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Easter Island heads have bodies

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Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#31

Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in th…

Yes.

Read _Collapse_.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#32

This blew my mind. I don't know why, I find it incredibly eye-opening that the first thought that one might think of on seeing a head in the dirt (that there's the rest of it underneath) has just simply never occurred to generations of people because we were "told" by someone that they're just heads. How powerful words can be in casting an illusion, in defeating creativity, and hiding the truth!

Thor Heyerdahl expeditions in mid 50s is what brought Easter Island and its figures to everyone's attention. These were truly captivating adventures, very intriguing and original, and as such they were widely publicized. As a part of the research his team carved, transported and installed a replica figure using only rudimentary tools. And this figure was - wait for it - a head. I would guess that this could've been just the thing that cemented the idea of figures being heads in public's minds, including those of future Easter Island researchers.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#33
post #27

Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in th…

Ok, nice prose of your, but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit. Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.

>>> nice prose of your Thank you, but my prose is far from being nice. You should see my boss with a red pen around my prose. :-)

>>>but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshitCarl Sagan has another take on the matter. :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

>>>Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China.

Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.I would argue that treating our resources as essentially endless because of the sheer size as compared to the individual fails to take into account that there are now 7 Billion people on this earth. Each and every one of them deserves a better life, they deserve to be able to have a luxurious bath, flush toilets with water, wash hands with water, eat processed foods which take a lot of water to make, wash their cars with water, drink pure water and at the end of the day consume around 315 litres of it. Of course, today not everyone lives like that except for wealthy countries (the statistic is based upon the US) but I think everyone wants a standard of life like that. If somehow, tomorrow 7 billion people started consuming water like that then we would drink up 2 205 000 000 000 litres of fresh water in a day, but the total possible water supply we can access (and this includes the glaciers) is only 3.5 × 10^19 litres...

That's quite an easy way to run out of water.

Now if you do the same with energy, with waste, with consumption and so on what you have is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. The way we live today just can't last. I think that you can solve this problem using technology, but its roots lie deep in our societies.

What's frightening over here is that there is no way out for us. Unlike our ancestors we simply can't burn and move on. The earth is where we have to make our stand. I really think that it's important for people to start taking the gravity of the situation seriously. We need solutions, and we need them fast. Our time is running out.

I think that there is no greater form of humanism than realizing that all of these people need to be saved from such an horrible end and devoting your entire life to creating a better future.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#34
post #24
post #12

ancient aliens!

Read the book "Behold!! The Protong!" and you'll get an even more intriguing explanation. These statues are a WARNING TO THE FUTURE that the great CATACLYSM, which comes in cycles, will HAPPEN AGAIN. Below the ground-line (which represents the flood survivors emerging from the murk) these statues are holding the "Bi" - an iconic feature representative of the grand CATACLYSM where the balance of water is tipped, and w…

Setting aside the outlandish CONJECTURE which is the CONTENT of your post, the arbitrary SHOUTING does not aid your CREDIBILITY.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#35
post #27

Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in th…

Ok, nice prose of your, but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit. Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.

Even if the resources were enormous, exponential growth would still have to level off sooner or later.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#36
post #15
post #11

This still a tech news aggregator? This is something that should be on reddit, not hacker news...?

Read the FAQ and tell me how a story about art/discovery/paradigm-shifting is OT... tl;dr hn is not a technews aggregator.

> Read the FAQ and tell me how a story about art/discovery/paradigm-shifting is OT...

Art, okay. But how is this paradigm shifting?

We already knew they have bodies below surface for at least a couple of decades. And a good deal of the statues are well above ground with their bodies. They're just called "Easter Island Heads" because their heads are often disproportionally large to their bodies. PARADIGM SHIFT!

If that's a paradigm shift to you, here, have some more! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

Though, I do notice that "Easter Island Heads are in fact not merely heads" is not among them. Maybe I should edit that, given the popularity of this story among what are supposed to be a community of knowledgeable and intelligent people :)

Finally, you say it's a story about "discovery". The posted article doesn't really mention anything about a discovery. The original article kind of does: http://www.eisp.org/3879/ Has the same pictures, nearly the same text, maybe it's a bit TL;DR for this crowd given that you even had to summarize your one-sentence post:

> tl;dr hn is not a technews aggregator.

In which case, congratulations to anybody who read this far.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#37

Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in th…

That's a really captivating story with a strong message but it's far from obvious whether it happened, and whether it happened like you describe:

http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myth-of-easter-islands-...

Especially the claims of cannibalism seem a little far fetched.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#38
Like everybody, I've heard of the heads at Easter Island since childhood and yet I never had a clue of where on Earth Easter Island migh be.

So here's a Google Maps link for geography-impaired folks like me: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Easter+Island,+Isla+de+Pascua,...

Answer: between Chile and Australia, closer to Chile.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#39

Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in th…

Nice writeup but it's easter, not eastern. If anything it's western.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#40
post #39

Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in th…

Nice writeup but it's easter, not eastern. If anything it's western.

Sorry I have dyslexia, I tend to get muddled up like that sometimes.
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