Island at the Edge of the World - by Mike Pitts Hardcover

Book Synopsis

"The true and fascinating story of Easter Island and its amazing statues" -- Ken Follett

"Revelatory...fascinating... wholly convincing" -- Daily Mail (UK)

"Striking . . . a stunning unraveling of many layers of hidden history." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A vital and timely work of historical adventure and reclamation by British archeological scholar Mike Pitts--a book that rewrites the popular yet flawed history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and uses newly unearthed findings and documents to challenge the long-standing historical assumptions about the manmade ecological disaster that caused the island's collapse.

Rapa Nui, known to Western cultures as Easter Island for centuries, has long been a source of mystery. While the massive stone statues that populate the island's landscape have loomed in the popular Western imagination since Europeans first set foot there in 1722, in recent years, the island has gained infamy as a cautionary tale of eco-destruction. The island's history as it's been written tells of Polynesians who carelessly farmed, plundered their natural resources, and battled each other, dooming their delicate ecosystem and becoming a warning to us all about the frailty of our natural world.

But what if that history is wrong?

In The Island at the Edge of the World, archeological writer and scholar Mike Pitts offers a direct challenge to the orthodoxy of Rapa Nui, bringing to light new research and documents that tell a dramatic and surprising story about what really led to the island's downfall. Relying on the latest archaeological findings, he paints a vastly different portrait of what life was like on the island before the first Europeans arrived, investigating why a Polynesian people who succeeded for centuries throughout the South Pacific supposedly failed to thrive in Rapa Nui. Pitts also unearths the vital story of one of the first anthropologists to study Rapa Nui, an Oxford-trained iconoclast named Katherine Routledge, who was instrumental in collecting firsthand accounts from the Polynesians living on Rapa Nui in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But though Routledge's impressive scholarship captured the oral traditions of what life had been like pre-1722, her work was widely dismissed because of her gender, her reliance on indigenous perspectives, and her conclusions which contradicted her historical peers.

A stunning work of revisionism, this book raises critical questions about who gets to write history and the stakes of ignoring that history's true authors. Provocative and illuminating, The Island at the Edge of the World will change the way people think about Easter Island, its colonial legacy, and where the blame for its devastation truly lies.

Review Quotes

"[Pitts] is good at bringing alive human stories - particularly about the indigenous islanders and how, after 20 generations of keeping their own company, they were shockingly assaulted by the outside world... a gripping story." - Spectator (UK)
"Rapa Nui has a double history of early Polynesian life and later colonial devastation, both mythologized. Mike Pitts draws on deep research to provide a powerful corrective to such myths. Anyone looking for an intelligent, balanced and accessible account of Rapa Nui should read his book" - Chris Gosden, Professor of Archaeology, Oxford University
"In this detailed, intelligent, humane work, Pitts has given us a salutary corrective to centuries of Western prejudice and fantasy." - Literary Review (UK)
"A thought-provoking mix of published past and current work, and rediscovered documents that together provides a usefully different perspective on Rapa Nui's iconic world heritage archaeology" - Sue Hamilton, Professor of Prehistory, University College London Institute for Archaeology
"An archeologist reexamines the mystery of Rapa Nui--and offers answers...The result is a welcome contribution to Pacific Island history that holds relevance not just for Rapa Nui, but for other islands across this vast ocean. A bold and convincing revision of Rapa Nui's history."
- Kirkus Reviews
"Striking . . . a stunning unraveling of many layers of hidden history." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The true and fascinating story of Easter Island and its amazing statues" - Ken Follett
"Revelatory...fascinating... wholly convincing" - Daily Mail (UK)