File:The history of mankind (1896) (14763781915).jpg

Identifier: historyofmankind01ratz (find matches)
Title: The history of mankind
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Ratzel, Friedrich, 1844-1904 Butler, Arthur John, 1844-1910
Subjects: Ethnology Anthropology
Publisher: London, Macmillan and co., ltd. New York, The Macmillan co.
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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umber is no less astonishingthan their size and the comparative high level of their workmanship. Even now theyare reckoned at several hundreds ; their height is nearly 50 feet, while in one casethe breadth across the shoulders is not less than I o feet. Many of them have i6o THE HISTORY OF MANKIND been thrown down and half-buried in rubbish ; but others stand on broad plat-forms built of hewn stone. Originally many are said to have had head-coveringsof reddish stone ; cylinders, according to Cooks description, of 5 feet diameter.Some have hieroglyphics carved on their backs. These images, weighing manytons, must at one time have been lowered down the mountain with hawsers, andprepared, that is, engraved, in pits below. Naturally these images, whose number,size, and clever workmanship contrast so strangely with the smallness of theisland, and the state of extreme simplicity in which the first Europeans foundthe islanders, have given rise to many speculations as to their origin. Even so
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Sepulchral monument in Ponape\ Caroline Islands. (From a photograph in the Godeffroy Album.) sober a judge as Beechey declares it to be simply impossible that the EasterIslanders can have executed these works ; both the sculpturing and the erectionof them, he thinks, far exceeded any capacity of theirs. What makes it yetmore difficult to answer these questions is the ignorance in which we are as totheir age, as to the reason why so many have been thrown down, and, lastly, asto their object. Earthquakes of course may have thrown them down ; but noobserver, old or recent, has been able to divine the purpose they served. Theimpression of decadence which one receives from the sight of such mighty worksamong a race now so scanty, feeble, and impoverished, is strengthened when wefind that Easter Island shows masonry adapted to various purposes in the shapesometimes of staged platforms, sometimes of huts, above or below ground, andwith or without interior ornament in colour. Oceania, as bein

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