• Welcome
• Technology
• Saginaw Manifold
• Enigmas
  • Observation Maps
  • Geologic
  • Silica
  • Cultural
    • Serpent Mound
    • Written & Oral
    • Easter Island
    • Building Sites
    • Pyramids
    • Stonehenge
    • Silbury Hill
    • Tell Hamoukar
    • Terra Preta
  • Earthen Burial
  • Fauna
• Reference
• Contact Us

Easter island

Google Search

http://www.alsindependence.com/Historical_Background_of_Easter_Island.htm

Although our knowledge of its events is mainly based on folk-traditions, which, as everywhere in the world are subject to embellishments and exaggerations by exuberant popular fantasy, we meet now more secure and concrete facts

Three different periods can be distinguished in this historical age,
The first period is that of colonization and begins with a Polynesian immigration conducted by Hotu Matua. According to an ancient tradition this immigration was the consequence of a cataclysm which occurred in the Pacific Ocean area, within the so-called Polynesian triangle. Land was submerged, people perished and King Hotu Matua emigrated from his homeland Hiva to this island which was called Te pito o te Henua - The Navel (Centre) of the Earth.

Folklore, always and everywhere, imaginatively attribute this destruction of land to Uoke, a mythical powerful being who submerged lands using a gigantic crowbar. This is a rather grotesque product of naive imagination, but I firmly believe that it has a historical background as popular legends and traditions have always a kernel of historical facts. I may add here that legend says that Easter Island was a much bigger land than it is now and that it has not disappeared altogether because Uoke's crow-bar broke into pieces on the northern coast near La Perouse Bay,

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/DP5/easter1.htm

According to legend, a powerful supernatural being named Uoke, who came from a land called Hiva, travelled about the Pacific prying up whole islands with a gigantic lever and tossing them into the sea where they vanished beneath the waves. After destroying many islands he came to the coast of Easter Island, then a much larger land than it is today, and began to lever up parts of it and cast them into the sea. Eventually he reached a place on the island where the rocks were so sturdy that his lever broke. He was unable to dispose of the last fragment, and this remained as the island we know today.

http://www.crystallotus.com/EasterIsland/02.htm

Legend says the island was given its present form when Uoke, a supernatural giant. He levered up the islands with a vast pole, it is said, and pitched them into the deep. But when he came to Te Pito o Te Henua the island at the centre of the world he found that one part of it was of a rock too hard for his pole. This triangular land formed by three volcanoes was left at the remotest eastern end of the Polynesian Islands, 1900 kilometres (1200 miles) beyond Pitcairn and 4000 kilometres (250() miles) from Peru.
Uoke is perhaps an expression of the destructive forces, typhoons, tidal waves and erupting volcanoes which beset the Polynesian people. The god who made the people themselves in the first place, known as Makemake in Easter Island, was a benevolent but surprisingly fallible deity.

http://www.rongorongo.org/leyendas/028.htm

Legends and Traditions of Easter Island
translated from Sebastian Englert's Leyendas

94, it is because of them that Uoke lifted [it] and this country became small.
94a.
94b landed near Te Rotomea, climbed [inland], stayed in Vai Marama95. The following month they climbed to Te Vare96.
97."

Ngata Vake and Te Ohiro					Told by Gabriel Veriveri
Ko Hogi Atua Kava A'Ure Aoviri i-vânaga-mai:		Hongi Atua Kava A'Ure Aoviri told me:
Kaiga nuinui te kaiga nei. Te ua i-itiiti-ai, Ko Uoke i-ketu hai akaûe, i-emu-ai i te kaiga.		This country was a big country. The reason why it has become small is Uoke, who lifted it with a lever, and sank it.
O te tagata kikino o Te Pito o te Henua, oíra i-ketu-ai Uoke ka-itiiti-ró te kaiga nei.		Because of the wicked people of Te Pito o te Henua
Mai Te Pito o te Henua i-ketu, i-oho-mai-ai, ka-tu'u-ró ki te tomoga o Gata Vake, ka-tu'u-ró ki Te Ohiro.		It is starting from Easter Island that he lifted [lands], coming from there, and arrived at the landing place of Gata Vake and at [that of] Te Ohiro
He-tomo a Te Rotomea, he-iri, he-noho i Vai Marama. I te rua o te marama i-iri-ai ki Te Vare.		[They]
I-ka-û'i-atu Ko Uoke e-ketu, e-oho-no-mai-á kî te henua, he-kî a Gata Vake ki a Te Ohiro: "He-emu te kaiga, ko ta'ûa te îka".		Seeing Uoke lifting [the islands], coming to the land, Ngata Vake said to Te Ohiro: "The country is sinking, we are doomed."
Ku-kî-ro-ai a Te Ohiro: "Ki tatá venavena-atu, he-tatá venavena".		[But] Te Ohiro had said [the magic words]: "Ki tata venavena-atu, he tata venavena
Ko Pukopuhipuhi i-hati-ai te akaûve a Uoke, ka-toe, inei te tomoga o Gata Vake.		Pukopuhipuhi is where Uoke's lever broke and remained, there at Ngata Vake's landing.