THE MYSTERY OF EASTER ISLAND 



643 



home of not less than two hours, during 

 which an anxious eye was kept on the 

 sinking sun. 



The burial-places are not all of one 

 type, nor all constructed to carry statues ; 

 some also are known to have been built 

 comparatively recently. A typical image 

 ahu (see diagram above) is composed 

 of a long wall running parallel with the 

 sea, which, in a large specimen, is as 

 much as 15 feet in height and 300 feet in 

 length. It is buttressed on the land side 

 with a great slope of masonry. 



The wall is in three divisions. The 

 main, or central, portion projects in the 

 form of a terrace, on which the images 

 stood, with their backs to the sea ; it is, 

 therefore, broad enough to carry their 

 oval bed-plates. The latter measure up 

 to about 10 feet in length and 8 feet or 9 

 feet in width and are flush with the top 

 of the wall. On the great ahu of Tonga- 

 riki there have been fifteen statues, but 

 sometimes an ahu has carried one figure 

 only. 



FOLKLORE ACCOUNTS FOR THE FALL OF 

 THE STATUES 



The only piece of a statue which still 

 remains on its bed-plate is the fragment 

 at Tongariki. In the best - preserved 

 specimens the figures lie on their faces 

 like rows of huge nine-pins. Some are 

 intact, but many are broken, the cleavage 

 having generally occurred when the fall- 

 ing image has come in contact with the 

 containing wall at the lower level. 



Xo one now living remembers a statue 

 standing on an ahu, and legend, though 

 not of a very impressive character, has 

 already arisen to account for the fall of 

 some of them. An old man arrived, it is 

 said, in the neighborhood of Tongariki, 

 and as he was unable to speak, he made 

 known by means of signs that he wished 

 for chicken heads to eat ; these were not 

 forthcoming. He slept, however, in one 

 of the houses there, and during the night 

 his hosts were aroused by a great noise, 

 which he said was due to his feet tapping 

 against the stone foundations of the 

 house. In the morning it was found that 

 the statues on the great ahu had all 

 fallen — the revenge of the old man. 



Such lore is, however, confused with 

 more tangible statements to the effect that 

 the figures were overthrown in tribal 



warfare by means of ropes, or by the 

 displacement of the small stones under- 

 neath the bed-plates, thus causing them 

 to fall forward. Some students still hold 

 to the theory that the images were over- 

 thrown by an earthquake. 



The conclusion, however, that the 

 images owe their fall to deliberate van- 

 dalism during internecine warfare seems 

 to be confirmed by comparatively recent 

 tradition concerning the destruction of 

 the image which stood alone on Ahu 

 Paro on the north coast. This was the 

 tallest known to have been erected on a 

 terrace, being 32 feet in height, and the 

 events which resulted in its destruction 

 are supposed to have occurred just before 

 living memory, and, like most stories in 

 Easter Island, are connected with canni- 

 balism. This is the story : 



A woman of the western clans was 

 eaten by men of the eastern. Her son 

 managed to trap thirty of the enemy in a 

 cave and consumed them in revenge, and 

 during the ensuing struggle this image 

 was thrown down. 



The oldest man living when we were 

 on the island said that he was an infant 

 at the time ; and another, a few years 

 younger, stated that his father, as a boy, 

 helped his grandfather in the fight. 



While, therefore, the date of the erec- 

 tion of the earliest image ahu is lost in 

 the mists of antiquity, nor are we yet 

 in a position to say when the building 

 stopped, we can give approximately the 

 time of the overthrow of the images. 

 We know, from accounts of early voy- 

 agers, that the statues, or the greater 

 number of them, were still in place in the 

 eighteenth century; by the middle of the 

 nineteenth century not one was standing. 



Strange as it may appear, it is by no 

 means easy to obtain a complete view of 

 a statue on the island. Most of the images 

 which were formerly on the ahu lie on 

 their faces, many are broken, and detail 

 has largely been destroyed by weather. 



STATUES QUARRIED FROM VOLCANIC CONE 



Happily, we are not dependent for our 

 knowledge of the images on such infor- 

 mation as we can gather from the ruins 

 on the ahu, but are able to trace them to 

 their origin, though even here excavation 

 is necessary to see the entire figure. 



Rano Raraku is a volcanic cone con- 



