A brilliant new account of one of the world's most remote mysterious and misunderstood places:
Easter Island. More than 1200 miles from the nearest inhabited island and 2200 miles from
mainland Chile Easter Island is one of the most inaccessible places on the planet made famous
by its thousand huge statues. How people came to live there and what happened to them has been
the cause of heated debate. Now in this compelling and deeply researched new book The Last
Island on Earth we find out the answers. For too long people have imposed their own theories
on this extraordinary place and its inhabitants. Thor Heyerdahl after his famous Kon-Tiki
expedition claimed the island had been discovered by light-skinned people from South America
believing only they could have been capable of travelling there and building the statues. Erich
von Däniken took it to greater extremes saying the statues had been carved by aliens. More
recently Jared Diamond's theory of ecocide - that Islanders destroyed their world by cutting
down all the trees - has become popular as a vital message about the need to conserve our
planet's resources. None of this survives scrutiny or captures the island's inspiring and
tragic real story. With new research local indigenous histories and rediscovered historical
sources archaeologist Mike Pitts creates a fascinating and comprehensive portrait of Easter
Island - and reveals how the truth is even more remarkable than the fiction.
