Easter Island Mystery 复活节岛之谜 Known to the locals as Rapa Nui,the Chilean dependency is the most remote,inhabited place on Earth.Standing on top of the tiny triangular island,pinned to the South Pacific on each corner by extinct volcanoes,you can see why:all that is visible is the blue ocean.In fact,Easter Island is so remote that with the curvature of the Earth,the nearest landmass you can see from here is the Moon.You can expect a typical Polynesian1 warm welcome when you arrive,but this is not a place where you would come for a luxurious holiday.The accommodation is clean and functional,the pubs and nightclubs,although friendly,are not cutting edge.But then,people do not come here for the nightlife and luxury.Most visitors want to see the Maoi,the famous Easter Island statues which date back some 1,000 years.Hundreds of the statues dot the island.Each of them is unique—differing in expression,height or weight.For centuries the mystery of how the islanders managed to do this and,just as importantly,why they bothered,has been hotly debated.To some the answer was obvious:extra-terrestrials had visited the island and formed the statues in their own shape.Others,notably the famed Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl,looked for a more mundane explanation.He proved that the maois could be erected and transported across the island if they were rolled on logs.The only problem with Heyerdahl’s proposal was that ever since the Dutch landed on the island on Easter Sunday,1722 the European and American visitors had reported the lack of trees on the island.So there would have been no logs.Today there are plenty of banana trees,coconut palms and eucalyptus woods,but scientists and historians now think that at one time Rapa Nui was more densely forested than it is now.They think they have solved the ancient mystery of Easter Island.The theory goes that the statues were erected as representations of deified ancestors to protect the island,over the six centuries that they were carved the priests,chiefs and stonemasons became obsessed with making the statues larger and more impressive—one unfinished maoi is 20 metres in length and weighs up to 150 tons.In their frenzy the islanders sacrificed the last of their trees to move their gods to their final resting places on the island’s shores.