I can seldom watch anything on utube that lasts more that 10 minutes. This one is a record for me at 1 hour and 43 minutes. I really don't expect anyone here to watch it, but I'm going to put it here if anyone is so inclined.
Everyone knows about Easter Island, and everyone knows that we know is mostly that it's a mystery. I've seen movies and read books going back to high school starting with the voyage of the Kon Tiki, my initial introduction to the South Pacific, up to a recent book researching the settlement of Polynesia just published in the last few years.
This is a surprisingly well done documentary, both for the content, photography, and narration, and adds more to my understanding of Easter Island than all of the (scant) resources that account for what I know and what I know that I don't know about the place. It cautiously deconstructs and reconstructs many of the myths about the long lost culture of the Islanders. This mostly happens in the last 45 minutes where it reveals the reasons for the loss of a once vibrant civilization, and is all new theory for me.
Is it true? I don't know. It's from utube, although professionally seeming, enough to possibly be from an original historical documentation done with a big budget by some serious foundation. The demise of the culture is more gut wrenching than what I had previously thought. I never would have made it to the end, except that beginning although familiar, was interesting and beautifully done, even though it covered what most of us have heard before.
In the past, I've sometimes considered if I wanted to blow thousands of dollars on travel to some interesting place, it would likely be Easter Island. Venice, Rome, the Acropolis wouldn't even come close.
