The "moai ," or statues, have been provoking theories for centuries. But for every conjecture made by a well-meaning archeologist, it seems another falls. In 1955, Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian voyager and explorer, famously proposed that the Polynesians originated in the Andes, traveling by boats made of totora reeds growing in Lake Titicaca. The same reeds sprout from a crater lake on Easter Island -- perhaps they were imported by Andean settlers? Heyerdahl made important discoveries here, but his South American connection did not hold up under scrutiny.
For starters, DNA indicates the island was probably originally settled from the Marquesas Islands to the northwest sometime between 400 and 600 AD.
Plunged into the world of the Rapanui (people and culture of the island are a one-word term), I learned a lot. But four days later I left with more unanswered questions than I arrived with -- and a desire to return.
The islanders today refer to their home as Rapa Nui, not Easter Island (as Jacob Roggeveen, that first Dutch explorer, named it) nor Isla de Pascua (as its protectorate, Chile, calls it). The island is commonly referred to as the most isolated place on earth, a notion that only adds to its allure.
It was the iconic statues that I came to see, and it didn't take long for a face-to-face meeting. After a traditional lei greeting at the airport -- the garland made from maroon-colored bracts of bougainvillea -- and checking into my hotel in Hanga Roa , the island's one town, it was hard to hold back from a half-mile sprint to Tahai . Here, three "ahu," or ceremonial altars, support a series of moai, lined up with their backs to the sea.
To my surprise, every one of the stone faces was different in size and character. Stolid, stoic, cheerful, mournful, each possesses its own personality, some of it instilled by the original artist, some by the slow ravage s of erosion, some through "tattoos" of lichen and moss.
