p The land bridge between America and Australia started to break up a very long time ago. The sinking of the land continued for millions of years. Even today the coast of South-East Asia is subsiding into the Pacific centimetre by centimetre. The East Pacific continent split off from the rest of the land mass long before man appeared on earth. But when did it start to sink into the ocean, leaving Raster Island all by itself?

p Professor Brown believed that the subsidence of the last remnants of land took place quite recently, between the voyages of Davis and Roggeveen. From the viewpoint of geologists this is absurd. Academician Vladimir Obruchev, the eminent Soviet geologist, suggested a more plausible point of time. He placed the sinking of the land in the region of Easter Island at the time of the glacial epoch, when the melting of the ice led to a rise in the level of the oceans, including the Pacific, and the low-lying sections of land were submerged.

p It was quite possible, said Obruchev, that extensive lowlands with thickly populated towns and villages once existed around the mountainous part of Easter Island. These lowlands were gradually submerged when the last Ice Age ended. The population, probably urged on by priests or sorcerers, hurriedly began carving statues with threatening faces out of the local volcanic tuff and setting them up along the coast in the hope they would hold the sea back and thereby save the coastal towns and villages. The melting of the glaciers had not yet ended, however, and the sea level continued to rise. In the end, the island lowlands were submerged. The population either perished or gradually moved to other islands in Polynesia. Only many years later did other inhabitants, who knew nothing about the preceding culture, appear on Easter Island.

p In Academician Obruchev’s opinion, Easter Island had attained a high level of culture about 10,000 years ago.

p It well may be, as Academician Obruchev believed, that the last remnants of the hypothetical Pacific continent were destroyed in human 41 times, when the level of the ocean rose as the glaciers melted. But the end of the last Ice Age evidently has nothing to do with the riddles of Easter Island. The melting of the glaciers took place between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. Archeological excavations show, however, that the island was settled at the beginning of our era. Construction of the gigantic statues is placed at no earlier than 1100 A.D. That would make a gap of some 10,000 years between the melting of the glaciers and the carving of the images.

p What is more, it seems unlikely that the statues were erected to prevent an invasion by the waters. Supporters of that theory vividly describe how "the ocean continued to rise and the stone gods fixed their wrathful, threatening gaze on it in vain”. But the stone giants stood with their backs to the ocean, as evidenced by sketches made by the first explorers to see the statues on their platforms, and also by the findings of archcologists.

p Or consider the enormous stone platforms, the ahus. If Easter Island were larger, why did they build the platforms along the entire length of the coastline? It is highly improbable that the ocean could have risen so evenly that it reached the platforms and then stopped. It is much more likely that the platforms were erected along the shore, and that the shore has remained unchanged since the time the platforms were built.

p Even if one were to assume that the platforms and statues were erected as protection against the threat of the rising water, and were placed on the shore to prevent that, then they should have vanished under the waves long, long ago.

But could the Easter Island monuments be merely the remains of a once great culture, with 42 the ocean bottom preserving far more traces of this culture than Easter Island itself? Could the ocean floor be strewn with platforms and statues? After all, the paved roads stop abruptly at the edge of the ocean.