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Archaeologists have solved an ancient mystery surrounding the famous Easter Island statues. At 2,500 miles off the coast of Chile, the island is the world's most remote place inhabited by people. Up to 1,000 years ago, the islanders started putting giant red hats on the statues. The research team, from the University of Manchester and University College London, think the hats were rolled down from an ancient volcano. Dr Colin Richards and Dr Sue Hamilton are the first British archaeologists to work on the island since 1914. They pieced together a series of clues to discover how the statues got...

Easter Island is branded into popular consciousness as the home of the mysterious and towering moai statues, but these are not the only curiosity the South Pacific island holds. Where the moai are fascinating for their unknown purpose and mysterious craftsmen, the island's lost language of Rongorongo is equally perplexing. The unique written language seems to have appeared suddenly in the 1700s, but within just two centuries it was exiled to obscurity. Known as Rapa Nui to the island's inhabitants, Rongorongo is a writing system comprised of pictographs. It has been found carved into many oblong wooden tablets and other...

The oldest dates were only about 800 years old, implying that occupation began around 1200 A.D. The dates from layers closer to the surface were progressively younger, which is inconsistent with the possibility that somehow our samples were contaminated with modern carbon. There was really no way to explain these numbers, at least not within the conventional model of Rapa Nui's development... Lipo and I took a closer look at the evidence for earlier human settlement. We evaluated 45 previously published radiocarbon dates indicating human presence more than 750 years ago using a "chronometric hygiene" protocol. We rejected dates measured...

Did humans devastate Easter Island on arrival? 19:00 09 March 2006 Bob Holmes Early settlers to the remote Easter Island stripped the island’s natural resources to erect towering stone statues (Image: Terry L Hunt)Related Articles What caused the collapse of Easter Island civilisation? 25 September 2004 Last of the great migrations 24 April 2004 Histories: Carteret's South Sea trouble 11 February 2006 The first humans may have arrived on Easter Island several centuries later than previously supposed, suggests a new study. If so, these Polynesian settlers must have begun destroying the island's forests almost immediately after their arrival. Easter Island...

Did humans decimate Easter Island on arrival? 19:00 09 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Bob Holmes Early settlers to the remote Easter Island stripped the island’s natural resources to erect towering stone statues (Image: Terry L Hunt)The first humans may have arrived on Easter Island several centuries later than previously supposed, suggests a new study. If so, these Polynesian settlers must have begun destroying the island's forests almost immediately after their arrival. Easter Island has often been cited as the classic example of a human-induced ecological catastrophe. The island – one of the most remote places on Earth – was...

Release Date: Aug. 31, 2005 Contact: Will Dube (585) 475-4954 or wjduns@rit.edu Groundbreaking Research Sheds Light on Ancient Mystery RIT researcher creates new population model to help predict and prevent societal collapse A researcher at Rochester Institute of Technology is unraveling a mystery surrounding Easter Island. William Basener, assistant professor of mathematics, has created the first mathematical formula to accurately model the island’s monumental societal collapse. Between 1200 and 1500 A.D., the small, remote island, 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile, was inhabited by over 10,000 people and had a relatively sophisticated and technologically advanced society. During this time,...

GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Los Angeles — NEW Year's weekend traditionally is a time for us to reflect, and to make resolutions based on our reflections. In this fresh year, with the United States seemingly at the height of its power and at the start of a new presidential term, Americans are increasingly concerned and divided about where we are going. How long can America remain ascendant? Where will we stand 10 years from now, or even next year? Such questions seem especially appropriate this year. History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and...

Easter island, fools' paradise Ronald Wright 18 November 2004 The greatest wonder of the ancient world is how recent it all is. No city or monument is much more than 5,000 years old. Only about seventy lifetimes, of seventy years, have been lived end to end since civilization began. Its entire run occupies a mere 0.002 per cent of the nearly 3 million years since our first ancestor sharpened a stone. The progress of “man the hunter” during the Old Stone Age, or Palaeolithic – his perfection of weapons and techniques – led directly to the end of hunting as...

Experts work to save Easter Island statues CLARE CHAPMAN A TEAM of conservationists is working on a ‘miracle cure’ to save the famous giant heads of Easter Island from crumbling away. Experts from Germany are investigating the use of a chemical to stabilise the stone monoliths, which have become severely eroded. The Moai stone heads with their famous long faces and large noses were carved out of rock that was originally volcanic ash by the island’s inhabitants between 1100 and 1650. They are one of the main sources of income for the island, known as Rapa Nui, drawing in more...

German Firm Hired to Save Easter Island Sculptures Tue Nov 4,12:24 PM ET BERLIN (Reuters) - UNESCO has awarded a German firm contract to preserve the world-famous but decaying Moai head sculptures on Easter Island, which are suffering the effects of the weather, tourism and past restoration attempts. Stefan Maar, founder of Berlin-based Maar Denkmalpflege GmbH said Tuesday his company planned to begin treating the statues with chemicals in early 2005 in a project estimated to cost about 10 million euros ($11.5 million). "Something has to be done," Maar told Reuters. "But with over 1,000 figures, it is a really...

Did Easter Island's famous statues rock, or roll? After doing a little rocking out themselves, researchers say they're sure the natives raised the monumental figures upright, and then rocked them back and forth to "walk" them to their positions. Their findings mesh with a scenario that casts the Polynesian island's natives in the roles of resourceful engineers working with the little that they had on hand, rather than the victims of a self-inflicted environmental catastrophe. "A lot of what people think they know about the island turns out to be not true," Carl Lipo, an archaeologist at California State University...

Lichen are eating away at the Moai, the 400 volcanic stone heads that dominate the skyline of Easter Island. Earlier treatments to preserve these ancient monoliths at this World Heritage Site called for filling some of the most deeply corroded stones with concrete. Unfortunately, experts think that this treatment might have worsened the damaging effects of the wind and saltwater that batter the Polynesian island. In fact, the lichen may even be feeding off the concrete used to save the Moai. Professor Lorenzo Casamenti and five of his students from the restoration school Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence have found...

QUITO, Ecuador – Ecuador's foreign minister says Wilikeaks chief Julian Assange has taken refuge in the South American nation's embassy in London and is seeking political asylum. Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino says Ecuador is weighing the request.

A group of astronomers are now on the mysterious Easter Island, one of the few solid places to stand on Earth where a total solar eclipse will be visible on July 11, 2010. The majority of the eclipse's path is over the ocean, so this will be one of the least observed eclipses ever. "This is one of the most interesting things that is possible for anyone on Earth to see in one of the most interesting places on the Earth that people can go," said Jay Pasachoff from Williams College, who is the Chair of the International Astronomical Union's...

The head statuary of Easter Island is instantly recognizable to people all over the world, but who would have guessed that, lurking beneath the soil, these famous mugs also had bodies? The Easter Island Statue Project Conservation Initiative, which is funded by the Archaeological Institute of America, has been excavating two of the enormous figures for the last several years, and have found unique petroglyphs carved on their backs that had been conserved in the soil. Their research has also yielded evidence of how the carvers were paid with food such as tuna and lobster, as well as clues to...

Explanation: Volcano Tungurahua sometimes erupts spectacularly. Pictured above, molten rock so hot it glows visibly pours down the sides of the 5,000-meter high Tungurahua, while a cloud of dark ash is seen being ejected toward the left. Wispy white clouds flow around the lava-lit peak, while a star-lit sky shines in the distance. The above image was captured in 2006 as ash fell around the adventurous photographer. Located in Ecuador, Tungurahua has become active roughly every 90 years since for the last 1,300 years.

Due to economic instability, in January of 2000, then Ecuadorian President Jamil Mahuad instituted a policy instating the United States dollar as the official currency of Ecuador. Despite disapproval of the policy by current Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa’s administration, no plans are currently in the works to replace the US dollar as the official currency. However, the administration has indicated that it would replace the US dollar in favor of a South American currency if one became available. The dollar replaced "sucres" in Ecuador, at a rate of 1 for every 25,000 sucres. While Ecuador has officially replaced their own...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended his country's nuclear program as he began a four-nation tour of Latin America, joining his ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in accusing the U.S. and its allies of using the dispute to unjustly threaten Iran.[snip] Both leaders planned to travel to Nicaragua on Tuesday for the inauguration of newly re-elected President Daniel Ortega, and then Ahmadinejad will also visit Cuba and Ecuador.

The United States has ordered the expulsion of Venezuela’s consul general in Miami, AFP reported on Sunday. The expulsion comes amid reports linking the diplomat to an alleged Iranian plot to target sensitive U.S. facilities with cyber attacks. According to the report, the Venezuelan embassy in Washington was notified on Friday that Livia Acosta Noguera, the consul general in Miami, had been declared persona non grata and had until Tuesday to leave the country...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to visit Venezuela and Cuba as part of a four-nation Latin America tour in the second week of January 2012, an official said Wednesday. Ahmadinejad will also visit Nicaragua and Ecuador on the trip, his international affairs director, Mohammad Reza Forghani, told the official news agency IRNA. All the countries are left-leaning and share an ideological antagonism towards Iran's arch-foe, the United States. "Mr Ahmadinejad will first go to Caracas to visit (Venezuelan President) Hugo Chavez," Forghani said, confirming an announcement made Tuesday by Chavez. "He will then go to the swearing-in ceremonies for Nicaraguan...