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National Geographic : 1993 Mar
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Nor does the island want for human remains. I crouched down one afternoon to peer under a low rock overhang, and as I balanced there, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I realized I was staring at a human skull, rolled on its side, its front teeth missing. I moved aside some debris and found the jaw lying nearby in a litter of ribs and femurs. It had the rounded "rocking chair" jawline character istic of Polynesians, a trait anthropologist George Gill at the Uni versity of Wyoming recently identified in 48 percent of the Easter Island skulls he studied. Physical evidence of cannibalism also occurs, along with legends that generally have to do with hunger rather than ritual, as if rival clans constituted a sort of free-ranging delicatessen. The evening I climbed Rano Raraku, I paused among the monumental statues on the outside slope and looked out to Motu Marotiri, a high black pedestal of rock rising out of the sea off the southeast coast. I was haunted by the notion that the same deforestation that caused Rapa Nui civilization to cave in on itself had probably also cut off escape: No large trees meant no canoes capable of long-distance voyaging. Legend recalls that islanders frightened of rival clans swam out and sought refuge crowded on the barren rock of Marotiri. Even there the warriors organized raids to kill them and carry their corpses back to the main island, to be eaten. For me the most disconcerting and unexpected aspect of Easter Island was the penetrating sensation at that moment that this brilliant civilization could have collapsed into such desperation. What happened to the Rapa Nui suggested that uncontrolled EasterIsland Unveiled
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