Easter Island Heads
Printed From: History Community ~ All Empires
Category: Regional History or Period History
Forum Name: History of Oceania, South-East Asia and Pacific
Forum Discription: Discuss the history of SE Asia: Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore etc.
URL: http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=30786
Printed Date: 12-May-2024 at 18:40
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 9.56a - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Easter Island Heads
Posted By: Nick1986
Subject: Easter Island Heads
Date Posted: 13-Dec-2011 at 19:08
 This small island is dotted with carved stone heads half-buried in the ground. These are supposed to represent deceased ancestors. Each statue looks unique and some of them even have tattoos ------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Replies:
Posted By: Arab
Date Posted: 14-Dec-2011 at 08:12
| The Polynesians are a pretty interesting people. It's amazing what they were able to achieve with what little technology they had available. |
Posted By: medenaywe
Date Posted: 14-Dec-2011 at 08:29
| ...and a lot of free time until resources existed on island. |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 14-Dec-2011 at 19:25
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I think the statues were the cause of war and famine. The islanders cut down all the trees to use as rollers to move the statues, resulting in the irreversible erosion of the fertile soil
------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 15-Dec-2011 at 18:27
I think I heard that the heads are meant to represent ancient chiefs. Those ancient chiefs must have been big heads then. ------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture. |
Posted By: Baal Melqart
Date Posted: 15-Dec-2011 at 18:33
And noses! ------------- Timidi mater non flet |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 16-Dec-2011 at 19:02
 Here's a reconstruction of the heads as they originally looked. The eyes were made of coral and the hats were made of a type of red stone ------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 16-Dec-2011 at 19:07
Ah, Nick, what's that old saying again? If you want to get ahead get a hat. ------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture. |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 17-Dec-2011 at 19:16
|
Thor Heyerdahl experimented with these statues in the 1950s. Using only logs and ropes he successfully moved a fallen statue and re-erected it in a pre-dug pit ------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 18-Dec-2011 at 12:41
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture. |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 18-Dec-2011 at 19:02
|
I believe so. While some statues are on plinths (and would have been put in place using earth ramps), others are half-buried in the ground
------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 20-Dec-2011 at 05:31
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture. |
Posted By: balochii
Date Posted: 20-Dec-2011 at 11:07
| did Polynesians discover america? |
Posted By: Cryptic
Date Posted: 20-Dec-2011 at 11:26
There is indirect evidence (Chicken DNA comparisons) which supports that the Polynesians might have made landings in Peru. I do not think, however, that anybody has found actual artifacts that conclusivley demonstrate that the polynesians made it to Peru.
Though the "glory day" Polynesians clearly had the skills to sail to Peru, polynesian expansion across the pacific was not continous. Some groups lost the skills and recesources needed to make precision deep ocean voyages, especially the exceptionaly long ones. This resulted in islands being stranded.
The most famous stranded island was Easter Island. Even large groups such as the Hawaiian islands got stranded after about 1200 AD. They, however, large enough to avoid a social collapse. Other stranded islands include Henderson island (population got stranded and died out) and other islands where the stranded population was in a state of near total social collapse when the Europeans arrived.
I guess the mystery is: Did they make it to Peru before some groups (or many) started to run out of gas...
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Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 20-Dec-2011 at 19:15
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It's highly likely the Polynesians at least set foot in America. Rafts like the Kon-Tiki were more than capable of making long-distance ocean voyages
------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: Sander
Date Posted: 04-Jan-2012 at 22:31
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Some of the ( standing) statues on Easter Island are 10 metres (ca 33 feet) high or more. That makes them probably the largest ancient statues in the whole southern hemisphere. That is.... I haven't found larger/taller ancient statues in South America, Africa, Asia or anywhere else below the equator .  |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 05-Jan-2012 at 21:41
 There's an even larger monolith in the quarry at Easter Island. It was never finished, but "El gigante" is over 20 meters long ------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 05-Jan-2012 at 23:53
|
in re: "It's highly likely the Polynesians at least set foot in America. Rafts like the Kon-Tiki were more than capable of making long-distance ocean voyages" Since the Polynesians were not known for making long sea voyages in rafts, I fail to see the connection. If central and southern coastal Peru lacks large forests with trees susceptible to being fashioned into ocean canoes, that is not the case with northern Peru and Ecuador, both of which wre within within the nothern limits of the Inca empire. As for the Kon Tiki, note that it was towed fifty miles out to sea to begin its voyage, due to currents off Peru's coast, something that pre-Colombian Peruvians would have had to contend with. So, while such rafts were theoretically capable of making long distance ocean voyages, it is far more likely they stayed in close to the coast and did not venture over the open sea. I too believe that some Polynesians set foot in the Americas, but if they survived first contact with the locals, they were likely absorbed into those populations. Perhaps some future genetic study will establish a link with some central and northern south american Pacific coast areas. ------------- Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 06-Jan-2012 at 22:01
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How similar are Indian and Polynesian DNA? Perhaps the Olmec civilisation was founded by these Aboriginals who may have had darker skin and more negroid features in the past? ------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 07-Jan-2012 at 15:01
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What makes the Olmec heads negroid? Take a look at some of the sculptured heads of Angor wat. ------------- Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì |
Posted By: medenaywe
Date Posted: 07-Jan-2012 at 15:14
|
Painters have been under payed,union of workers corrupted and paint color vanished.Let me be clear about color people:Ancient people's life element in statues and buildings around them was color.Color shows them they are alive,different than stones!Only modern sterile&lifeless human society could be admired by colorless blocks of stones(period!).But color do not last forever,believe me i colored my fence 3-4 months ago and...maintenance follows. |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 07-Jan-2012 at 20:37
A black person doesn't neccessarily have to be African. The Australian Aborigines and people of modern-day India both have dark skin and features typical of black Africans despite having lived in their respective countries centuries after leaving Africa and coming into contact other races. The Indians, Aborigines and Polynesians may have retained darker skin as protection from the hot sun, though this is pure speculation ------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 12:19
Color is particularly important in areas such as Egypt where the desert conditions limit natural colors to shades of beige. A door painted red can be seen a long way off in a beige landscape.
When our son came back from Iraq in 03, he arrived just before Christmas. We took him out shopping at the local mall and he became sick. He said that the colors and lights were the cause. He had been in a beige landscape for nine months and the visual input created a vertigo like condition.
------------- "Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces". Unknown. |
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 12:29
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture. |
Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 12:42
Oh get real. In the years I worked in the Landscape field I knew a lot of Mexicans, none of them looked like this.
   Note that all of the heads show them as Helmed.
------------- "Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces". Unknown. |
Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 12:47
It took him about a week to readjust. With no residuals.
------------- "Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces". Unknown. |
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 12:52
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture. |
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 12:56
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture. |
Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 12:59
|
From Angor Wat, you be the judge.
    ------------- "Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces". Unknown. |
Posted By: TheAlaniDragonRising
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 13:13
------------- What a handsome figure of a dragon. No wonder I fall madly in love with the Alani Dragon now, the avatar, it's a gorgeous dragon picture. |
Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 18:40
|
Red Clay, point made, though I wouldn't call the first photo in your Olmec heads helmeted. It looks more like a hairline, and definitely negroid. ------------- Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 19:53
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The heads from Angkor War look nothing like the Olmecs. They are obviously Asian, while the South American heads have more "African" features ------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 08-Jan-2012 at 20:26
|
Nick. Mexico, to include the parts the Olmec heads were found in, is in North America. ------------- Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì |
Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 09-Jan-2012 at 09:07
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Actually the regions where the heads were found is considered Central America. ------------- "Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces". Unknown. |
Posted By: medenaywe
Date Posted: 09-Jan-2012 at 09:15
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Those statues were painted once:(Eastern Island!) http://www.eisp.org/ - http://www.eisp.org/ |
Posted By: lirelou
Date Posted: 10-Jan-2012 at 13:35
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Red Clay, what makes it Central America? I'll grant you that you can hit the northern edge of Belize a few hundred miles to the east from La Venta, which itself lies on the eastern side of the Tehuantepec peninsula, but that is also the eastern limits of the Olmec area. From La Venta it spread west up the gulf coast past San Martin Pajapan as far as Alvarado. Geographically, Tabasco state is in North America, as is Oaxaca state, it's southern neighbor. One could certainly make a case that Mayan Chiapas is Central American. And all of them are obviously in "Meso America". There is a body of opinion that the peoples who became the Olmecs came out of South America and across the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, obviously in Central America, to settle in the area described above. ("Los Olmecas," Lorenzo Ochoa, in Atlas historico de Mesoamerica, edited by Linda Manzanilla and Leonardo Lopez Lujan (Referencias Larousse, 1993) pp. 62-66) ------------- Phong trần mài một lưỡi gươm, Những loài giá áo túi cơm sá gì |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 30-May-2012 at 19:12
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Check out this excavated moai. Each statue has a body with unique markings representing tattoos: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2149846/Hidden-treat-The-Easter-Island-heads-BODIES.html - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2149846/Hidden-treat-The-Easter-Island-heads-BODIES.html ------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 15-Oct-2012 at 08:37
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According to legend, the statues "walked" from the quarry to their final location. If there were no trees on Easter Island, perhaps they were dragged into place with ropes and winches?
------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 15-Oct-2012 at 11:22
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Or perhaps they had access to the same "Majic" that is claimed to have been used to build Nan Madol. Remember that old saying, What you don't understand is Majic, [or magic] as soon as an understanding presents itsel, it becomes science.
------------- "Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces". Unknown. |
Posted By: Mountain Man
Date Posted: 15-Oct-2012 at 12:44
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Why does everyone persist in thinking that Olmec heads are "negroid"? Why can't negroid heads be Olmec instead?
------------- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 16-Oct-2012 at 10:29
------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 16-Oct-2012 at 16:15
Are you certain of that? ------------- "Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces". Unknown. |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 18-Oct-2012 at 06:29
------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 18-Oct-2012 at 10:06
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Got me. Why are Australoids black and not Asiatic? ------------- "Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces". Unknown. |
Posted By: Nick1986
Date Posted: 19-Oct-2012 at 09:45
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Hard to say. Perhaps they were descended from Africans who colonised India? They may have migrated before the arrival of lighter-skinned invaders
------------- Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains! |
Posted By: Don Quixote
Date Posted: 16-Dec-2013 at 21:26
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So, are the Europeans responsible for the ruination of the easter Island native culture? "...HONOLULU, HAWAII—According to some scholars, http://www.bishopmuseum.org/media/2013/pr13029.html#.Uq87tmRDuGJ - the people of Easter Island , or Rapa Nui, committed “environmental suicide” by deforesting their island, an event that led to the society's demographic collapse. But now some archaeologists, including the Bishop Museum's Mara Mulrooney, believe that intepretation of the island's history is wrong. Mulrooney studied 300 radiocarbon dates from Rapa Nui and found that people continued to use the interior of the island to cultivate crops such as sweet potatoes up until European contact. Previously it had been believed that these areas had been abandoned when the island chiefdom supposedly collapsed. "The new picture that emerges from these results is really one of sustainability and continuity rather than collapse, which sheds new light on what we can really learn from Rapa Nui,” said Mulrooney. “Based on these new findings, perhaps Rapa Nui should be the poster-child of how human ingenuity can result in success, rather than failure.” Mulrooney believes that it wasn't until after European contact and the introduction of new diseases that the society underwent demographic collapse...." http://archaeology.org/news/1649-131216-easter-island-never-collapsed - http://archaeology.org/news/1649-131216-easter-island-never-collapsed ------------- |
Posted By: opuslola
Date Posted: 16-Dec-2013 at 23:41
Red Clay, just why would an administrator say such a thing? LOL ------------- http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/history/ |
Posted By: opuslola
Date Posted: 16-Dec-2013 at 23:43
And Saint Nick 1986, just where did these "honkeys" originate? Ron ------------- http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/history/ |
Posted By: medenaywe
Date Posted: 17-Dec-2013 at 01:01
they had waited for first ships and they migrated. Technology moved them out.
|
Posted By: Mountain Man
Date Posted: 17-Dec-2013 at 11:34
Actually, the latest studies showed that the statues could have been moved with the use of any rollers at all. More likely is that the growing population stripped all the timber for building and cooking and similar domestic uses. Had the wood been used as rollers, a set of them would have been sufficient to move many statues and would not have resulted in removal of all of the forests. ------------- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? |
Posted By: Mountain Man
Date Posted: 17-Dec-2013 at 11:37
Because the Amerinds migrated to the American continent over the Bering Land Bridge and/or followed the edge of the ice shelf. There was no bridge from the African continent. Hence the Amerinds, Innuits and others are Asiatic by ancestry. ------------- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? |
Posted By: red clay
Date Posted: 20-Dec-2013 at 10:05
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The islands legends have it that the statues "walked" to their platforms. There are some scientists now that doubt there was ever any heavy forestation on the Island, at least not not enough to be of any consequence and certainly not enough to be relied upon for much by the inhabitants.
Hence the Amerinds, Innuits and others are Asiatic by ancestry.
Uh huh, and then there is Kenniwick Man, at approx. 9500 BCE and deffinetly Caucasian. MM, as we discover more, there seems to be a situation developing where there is more than one correct answer to this question.
And there is also, Hueyatlaco.
------------- "Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces". Unknown. |
Posted By: Mountain Man
Date Posted: 20-Dec-2013 at 11:32
i would agree with you except for one small problem...it seems that "caucasians" are now defined as a group that includes " asians".
------------- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? |
Posted By: Arthur-Robin
Date Posted: 21-Dec-2013 at 16:45
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A few different possible connections to be pieced together or dis/proven:
Thats interesting about the statues being unique & with tatoos etc like as if = ancestors. Statues called Moai which may connect with Moa who "may have been the ancestor of mankind, was given birth to in centre of the earth by earth-mother Papa" [~ Noah? statues holding crux area like ham castrated noah?] (& the Moa birds of NZ, & Sa-Moa?) I had thought that the stone hats could connect with Atlas motif? (Atlantis = Tiahuanaco/Peru/SouthAmerica.) Polynesians could have come from America rather than gone to America? (Currents. Kon Tiki. Kumara. Uru.) [Old World -> Atlantis/SthAmerica -> EasterIsl? (&, Atlantis/SthAmerica -> Olmec/central America?)] Could the deforestation (& toppled statues) been from catastrophe rather than human? Some faces/heads from central America look similar to Easter island statues. (Some faces/heads in other pacific islands look similar to easter island ones.) However there is also the Indus valley script (& ears) connection. [Indus -> Easter -> SthAmer/Atlantis?] |
Posted By: opuslola
Date Posted: 22-Dec-2013 at 22:09
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It is mostly all too complicated by race and culture and time, to ever be explained!
Regards, Ron ------------- http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/history/ |