The monumental statues of Easter Island, so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing
out in their imposing rows over the island's barren landscape, have been the
source of great mystery ever since first discovered by Europeans on Easter
Sunday 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land,
the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such
monumental works? No such astonishing numbers of massive statues are found
anywhere else in the Pacific. How could the islanders possibly have moved so
many multi-ton monoliths from the quarry inland, where they were carved, to
their posts along the coastline? And