Graham Hancock

The mysterious, gigantic moai statues that dot the landscape of remote Easter Island have captured the imagination of archaeologists for centuries. While conventional explanations of the statues hold that they were built by an ancient thriving island civilization, others maintain that other factors may have been at work.

In this excerpt from his book Heaven's Mirror (1998), journalist and political activist Graham Hancock argues that an ancient and highly advanced lost civilization built the statues of Easter Island. As evidence, Hancock cites (among other things) traditional Easter Island folklore, the island's complex native language, and the high quality of the more ancient moai relative to later monuments.

Known to its inhabitants since ancient times as Te—Pito— O—Te—Henua, 'The Navel of the World', and as Mata...