Greek experts to excavate Alexander's colony in Kuwait

Greek archaeologists plan to excavate an ancient colony founded by Alexander the Great in the Gulf of Kuwait in the fourth century BC, officials said Wednesday.

"The site on Failaka Island is of particular importance to [Greece] as it was founded by Macedonians and other Greeks on Alexander the Great's expeditionary force," said culture ministry general secretary Christos Zahopoulos.

The agreement between Greece and Kuwait signed in July will enable the Greek team to excavate the ancient town of Icarus on the island, organize the site, and restore its finds, the ministry said in a statement.

The Greek mission's departure date was not announced.

Prior excavation on Failaka Island by French archaeologists has partially unearthed the Greek outpost, believed to have been created by forces under the command of Alexander's admiral Nearchus in the fourth century BC.

A temple to Artemis, the ancient Greek goddess of hunting, has been found on the site along with Greek coins, idols, vessels, and an inscription bearing 43 verses in Greek, Zahopoulos said.

The inscription sustained damage in the Iraqi invasion of 1991, which also forced the evacuation of Failaka's inhabitants.

Archaeologists from Denmark, the US, Italy, and Slovakia have also worked on the now-deserted island, whose name is believed to be descended from 'fylakio,' the Greek word for outpost.

The ruler of the ancient kingdom of Macedon, based in modern-day northern Greece, Alexander the Great created through conquest an empire stretching into modern-day India and Egypt.

Source: http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070801-021350-9158r

Nearchus (c.360-c.300): admiral of Alexander the Great, famous for his exploration of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.

Nearchus was born on Crete, but his father Androtimus moved to Amphipolis in Macedonia; here, Nearchus grew up. Androtimus must have been an important man, because his son was educated together with the crown prince, Alexander, the son of king Philip of Macedonia (356-336). At some point in around 337, probably as a result of the Pixodarus affair, Nearchus was banished by Philip. He shared his exile with Ptolemy, Harpalus, Erigyius and Laomedon. It is likely that they remained in exile until after Alexander's accession in 336.

When Alexander invaded Asia in May 334, Nearchus was with him, and at the beginning of the next year, he was appointed as satrap of Lycia and Pamphylia. This meant that Nearchus was responsible for the ports in southern Turkey; as long he held them, the Persian navy was forced to sail from Cyprus to the Aegean Sea through open waters, which was very risky. He did his job well: during 333, the Persian commanders Memnon of Rhodes and Pharnabazus were active in the Aegean waters, but they received no reinforcements. A town that revolted, Telmessus in Lycia, was reduced without much violence.

Meanwhile, the naval war ended when Alexander conquered Phoenicia, the Persian naval base. He went on to Egypt and Babylonia, took the Persian capitals of Susa, Persepolis, Pasargadae and Ecbatana, pursued the defeated Persian king Darius III Codomannus and went on to the northeastern provinces of the former Achaemenid empire, Bactria and Sogdia.

It was at this stage of the war, in the first months of 329, that Alexander recalled Nearchus, who was to come to the east bringing reinforcements of Greek mercenaries. The former satrap of Lycia and Pamphylia shared this command with Asander, who had been satrap of Lydia. It is likely that Nearchus was surprised to see how his youth friend had changed: he was now calling himself Son of Zeus and King of Asia, and wore a diadem and the Persian royal tunic.

We do not know what Nearchus did during the Sogdian campaign; during the invasion of India (327/326), however, he was one of the two commanders of the Shield bearers, a heavy infantry unit. He was almost immediately replaced by Seleucus, who commanded these men during the battle on the Hydaspes (May).

Although they were victorious, the Macedonian and Greek soldiers refused to go any further and Alexander decided to return to Babylonia. He ordered the construction of a large fleet, which was to be commanded by Nearchus. The voyage down the Indus lasted from November 326 to July 325. It was not an easy cruise: several times, the Macedonians had to fight their way past resisting native towns. Finally, the reached Patala (Old Indian for 'camp for ships'), modern Bahmanabad, 75 kilometers north-east of Hyderabad.

Not all soldiers continued to the Ocean. The army was too big to remain united. In June, general Craterus had already left the main force and had gone to Carmania with a third of the soldiers. In August, Alexander and three quarters of what remained of the army set out for a long and difficult march through the Gedrosian desert. Nearchus was to ship the remaining quarter of the soldiers, 17,000 - 20,000 men, to Carmania and Babylonia. He was not the first westerner to make the expedition: one Scylax of Caryanda had made the same voyage in the late sixth century BCE.

Later, Nearchus wrote a book about the naval expedition, which was also to be a voyage of discovery. The Indikê is now lost, but its contents are well-known from several sources, especially the Indikê by Arrian of Nicomedia. It seems to have consisted of two parts: the first half contained a description of India's borders, size, rivers, population, castes, animals -especially elephants-, armies and customs; the second half described Nearchus' voyage home.

On 15 September, Nearchus' set out from Patala, having waited for the Southwest monsoon to subside. It is not easy to reconstruct the voyage in detail, because it was impossible for the ancients to measure distances at sea; all Nearchus' indications of distance are, therefore, merely guesswork and can hardly be relied upon to reconstruct his expedition. Nonetheless, the information in the Indikê is sufficient to have a general idea of the route and the troubles encountered. (All places mentioned below can be found in The Times Atlas of the World.)

Almost immediately after leaving Patala, it was clear that the Macedonian fleet had set out too soon. (Perhaps the native population had forced Nearchus to leave earlier than he wanted to.) The ships encountered adverse winds and it took them almost a week to reach Ocean. Then, they headed for the North, through the lagoon between the mouths of the rivers Indus and Hab. This was easier, but when they turned to the East, the renewed Southwest monsoon proved too strong to continue. The Macedonians had to wait and fortified their camp with a wall of stone, fearing enemy attacks. They soon discovered that their supplies were running out. They were forced to hunt for mussels, oysters, and razor-fish and had to drink briny water.

They remained there for twenty-four days, but were eventually able to continue and after several days reached a place called Morontobara or Woman's Harbor (modern Karachi) and reached the mouth of the Hab. They continued along the coast through the Sonmiani Bay. One night, they camped on the battlefield where Leonnatus, one of Alexander's generals, had defeated the native population, the Oreitans ('Mountain people'). He had left a large food deposit for Nearchus' men - enough for ten days.

With the wind behind them and sufficient supplies, they were able to speed up their journey and reached the Hingol river. At this point, the Indikê describes how a native village was destroyed and its inhabitants were killed (text). It is remarkable that the author (Arrian/Nearchus) makes no attempt to justify the attack.

Continuing their voyage, Nearchus and his men arrived in the country of the Fish eaters. (It was a common practice among the Greeks to describe people not by their own name, but by one of their most remarkable customs.) These were very poor people living on the sandy strip of land between the Ocean and the Gedrosian desert, and the Macedonians had big difficulties finding supplies. Fortunately, they found an excellent harbor, called Bagisara (modern Ormara).

The next stage of the voyage is well-understood: they put in at Colta (Ras Sakani), Calima (Kalat) and an island called Carnine (Astola), where, according to Nearchus, even the mutton had a fishy taste. They continued and passed Cysa (near Pasni) and Mosarna (near Ras Shahid). Here, a Gedrosian pilot joined them, who led them in two days to modern Gwadar, where they were delighted to see date-palms and gardens. Three days later, Nearchus' men surprised Cyisa, a town near modern Châh Bahâr and took away its supplies. Next, they anchored near a promontory dedicated to the Sun, called Bageia ('dwelling of the gods') by the natives; it is probably identical to Ra's Kûh Lab.

From now on, the Macedonians were really hungry, and they must have been happy to see that they could cover large distances. The places that Nearchus mentions in his account of the voyage (Talmena, Canasis, Canate, Taa, Dagaseira) can not be identified, although it is plausible that the last mentioned town is modern Jâsk.

Now Nearchus had reached Carmania and was approaching the Straits of Hormuz. In the Indikê, he notes that the country produced corn, vines and many cultivated trees, except the olive tree that the Greeks loved so much. The sailors saw the Oman peninsula, and Nearchus describes how the helmsman of the flagship, Onesicritus, said that they should go over there, and that Nearchus replied that he did not want to expose the fleet to new dangers (text).

Nearchus describes Onesicritus as a fool and also mentions that Onesicritus had (later) falsely claimed to have been the fleet-commander. Most scholars accept Nearchus words, but there may be more to it than meets they eyes. Alexander had started to give important commands to two people at the same time, who had to act as colleagues (e.g., Nearchus had shared the command of Alexander's Greek mercenaries with Asander and had been in charge of the Shield bearers with one Antiochus). It is possible that Onesicritus was not just the helmsman of the flagship, but Nearchus' equal, and it is also possible that Alexander had ordered his navy to conquer the Oman peninsula, which was a Persian satrapy, Maka. Perhaps we should not believe Nearchus' own words.

Two days later, the Macedonian navy reached Harmozeia (modern Mînâb), one of the largest ports in the Persian Gulf. Here they had a rendez-vous with Alexander, who had marched through the Gedrosian desert (text). Nearchus had believed Alexander was lost and Alexander had believed that he had lost his navy, so it was a happy encounter.

It was January 324 when the Macedonian fleet continued its voyage along the coasts of Carmania and Persis. But now, they were traveling along familiar shores and made progress. Among the identifiable places they visited are the island Qeshm, Cape Ra's-e Bostâneh, the island Queys, Band-e Nakhîlû, the island Lâzeh (where they watched pearl divers), the Bandar-e Shîû promontory, Nây Band, Kangan, the river Mand, Bûsher, the river Dasht-e Palang, Jazireh-ye Shîf and the river Hendîyan, which is the border of Persis and Susiana. Here, the ships could no longer continue along the coast because of the breakers. However, they finally reached the mouth of the Tigris safely.

When Nearchus heard that Alexander was approaching from the east, he decided to wait for his king at Susa, the capital of Susiana. Here, Alexander celebrated the homecoming of his army and navy. Nearchus, Onesicritus and several others received a golden diadem as a reward for their deeds.

It was Alexander's wish that his friends, and then other Macedonians, should marry native women; therefore, Nearchus married to a daughter of Alexander's Persian mistress Barsine. It is not known whether they had children, but it is notable that during the conflicts after Alexander's death, Nearchus backed Heracles, the son of Alexander and Barsine, and stayed with his wife. He might not have discarded his wife, at least not immediately, as most of the other Macedonians appear to have done.

In the last months of Alexander's life, Nearchus was usually with him, which may have something to do with the fact that Alexander was making plans for a naval expedition against the Arabs of modern Yemen. However, Alexander died on 11 June 323, in Babylon. This was the beginning of the era of Alexander's successors, the Diadochi.

In the argument over the succession, Nearchus backed his wife's half-brother, Heracles, but the boy and Barsine were probably killed by Polyperchon, one of the generals fighting for a share of Alexander's inheritance (309). Nearchus spent some time with another general, Antigonus Monophthalmus, and educated his son Demetrius. When Demetrius had his first independent command in a war against Ptolemy, Nearchus assisted him. The two were defeated near Gaza (312).

Nearchus' year of death is unknown.

Ancient mariner tools found near Cyprus

AKAMAS, Cyprus — Archaeologists excavating the seabed off Cyprus have discovered the tools of ancient mariners, which they believe were used by foragers more than 10,000 years ago — before the island had permanent settlements.

The underwater discovery of what archaeologists said were the oldest materials recovered off the island's coast could shed fresh light on the early history of Cyprus and Mediterranean seafaring.

Earlier this month, divers located the pre-Neolithic finds — chipped stone tools and ground stone implements — in several areas off the western coast, near Aspros, an archaeological site discovered in 2004.

The most significant finds were located in water about 33 feet deep and about 330 feet offshore.

"These are the people who are the pioneers; without their knowledge people who came later maybe would not have had it that good," said Colgate University's Albert J. Ammerman, the survey's director.

Archaeologists say the new discoveries indicate that ancient Aspros was much larger than the landward section visible today. The Aspros site, discovered in 2004, now extends more than 820 feet along the top of a cliff on the north side of the dry Aspros River bed, the archaeologists said.

"All of what we see on the land is just a tip of the iceberg of what is in the water," said Ammerman, whose underwater survey was carried out by nine divers from Cyprus and the U.S.

Aspros, along with a similar site also discovered in 2004 at the tourist resort of Agia Napa in southeastern Cyprus, lies on a coastal formation of aeolianite — old cemented sand dunes.

The archaeologists believe that tools found at the two sites were used by seafaring foragers who frequented the island well over 10,000 years ago — before the first permanent settlers arrived around 8,200 B.C.

They are thought to have sailed from present-day Syria and Turkey, at least 46 miles north and east of the island.

The dawn of seafaring in the region has been put at around 9,500 B.C. from evidence found 20 years ago at Aetokremnos, on Cyprus' southern Akrotiri peninsula.

The finds indicate these early wanderers traveled more widely, and more frequently, than was previously believed, outside experts say.

"This just shows there is a lot more activity than was originally thought," said Tom Davis, an archaeologist and director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, who not involved in Ammerman's study. "We're looking at repeated visits around the island."

"These would be people stopping deliberately, coming to the island to use resources, setting themselves with a clear understanding of the landscape," Davis said.

The tools found at Aspros and Ayia Napa are similar to those found at Akrotiri, though precise dating must still be verified through radiocarbon tests, which are in progress.

The era in question coincided with a climatic cold snap known as the Younger Dryas — dated roughly 11,600-12,800 years ago — when the sea level was some 200-230 feet lower.

Rising seas subsequently submerged much of the ancient coast.

By GEORGE PSYLLIDES Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4982448.html

List of Hittite Kings

Old Kingdom

Labarna	–1650
Hattusili I	1650–1620	(grandson?)
Mursili I	1620–1590	(grandson,adopted son)
Hantili I	1590–1560	(brother-in-law)
Zidanta I		(son-in-law)
Ammuna	1560–1525	(son)
Huzziya I		(brother of Ammuna’s daughter- in-law)
Telipinu	1525–1500	(brother-in-law)
Alluwamna		(son-in-law)
Tahurwaili		(interloper)
Hantili II		(son of Alluwamna?)
Zidanta II	1500–1400	(son?)
Huzziya II		(son?)
Muwatalli I		(interloper)

New Kingdom

Tudhaliya I/II		(grandson of Huzziya II?)
Arnuwanda I	1400–1360a	(son-in-law, adopted son)
Hattusili II?		(son?)
Tudhaliya III	1360–1344	(son?)
Suppiluliuma I	1344–1322	(son)
Arnuwanda II	1322–1321	(son)
Mursili II	1321–1295	(brother)
Muwatalli II	1295–1272	(son)
Urhi-Tesub	1272–1267	(son)
Hattusili III	1267–1237	(uncle)
Tudhaliya IV	1237–1228	(son)
Kurunta	1228–1227	(cousin)
Tudhaliya IVb	1227–1209	(cousin)
Arnuwanda III	1209–1207	(son)
Suppiluliuma II	1207–	(brother)

Note: All dates are approximate.When it is impossible to suggest even approximate dates for the individual reigns of two or more kings in sequence,the period covered by the sequence is roughly calculated on the basis of 20 years per reign.While obviously some reigns were longer than this, and some shorter, the averaging out of these reigns probably produces a result with a reasonably small margin of error.

a Includes period of coregency

b 2nd period as king

Source: T.Bryce " Life and Society in the Hittite World" (2002)

Ancient Massacre Discovered in New Mexico -- Was It Genocide?

Seven skeletons discovered in a remote New Mexico canyon were victims of a brutal massacre that may have been part of an ancient campaign of genocide, archaeologists say. The victims—five adults, one child, and one infant—were members of an obscure native culture known as the Gallina, which occupied a small region of northwestern New Mexico around A.D. 1100.
The culture suddenly vanished around 1275, as the last of its members either left the region or were "wiped out," archaeologists say.

The newfound skeletons could provide crucial clues to the people's mysterious fate, since scarcely more than a hundred Gallina remains have ever been found, said Tony Largaespada, an archaeologist with the U.S. Forest Service who made the discovery in 2005.

"Almost all of [the Gallina ever found] were murdered," he said. "[Someone] was just killing them, case after case, every single time."

Greg Nelson, a physical anthropologist at the University of Oregon, studied the newly unearthed skeletons and said they paint a macabre picture of violence inflicted on both sexes and all age groups.

"It's pretty obvious that they were killed—they're people who were wiped out," he said."

One skeleton was found with a fractured skull, forearm, jaw, thighbone, and pelvis, and several broken ribs, Nelson said. Another bore cut marks on the upper arm that suggest blows from an ax. The child, about two years old, had had its skull crushed .

The findings are grimly consistent with previous reports from other Gallina sites, the pair said. But the new skeletons offer tantalizing signs of how unique the culture may have been.

In particular, the skulls of two of the victims have an "unusual" flattened shape that has never been seen before in the Southwest, the experts said.

Such signs of a distinctive culture may help explain why the group was so plagued by violent conflicts with neighboring groups. But the scientists stress that their research is ongoing, and the ancient murders remain unsolved for now.

"We just don't know right now," Nelson said. "The evidence indicates that somebody was going through and killing them. Why and to what extent? We're not sure."

Among the other peculiarities of the murder scene is the arrangement of two of the bodies, the scientists said.

The victims, an adult male and female, were found face down and doubled over, their heads snapped back so far that their skulls rested between their shoulder blades .

The bodies may have been deliberately posed, or the victims may have been crouching in defense when their necks were broken, Nelson noted.

But none of the seven dead appears to have been buried, suggesting that the group was struck by a swift attack.

"Normally when you bury people, you extend them, you flex them, you do these kinds of things—you don't bury them on their knees with their heads snapped back," he said. "So right away you know something screwy is going on."

Other evidence includes what appear to be the ruins of a burned pit house, or dugout dwelling, nearby.

"Why these [victims] were outside the house is kind of a mystery," Largaespada said. "Usually [attackers] threw [Gallina victims] in their houses and burned the houses on top of them. That's the case with 90 percent of them.

"But in this particular case they were thrown in a pile outside the house. … More than likely there are others [nearby]."

Largaespada discovered the grisly scene in October 2005 when he and a team were reburying a Gallina skeleton that had been in storage at his Forest Service office in the town of Jemez Springs.

When he arrived at the site where the bones were originally excavated, he saw evidence of other bodies eroding out of the road bank.

"So we set up our unit and [dug] down, and the first thing we saw was two skulls. Then it was three individuals. Then we found the baby. And it just kept multiplying from there."

Summer rains in May 2006 ended the dig, which the Forest Service had authorized as a small-scale emergency excavation.

Largaespada and Nelson are awaiting funding to continue their investigation of the site, as well as other unexcavated Gallina ruins nearby, which they say are probably plentiful along the rocky ridges of northern New Mexico.

"I bet there's a house on every one of these peaks around here," Largaespada said.

Was It Genocide?

Traces of the Gallina culture were first discovered in the 1930s by archaeologists working just a few miles from the newfound massacre site.

Scientists at the time described excavating a 25-foot-tall (7.6-meter-tall) circular stone tower that held the remains of 16 people, all of whom bore signs of gruesome deaths

Since then several Gallina sites have been excavated, but scholarship on the culture's origins and demise have been limited, Nelson noted.

"Because not much has been done for a long time, it's almost like a whole debate should be renewed—where they came from, what happened to them," he said.

The duo reported their discovery this spring at meetings of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and the Paleopathology Association.

In their study, they write that the culture's disappearance was "possibly the result of genocide," reflecting the prevailing theory of the Gallina's demise, they said.

But whether the Gallina were the victims of true genocide—the extermination of one ethnic group by another—is a matter of debate, the scientists said.

"It could've been internecine—it could've been within the Gallina," Nelson said.

A crucial factor, he explained, is the severe drought that struck the Southwest soon after the culture's appearance around A.D. 1100.

"Beginning 1100, 1150, you start getting real drought conditions, and the water table starts dropping. That means you're not able to grow as much corn. So there's a chance that this is [a sign of] intervillage resource-stress problems."

This "megadrought" is also known to have spurred mass migrations throughout the region, including the abandonment of massive settlements built by the Anasazi, such as the sophisticated pueblos at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

With such dire competition for water and land, the Gallina may have been particularly vulnerable if they were seen as outsiders with their own, isolated culture, the researchers speculated.

"Look at it from this perspective," Nelson said. "If you live in the area, you're growing your corn, and new people come in.

"Then the environment goes down the tubes. Let's blame the new people. We don't know you. Maybe you speak a different dialect. And we can't grow our corn anymore. You must be witches, so we're just going to kill you."

Mystery of Deformed Skulls

Heather Edgar is a curator at Albuquerque's Maxwell Museum of Anthropology who has inspected the newfound skeletons.

She says perhaps the most distinct clues revealed by the new discovery are the two deformed skulls that Nelson first observed.

"It's not just him that sees [the deformation]," she said. "It's there."

The skulls are flattened on the back, just below the crown, Nelson explained. The deformation must have occurred during infancy, when the victims' skull bones were soft and malleable.

Both Nelson and Edgar said it's too soon to determine whether the deformations were intentional or merely the result of cradleboarding, the practice of carrying babies on boards strapped to mothers' backs.

"I could think of ways it could have been accidentally made, and I could think of ways it could have been purposely made, but the flattening is there," she said.

Edgar added that the duo's ongoing investigation of the massacre may provide the evidence needed to finally solve the mystery of the Gallina.

"I think the Gallina are an important point in the history of the area," she said. "Where did they come from, and where did they go?"

"Specifically the information that [Nelson and Largaespada] are working on is, where did they go?

"Did [the Gallina] contribute to a population that's alive today, and we're just aren't aware of that? Or did they just move to another region? And there are theories out there that they were all massacred.

"Maybe the work they're doing can help figure that out."

By Blake de Pastino in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.

Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070712-chaco-massacre.html

IMPORTANT BREAKTHROUGH IN BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

An expert working at the British Museum has confirmed the existence of an important Biblical figure after deciphering a cuneiform inscription on a small Babylonian clay tablet.
Austrian Assyriologist Dr Michael Jursa made the breakthrough discovery confirming the existence of a Babylonian official mentioned in the Old Testament and connected to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar.
The clay document is dated to the 10th year of Nebuchadnezzar II (595 BC) and names the official, Nebo-Sarsekim. According to chapter 39 of the Book of Jeremiah, he was present at the siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC with Nebuchadnezzar himself.
In 601 BC King Nebuchadnezzar marched to the Egyptian frontier where the Babylonian and Egyptian armies clashed with both sides suffering heavy losses. Over the next few years the struggle between the Babylonians and Egyptians continued and in the course of these campaigns Jerusalem was captured (597 BC).
To find a cuneiform reference to someone connected with these remarkable times is rare but evidence from non-Biblical sources for the existence of any individual named in the Bible - other than kings - is incredibly rare.

Nebo-Sarsekim is described in the book of Jeremiah as ‘chief eunuch’ (as the title is now translated, rather than ‘chief officer’). Dr Jursa’s translation of the Babylonian tablet proves that his name was really pronounced as Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, and gives the same title, ‘chief eunuch’, in cuneiform script, thereby confirming the accuracy of the Biblical account.
“Reading Babylonian tablets is often laborious, but also very satisfying: there is so much new information yet to be discovered,” said Dr Jursa, who is Associate Professor at the University of Vienna.
“But finding something like this tablet, where we see a person mentioned in the Bible making an everyday payment to the temple in Babylon and quoting the exact date is quite extraordinary.”
Dr Jursa has been studying cuneiform at the British Museum since 1991. It is the oldest form of writing known to us and was commonly used in the Middle East between 3200 BC and the second century AD.
Today there are only a small number of scholars worldwide who can read cuneiform script, which was created by pressing a wedged-shaped instrument (usually a cut reed) into moist clay.

Source: http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART48827.html

Easter Island's ancient statues

The giant stone statues of Easter Island have perplexed generations of archaeologists, engineers and scholars. Ever since European explorers first set eyes on them three centuries ago these carvings have presented a problem. How could the island's primitive inhabitants have erected such massive edifices – each weighing many tons – without the help of wheels, cranes, machines, metal tools or draft animals? The very existence of these giant heads on a barren outcrop of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean seemed to defy reason, if not the laws of physics.
The author Erich von Däniken suggested that the statues were the work of extraterrestrial beings who, after being stranded on Easter Island, decided to do a little stonework before eventually being rescued. It was hard to believe that the stones were the work of humans, especially ones who had to survive in the treeless landscape of Easter Island, which lies more than 2,000 miles from the nearest mainland.
Jacob Roggeveen, the Dutch seaman who gave the island its name when he spotted it on Easter Day in 1722, was amazed by the statues. "The stone images at first caused us to be struck with astonishment, because we could not comprehend how it was possible that these people, who are devoid of heavy thick timber for making any machines, as well as strong ropes, nevertheless had been able to erect such images, which were fully 30ft high and thick in proportion," Roggeveen wrote in his journal.
He was equally amazed as to how the Easter islanders could have come to colonise such a remote place in the middle of a vast ocean. Their canoes were leaky and frail, made of small planks and light inner timbers stitched together by fine, twisted threads. They were not the sort of heavy ocean-going craft that could survive a three-week journey over open sea. Much bigger timbers bound with heavy ropes were needed for that.
Yet there were no trees, no timber and no ropes to be seen. Easter Island seemed to be a place of "singular poverty and barrenness", Roggeveen wrote.
However, we now know that Easter Island was once a lush, sub-tropical paradise covered in thick forest filled with a rich assortment of wildlife. But the trees and forest animals were long gone by the time Roggeveen had arrived. The question is why?
This Saturday the giant statues, or "moai", could be voted one of the new seven wonders of the world in a global competition. At least 50 million people have taken part in the attempt to comprise a 21st-century list of man-made heritage sites. The seven winners from the 20 entries will be announced in Lisbon at the end of the week.
The moai stones lie at the heart of the many mysteries of Easter Island. But trying to explain the puzzle has caused a deep fissure within academia. Some archaeologists see Easter Island as an example of what can happen when the lust for material splendour – ever bigger stone carvings in this case – is satisfied at the expense of the environment.
Others, meanwhile, take a different view. They see Easter Island as another victim of European colonialism that killed off an ancient culture. The island, these scholars argue, suffered at the hands of introduced diseases, notably smallpox, and a slave trade that stole a huge proportion of its indigenous population.
At the heart of the debate is the issue of the island's deforestation. There is no dispute that the island was once covered in huge palm trees. There is also no dispute that something happened that caused the island to become completely denuded over a short period of time. But was it the islanders who triggered this environmental degradation, or some other event beyond their control such as climate change or the introduction of rats?
In his 2005 book Collapse, author Jared Diamond explains why it was the islanders' fault. Diamond says they started to build bigger and bigger ceremonial statues in an atmosphere of competitive rivalry between the island's many different clans. To move the statues from the island's quarry, Rano Raraku, in the south-east, the islanders needed to cut large logs for the construction of long "canoe ladders" to carry the massive carvings to the island's coast. They also needed heavy ropes made from the fibrous bark of the bigger palms.
The scale of the operation was vast. Crews of between 50 and 500 men dragged statues weighing between 10 and 90 tons. Some 887 statues were carved in total, nearly half of which still remain in Rano Raraku quarry, which appears to have been abandoned mid-production. For its transport alone, each statue would have required several trees to be cut down. Other timber was needed for housing, fuel and the construction of the large stone platforms, or "ahu", on which the moai were placed.
"The overall picture for Easter Island is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all of its tree species extinct," says Diamond.
As a result of the deforestation, food production fell dramatically as crops became exposed to the harsh winds and semi-arid conditions of the region. Consequently the population collapsed from perhaps as many as 15,000 at its peak to the few thousand that were eking out a living by the time Roggeveen arrived.
Smallpox and slavery killed off most of the people that remained, but the islanders were on the way to total collapse even without any contact with Europeans, says Diamond.
But not everyone is convinced. "It's a shame that some now want to blame the islanders for their own demise," says Professor Terry Hunt, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii. "There is no evidence that a population collapse occurred before European contact," says Hunt, who is supported by Professor Carl Lipo of California State University in Long Beach. "Lacking much of the basic evidence, a set of beliefs has been established and perpetuated that rationalise the story," says Lipo.
Hunt and Lipo argue that Easter Island was first colonised by Polynesian seafarers much later than supposed. They say the first people to arrive on Easter Island came around AD1200, about 400 years later than other scientists have suggested from radio-carbon dating. This makes it implausible for the population to reach the 15,000 figure that would have caused the fast ecocide invoked by the environmental catastrophists.
Hunt and Lipo believe the deforestation occurred over a longer period as a result of climate change, aided probably by rats. The islanders did not go through a population collapse until after the arrival of Europeans, they say.
However, John Flenley of Massey University in New Zealand, who carried out much of the radio-carbon work on Easter Island, and Paul Bahn, a leading British archaeologist, say there is ample evidence for a much earlier arrival of Polynesian settlers. They dismiss the sceptics. "They view the island through rose-coloured spectacles, choosing to believe that the community was thriving up to 1722 and that it was the Europeans who destroyed them," say Flenley and Bahn in a scientific paper published in the May issue of the Rapa Nui Journal.
"It is undeniable that many calamities befell the island thanks to European visits... but the Europhobic model ignores the mass of archaeological, oral, botanical and sedimentological evidence which documents the prehistoric transformation of the island by humans from pristine subtropical rainforest to a virtually treeless landscape," they say.
Climate change may have contributed to deforestation but it could not be solely responsible. Neither could rats have killed off the living trees which can live for a century or more. The radio-carbon dating points convincingly to an initial colonisation before AD900, Flenley and Bahn argue. There was ample time for the rapid deforestation, environmental collapse and a population crash, they insist.
Why all this is important today is not of course lost in the age of globalisation, climate change and a rapidly growing world population of more than 6.5 billion people. As Jared Diamond says: "The parallels between Easter Island and the whole of the modern world are chillingly obvious."

The tale of the heads
* Easter Island lies 2,237 miles west of Chile – which annexed it in 1888 – and was formed by the three volcanoes as they emerged from the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
* It is one of the most remote inhabited islands and was first colonised by Polynesian seafarers sailing from islands to the west which were already inhabited.
* The stone carvings, or moai, probably represent ancestral deities linked with the 20 or so clans that comprised the island's population. The statues were usually placed on a stone platform, or ahu, sited on the coast. They faced inland, overseeing the segment of land controlled by each clan.
* A quarry called Rano Raraku is where most of the statues were carved from hardened volcanic ash before being transported to their final resting site. Many statues are still in the quarry today, including the biggest, weighing nearly 155 tons, which probably turned out to be too large to be removed.

By Steve Connor

Independent

Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2734673.ece