Easter Island, a volcanic island in the South Pacific, is the site of a great mystery. Over 600 enormous stone heads, 2,000 years old, each carved from a solid piece of rock and with identical faces, stand over all the island. They rise from 10 to 40 feet above the surface and weigh up to 70 tons each. None of these heads has eyes, and none is complete.
Ancient people who lived on the island left tools scattered around the partly finished figures, but archeologists have no explanation why work was stopped suddenly and why it was never continued. Also, how could the island’s inhabitants of 2,000 years ago have moved the heavy stones from the island’s stone quarry 10 miles away? And what did the figures represent?
Island legends tell of wars in 400 A.D. between the original inhabitants who came from Peru and invaders from other South Sea islands. The natives, who were the statue builders, were called the long-ears and the invaders, the short-ears.
Since the short-eared winners of those wars did not know how to carve statues and were unable to unlock the secrets found on wooden tablets written in a strange script, archeologists believe that the statues were the work of the long-ears. But who they were and how they got to this island 2,500 miles away from South America still remains a mystery!
