WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON EASTER ISLAND?

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is the most isolated piece of permanently

inhabited land on the planet, and yet it produced a most extraordinary Stone

Age culture: hundreds of sophisticated coastal stone platforms, more than a

thousand enormous stone statues, the richest rock art in the Pacific, and a

unique writing system. This talk will provide an introduction to the history of

the discovery of this culture; to its principal features; and to what archaeology,

oral traditions and, more recently, palaeobotanical evidence have combined

to teach us about the island’s cultural rise and decline, its environmental

crisis, and the lessons all this can teach us about how we look after the Earth

as a whole.

Paul studied archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and completed PhD

thesis (1979) on the prehistory of the French Pyrenees. Has held post-

doctoral fellowships, at Liverpool and London, plus a J. Paul Getty

postdoctoral fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities. Devotes time

to writing, editing and translating books on archaeology, plus occasional

journalism and as much travel as possible. Main research interest is

prehistoric art, especially rock art of the world, and most notably Palaeolithic

art, as well as Easter Island. Led the team which, at his instigation, searched

for and discovered the first Ice Age cave art in Britain (at Creswell Crags) in

2003.