During the period of devastating war that saw a rapid descent of Rapa Nui civilization into famine and ritual cannibalization, some tribes would topple the moai of rival tribes as a means of psychological warfare.
Most authorities appear to agree that the original inhabitants of Easter Island arrived from Polynesia, and Thor Heyerdahl's theory of a Peruvian discovery of Easter Island seems largely discredited. Interestingly, some people believe that the chicken may hold the key to the mysteries of the spread of humans through the Pacific and into South America. Apparently, scientists have traced the genetic lineage of chickens and determined that chickens, which originated in Asia, and were carried by the Polynesians through the Pacific, arrived in southern Chile in the 12th century -- before the Spanish -- suggesting that Polynesians arrived in South America before the Spanish, and perhaps brought masonry techniques and the sweet potato back with them to Easter Island.
The TDBP is officially complete. What follows are merely postscripts and annotations on the original text. Like the mysterious Rongo Rongo texts left by the Easter Islanders, the TDBP will be an object of study and scholarship for generations to come. Our understanding of the TDBP, its meteoric rise, its sudden collapse, with meals left warm and half-eaten, projects dropped incomplete, is only at a beginning. There are important lessons to be learned by close study of the TDBP and its lasting effects on all who came into its orbit.
Also, we will have to do some investigation to determine the Evacuee's final whereabouts, as she has chosen, for reasons of her own, not to inform us of her final destination.
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