From the S&S archives: An archeological pilgrimage to Easter Island

IMAGINE A LITTLE volcanic island about the size of Nantucket studded with 600 giant stone figures, all with the same brooding, sightless face. That's Easter Island the South Pacific, so called because it was first seen by a white man, a Dutch navigator named Roggeveen, on Easter Sunday, 1722.

Ever since its discovery, the great stone figures of Easter Island have been one of world's unsolved riddles. Who made the stone men and how were they transported and lifted up on stone platforms?

Two years ago the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who in 1947 drifted on his balsa raft Kon-Tiki from Peru to the South Seas to prove that Peruvian Indians could have done likewise and settled Polynesia, set sail for Easter Island. This time he sailed in a sturdy trawler with four archeologists, three of them American.

The archeologists were Dr. Edwin Ferdon, of the Museum of New Mexico; Dr. Carlyle S. Smith, University of Kansas; Dr. William Mulloy, University of Wyoming, and Arne Skjolsvold, University of Oslo, Norway.

Heyerdahl wanted to try to crack the island mystery, which he felt would yield further evidence for his theories about early migration, since the Easter Island stone men resemble statues found in Mexico, Central America and along the west coast of South America.

He spent six months on the :island during an expedition that lasted a year. Next year he will publish a full scientific report on his findings. Meanwhile, for the general public, he has written a thrilling tale of his adventures and discoveries, as exciting .as a whodunit, under the title "Aku-Aku." Just published in Germany and other European countries, an English translation is scheduled for U.S. publication next April.

The 43-year-old Heyerdahl flew into Frankfurt the other day just before the German edition by Ullstein appeared.

"The most important thing about my book is the title," Heyerdahl said. "Aku-Aku is the name of the most important deity on that mysterious little island, a guardian spirit. I was given a little stone aku-aku by a native. Through it I discovered secrets even the natives themselves never knew about.

"Easter is the loneliest island in the world, about 2,400 miles west of Chile, which annexed it in 1888, and 1,300 miles east of its nearest neighbor, Pitcairn of `Mutiny on the Bounty' fame, where we also stopped."

Easter Island is now inhabited by about 850 Polynesians and a handful of whites, including the Chilean governor, Capt Arnaldo Curti, Father Sebastian Englert, known as the island's uncrowned king, and a doctor, according to Heyerdahl. A Chilean ship brings mail and supplies once a year.

His party was the first to do any excavating because it had been believed the treeless island had no soil. Heyerdahl, however, found sand had blown over from the mountains so he had about 100 natives dig through it around the island during their stay, the longest made by any ship.

Stone figures, of which only heads and shoulders were visible, were uncovered to full length after being buried for centuries. The heads have elongated ears, which, Heyerdahl said, seemed to confirm an old Easter Island legend that it once had two tribes, the long ears and the short ears, and that the short ears killed off all the long ears except one. The stone men, presumably carved out of the soft volcanic rock by the long ears, were toppled by the victorious short ears.

Heyerdahl was able to locate descendants of the long ears, among them the island's mayor, and he had them start to carve a new stone figure in the old manner, using stone implements, many of which were found in the quarries beside half-finished statues. The work wasn't completed, but Heyerdahl estimated it would take a year to make a single stone giant.

The natives also showed "Senor Kon-Tiki," as they called the explorer; how the stone figures had beep transported and raised on a ceremonial platform. By means of tree trunks, crude hemp rope and stones, 180 natives moved a colossus weighing 30 tons a distance of 12 feet and raised it more than 10 feet onto a stone base.

"Natives began coming into my tent in the middle of night with gifts of objects carved from stone," Heyerdahl said. "Later I found these stone carvings came from secret caves which belonged to various families on the island. We were taken into the caves in elaborate nocturnal ceremonial rituals. The cave was entered with a secret key, a stone skull with a hole in the forehead, which was filled with powdered human bones."

Heyerdahl said he brought back about 1,000 carved figures from Easter Island found in the caves and elsewhere.

Before the Heyerdahl expedition, scientists had believed Easter Island had first been settled about five centuries ago.

"We have conclusive evidence that people were on the island as early as the year 400 A.D., 1,000 years earlier than originally believed," Heyerdahl said. "We also believe that work on the stone giants finally stopped about 1500."