in the island, and that their im- 

 mediate forebears must necessarily have worked wood with the afore- 

 said adzes. On the other hand they freely admit that adzes and stone 

 chisels were used to work the two kinds of andesite of which the 

 statues, bols, and house stones were made. By a curious inversion the 

 Pascuan regards wood as being harder and more difficult to work than 



* A volcano in the eastern part of Easter Island. On its slopes is the quarry where the 

 statues were hewn. 



