Description
Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island is a 1957 travel and archaeology book by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl. The book documents his 1955–1956 scientific expedition to Easter Island (Rapa Nui). It focuses on solving the mysteries of the island’s giant stone statues, known as Moai.
The Central Mystery
- The Statues: Hundreds of massive stone figures scattered across the isolated island.
- The Question: How did an ancient civilization carve, transport, and erect them without modern machinery?
- The Disappearance: What happened to the advanced culture that created them?
Key Discoveries and Themes
- The “Aku-Aku”: Heyerdahl befriends the local inhabitants to gain their trust. They reveal their “aku-aku”—invisible guardian spirits—and guide him to secret family caves filled with ancient stone carvings.
- Engineering Experiments: Heyerdahl convinces the islanders to demonstrate their ancestral techniques. They successfully carve a statue using stone hand tools, transport a multi-ton Moai using ropes and logs, and raise it onto a platform using wooden levers and stones.
- Two Migrations: The book promotes Heyerdahl’s theory that two distinct waves of people populated the island: the sophisticated “Long-ears” from South America and the later “Short-ears” from Polynesia, who eventually revolted against the Long-ears.
Modern Context
While the book is a gripping adventure, modern archaeology has disproven Heyerdahl’s theory of a South American origin. DNA evidence confirms that the original inhabitants of Easter Island were entirely of Polynesian descent.
The Hidden Torsos of Rano Raraku
Before Heyerdahl’s 1955 expedition, the global public mostly knew the Moai as just “giant stone heads”. Heyerdahl’s team conducted the first professional subsurface excavations on the island. They dug around the heads half-buried in the silt of the Rano Raraku volcanic quarry. They discovered that the heads actually had massive, full-length torsos hidden beneath centuries of sediment accumulation. These buried bodies were adorned with detailed, ancient ceremonial carvings, belts, and symbols carved directly into the rock.
The Ritual and Danger of the Secret Caves
A significant portion of Aku-Aku reads like a suspense thriller focused on secret family caves (avanga). For generations, Rapa Nui families closely guarded these hidden lava tubes. They believed that their ancestors’ spirits (aku-aku) guarded the entrances.
Heyerdahl went to great lengths to win the trust of the island’s mayor, Pedro Atan, and other elders. Once convinced that Heyerdahl possessed a powerful aku-aku of his own, locals led him through terrifyingly narrow, camouflaged openings. Crawling through suffocatingly tight mud tunnels, Heyerdahl documented a subterranean world filled with unique stone carvings completely unlike the Moai. These included stone models of boats, bizarre animals, and human skulls.
The Legend of the “Long-Ears” vs. “Short-Ears”
Heyerdahl used local oral histories to reconstruct a violent civil war. According to the legends told to him:
- The Hanau Epe (“Long-ears”): This group supposedly arrived first, boasting elongated earlobes. They were described as the mastermind engineers who carved the statues.
- The Hanau Momoko (“Short-ears”): A later-arriving working class.
The narrative builds to a climax describing a legendary battle at the “Poike Ditch.” The Short-ears revolted, trapping the Long-ears in a trench filled with burning brush, leaving only one Long-ear survivor to tell the tale. Heyerdahl used this to justify why the statue carving suddenly stopped mid-production at the quarry.
Testing the “Walking” Statues
Heyerdahl returned to the island in 1986 alongside Czech engineer Pavel Pavel to crack how the statues moved. Local lore insisted the statues “walked” to their destinations. Rather than dragging them flat on timber sledges, they tied ropes to the head and base of a standing, 15-ton Moai. A team of just 16 locals successfully rocked and swiveled the upright monument forward. This proved that the shape of the Moai’s heavy, flared base allowed them to be effectively “walked” across the terrain using rhythmic, alternating pulls.
Paperback. 348 pages. In good to very good condition with the exception of minor wear and minor damage to cover. All in all a very good copy!
