Easter Island's stone giants: a neuro-psychiatric view.

Abstract

The sorting-out of neuro-psychiatrically meaningful patterns is offered as an auxiliary tool to so far unsuccessful attempts at understanding why the approximately 1000 giant stone statues on Easter Island exist and at deciphering the significance of their unique features. Under stone age conditions these stone giants of repetitive shape were created by a population of 3000 to 4000 at the most, probably between 1100 A.D. and 1680 A.D. on an isolated and quite barren island. It is suggested that nothing short of an existential shock would have provided the impetus for this strenuous form of art. The disfiguring disease of leprosy, which has been endemic on Easter Island, might have constituted such a shock. Thus, in a possible magic attempt at mastery, the still healthy portion of the tiny community may have created these stone giants, who represent indestructable strength in general, and fortification of those specific body parts, which are usually damaged or disfigured by leprosy, in particular. Thus 7 body areas, including the acral ones, of these stone giants show a specific pattern of deviation from the normal appearance of the human body. These deviations may represent the reversal of the characteristic signs of leprosy into their opposite, a mechanism used by our unconscious to prevent panic.