(eerie music) - [Brian] Hi, this is Brian Forrester, and welcome to another one of my videos. Here we are walking the
streets of Glastonbury in England, which is in Somerset, and we're going to be exploring
a number of ancient sites including Stonehenge, Silbury
Hill, the Avebury Complex, et cetera, all locations which
have great historical value. Now this little town is very ancient. It goes back to Neolithic times and has such things as the Chalice Well, which is an ancient sacred
well with lo
ts of iron oxide in it, or at least iron in it. So it's a very reddish color
and it has been used by people for healing and meditation and other things for likely thousands of years. This is also the location
where supposedly King Arthur and Queen Guinevere were buried. So most of this will be a walking tour. Here you see that this ancient well is still running. This is not the Chalice Well, it's another one across the
street called the White Spring. And this area is very much a, one would call
like a new age town, but we're not concerned with that as much as we are with the historical aspects such as this, the Glastonbury Tor, which is a man made hill most likely and on top of it, are the ruins of St. Michael's Church, which was replaced several hundred years ago by what you see now. Prior to that it was a wooden church which suffered from an earthquake, and this as well, it's an iconic location. You can see Glastonbury Tor
from at least 20 miles away and supposedly it's also a locati
on which is in the Arthurian Legends as in the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. And it's just an iconic location in southern England. Now here we're taking the hike up to the top of Glastonbury Tor. You can see the shaping of
it is obviously an alteration done by human beings in the way distant past, this location or this area also features heavily in supposedly Joseph of Arimathea. Some legends say that Mary,
as in the mother of of Jesus, visited this location and
you
can see just the landscape is absolutely breathtaking and beautiful, again county Somerset in Southern England. Now England tends to have pretty awful weather, but this location was beautiful on this day. And of course southern England
has a much milder climate than Northern England because
we had just previously visited Yorkshire in the north, there the weather was pretty God awful, but here, quite pristine, quite beautiful on this September day in 2018. So I've also heard when I was, or I did
hear when I was there, that there are tunnels underneath Glastonbury Tor, there are caves, other stories about treasure
that's been hidden there in different locations. So it's a very mystical place, a very energetic place in terms of spirituality. And I guess that's why in modern times it's a mecca for so-called New age people to live there for extended periods of time. So the church itself, as you can see is it's likely
only a few hundred years old. It actually has no roof. So the rain goes ri
ght through it, and that's what we're gonna do. We're going to walk right through the location again, the beautiful hillside of England in the background stretching out. And this location or this area is also called Avalon. Of course that comes from the Arthurian Times. And it's also called the aisle
of Avalon because supposedly when King Arthur was alive, this area contained like a large system of lakes, we've now changed location and we're actually at Glastonbury Abbey. So we're walking throug
h here. The Abbey was destroyed
supposedly by King Henry VIII. And so we're going to look
at some of the details of this again, iconic location in ancient England. Here you can see what's called the Lady Chapel Galilee Encrypt. So again, connection
supposedly with biblical figures after the death of Jesus. And now we're taking a walk through the grounds. And more specifically we're going to look at a sign, which is quite intriguing, sight of the ancient graveyard where in 1191. The monks dug to
find the
tombs of Arthur and Guinevere. We are now continuing our
stroll through the Abbey area. It's quite a large complex. And now just for kind of the fun of it, because it is in this area, we're going to walk into the Abbott's kitchen and you could see what a kitchen looked like during most likely medieval or even earlier times. So you can hear, or actually you can't hear, but you can see that this is the Abbot's kitchen. And notice all of the pottery. Some are replicas, some may
actually be
original artifacts. And it's actually quite a
huge kitchen here you can see on the left some of the preserved foods. And you have the place where
water and soups were made in there, pigs and chickens being roasted. But now the main feature of this video for most of you is Stonehenge. And what we're going to hear, is we're going to hear the words of local expert Maria Wheatley, who lives in the area and
has been studying Stonehenge for at least 30 years. Her father before her, she is
a dowser, a
s was her father. And she has written extensively
and studied extensively, Stonehenge and Avebury
and other megalithic structures in the area. - You on the access line,
(indistinct) oh it's the swallows. And there was three standing stones just in front of the entrance, which would've blocked off your view. You wouldn't again be able to see what was happening in this site. So that's the access line of the moon and the sun. And this is the actual entrance. And it's very subtle because
it's just a
little bit wider than the spacing of the other stones. So this is the, the official way into Stonehenge rather than, through there, and these are the sarsen stones. And then when you walk through here, this is the blue stones now. So these are from Preseli, and you find this shape all over Europe. And this is considered a
feminine stone 'cause of its shape. And this stone here is masculine, but they've lost their luster because this is blue stone, when it's highly polished, it looks like that.
- [Brian] Really. - And that's sarsen, so that's what you are seeing, highly polished sarsen behind you would've looked like that originally. And that would've been the blue stones. That's the drama of color change here that you just can't see today. And the altar stone, we'll just go through this access light here. - [Brian] Sure. - You've got a blue stone circle around here, which this is a park, the diameter is 79 feet, 20 inches, according to Jean-Michel, very famous author, the late John Mi
chel, and he recons, if you multiply that by a
hundred and change it to miles, you get the diameter of the
earth coded into Stonehenge. - [Brian] Wow. - So they would look very beautiful. And then as we approach the altar stone, this originally stood as the
first phase of Stonehenge, 16 feet high, but today it doesn't look much. But again, once we look at the color coating, this was green, highly polished flexed with garnet. - [Brian] Really. - So it would've looked completely different to what
it does today. That's the greater triathlon. And this part fell, and this was the top capstone on top of it. But this is what foxes a lot of people. There's its socket. Can you see there? - [Brian] Yeah. - Which would fitted into the 10 up there, but if we go, round the other side, it's also got two more sockets on this side as if another stone on the top. But what the official explanation is, is that this side was wrong
and the other side was right. Okay, now this stone here, it's got a big gro
ove down it. This is the tallest blue stone at stone head and it's got a clear groove. It once had a partner that had a kind of a socket going into it, causing a big of here because it didn't fit into the Stonehenge model of Richard Atkinson of having, you know, 19 stones. He buried it just here. So anything that doesn't fit
into the model of Stonehenge is actually buried. - [Brian] Whoa, amazing. - And this is the kind of horseshoe of, five big, quite weathered stones. - [Brian] And again, wher
e are the stone's from. - The sarsen stone here is from
the Mark Downs near Avebury, which is about 17 to 20 miles north of here. And this stone here, the blue stone comes from Wales about 170 miles away. But the analysis by the likes of an archeologist that's looking into the geology of Stonehenge, now thinks they come from North Wales, which are even further away. So they've just found some new, of what's called the bluestone. So that's, these ones would've looked more silver on the outside an
d some of them would've looked more cream against the blue. And the drama of the color of the altar stone. And there's another entrance,
Stonehenge just over there. It's called the Southern Entrance. And not a lot of people talk about that. They just talk about the
main entrance there and there, this is a good story of Stonehenge that is not in any guidebook whatsoever. When Richard Atkinson came here, some of the stones were leaning, okay. So he felt that all of them should be perpendicular, ju
st stood upright. So he came to this stone here, it was leaning, you always get leaning stones at ancient sites in northwest Europe. It's like bowing, it's a sacred space. So he got the crane and he started to move it upright, but then it led off a scream. According to the crater, a crack came in it down. So he had to concrete it all here, he broke the stones. - [Brian] Wow. I'm sorry about the low quality of the audio when Maria speaks. But the problem is that the
wind was blowing literally at
least 50 miles an hour. And so I've tried my best to reduce the background sound, et cetera. But she does have priceless things to say. She's way more informative and informed than I am. I've only been there three times. She's probably been to Stonehenge a hundred times. So let's continue on with what Maria has to say. - Back in the day after, it would be completely blocked off, you won't be able to see what was going on inside Stonehenge now. The banks would've been very high. The three stones
are blocking your view. And if you are an outsider, you just see those top bits. So yeah, this was phase one Stonehenge. So this predates what you are seeing behind you by about 500 years. - [Brian] Oh, really? And again, it's leaning, it's very important. You'll notice that at Avebury, you'll notice that at all
circles off the British Isles. You will have a leaning one
even inside any other places. So I've noticed it and they've actually put down, this is a new addition, the axis line. Can you
see how it's bit off right? For the sunrise and sunset? And the moon one would literally have been down here like this. So that's the angle of it. That's what I mean Atkinson kind of fakes it. Really about this, so this is really a lunar stone. It's about 16 and tons comes from the northern ends. Bear in mind, if the long scale people that put this up, they moved the largest and
heaviest amounts of stone, because that is, when we
come to the Avebury if I wanted for example, they were the
ones re
moving the heaviest stone. Not the later Bronze Age people. - [Brian] Oh, really? - Yeah, so the older monuments are heavier than the more recent ones. - [Brian] So what Maria is
saying is that the outer circle, because she believes that
originally Stonehenge was two circles and the smaller
stones were in the inner circle, the larger stones in the outer circle, that she believes that the
dating originally goes back to about 12,000 years. Whereas conventional academics say somewhat around 4,500 y
ears, official carbon 14 testing of
bits of wood found underneath the Stonehenge area, they say dated to 4,500 years. But according to researcher John Cowie, who did independent study, the dating should go back to more like 12,000 years. So the present state of Stonehenge is not what it originally was. And just for fun, this is what's called wood henge, which is in the area originally, of course these little pillars would've been taller and would've been wooden, but they rotted away a long
time
ago and have been replaced by these concrete columns again, she dates wood henge has been contemporary with Stonehenge at 12,000 years old. And now we're at Avebury, which is one of the largest megalithic complexes in the world where the stones of Stonehenge come from, I believe the Marlborough area as well as possibly northern Wales. The quarry, according to Maria, of these stones that Avebury are from a quarry about three miles or 4.5 kilometers away. And I asked her also what type of stone it
is. And she stated that it's called sarsen stone. And as we look very, very carefully, after we look at the ditch, which is ancient and surrounds much of Avebury, We'll see that the stone is of a very fine grain. And I believe it's a type of quartzite. So it's very high. It quartz crystal content, which could very well mean
that it was energetic in nature. What she's pointing out now
is that there are female stones and male stones. This is a female stone because it's wider at the top than the b
ottom. And then the male stones, of course are the opposite. And here we see evidence of
where the stones themselves have been quarried over the course of time by local farmers and other
people, damaging some of them, and in other cases breaking
them down into small bits to be used in the construction of walls. So when we see that there
is damage to megalithic sites in many parts of the world as the result of warfare, invading armies, other belief systems that take over older belief systems, in
this case, it appears that it was local
farmers destroying and damaging the stones for building material. And again, that's happened in Egypt and Peru and Bolivia, et cetera. So we've just walked through to another section because again, Avebury is, excuse me, one of the largest megalithic sites on earth. Some of the stones weigh up to a hundred tons. And as we walk along, we'll see that Avebury just
keeps going and going and going. The great thing about Avebury is that you're allowed to touch t
he stones where in Stonehenge, you're not allowed to. - Actually this Rusty, you haven't been on a tour
while if we kind of go over here and you look at the stone at this angle, you can see like a face profile. Well, if you look really
carefully at this face profile, I think it's all highly polished sarsen because come and have a look at this. That's very smooth, polished off sarsen. - [Brian] Oh yeah. - [Maria] So I think the whole of the face was polished. That's how smooth Stonehenge would've
been. - [Brain] Oh, really? So now Maria is showing us
a drawing of what Silbury Hill may have originally looked like. And we're going to be
seeing Silbury Hill in this video, but for now it's more exploration
of the Avebury megalithic complex, which again, is absolutely vast in scale. And supposedly some studies have been done. I'm not sure what science
was used to measure the energy that is actually present in the stone. And the Avebury World
heritage site is a huge complex of Silbury Hill, A
vebury Stone circles, the sanctuary, et cetera. And now we are at Silbury Hill. And here again, Maria has some insights that
she wants to share with us. This definitely is not a natural hill, or at least, has been heavily modified
over the course of centuries, if not millennia. - [Maria] Mosthe and Marden was a super huge complex in between Stonehenge and Avebury. And Den is an old English word for settlement that needs to settle with Mars. Okay, now I showed that to Bobby, he was mentioning ear
lier it's worked for Andrew Co. And we noticed that if you use Silbury Hill for Earth and then you go to Mercury,
Venus, Mars, Jupiter and so on, they're using the mean distance in the heavens of where Earth is to upon the ancient sides. And the ancients chose the orbit of Neptune, the God of the sea, right on the coast of an
ancient settlement looking down. - [Brian] So this is the standard description of how Silbury Hill was made, which is quite ludicrous that
a bunch of people with skin or cl
oth bags filling up with material were able to create this giant mound. Also, it appears to be made of chalk. And there was a sacred lake once located here. Again, Silbury Hill is several
thousands of years old and probably was altered over the course of time depending upon who was living in the area. But you see it's relatively
even in terms of shape and size. So the idea that it's natural is highly unlikely. And again, more of the Avebury World Heritage site, Windmill Hill, et cetera. So Engla
nd has many, many, many ancient sites that are great to look at. Of course the most famous would be Stonehenge, but Silbury Hill is quite fascinating. And this is our final destination that we're going to be visiting. And that's West Kenneth Long Barrow. And the intriguing thing about this location is that it was an ancient cemetery and Maria's gonna give us some incredible insights as regards its age and the fact that at least two different ancient cultures existed here. First it was an elongat
ed
skull culture and then they were destroyed by what are called
the beaker people who arrived somewhere in the area of 4,500 years old. So once again, we have those interesting two dates, one of 4,500 years ago and the other of 12,000 years ago. Most of you I'm sure have never heard the idea that elongated skulls have been found here. But elongated skulls have
been found in the long barrows and normal skulls are found in round barrows. But let's let Maria give us insight. - Neolithic a long sca
le period. This was open and aligned
to face the full moon in east and the spring and autumn sunrise. Now they used the chambers
for probably initiation rituals, ceremony, not for death. And then when it came to the final demise and the long skulled people were attacked, many murdered around Stonehenge. It was a decommissioning phase of the neolithic. What do I mean by that, the decommission phase, what they did, the round
skull people, the beaker culture, they got dirt and they got everything a
ssociated with that civilization put their skulls and their long bones inside infilled this with dirt,
massive blocking stone here, put the skulls in massive blocking stone and did that throughout this. And then in the style of Indiana giants, they got this blocking stone and sealed the tombs for all time. - [Brian] Wow. - I know archeologists don't talk about that facts. In fact, I'm the only earth mysteries person that ever pointed that out. This is the long last forgotten history of the early
neolithic civilization. - [Brian] So when would this have have taken place where the round skull people took over. - Well, Brian, it's that date everybody bangs on about, 2,500 B.C. I actually think
it was a lot earlier than that. Yeah, but that's the archeological date given through some shards that they found in there. And it wasn't until the 1950s that they realized there's these chambers here because it was so infilled with dirt, so jam packed that the archeological team had to hire huge di
ggers to get all of it out. But that didn't just happen
in this area that happened throughout the British Islands. So it was a phase where, let's forget about the past, let's forget about these people even existed and we'll start building our own culture. So they added to the monuments
that the long skull people had already erected is my theory and is archeologically correct. - [Brian] So these are the Celts who moved in. - No, the beaker people, the beaker people were going across Europe from p
robably from pockets
in Russia, the steps there. And they were moving across Europe with a culture called the Beaker Culture, which was owned burials in beakers. They were a lot taller than the ancient Britains. And they were fairer in skin, in color. And they came and either bought disease here, killed a lot of people. There was a crisis point in the neolithic and no other neolithic monument was ever built after 2,500 B.C. - [Brian] Oh wow. - So it's, which I point out in my little book, I'm wr
iting a bigger book called Stone Comes the Long
Skull People, I point that out, I'll give you a couple of copies of that, which I've got that describe all of this. And the decommissioning of their monuments. I mean Stonehenge was twice as violent. They really put more rubble so packed and started to destroy the fronts pieces. They didn't just get the blocking stone and neatly put it in. And some of the skulls were really in a bad state in Stonehenge because they'd
been crushed with the weight, t
he decommissioning faced. So it was, these are the actual chambers. And you get this through
our island in the British Isles, the top stone here always
has this kind of rubble effect. You find that in Ireland, you find it in some parts of
Slovenia actually and Malta. So that's a very neolithic feature. And saying in this one here, and obviously that's more
concrete for Atkinson's time, and you have the, so these were the chambers, but the far chamber, which now you've got two smaller chambers th
ere, that's a block and stone there, you see, and this is the back chamber. But originally it was what's called roofing and that's where you get a dome effect. Like at New Grange (indistinct). And that in itself generates
a particular type of energy. - [Brian] So I hope you've enjoyed this exploration of megalithic
sites in Southern England. I think we covered the most famous ones that you may have heard of, Stonehenge, of course you will have heard of. But there are many, many other megalithic
sites located in Middle England, Northern England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland. So Easter Island is a very small place. It's located about 2000 miles off the coast of Chile and is five miles by seven miles by 10 miles in size with a population of about 6,000 to 7,000 people. Now this is a series, I'm going to do five or six videos from our recent trip to Easter Island. And this is the Orongo crater. You can see it's a volcanic
crater and it's quite massive and it has totora reed growing in the cent
er. Totora reed is also found on the coast of Peru and also in lake Titicaca. The entire island is a series
of volcanoes, very ancient. And this location is also at Orongo. This is where the Birdman
competition was held in times prior to the arrival of Europeans
in the early 18th century. And these little islands offshore are where the native people, it was a man's tradition to
swim to the farther island there and collect an egg. And if he was successful in making it back without being eaten by
sharks, then he became the king or
chief of the island for a year. So these are the quite simple
stone basalt stone houses that, where the Birdman
competition people would live. But then there are some odd artifacts such as this piece of stone, which looks like it was shaped by some kind of sophisticated tool. And that is why Easter Island or Rapa Nui or Te Pito te Henua is quite a fascinating place because we're going to be seeing examples of lost ancient high technology here. But first I wante
d to show
you again the rather simple houses that were constructed of slabs, of basalt like this one you
can see simply broken slabs were stacked on top of one
another in an orderly fashion all near the rim of this crater. There are some more of the houses, and again, another inspection as we go
past my beautiful wife Edna of the simple slab construction
that we see at Orongo. So it's probably a later
period of construction just prior to the arrival of the Europeans, as I said, the first Europea
n to arrive was Roggeveen, who's a Dutch explorer, and he's the one who named the island Easter island, because he landed there on Easter Sunday. And then we have some
relatively simple temple circular complexes here, constructed
probably out of older buildings. And now this is the small town on the island, there's only one, and we're
driving to a different location. And this is Vinapu. So we have to go past the airport and this is the location of Vinapu right on the coast and quite a complex ar
ea because it has different types of construction all out of stone. So as we walk along, we're looking at some rather large blocks of basalt, not well fitted together here, but as we move closer to the left, you see they do fit together
quite tightly and these weigh one ton or more, but then the stone quality reduces. But this is the phenomenal wall at Vinapu that's partially destroyed. And it is similar to construction that we see in the highlands of Peru. And to some degree also in places like
Egypt. You see super tight fitting stone, very different from most of the construction we see on the island. There of course is one of the famous heads of which there are 950. But as you're going to see this is very atypical construction on Easter Island. And hints that an older civilization was once there did this construction, then the island was hit by a massive cataclysm which damaged part of the wall. And again, this is evidenced here, you see rather crude construction technique in compari
son to the beautiful but damaged technique used at the Vinapu wall. And as we walk around to the side, again, very crude construction in front and superior construction in behind. And again, there's the superior construction in behind we have some fallen moai statues and then slabs that looked like they were thrown from their original position. And here too, a small wall section, very big slabs of stone. Clearly these have, it's either
been damaged or reassembled and then much rougher work on th
e left hand side. Those two large ones are quite impressive. And now we're walking up to one of the Pukao so-called hats or more probably that is a top knot. That is what the royal people's hair looked like. They would tie their hair up into a top knot and they're all red, which could indicate that these people actually had red hair, which of course is not what Polynesians look like. But what we're seeing as we
go through this video and others in the series is that there's appear to have been tw
o different types of construction, the first one superior and the second inferior. And so what I'm believing and others believe is that the Polynesians arrived on Easter island about 1000 years ago and they found the remains of
a more advanced technological civilization possibly there were some people still living there from the earlier time period. And when Roggeveen landed on Easter Island, what was recorded in his log book was that they saw tall people, they saw short people, they saw black-h
aired people, they saw red-haired people, they even saw blonde-haired people, as well, they saw light-skinned people and they saw dark skinned people. So here what you're looking
at is a rebuilt wall probably done during the Polynesian time period. Some of the stones are quite large, others very small. And that's in stark contrast to the Vinapu wall you saw earlier. There again is one of the Pukao top knots, And now we're walking up to
another one of the fallen moai and they seem to be from two
time periods as well. The small ones are like this, that's of course simply the head, but they're much larger ones
with so-called aqualine noses. So again, possible reconstruction of a somewhat megalithic wall. And now we're going to look at inferior construction. And again, one of the fallen heads, each one of the moai, the 950 of them were originally full figures with one or two being on the
order of 35 feet tall or more. There's also one moai in the quarry unfinished, which wood weigh 180 ton
s if it was ever completed. And a view of the quarry will come up in a future video in this series. Here again are some massive slabs that look like they've been recycled during
the Polynesian timeframe. And now we're going back
to the Vinapu megalithic wall. But this is the backside where you're having a look at some fallen smaller moai. So these were ones probably made during the Polynesian timeframe, whereas the much larger ones were likely made thousands of years prior to
the arrival of the
Polynesians. And here we see one of the Pukaos, which has been turned into a water vessel. So again, recycling. And sadly the population of Easter Island dropped after contact with Europeans from possibly 10,000 plus people down to a population of only 111. So the population now is a mix of Polynesian and European heritage in general. And as we drive past the airport, which you have to do to get anywhere. And so this is part two of exploring Easter Island or Rapa nui, little tiny place only five
miles by seven miles by 10 miles and more than 2000 miles away from Chile and or the west coast of South America. So the infrastructure is relatively modern, taking into account how far away it is from anything. And we're on one of the paved roads, one of the few paved roads on the island, heading towards the Rano Raraku quarry. So here we are at the quarry itself, and this is where more than 900 of the moai figures were excavated or that's where the quarry is. So we're walking around here and
pretty soon you are going to be able to see many of these. There are more than 300 I
believe, still in the quarry area. And as you can see, they're basically buried up to their shoulders or even up to their necks. But each one is a full body. And there's one in the quarry
that you will see, unfinished, that would've weighed 180
tons if it had been finished, which it wasn't. And also there are two different varieties of moai. There are ones with flat
noses and others like this one with more of a,
some would say European style nose. So it is quite possible that
there were two different time periods of their construction. So again, this is the classic view of what most people associate with Easter island. Again, buried up to their necks unless the heads are broken off. And 950 of them on the island. One of these ones on the
right hand side was excavated by Thor Heyerdahl and it proved that the moai heads are in fact full bodies. And the one that he excavated, I believe was more than 20 fe
et tall. So moving farther along, these are the classic ones
with the so-called aquiline nose. And then here we see a much smaller one that is lying down on its front. So I believe that there were
two different time periods of construction that the
ones with the aqualine noses, which are the tallest ones were made first by a pre Polynesian culture. And then the Polynesians
arrived about 1000 years ago, likely from Tahiti, and they started to copy on a much, much smaller scale. So the mystery is
who were the original builders Again, you see a small one lying down and then much, some much larger ones that
are buried up to their necks. And that is the quarry in the background. And here again, some detailed views of some of the larger ones. And this one has a ship carved onto its torso. Now it is quite possible
that originally it was carved as a canoe and then later on, the sails were added once European contact was made sometime in the 1720s. And now we're going to approach one that is st
ill in the quarry, quite massive one. The material is actually volcanic tough, which is a concentrated volcanic ash that has been compressed over the course
of likely hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. And this gives you the view of the entire figure that was never finished moving farther and farther along. This is on the outskirts of the actual crater itself. The whole thing is the quarry. And now we're approaching
a little moai that I believe is the only one ever found in a kneeli
ng position. And in the far distance you'll see Tongariki, which is a site we're going to get to very soon. So this gives you the landscape
from the quarry edge itself. And you see the multiple moai that were never moved to any other place on the island. Almost all of the moai that were moved and placed in position, face inland, they do not face the ocean, but there are seven that will be in another video, which in fact face the ocean and they are called the seven navigators. So this is a view o
f the quarry. And there in the center is
the one that would've weighed about 180 tons but was never completed. And now we're farther along
on the outer edge of the quarry and we're actually going to climb inside of it. So this is my third time to Easter island, Rapa Nui. And the first time that I was ever able to actually get into the crater itself. Here again you see volcanic stone material and then volcanic ash or mud. And then there is a small lake in the middle of the quarry area. It's an an
cient volcanic crater of course. And moving along you'll see
that there are totora reeds growing in this little lake. There are actually also totora reeds growing in a much larger lake on the island. And totora reeds are native to this island as well as the coast of Peru and lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia. And if you look very carefully in the background, you'll see more of the moai once again, buried up to the shoulders or up to the necks. And you're not allowed to get too close to them beca
use there are still excavations going on. But this is the fence from which you can see that there are quite a few of them there still inside the crater. And now this is Tongariki, which is the largest ceremonial platform or ahu on the island. And there are 15 of the moai that have been put back up because the whole ahu altar was hit by a tsunami in the 1960s, I believe. And then these are the so-called hats that belonged on top of the moai. In fact, it's indicative of red hair with a top knot, w
hich is the traditional way that many Polynesians wear their hair. So that's a mystery. Could it possibly mean that the first people who lived on Easter island or Rapa Nui were actually redheaded people? And so here you see the different shapes and sizes and there is one of them with its top knot or pukao put back into position. And again another view of the moai that had been put back up again. And now we're going to go around the backside and look how massive this ahu is. The blank space on th
e right part of the screen now, could mean according to our guide, Alejandro, that there were spaces for possibly seven more moai to be placed in position at a future time. Now the hill in the background, it's called the Poike ditch. And that is where a fierce battle happened between what were called the long ears and the short ear people. The long ears were the nobility and the short ears were the common folk. And the short ears decided to kill off the nobility, most likely due to a problem wit
h drought at one time prior to the
arrival of the first Europeans, theoretically, in the 1720s. And now you see shattered parts of smaller moai and you see that one on the right side has quite a polished surface. So it is possible that some
were made of a harder material than the volcanic tough. And in fact, there is one in the British Museum which is made of very hard basalt and it's unknown how that material was shaped if the only tools that the Rapa Nui people had was in fact basalt. How do y
ou shape basalt with basalt? And finally we're driving by the ocean here. And this is a little recreation
of a Polynesian village. This stone structure is actually a chicken house. So the chickens would come in and out of that hole you see on the left. And chickens were very important to the diet of the Rapa nui people and were likely brought from Tahiti when they discovered and decided to inhabit the island with their chief called Hotu Matuꞌa. So here again, a relatively simple
construction of
volcanic stone and there's the hole for the chickens to go in with banana trees as well growing on the inside. This is an ancient earth oven being shown to us by Alejandro, similar to a luau in Hawaii. And then this is a house, originally it's believed that the first settlers used their canoe hulls to make a house. But of course over the course of time they would have rotted away and there was limited wood on the island, basically only the miro tree I believe, or miro tree. And so instead they'r
e made with smaller tree trunks and of course that roofing then this is a recreation of a garden. I'm not sure if these are
gourds or if they're watermelon, they look more like watermelon to me. I don't believe that watermelon
is indigenous to Polynesia, but it's just a way to recreate what a gourd garden would look like. And now we get to see the
interesting finely shaped stones of the base of the canoe house. And so once again, this is part two of a five or
six part series that I'm doing about
my recent trip to Easter
Island in October of 2018. And I look forward to
sharing more of the interesting aspects and mysteries of Rapa Nui. And here we are on one of
the dirt roads on Easter Island. I think only the main highway is actually paved, but it's maintained in pretty good condition. And today, or at this point in the video, what we're going to explore
are the large red scoria stones that were used to place on top of the moai figures. So this is the quarry of Puna Pao. So, in the back
ground you can see some of the semi-finished stones. Again, they've represented to some people a head of some kind, but it's more likely that they were top knots because Polynesian people to this very day, especially women, but some men, wear their hair up as a top knot in order to keep their necks cool because after all, this is the tropics. So again, these are some of them in different stages of completion. And this is the main quarry where you find this red scoria stone, which of course is vo
lcanic because the entire island is volcanic. There is a glimpse at the
coastal area and the little town of Hanga Roa, which is the only town on the island of any size, Easter island is seven miles by five miles by 10 miles in size. And it's located more than 2000 miles from the coast of Chile. So here you can see the color of the the red soil. And now we're looking down into the quarry itself. Once again, you can see some
in different stages of finish, they would be roughed out
and then rolled
up to the top and then rolled down to where the moai was that was going to wear this
interesting top-notch adornment. Rapa Nui or Easter island is a phenomenal place to visit and it's not that expensive to fly from Santiago de Chile and well worth a trip, lasting I would guess or estimate five to six days. You can see basically everything. So we're driving to another location now and this is Ahu a Kivi and this is where we have
seven of the full moai figures. These are the only seven out of some
thing like 950 that face the ocean. All the other ones face in land. And in fact the heads are cocked slightly backwards so that they're facing the sky, which is quite curious. And of course that's a
great subject for ancient alien or ancient astronaut enthusiasts. Our local guide Alejandro, said that they were looking
up to their home star system, which is intriguing if you
believe that the ancestors of people came from another planet. So once again, these are the seven navigators. Supposedly t
hey were sent by Hotu Matuꞌa who was the original chief of Easter Island. And it's quite probable that the Polynesian people originally came from Tahiti approximately a thousand years ago. But the question is, since the island is so tiny, how could you even find it in the first place? The oral tradition story says
that it was a major person in the Tahitian nobility who had a dream about this little island. And through that dream, he was able to assist in navigating from Tahiti to Easter Island.
Now notice the quality of the
stone work at the very bottom. Much of the content of these videos except this one, discusses the concept that
there were two different civilizations that lived on Easter Island, the Polynesians who arrived approximately a thousand years ago, as I said, and then a more technologically
sophisticated civilization that came before that. The question is from where, some theories are that they
in fact came from ancient India, from the Indus Valley civilization. But again
, how they would ever have found this little tiny island is
one of its greatest mysteries and not very often discussed by academics because that's
a very inconvenient question to ask as are questions about
who built the giant megalithic sites in Peru, Bolivia, Egypt, et cetera. They tend to dodge these
questions rather than face them. So now in the main part of the video, we're going to be exploring lava tube systems of which there are extensive
ones, some larger than others. This could be the l
argest of all of them. You can see that banana plants have been placed in sunlight surrounded by stone. So that means that they
would grow very well in this area. Very clever job by the ancient Rapa Nui people. And now we're going to
explore into this lava tube system. I believe we walked more
than one and a half kilometers or about one mile underground. Now the story goes from our guide, Alejandro, that the reason why these lava tubes were inhabited was that at one time, or possibly at many tim
es
in the history of the island, there was famine as the result
of extensive climate change. This could have been the
result of major fluctuations in the El Nino system just off the coast, western coast of South America. And so these would be
places of refuge during wartime when people were fighting
over very scarce resources. I had been to Rapa Nui twice before and explored a much smaller cave system, but you can see how extensive this one is. This again is our group who went there with Hidden
Inca Tours in October of 2018. And here again an open area where taro is growing and sugar cane I believe as well. So these people when they were in refuge actually had gardens that would sustain them. And there's a lot of underground
water on Easter Island or Rapa Nui because it's in the tropics, it tends to rain a fair bit, especially in June, July and August. Fortunately we were there in October, so we had some overcast days, but it wasn't really all that bad. So here's a wall that was built
by the ancient people and now we're going to go, we're going to go even deeper into this system. Again, a natural lava tube created during the formation of this part of the island. Rapa Nui has quite an extensive history with different times of volcanic activity. I believe there are three
major craters on the island that make up the whole system. And so we're going deeper
and deeper into the darkness. And there again, you could see an open area where plants were growing, but this is the darker p
art that leads to an opening at the very end. Here again is another opening
where a small garden is. And there is Alejandro on the left hand side. He is by far in my estimation,
the best guide on Rapa Nui. If you want to know how to contact him, you can contact me through
my website, hiddenincatours.com. We are planning probably to go back to Rapa Nui in two years, so in 2020. And so I'll have that listed on my website if you want to join us, there right in front of us is Gustavo, who's our Boli
vian tour coordinator, And this is the darkest part of the tunnel that we are exploring now. The population of Rapa Nui is about six to 7,000 people. Half of them are native people from the island and the other half are Chileans. And about 75% of the island is the national park. So this of course is part of the national park. As are all of the other ancient locations, temples, more than 300 of the moai stone figures, which are full bodies, not just heads are located in the quarry area. So here w
e are at the very end
and climbing our way back out through the thickets and
different tropical plants, this is me finally climbing out from underground and being greeted by our tour group. And then here comes Antonio from Australia, probably the largest member
of our group in this case. I think he's six feet four and he's having a little bit of trouble trying to get back out of the cave system, but success. So here we are driving on
their quote unquote highway. And this is our first stop
at loo
king at ancient ruins. So you see some, what may
have been a damaged tiny temple on the left hand side. And this is our actual first stop, the Ahu Te Pito Kura. And what's interesting about
here is that there is a stone which seems incredibly even in shape and it's highly metallic, or sorry, magnetic, as if it obviously has iron content. So as we walk past the ruins of an ahu, which is a temple platform, we get to the location of this first interesting exploration. And there we have it, you see
the central stone, which must weigh 200 pounds at least. And then the four stones around it. Supposedly the stone was found on the island. Some say it was brought from somewhere else. But our guide Alejandro is going to show you that it affects a compass in
some quite fascinating ways. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get into the little temple complex here because it's very sacred to the Rapa Nui people. But the other people who
were with us in our October tour said definitely that the
compass a
cted quite strange when Alejandro, who is the best guide on Rapa Nui, when he brought his compass close and then took it away from it. And nearby we have this other temple ahu complex and it appears to be
constructed in two different ways, relatively crude on the left hand side and then more sophisticated on the right hand side. And so it could mean that
there were two different cultures that lived here, an early megalithic presence, and then later the arrival of the Polynesians about a thousand
years ago. So there's the cruder work on the left and then the more sophisticated work on the right. In this series of five videos, you will see examples of megalithic work and the probability of
lost ancient high technology on Easter island in the very distant past. And now we're coming up to what is called a pukao. And that is the top knot that was put on top of the moai figures. Moai's are the humanoid figures or human figures that most people think of as simply being a head or a head and a
neck. But in fact, each one originally was a full
body and there are hundreds of them on the island. In fact, there are 950 of them on the island. So what we're doing now is we're coming closer to another ahu platform. And as I zoom in, you'll see some very large slabs of basalt, which is a very tough stone, hard stone. And the hardest tools that the Rapa Nui people had was in fact basalt. So shaping basalt with basalt is not very efficient. We're now at Anakena Beach And it is the only major sa
ndy beach on the island. You see all of these coconut
palms that were brought in relatively recently from Tahiti. The island was denuded by the fact that it was turned into a sheep farm in the 19th century. And all of the inhabitants of the island were restricted to a tiny area on the island. Very cruel history this place has. So as we get closer to this ahu, which has seven figures on it, I believe the restoration of it was done in the 1950s by Thor Heyerdahl and his team who went to explore th
e island. They were the first archeological team or major archeological team to go there. And what I'd like you to look
at is the bottom row of stone that you see there on the ahu. You see some kind of rough stone on top, but the lower row is fine blocks of basalt that evenly tightly fit together. Again, we're going to look at this one more time and you see it's in a slightly upward arcing shape. Look at the cruder elements of the rest of the ahu. And now we're going to walk around the backside
of it. And I'm going to zoom into some stones, two of them which are large basalt blocks. Each weighing I would think at least a ton of piece. The quarry is not in the area, it's at the other side of the island. And these look very finely shaped unlike some of the other features that we see. So again, I think there were two different cultures on the island, the Polynesians arriving about 1000 years ago. And prior to that, a more high tech culture, who did fine work. You see the inferior nature
o
f the stones you're looking at here, just rough stone. So now continuing at Anakena, we're going to look at some more stones that look to be outta place. So you can see once again
two relatively large pieces of basal stone. This one relatively nicely shaped. And then we come to the ruins of what was literally a
boathouse as in human habitation. But what they would do in early times is take a canoe and flip it over and put it on this foundation made of very nicely shaped basalt stones, once again
, with drill holes, probably hand drill holes
or or pounded into the stone, not necessarily an example
of lost ancient high technology. And then finally we're going
to look at some other things of interest here at Anakena. There's a very crudely shaped shrine as you can see, and here another shrine of
mixed stones, some small ones, but then also broken sections of the long ones that we saw at the boathouse foundation. Once again, the holes don't appear to be have done by a machine or anything li
ke that. And this shows you the backside of the ahu complex at Anakena, the seven moai, five of them with the pukao top knots on them, different shapes which
could indicate different levels of hierarchy, at least that's according to our guide Alejandro. And each one is always, the pukaos are always red. And that may indicate an
ancient people who lived there that actually had genetically red hair because the first accounts by explorers, especially the crew of the
Dutch Explorer Roggeveen in abou
t 1720 indicated that
there were black haired people, red-haired people, and even blonde-haired people on the island. And some were tall, some were short, some were light skinned, some were dark skinned. So this kind of flies against
the typical academic studies that state simply that the Polynesians were the first humans there, beginning about a thousand years ago. And once again, we see a grove of very nice coconut ponds brought in from Tahiti relatively recently, because the fact that it was
a sheep farm for something like 75 years
basically denuded the island. It was a British company, I
believe that was given license by the Chilean government to basically devastate the environment. But what we're here for is to
look at the beautiful ancient aspects of this little gem of an island, more or less in the middle of nowhere. And so this is something
you're going to see in part five. It's another ahu complex, but this is located at a site called Tahai. Now we're at an ancient
location cl
ose to the small town of Hanga Roa, and this is called Tahai. And this is also where some of the most famous of the moai figures of Easter island are located. So you can see that it was a ancient canoe port. So it's quite likely that
during the pre-European times, that Tahai was a very important location for the Polynesian people that still inhabit the island itself. And this ahu, which is a small temple complex, has one of the moai figures which has been put back into place because more or less
, all of the moai figures were knocked down during tribal warfare, likely in the 17th century. And we can see that eyes have been put back into place. And also the pukao top knot also has been put back. So this is what a traditional
one of the moai look like. And there are 950 of them, more or less located on the island. So as we walk further, we see more of the Tahai complex. You can see another moai that has been put back up into place, but the eyes have not been put back on. Neither has the p
ukao top knot. And once again, the pukao top knot likely, was the color of the people's hair, which in every case the pukao is red. So whether that was dying
of the hair using volcanic clay or whether the people
actually had genetically red hair is something up in question. It seems that there were
two different civilizations living on Easter island. First, mysterious people who seemed to have the capacity to do lost ancient high technology, cutting of stone on some level, and then later the Pol
ynesian
people about 1000 years ago. Whether or not there was an overlap of these people is still in question. And then on our last full day, Gustavo Morales and I went to this location, which I'd been to once previously. It was not part of our tour, we had some free time. So we decided to visit this ahu, which very few visitors see. And here again we can see a moai figure put back on top, look at the quality of the
stone work right below the moai and here in the middle of the video frame, very
precise cutting, very
tightly fitting together. We see that at four or five other locations. So that's why I believe that there were two different civilizations that lived on the island, the Polynesian people who came from Tahiti, about 1000 years ago, and then an earlier mysterious culture that had the capability of cutting stone with quite precision. Again, look at the tightness
of the fit of the stone work. And here again, this gives you a sense of it in detail. You can see that originally th
e stones fit very tight together. Some still do, others have been put back into place. And so this is our last complex that we're visiting on the island for this time. We'll probably go back on tour in 2020. And as a final little teaser, we're exploring to the left side of the ahu, and we're going to look at a damaged ahu here. Ahu is the word for temple. There you see a moai on the left, quite a small one that has fallen down and broken. But then again, look at these relatively
precisely cut pi
eces of stone. They don't really fit in
with the standard Polynesian technique of simply stacking volcanic stone one on top of another. And so that's why this island has many more mysteries than most people realize. There you see quite a simple wall in the background. And again, as this final little bit goes on, we're exploring these giant, relatively giant slabs of stone that are presently out of place, but seem to have been
originally quite precisely cut. Thank you very much for watching and s
tay tuned for more videos coming up.
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