I'm not sure how reliable these links are, but I'm starting to get an interesting picture in my head, of an island that could have had a very long history.
http://www.crystalinks.com/easterisland.html
This seems to indicate three ethnicities. Is it possible that maybe three different cultures might have separately, and independently discovered the island at three different times, and stayed around and had children?Originally Posted by Crystalinks
This sounds a lot like what happened in the Americas between the Aztecs and the Spanish. A slightly more advanced culture comes along, discovers a weaker culture, and conquers them. Only, in the case of Easter Island, the arriving culture probably wasn't able to maintain contact with their motherland.Ron Fisher in his work Easter Island Brooding Sentinels of Stone, mentions as one explanation for the statues that "two classes of people, the-so-called Long Ears and Short Ears, lived on the island. The Short Ears were enslaved by the Long Ears, who forced the Short Ears to carve the Moai. After many generations and during a rebellion, the Short Ears surprised the Long Ears killing them all, which explains the abrupt end of the statue-carving.
While the Mutineers of the H.M.S. Bounty didn't land on Easter Island specifically, I think this goes to show that all it takes is one errant vessel and you can get a new ethnic group started.The inhabitants of this charming and mysterious place called their land: Te Pito o TeHenua, 'the navel of the world.'
It sits in the South Pacific Ocean 2,300 miles west of South America, 2,500 miles southeast of Tahiti, 4,300 miles south of Hawaii, 3,700 miles north of Antarctica. The closest other inhabited island is 1,260 miles away - tiny Pitcairn Island where the mutineers of the H.M.S. Bounty settled in 1790.
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http://www.sacredsites.com/americas/...er_island.html
I'm wondering why we should believe those 100 colonists really found the island uninhabited? American history shows us pretty plainly that you can "colonize" a place even if it's already occupied, as long as you have the weapons and skills necessary to push out the existing population.Originally Posted by Sacredsites
On the other hand, they probably draw this conclusion on the basis of searching for human remains from earlier times and not finding any, so maybe the other 2 ethnicities arrived later?