Ethnology of Easter Island

“Metraux records a lot of details, oral traditions, culture, and some observations about archaeology. It’s a compendium of as much information as he could gather…I like it as an early work, because it’s detailed, and he recognized what later writers did not: the tragedy that was brought by European contact. In fact, he refers to this as one of the most tragic stories in the Pacific. That insight at that early date is really valuable, something that was ignored by authors in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.” Read more...

The best books on Easter Island

Terry Hunt, Historian