Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/84

72 im Thurn), and that the cylindrical shape was adopted in order to facilitate transport (by rolling) of the huge masses of specially selected red volcanic tufa over the considerable distance intervening between the tufa-quarry and the sites of the statues.

Lastly, Dr. Rivers admits the possible validity of Moerenhout's suggestion that the great statues may have represented minor deities whose duty it was to prevent encroachment of the sea over the land, at any rate as regards the 'hatless' statues erected along the road. But it should be noted that these aligned effigies are situated at a considerable distance from the sea, and that they do not appear to have faced seaward. As for the images erected on the ahu along the shore, the fact that all had their backs to the sea seems to militate against Moerenhout's theory as regards them. To be effective they should surely have faced the encroaching enemy.

I refer to these points in no controversial spirit, but in the hope that, by viewing the available facts as they arc and in true perspective, some definite conclusions may be arrived at. I am gratified to find that so distinguished an ethnologist as Dr. Rivers has adopted my main point, which I first put forward at the Royal Geographical Society's meeting on 20th November, 1916, during the discussion on Mrs. Routledge's lecture (Geographical Journal, May, 1917, p. 345), which I developed in Folk-Lore (December, 1917), and which Mrs. Routledge has incorporated in her book (The Mystery of Easter Island). This point is that in the Easter Island culture there is evidence of a very strong Melanesian element, and that the Solomon Islands especially furnish valuable clues to that culture affinity.