Name: 年を重ねるロックスター - イースター島の崩れかけたモニュメント (Ageing Rock Stars - Easter Island's crumbling monuments)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T04:59:30.000Z
Duration: 26 min 42 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Rapa Nui is a tiny South Pacific island with a towering presence.

様態の副詞

Officially it's part of Chile, three and a half thousand kilometres to the east.

法助動詞 B1

Named Easter Island by an 18th century Dutch explorer, Rapa Nui would have been nothing

more than a dot on a map if not for its megalithic stone statues - the Moai.

"There are about a thousand Moai scattered round the island and at first glance they

all look pretty similar, but once you get up close and personal, and really take a good

look, you can see that each one is unique. And rather than all looking austere, some

have other expressions like this one which... well, rather wistful I think".

But the famous faces of Rapa Nui are in danger of becoming faceless. Lashing wind and rain

and searing sun are all taking their toll. Now the race is on to preserve these centuries'

old sentinels so they and their secrets are not lost to eternity.

"These objects are very friable, they're very fragile. They're not going to last forever

and the record that we have we.... we're certain of, is required in order to take care of them

Californian archaeologist, Dr Jo Anne Van Tilburg, has spent thirty years trying to

solve some of the mysteries surrounding ancient Rapa Nui civilisation.

"Oh we're very excited. We've been wanting one of these for a long time. Even if it's

"Cristian, can you explain what you're doing?"

"We are suffering down here!" Working alongside Dr Van Tilburg is Cristián

Arévalo Pakarati, a Rapa Nui graphic artist. Together they run the Easter Island Statue

Over more than two decades, they've measured, mapped and documented every Moai on the island.

Now they're conducting the first comprehensive scientific excavation of statues inside Rano

Raraku, the volcanic crater where nearly all the Moai were carved.

The inner rim is a place of privilege, off limits to all but a few.

Nearly 400 statues remain in various stages of creation. Were they abandoned in haste,

and if so why? War? Famine? Or were some of them just not up to scratch?

everybody's assembling cars and they say okay guys, this is finished, yeah and then you

find all these cars in the line of assembly."

This season's dig aims to uncover more pieces of the Rapa Nui jigsaw.

coming to understand human behaviour on this island relative to this clear obsession to

The second thing I'm really interested in is how our work and our records can help conserve

Despite their formidable appearance, the statues are delicate.

The volcanic tuff from which most were sculpted as many as 900 years ago is crumbling. In

some cases, to the ground. "I've been seeing already in 27 years entire

degraded into the ground. It's melted to the ground already. It's soil now, it's not a

Cristian Pakarati has an artist's eye for detail.

He sees not only the features of his ancestors in the statues, but also a carved record of

their lives, their values and their activities.

"If you see the nostril of the statue from any angle you're going to see like ...

that this nostril is actually a fishhook instead of a nostril".

The Moai are an invaluable - if still inscrutable - map of the society which created them and

"I just want to draw as much as I can before the statues are gone.

The more we archive the better for the statues and for the Rapa Nui people".

It's now largely accepted that Rapa Nui was settled by Polynesian voyagers, sometime between

400 and 1200 AD. Maori sailors from New Zealand last year proved that such a daring journey

In traditional, double hulled canoes they sailed the 7,000 kilometres to Rapa Nui using

Oral tradition has it that Rapa Nui's first king, Hotu Matua, came ashore with his family

here at Anakena Beach. That small group was the nucleus for what became an extraordinary

"And my idea about Rapa Nui is that artists have shaped this island and its culture

from its beginning in a profound way, in ways that we don't see on some other Polynesian

So I think the ability to articulate in an object an idea is what drives religion".

In ancient Rapa Nui, religion centred on the Moai, the deified representation of a family's

ancestor. The Moai watched over their clans and lands and passed on their full power - or

mana - when fitted with coral eyes. For Vaiheri Tuki Haoa, handling the tools

that her forebears used to carve the statues is spine tingling.

She's part of the archaeological team working in Rano Raraku. She believes it's only in

understanding their history, that Rapa Nui can build a prosperous future, free of their

"When you are in school you learn the history of Chile,

but you are not learning the history of Hotu Matua, the first kind of Rapa Nui and that

is the story that the children really want to know

and that is what make us Rapa Nui". The ancient Rapa Nui established a highly

sophisticated society geared around making and moving the statues. But Moai mania which

reached its height between 1200 and 1600 came at a cost.

"Giant palm trees with massive trunks once covered much of the island. They provided

food, shelter, fabric and wood for the Rapa Nui. Those trees no longer exist. This is

one of the few pockets of palms on the island. They're not native trees, they were imported

By the time European explorers arrived in 1722, Rapa Nui was denuded. Its population

had shrunk from perhaps ten thousand people to a few thousand.

Some scientists argue that cutting down trees to move and erect the statues was largely

responsible for deforestation and ultimately the collapse of Rapa Nui's ecology and society.

字幕リスト動画再生

年を重ねるロックスター - イースター島の崩れかけたモニュメント (Ageing Rock Stars - Easter Island's crumbling monuments)

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