Evening star., 1934-11-11

party of French Belgan-SwiSs scien-
lists has already landed. Americans
will arrive later. The men Of science
will climb grassy hillsdes of the island to peer
at hundreds of great stone faces that have
so far outsphvnxed the sphynx in determined
silence about the past.
In some long ago era Of hustling energy
Easter Islanders turned out statuary by the
ton. Using volcanic craters on the island as
quarries the people carved out heads and
torsos-little fellows feet high, big fellows
20, 80 feet. even one giant 10 feet tall. Both
men and women were portrayed.
They had pattern for their art, and they
stuck to it. The stone faces had to have long
noses, disianful mouths, jutting eyebrows.
In another quarry, workers ran stone hat
factory, hewing out red-tnted stone for top
hats to adorn the heads of gray stone giants
A red hat for a 30foot giant would weigh
fully three tons
When an image was finished, the workers
slid it down the hillside, and then somehow
pulled or pushed the statues-some weighed as
much 40 tons-to an appropriate site. All
the faces were made to turn inland, toward
the graves of Easter Islands dead
THE worlds strangest art gallery came TO
have more than 600 Of the images And
then one day the workers dropped their crude
stone tools in the workshops and never came
back Their masterpiece, a giant that would
have stood 70 feet tall, lies unfinished there
among other partly carved work to this day.
Every one who the images of the island,
or pictures of them, thinks of questions to
ask:
Were the images meant for idols or por-
traits of ancestors guardians of the dead?
Did important men get big statues and
plain citizens smaller statues?
he Tn
ness?
And who were these artists of forgotten
school of sculpture, anyway?
The last question can be answered, to an
extent. The others haven't been answered
yet, nor many more than you think of.
The natives of the island today of a
mixed type, some dark. some light. 1t Is
realized that the Pacific in prehistoric times
was ably navigated by Polynesians who could
make voyages of . thousand miles or so In
their large canoes. They had bamboo charts
on which they marked the courses of guiding
stars. So it is not hard to understand how
Easter Island could have been reached by ad
venturous expeditions, and settlement made
there.
The modern natives have traditions about
the stone figures and other island antiquities.
The memories have worn thin, and fact and
fiction are confused. But it is generally sup
posed that the ancestors of these natives
were indeed the possessors of Easter Islands
famous old culture.
Accepting that, however, does not begin to
solve the mystery. The problems that scien-
fists want to have explained are harder:
Did the first settlers come to the island from
South America, or from the west from other
islands? That is, was this island an offshoot
of Americas ancient history, perhaps linked
with the Indians of Peru, who adopts at
handling tons of stone? Or was the islands
past rooted in some Asiatic homeland?
And did the first settlers bring their uncanny
knowledge of stone work and other advanced
cultural ideas to the island? Or did they make
their own inventions on the spot after they
arrived?
If American anthropologist show
hov the giant statues and their makers At