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Monday, Mar 15, 2004
easter services
"All those mysteries have spawned volumes of speculation for almost three centuries. Many Europeans were incredulous that Polynesians, "mere savages," could have constructed the statues or the beautiful stone platforms. The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's famous Kon-Tiki expedition and his other raft voyages aimed to prove the feasibility of transoceanic connections between Egypt's pyramids, the giant stone architecture of South America's Inca Empire, and Easter Island's statues. Going further, the Swiss writer Erich von Däniken claimed that the statues were the work of intelligent extraterrestrials who had ultramodern tools, became stranded on Easter, and were finally rescued. But the explanation that has now emerged attributes statue carving to the picks and other tools littering Rano Raraku rather than to hypothetical space implements, and to Easter's known Polynesian inhabitants rather than to Incas, Egyptians, or Martians. This story is as romantic and exciting as were postulated visits by Kon-Tiki rafts or extraterrestrials—and much more relevant to events now going on in the modern world."