Bureau of Lost Culture3 Mars 2025

The Myth of Easter Island

The giant stone heads of the fantastically remote Easter Island have gazed out mysteriously for over a 1000 years, fascinating the world since Dutch sailors came across them in the 18th century. They were created by some lost civilisation it was said, or perhaps they may not have been made by humans at all, but by extra-terrestrial visitors. Most commonly the story has been that the original people who made them brought about their own complete destruction in a kind of unintentional eco-suicide - a narrative that acts as a moral fable, a warning against our own selfish destruction of the planet's resources. But is that really true? James Grant Peterkin, historian, author and educator lived on Easter Island amongst its people for 20 years. He is one of the very few outsiders to speak their language of Rapanui and to be accepted in their community. He came to the Bureau to talk about how he came there, why he stayed and to dispel some of the myths, tell some of the truths about a very particular, and very peculiar lost culture. James's thoughts on the Easter Island statue in the British Museum

---

If you can contribute to this crazy endeavour, join our Patreon HERE

Thank you to everyone who’s signed up to support the show —that means a lot. We have chosen not to carry ads here; it simply wouldn’t sit right with the spirit of the Bureau. But that does mean we can benefit from your support, in whatever form that takes, not just financial.

Stephen

#easterisland, #rapanui, #stoneage #polynesia #earthmystery #esoteric #archaeology #statues #island

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(169)

A Countercultural History of the Universe

Has 20th-and 21st-century physics moved away from the brute materialism of the nineteenth century toward ideas that resemble the world’s ancient mystical traditions? Might many of the discipline’s gre...

21 Aug 51min

Levitating the Pentagon and other Stories

She's 82 but is firing on all cylinders, still crazy after all these years, as Paul Simon sang, well, still crazy enough to believe the world can be changed for the better, that it's her duty to try t...

2 Aug 1h

Peace is a Fire: The Monk Who Set Himself Alight

There are some images that don’t simply record history—they change it. On the morning of 11 June 1963, at a busy crossroads in Saigon, Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk, calmly sat down in the lotus po...

19 Juli 59min

The Road to Rebellion - Part 1

Roc Sanford is a British writer, artist and climate activist whose life has been a countercultural journey from an alternative childhood through academia to a remarkable experiment in off-grid living ...

3 Juli 50min

Free Radicals - Tripping in the 18th Century.

In the company of historian of drugs, MIKE JAY, we journey back to the first psychedelic age - not the 1960s, but the 1790s, when Britain was at the forefront, at the frontier, of gonzo psychedelic sc...

10 Juni 55min

The Shadow of the Counterculture

Ever thought the so-called ‘golden decade’ of the 1960s was only about peace and love? Think again. Beneath the surface, it was riddled with violence, paranoia, and chaos, even in its most iconic mome...

24 Maj 1h

21st Century Mutoid Man: Joe Rush - Part 2

This is the second part of our conversation with Joe Rush, the initiator, mentor, and driving force behind The Mutoid Waste Company, that extraordinary countercultural endeavour to turn the waste of o...

19 Maj 1h 2min

The Revolutionsts: How The Counterculture Turned to Terror

The Weather Underground, The Baader-Meinhof Group, The Red Brigade, Carlos the Jackal, The Japanese Red Army. The counterculture has always had a shadow side. There have been bad actors, casualties, t...

6 Maj 53min