Island at the Edge of the World

Pitts, Mike. Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island. New York : Mariner Books 2026. Print.

First Sentences:

This story about statues begins on Easter Sunday, 1722, on what was then the remotest inhabited island on Earth. This was the day the first European set eyes on Rapa Nui, the start of the final century when Islanders were in control of their own world. It was the day when everything about the island began to change, so that within a few generations no one there could say what the statues meant or who made them.

Description:

No one can deny a secret fascination with Rapa Nui (Easter Island). After all, it's a barren island thousands of miles from the nearest land, with no trees, few inhabitants, and hundreds of huge stone statues of heads and bodies scattered throughout the land. How was this island ever discovered and by whom? Where did all those people go? Why are there no trees? And, of course, who carved the gigantic heads and for what purpose?   

 

Mike Pitts, in his extensively researched Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island, looks deeply into original documents recorded by the first seamen who came across Rapa Nui in the 1700s, as well as the diaries and notes taken by early researchers, Katherine and Scoresby Routledge, who in 1910 lived for months on the island with to study and understand its people, culture, and history. DNA and radiocarbon dating were also studied. He also included research by Thor Heyerdahl from the 1960s, although Pitts feels many of Heyerdahl's conclusions, while extremely popular with the public, were based on legends, misconceptions, and racism which perpetuated many untruths about Rapa Nui and its history.

 

Little is known of Raga Nui prior to 1760, with only scattered eye-witness records of Europeans from 1722 on and before the slave traders, missionaries, and South American governments took a self-centered interest.

 

Author Pitts divides Island at the Edge of the World into sections to explore several major questions. He focuses his studies about each subject on related hard evidence and original documents to draw conclusions based on facts rather than legends and unsupported rumors:

• First settlers? - Pitts research indicates that Polynesians were the first settlers around 1200. They were masters of navigating long distances and had already colonized other islands using huge outriggers that could carry sufficient men, women, and children as well as animals, tools, and food to start a colony. Easter Island culture is full of Polynesian art, building style, traditions, etc.

• First Europeans? - In 1760 a Dutch East Indian Company ship stumbled upon the island on, guess what, Easter Sunday, 1760. Other voyages followed, including those of James Cook and explorers from other countries as well. Pitts searched out these first-hand observations as the most reliable accounts of island life and people.

• What happened to the people? - Pitts found records indicating the immediate influx of Peruvian slave traders who captured most of the population as slaves. A decade later when the Chilean government passed laws to stop this human trading and return captured islanders, the released captives brought back diseases which decimated the population even further. The arrival of Christian missionaries spread more disease, further diminishing the culture and population. Investors bought the abandoned homes and gardens of deceased islanders and turned it into sheep-grazing land, destroying cultural centers, farms, houses, and religious symbols. The island was "sold" by the Chilean government in 1897 to one man who turned all the land to sheep grazing. The population was rounded up and placed in a single large community behind walls and not allowed outside that compound. Only a hundred or so people survived in 1877, down from an estimated population of 6,000  only a decade ago.

• Who built the stone heads (moai) and why? - Although the earliest interviews with the islanders were recorded by the Routledges in 1910, the current people did not know the origin of the carvings and purpose even at that early date. Recent carbon dating puts the stone carving between 1200-1680CE. Pitts concludes that the slave trade removed the men who knew how to carve the statues, as well as those who understood the purpose and traditions the carvings represented. Recent archeological digs have uncovered human bones at the foot of these stone heads, indicating the giant heads might be grave markers and protectors of ancestors.

• How were the statues moved? - Almost 1,000 heads were found scattered all over the island. They must have been moved from the quarry to their varied locations. But this barren island never provided enough trees to use as rollers under the statues, a difficult undertaking with any trunks that were not perfectly cylindrical. Rope-walking the heads was also tricky as statues were likely to fall, unable to be raised again. Pitts tested and soon felt the answer was sleds made of palm fronds and a couple of trunks which could easily slide the heads into desired locations.

• What new research is there? - DNA and radiocarbon dating have become very sophisticated, allowing anthropologists and archeologists solid data on the age of the stone carvings, the tools used, the ancestral history of the surviving people through buried bones, and the beginning of understanding of the few pieces of writing and pictures found.

Each of Pitts' conclusions was reached after exhaustive research into ancient records and visits to Raga Nui himself. Interestingly, he located records from Katherine Routledge, (the first person to actually study the island and culture), including her diaries, maps, statue counts and descriptions, sketches of petroglyphs, and interviews with natives. These documents had long before been seized and suppressed by her husband, Scoresby, after he had her forcibly committed her to an asylum for her paranoid behavior. Pitts also visited and described what few artifacts exist in museums around the world, including several carved heads, some untranslated writing on wood planks, and a feathered helmet.

 

Sorry this review is so long, but it is a fascinating subject full of thorough research clearly presented to try to unlock the secrets of Rara Nui. Many of Pitts' findings counter Heyerdahl's and other popular theories, with Pitt feeling these accounts relied on unproved rumors and conjectures by the writers, and did much damage to the real story of these islanders by suppressing the cruel influence that Europeans had thrust upon them. 

 

So read or at least skim this book for what I consider the true history, culture, and fate of this most mysterious of isolated islands: Rara Nui, also known as Easter Island. 

   

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Heyerdahl, Thor. Easter Island: The Mystery Solved

Read Heyerdahl's own explanation of the history of Easter Island, the stone carvings, writings, and original settlers. He proposes very different answers to the questions raised about the island, its people, and carvings. (Note: Mike Pitts, in the above book, thinks Heyerdahl is mistaken in almost ever explanation he proposes, but it is interesting to contrast their research and conclusions.)  (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

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