The Hipster Islanders

AKU-AKU, THE SECRET OF EASTER ISLAND (384 pp.)--Thor Heyerdahl--Rand McNally ($6.95).

Easter Island, a pinpoint in the wide Pacific 2,000 miles west of Chile and 1,000 miles from the nearest inhabited place, has long presented scientists with a stony enigma. Somehow, some time in the past, an industrious people carved out hundreds of stone statues of big-nosed, long-eared men and moved the figures, weighing up to 50 tons, from inside an extinct volcano to stone platforms rimming the island. According to archaeological evidence, the job was done without metal, without knowledge of the wheel, without technical aids save poles and fiber ropes. How could this feat be accomplished?

To answer the question, as well as to "prove" his pet thesis that Polynesia was first settled by Indians from South America, Explorer Thor (Kon-Tiki) Heyerdahl in 1955 led an archaeological expedition to Easter Island. The islanders first tried to sell him their present-day wood carvings ("If we put on old rags, we are much better paid," explained one amiably), and promptly hailed him as "Senor Kon-Tiki." They attributed to Heyerdahl an aku-aku, or magical spirit, superior to their own.

Salted Caves. Norway's Heyerdahl got on famously with the native leaders, who claimed descent from the last surviving "long-eared" statue builder--the rest had been slaughtered, they said, by "short-eared" Polynesian invaders centuries ago. Easter Island's Mayor Pedro Atan demonstrated how the statues might have been raised on their platforms by having a crew of eleven men gradually pry up a fallen idol with poles, and then insert rocks under it until it could be lifted to its feet. It took 18 days. Convinced that the mayor possessed a secret handed down through ten generations, Heyerdahl asked why Atan had never revealed it before. "No one asked me," said the mayor.

Soon, other Easter islanders were rushing to Heyerdahl with the contents of their "secret" ancestral caves--small stone skulls and images, artifacts and wood carvings--which he excitedly declares "were entirely different from all ancient and modern art hitherto known from Easter Island." Heyerdahl became an initiate of sacred rites. He crept round the island at night, eating chickens buried according to formula in earth ovens, muttering incantations to placate hostile aku-akus, shouting out ritual invocations such as: "Wizard Juan, stand up for good luck!" Only slowly did it dawn on Heyerdahl that the natives might be hipsters who were taking a square for a ride. One native was caught scattering potsherds in an excavation site; Mayor Atan himself twice salted secret caves with stone sculptures that he had made himself.

For the Armchair. Despite these body checks, Heyerdahl is convinced that he has found additional evidence that the Easter Island image makers were originally seafarers from Peru. One reason: ancient Peru was known for megalithic structures not unlike those on Easter Island. The book--translated from Norwegian into chatty, slapdash English--has travelogue overtones of mystery and menace that seldom seem justified by the events described. Perhaps the Easter islanders were a shade too hip for the Western visitors, but they still provide a good story for armchair archaeologists.

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