Lemuria and Easter Island
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There are many theories surrounding Easter Island and how it is a supposed remnant of a lost continent and a lost civilisation. Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as its native population knows it, has been the subject of many centuries of “fantastic” archaeology, cult archaeology, or pseudoarchaeology. This type of science puts a great emphasis on and also manipulates the evidence that is deemed “mysterious.” This is a simple task for pseudoscientists when it comes to Easter Island due to the long history of isolation of the island and varying degrees of quality in which the research has been conducted. The tendency for pseudoscientists to manipulate evidence in order to make it more interesting and marketable is directly linked with the tendency for academia to view these interpretations as explanations for histories and pre-histories that are extremely ethnocentric and widely discredited, especially due to lack of solid scientific evidence. This is definitely the case concerning theories of Easter Island being the remnant of a lost continent.
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[edit] Arrival of Settlers
The current research on Easter Island displays an argument that is difficult to refute: the Rapanui people traveled into Polynesia from East Asia and discovered Easter Island sometime around the first century AD. The contradiction is apparent between the argument from current research and that of lost continent theorists such as Hancock and Churchward. The lack of evidence for a cataclysm resulting in the Rapanui being stranded on Easter Island, rather than traveling there by sea, indicates a theory that is arguably disproved.
[edit] Hancock's Theory
Graham Hancock is another proponent of the theory that a lost civilization left traces in the Pacific and around the world. He uses very similar comparisons of evidence to Churchward: He cites only his own comparative analysis of “local traditions” and art from around the world. He claims that “all local traditions” of Easter Island describe it as once being part of a much larger country: He agrees with most scholars, however, that these traditions have many “confusing and contradictory elements.”[1] Hancock also compares what he calls “god-kings” of Pohnpei and Angkor to what he claims is the god-king of Easter Island: Hotu Matua.[2] According to legend, Hotu Matua sent seven men to pave the way and “prepare the island for settlement” after the destruction of the larger country, previously mentioned.[3] Hancock compares this Easter Island tradition with Egypt’s story of the Seven Sages who fled to the Nile Valley when the “Homeland of the Primeval One was destroyed by a flood.”[4] He concludes that these similarities make the two cultures inseparable in their history.
[edit] Conclusion
It is a recurring trend to use traditions from many ancient civilizations of the world to prove their origin in a first great, now lost civilization. However, not only are their comparisons vague and over-generalized, their theories lack any geological evidence - none of them fully explain or provide physical evidence for the theory of the ability for a continent to be swallowed up into the sea. In addition to this, geologists and volcanologists agree that Easter Island was formed by the eruptions and activities of three volcanoes.[5] Churchward proposed his own theory to explain the concept of a sunken continent – a word that implies a large, continuous body of land. According to this theory, there were gaseous pockets under the surface of the continent that allowed the landmass to cave in during the supposed cataclysm. This is not a possibility in the widely accepted theory of plate tectonics.
