Rate this book

The Statues That Walked: Unraveling The Mystery Of Easter Island (2011)

by Terry Hunt(Favorite Author)

3.74 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1439150311 (ISBN13: 9781439150313)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Free Press

review 1: Alternating between fascinating and mind-numbingly boring, Hunt’s position is fundamentally a contrarian one to the “ecocide” theory (espoused most famously by Jared Diamond) of Easter Island’s collapse. Hunt argues that the Rapa Nui people did not arrive on the island c. 500 AD and live in harmony with the island’s environment for 500+ years before cutting down all of the trees to use as rollers for the moai. Instead, he believes, based on some fairly compelling archaeological evidence, that the island was colonized much more recently than had been thought – roughly 1200 AD. He then asserts that the deforestation of the island proceeded very quickly from there – not as a result of the Rapa Nui people, but based on destruction wrought by Polynesian rats that ... morearrived with the people, most likely as food. Hunt argues that the rat population would have quickly exploded on the island, and that the rats would feed on the seeds of the native palm trees to the point of deforestation. As a result, the Rapa Nui had to quickly adopt new methods of cultivation that would allow them to subsist on a tree-less island. He thus believes that Easter Island’s barren landscape is not a warning of the dangers of ecocide but instead a monument to the ingenuity of the Rapa Nui people, who were able to carve an existence from the island’s infertile soil.Since the palm trees were largely killed off by rats, Hunt believes that the Rapa Nui people must have moved the moai to their ahus upright, similar to the way one moves a heavy refrigerator by rocking it back and forth. He discusses several theories about the specifics of this movement, but ultimately fails to make a strong endorsement of any one methodology, which I found a bit surprising given the title of his book. He then delves into an unnecessarily thorough discussion of the reasons for building the moai, most of which are rooted in some combination of evolutionary adaptation and game theory. In this section of the book, Hunt proves himself to be a classic academic, making the obvious and intuitive opaque and abstract. He then concludes with a blunt and horrifying history of the island since its discovery by Europeans, in which he argues that the collapse of the Rapa Nui society did not stem from ecocide but instead was the result of various atrocities – disease, slavery, forced emigration, etc. – wrought by outsiders. In short, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Easter Island, as it presents a vantage point different from the currently predominant view of the island’s history. I would, however, recommend skipping some of the drier sections.
review 2: Two scholars who have done years of fieldwork on Easter Island have co-written this engaging and mostly satisfying study of the history of Easter Island and its magnificent statues. Plenty of maps and pictures keep the text lively and keep you focused on the island's central mystery: how the hell did people on that tiny, godforsaken island create and move all those hundreds of giant statues centuries ago?Hunt and Lipo have done a lot of research and a lot of digging, and they have created a compelling narrative explanation for most of the mystery. The least plausible part of their argument was a laughable digression into game theory that should have been omitted from this otherwise evidence-based argument. Still, though, this was a great read for anyone interested in one of the world's enduring mysteries. less

Download links for: The Statues that Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island

Advertising