What really happened on Easter Island
What really happened on Easter Island
Lecturer: Dr Paul Bahn
Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is the most isolated piece of permanently inhabited land on the planet, and yet it produced a most extraordinary Stone Age culture: hundreds of sophisticated coastal stone platforms, more than a thousand enormous stone statues, the richest rock art in the Pacific, and a unique writing system.
Paul Bahn studied archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and completed his PhD thesis (1979) on the prehistory of the French Pyrenees. Paul has held post-doctoral fellowships at Liverpool and London, plus a J. Paul Getty postdoctoral fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities. He devotes his time to writing, editing and translating books on archaeology, plus occasional journalism and as much travel as possible.
Paul’s main research interest is prehistoric art, especially rock art of the world, and most notably Palaeolithic art, as well as Easter Island. He led the team which, at his instigation, searched for and discovered the first Ice Age cave art in Britain (at Creswell Crags) in 2003.
Image credit: Soizic Gaborel. Licensed under Creative Commons Share alike 3.0