Photos emerge of incredible Easter Island discovery

News.com.au, June 10, 2015

Archaeologists dig up the famous statues. Picture: Easter Island Statue
Project Source: Supplied

THERE’S a lot more to Easter Island’s famous statues than first meets the eye.

A new series of photographs of the 2012 excavation has emerged that captures the moment archaeologists dug out the previously hidden stone bodies, discovering a surprising secret along the way; the monoliths were covered in detailed ancient tattoos.

The images have been shared widely on social media, being viewed more than 1 million times on Imgur.

They show intricate markings such as crescents, which academics say represent the canoes of the local Polynesians, the UK’s Mirror reports. Little else is known about the markings yet.

Detailed markings are visible. Picture: The Easter Island Statue Project
Source: Supplied

There are 887 huge statues carved between AD 100 and 1800 — which are up to 10 metres tall. Members of the Easter Island Statue Project have been excavating the statues for years, and provided the first photos of their torsos in 2012. This surprised many, with people believing they only had heads.

“The reason people think they are (only) heads is there are about 150 statues buried up to the shoulders on the slope of a volcano, and these are the most famous, most beautiful and most photographed of all the Easter Island statues,” Jo Anne Van Tilburg from the Easter Island Statue Project said.

“This suggested to people who had not seen photos of (other unearthed statues) that they are heads only.”

They are fascinating. Picture: The Easter Island Statue Project Source: Supplied

In 1919 pictures of the first excavations by the Mana Expedition to Easter Island revealed that some statues were full sized. The discovery was confirmed in 1955 by the explorer Thor Heyerdahl when his Norwegian Archaeological Expedition excavated a statue.

Over subsequent decades the discoveries were gradually forgotten, known by archaeologists but not by tourists, who began visiting the isolated island in the 1990s.

They’re discovering an island that was first settled by Polynesian people who arrived by canoe as part of a great wave of Pacific colonisation.

Much remains unknown about the statues — how were they made? How was such a remote island populated? How were they moved around the island? And what happened to the society that had resorted to cannibalism by the time Captain James Cook visited in 1774?

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Easter Island’s Carnival Magic Seduces Tourists

Jakarta Globe, Mike Leyral, Feb 22, 2015

People take part in dance contest in Hanga Roa on Chile's Easter Island (or Rapa
 Nui as its inhabitants call it) in the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 10, 2015 as part of the 47th
 edition of Tapati, an all-out 15-day contest between rival teams to crown a new monarch.
(AFP Photo/Gregory Boissy)

Far from home on Chile’s Easter Island for Carnival festivities, one middle-aged American woman throws caution to the wind. Stripped down to a thong, she lets a local reveler paint her chest.

“If someone had told me I would end up walking down the street almost naked, I would never have believed it,” the woman, who only gave her first name Susan, said.

Susan is one of a few thousand tourists who joined the Pacific island’s 9,000 residents for Tapati, an exuberant mix of music, dance and traditional sports that takes place for two weeks every February.

In the island’s only town Hanga Roa, revelers wait in a long line under the blistering tropical summer sun to take part in a time-honored ritual — a plunge in an old tub filled with clay.

A man known as Ale then spreads with his hand this reddish-brown natural paint on the bodies of other locals — and any tourist ready to participate.

Then, other lines form in front of tubs filled with white and yellow paint.

It’s time for the Rapa Nui — the Polynesian word for both the island and its residents — to paint symbols, inspired by the local Birdman legend, or characters from the long-lost Rongorongo system of writing.

Shortly after 5:00 p.m., a warrior blows into an enormous shell, signaling the start of the nightly parade, which features colorful floats and dancers in elaborate costumes, not unlike the massive Carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro.

The Tapati festival is at once a test of masculine strength and feminine grace celebrating Polynesian pride.

Easter Island is at the southernmost point of the so-called Polynesian Triangle — a Pacific region with Hawaii and New Zealand at the other corners.

The Unesco World Heritage Site is famous for its nearly 900 massive stone monuments — the Moai, carved by the Rapa Nui hundreds of years ago.

Rival teams are locked in an all-out contest to crown a new Tapati queen, who reigns for a year.

Numerous races and other contests take place — including reed board surfing, underwater fishing, fruit-carrying, a triathlon and horse races — but the nightly parades and dance competitions are the highlight.

Locals spend months carving out large wooden statues for the parade floats from Eucalyptus trees representing deified ancestors, such as the mystical Moai stone giants or the Birdman.

One night, a man draped in animal skins leads the way on his motorcycle, featuring a bull’s skull on the steering wheel.

Behind him, a woman dressed as a mermaid — her costume made of all-natural materials including a tail taken from a tuna caught just that morning — poses on a float decorated with huge wooden octopuses.

People originally from the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia play large pahu drums, while the Rapa Nui prefer horse jaws that make a light sound close to maracas when the teeth hit one another.

Some of the Tapati activities reflect a more Latin vibe taken from Chile — the elderly do battle to be the accordion king, as young people display their tango skills.

But the Polynesian dance competitions are fierce.

At the Hanga Vare Vare, the main festival stage in Hanga Roa, dancers sway sensually to the Polynesian drum rhythms.

Agence France-Presse

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The Mysteries Revealed of Rapa Nui (5) - Oct 18-21, 2014 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

"The Timing of Creation" – Aug 12, 2012 (a message from Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

A Rare Look at Lesbian Issues in Indonesia

Jakarta Globe, Katrin Figge, November 09, 2012     

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'Tombois and Femmes: Defying Gender
Labels in Indonesia' by Evelyn Blackwood.  

In Indonesia, lesbian women, as well as gay men, bisexuals and transgender individuals, often face intolerance and violence from religious fundamentalist groups like the Islamic Defenders Front.

Even though there have been many positive developments in recent years in terms of visibility, many people who belong to the LGBT community still hide their true identity for fear of the social stigma, which comes not only from groups like the FPI, but often from one’s own family, friends and immediate surroundings as well.

A book by Evelyn Blackwood, a professor of cultural anthropology at Purdue University, sheds light on the challenges that lesbian women in Indonesia still face, following extensive research she conducted in West Sumatra.

The book titled “Tombois and Femmes: Defying Gender Labels in Indonesia,” was first published by the University of Hawai’i Press under the title “Falling into the Lesbi World: Desire and Difference in Indonesia.” Blackwood’s book was recently picked up by the Lontar Foundation for a reprint.

“My first research project was in West Sumatra, which resulted in my first book, ‘Webs of Power: Women, Kin and Community in a Sumatran Village’ [2000], a study of the matrilineal Minangkabau,” Blackwood said. “So I was already very familiar with the area of West Sumatra and the cultural context. Much of my research over time has focused on sexuality, female masculinities and transgender identities. So it was an easy jump for me to take my interest in those topics and apply them to West Sumatra.”

With the help of a local research associate, Blackwood was able to make contact with “tombois” in Padang — a term which derives from the English word tomboy and refers to the masculine partner in a same-sex relationship — and their girlfriends, or “femmes,” the feminine counterpart.

However, it was not easy, especially when taking into account the fact that West Sumatra is a region with a reputation of being devoutly Islamic.

“Because I was open about my sexual identity as a lesbian, they felt pretty comfortable talking to me,” Blackwood said. “Their fear was of course that they would be exposed to their family or neighbors. So I have been very careful to maintain their privacy.”

Interviews were mostly conducted in Blackwood’s hotel room to guarantee that her sources could talk openly.

The book is not only a much needed contribution to raise awareness and understanding of LGBT issues, but the author also understands to put the stories of the women in a larger cultural context. At the same time, Blackwood’s main aim seems to be to provide information in order to increase the visibility of lesbian women in Indonesia. She doesn’t use a judgmental tone, but rather states facts and brings to paper what others have told her.

“The tombois and femmes I knew lived quiet lives with their families and kept their relationships hidden,” Blackwood said. “I don’t think that has changed. But even with that, tombois and their girlfriends are finding ways to have meaningful and long-term relationships. The LGBT activist groups in major cities are doing a great job creating visibility for LGBT. The more people know about them, hopefully the more accepting the larger society will become.”

Blackwood hopes that through the publication of her book in Indonesia, she will help people understand sexuality and gender in a broader sense, by showing how cultural factors have defined the terms.

“It argues against fixed sexual identities, by which I mean that identity labels are just that, labels,” Blackwood explained. “How people live those labels depend on cultural, religious, and political influences, as well as their access to the global flow of ideas circulating on the internet.”

Blackwood added that the Ardhanary Institute, a Jakarta-based center for lesbian, bisexual, and transgender research, publications and advocacy, was in the process of working on an anthology which will include the first chapter of her book, translated into Indonesian. The anthology is scheduled to be published by the end of this year.

“I think their efforts will make a much stronger impact because it will reach non-English-speaking Indonesians,” she said.

Blackwood is currently working on her latest project in the United States where she is developing a research topic to look at the history of lesbians in San Francisco from the 1970s to today.

While Blackwood sporadically keeps in touch with some of the women she has written about in her book, the personal impact of the research has stayed with her. “I haven’t forgotten any of their stories and can only hope that they continue to be happy in their lives and their relationships,” she said.