Taking on Easter Island

The writer of this piece is exactly right. I best know the massive head statues of Easter Island from the program In Search of, by Leonard Nimoy. To me the heads are kind of the equivalent of several classical music compositions which, when I hear their familiar notes, think only of various Bugs Bunny cartoons (if only Wagner had thought to write Kill the Wabbit! into his libretto, his music might have been popular among children a whole lot earlier). Well, I have learned a bit more about Easter Island now that I have read this article from Stellar Magazine.

I have learned that the island is too large to travel by foot, and that music and dancing are a major aspect of island life. I have learned that there are more than 2000 of these heads, or moals, scattered around the island, and that these moals likely reflect the growing problems that the people of this island faced as they cut down its trees and depleted its resources. That is, as the island's resources dwindled, the people built the moals larger and larger, hoping, one would think, to gain the succor of the gods. Or maybe the gods were pissed because these people were obviously insinuating they had big heads…OK, then, forget them! And so the population starved and many died and some left for other distant places and all was not well with the people of Easter Island. Don't believe me? Just ask Leonard Nimoy.

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