IntroductionThe intent and purpose of this book is to shed light on the ambiguoushistory of the cultures and history of the west coast of South America,more specifically what is now called Peru, and the islands that lie to thewest, as in Easter Island, Tahiti, New Zealand and Hawaii.

What the latter 4 have in common, is that they all clearly, whether oneaccesses western driven academia, or the oral traditions of the Nativepeople, is a clear and historic past, that of the so called Polynesian people.Scholars disagree greatly on the common root of these people, and muchof what is written is either at odds with the oral traditions of the peoplethemselves, if and when the latter is or has been consulted.

Map of the area under discussion in this book

The lack of western academics’ inclusion of the knowledge of Nativepeople is hardly restricted to Polynesia, which is itself a name that theindigenous people never called nor call themselves, but a geographic label,and it is an example, symbol and symptom of colonialism.

All of these “Polynesian”, meaning simply “many islands” people have anancient tradition that speaks of a time when a light skinned people, withreddish or auburn hair and in some accounts green eyes either livedalongside them, or were indeed an ancestral line from which they draw atleast part of their genetic inheritance.

The coast of Peru is to this very day a place where ancestral skeletons arefound, often with reddish hair still attached to their scalps. This is due tothe extreme dryness of the area being a perfect place, whether intentionallyor by accident for the preservation of human bones and tissues. ThorHeyerdahl, the famous, but much maligned researcher whose perhapsgreatest accomplishment was the Kon Tiki expedition, whereby he and 5of his compatriots successfully sailed from the coast of Peru to the SocietyIslands in 1947, was adamant that Pacific Islands, such as Easter, werefirst inhabited by non-Polynesians .

The Kon Tiki under full sail

It is purely out of curiosity, and without any sort of political or racialagenda, that I pursue this story, which Heyerdahl gleaned from historicaccounts of the Inca, Spanish and others, of the existence, in the deep past,of a race, or at least group of people, who bore non Indigenous physicalcharacteristics, and may have left their mark, in the form of stonestructures, oral traditions, and descendants throughout Polynesia andperhaps beyond.

Many island people, especially in New Zealand, which should properly, inmy view, be called by its native name Aotearoa, or “Land of the LongWhite Cloud”, speak with pride of these mysterious ancestors, much ofwhose identity seems to be lost in the mists of time.

The idea of a lost race or company of tall, light skinned and auburn hairedsea farers often brings up the idea that Europeans, especially the Irish or

other Celtic people must have traveled the world’s oceans and occupiedthe ancestral lands of people like the Polynesians long ago. This Iimmediately dismiss as pure fantasy, and do not include in this book, asidefrom casual but superficial glimpses. The topic and theory, which basicallyhas no merit nor evidence in my view, will simply attract a storm ofracism, from both sides, and controversy which will muddle my intent.Who were these ancient people, and what did they leave behind to tell usthe story of their existence?

Crimson Horizon:

The Mysterious Ancient Sea Kings Of The Pacific Ocean

3500 km west of the Chilean coast of South America sits Easter Island,also known as Isla de Pascua (Spanish) and Rapa Nui (the Indigenouslanguage.) This remote outpost of civilization has fascinated visitors eversince it was first discovered by the Dutch explorer Jakob Roggeveen onEaster Sunday, 1722; he thus named it Easter Island, or more properlyPaasch-Eyland (18th century Dutch for "Easter Island") (1) and that namehas stuck ever since, much to the consternation of the Native islanders,who knew their home by their own names for hundreds if not thousands ofyears.

The name Rapa Nui, for example, which is the title best loved by thepresent day population, who are a mix of Polynesian and Chilean descent,

means “Big Rapa,” but this term was supposedly coined after the slaveraids of the early 1860s, and refers to the island's topographic resemblanceto the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group. (2)In the source’s own words, he being William Thompson writing in 1891,‘Throughout southeastern Polynesia this island is known as Rapa Nui, butthe name is of accidental origin and only traces back about twenty years.When the islanders, kidnapped by the Peruvians, were being returned totheir homes, there was for a time a question as to the identity of those fromEaster Island. The native name of "Te Pito te Henua" was not recognizedby the French officials, and finding certain fellow-sufferers hailing fromOparo, an island lying 2,000 miles to the westward, were more successfulunder the local appellation of Rapa iti (Little Rapa), the euphonious titlewas dropped and Rapa nui (Great Rapa) substituted.’

Te Pito O te Henua is another native style name, and has been said to bethe original name of the island since Alphonse Pinart gave it the romantictranslation "the Navel of the World" in his Voyage à l'Île de Pâques,published in 1877. (3) However, there are two words pronounced pito inRapa Nui, one meaning 'navel' and one 'end', and the phrase can thus alsomean "land's end".

Yet another name, that being Mata ki te rangi, means "Eyes looking to thesky" and this may be in reference to the famous large stone statues, calledMoai, which ring the island and are in the shape of, predominantly, humanheads and torsos. And finally, Thor Heyerdahl, the amazing Norwegianexplorer best known for his 1947 Kon Tiki adventure, and later the Ra andTigris expeditions, insisted that Rapa was the original name of EasterIsland, and that Rapa Iti was named by refugees from there. (4) Heyerdahlwas in fact the first European, and in fact outsider, to conductarchaeological excavations on the island, which is well documented in hisbook “Aku- aku: the Secret of Easter island written in 1958.

What is perhaps most intriguing and perplexing about Easter Island are the

recurring stories of two separate people and cultures cohabiting this smallisland which Roggeveen was the first outsider to witness in 1722. Hestates that they were "of all shades of colour, yellow, white and brown"and they distended their ear lobes so greatly with large disks that whenthey took them out they could "hitch the rim of the lobe over the top of theear". (5) The latter is in reference to the so-called Long Ears, or Hanau epepeople, who are generally regarded as having been a high caste group,whereas the Hanau momoko were the Short Ears, and the working class.

All of the large stone Moai heads depict Long Ears

The Hanau eepe were theorized by Thor Heyerdahl to have come fromSouth America (6), perhaps being the early Inca or the predecessors, whilethe Hanau momoko were Polynesians, most likely coming from Oparo orRapa iti island which is in the Australs. Much controversy surrounds the

relationships between these people, as well as time lines of conflicts that infact did occur; however, a full discussion of this will come later. However,Roggeveen clearly indicated that he observed two distinct peoples upon hisarrival to Easter Island, the Polynesians and “White” people, whose earlobes were heavily distended. Not only was their skin colour much lighterthan the Polynesians or Hanau momoko, but their hair was also reddish oreven blonde.

What Heyerdahl purports in Aku-aku is that the evidence exists to showthat the island was “invaded” by a white skinned people that arrived on theisland about 500 A.D.This race of people had unusual features that included red hair and longthin noses. They were remembered by the natives as the “long ears”because they wore large ear rings that elongated their earlobes. They tookpossession of the island and forced the natives to work as labourers.Descendants of the long ears still exist on the island today. They are thepredominant families, many of them still with red hair and European facialfeatures that set them apart from the dark haired, dark-eyed natives. (7)This is the first example of several instances, on different lands and islandsof the Pacific Ocean, and the purpose of this book, to show that ourgenerally accepted theory about the exploration and settlement of theworld’s largest ocean is not as simple as we have been led to believe. Thearea called Polynesia, (from Greek: πολύς "polys" many + νῆσος "nēsos"island) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scatteredover the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people whoinhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they sharemany similar traits including language, culture and beliefs. (8) Morespecifically, it forms what is called the “Polynesian Triangle” which isbordered by Hawaii in the north, Easter Island to the southeast, and NewZealand (Aotearoa) in the southwest.Conventional scholarship believes that the first settlers of this trianglewere native people from south-east Asia in the distant past, a subject we

shall explore in detail later, and that no other humans were resident in thisarea prior to these Polynesian people. However, the presence of red hairedand light skinned individuals, as we have already seen in our brief accountof the history of Easter Island, places this simplistic view in doubt.The same seems to be true of the Pacific side of the South Americancontinent, which we shall also delve much more deeply into in the book;accounts by the first Spanish conquistadors and chroniclers speak of thepresence, within the Amerindian populations of mysterious light skinnedand red haired individuals. Again, conventional archaeology andanthropology would have us believe a very simple story, that all of the pre-Columbian residents and populations of North, South and Central Americacame exclusively across what is called the Bering Land Bridge, linkingAsia and Alaska prior to the melting of the vast ice sheets which werepresent up until approximately 12,500 years ago. Clearly something ismissing from this idea.

Map of the basic pattern of Indigenous migrations

It is not my contention to suggest that Europeans with bright red hairexplored the world’s oceans and occupied lands which conventionalwisdom decrees was first found and settled by native people, such a claimimmediately invites cries of racism and muddies the waters of anintellectual enterprise with emotional baggage. However, when the storiesof the native people themselves, especially the Maori of New Zealand,Hawaiians, and various South American indigenous people, especiallythose of Peru speak of light skinned and red, or more properly auburnhaired ancestors, then it is natural to take notice.

Female skull in Paracas History Museum

So, rather than dealing with the Pacific Ocean as a whole, this book ismainly about the area called Polynesia and the west coast of SouthAmerica, more specifically Peru, because it is these two areas wherefrequent accounts of the illusive red haired ancestors exist. Through thisexploration we will encounter many physical clues which strengthen theidea that these two areas were linked together in far more complex ways,in the distant past, than most scholars will accept; these include thepresence of plant species, which would have to have been physicallycarried by people from one place to the other, not the whim of naturalforces.So, let us return to Easter Island, and explore further the two distinctgroups of people that seemingly cohabited that small island prior to theadvent of European colonization. This exploration will naturally draw usto other parts of Polynesia, especially New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii, aswell as the western shores of South America. Wind patterns and oceancurrents will act as guides for us, as they did for the ancestral people, tohopefully reveal the true history of this part of the world, and the richnetwork in which the people, land, sea, plants and animals wove the storyof the past.

Rapa Nui: Navel Of The WorldWhy start with this little island? Because on a purely physical level, it is inthe center of the area that we will be discussing. The big dispute, as wehave already briefly seen, is that two distinct groups lived on Rapa Nui(the name we will use from here on in as it is at least somewhat native innature, whereas Easter Island is a title imposed by a European simplybased on the date that he arrived there, as the first non-native witness.

Map of Polynesia, with conventional migration pattern ideas

Great disputes arise in the timing and identity of these two groups, theHanau epe (Long Ears) and Hanau momoko (Short Ears.) Conventionalwisdom, taken from the loosest of sources, as in Wikipedia, tells us thefollowing: Estimated dates of initial settlement of Easter Island range from300 to 1200 CE, approximately coinciding with the arrival of the firstsettlers in Hawaii. Rectifications in radiocarbon dating have changedalmost all of the previously-posited early settlement dates in Polynesia.Rapa Nui is now considered to have been settled about 700–1100 CE. Anongoing study by archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo suggests a still–later date: "Radiocarbon dates for the earliest stratigraphic layers at

Anakena, Easter Island, and analysis of previous radiocarbon dates implythat the island was colonized late, about 1200 CE. Significant ecologicalimpacts and major cultural investments in monumental architecture andstatuary thus began soon after initial settlement." (9)However, such a broad range of dates, even with radiocarbon as a timemeasure more clutters the situation than defines it, when, again, taking intoaccount the two separate groups that dwelt there.According to Heyerdahl’s own words, delivered in a series of lectures tothe Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography in Stockholm: "atsome unidentified date prior to AD 380, the first settlers landed on EasterIsland, and found a verdant island covered by trees, shrubs, and palms."He proved this to be true from the extensive pollen samples taken from thecrater lakes with the aid of 26 feet long cores from the sediments.

Thor Heyerdahl inspecting a buried wall of great antiquity

His excavations proved that there were 3 separate epochs in the History ofEaster Island, which the archaeologists have named Early, Middle and

Late Periods. In the Early Period there was no production of giant statues,only altar-like elevations of very large, and most precisely cut and joinedstones, which were erected with their facades towards the ocean, and a

sunken court on the inland side. They were astronomically oriented, andconstructed by highly specialised stone masons who studied the annual

movement of the sun and in their religious architecture.

Not until the Second Period were the well known Giant Statues quarriedand placed on the platforms. The archaeologists believe that during this

period, around AD 1100, the Birdman Cult arrived and marked thecommencement of the raising of the large ancestor statues. During a periodof less than 6 centuries, more than 600 giant ancestor statues were carvedfrom the quarries on the slopes of Rano Raraku after the forests had beencleared. When the statue production reached its peak the island engineerswere able to erect statues up to 40 feet tall, weighing more than 80 tons,

and balance a red stone cylinder hat, weighing up to 12 tons, on top of itshead.

According again to Heyerdahl, about 50 years after Roggeveen first visitedRapa Nui, the Spaniard Don Felipe Gonzales was the next foreigner todescribe the people of this island, in 1770. "The Spaniards met on theisland tall, fair men. Two of the biggest were measured and wererespectively 6 feet, 6l/2 inches and 6 feet, 5 inches tall. Many had beards,and the Spaniards found that they were quite like Europeans and notordinary natives. They noted in their diaries that not all of them had blackhair: the hair of some was chestnut brown, and in other cases it was evenreddish and cinnamon-colored.” (10)

Rapanui Moai with red top knot hats, or red hair? Heyerdahl based his theory of emigration from South America in largepart on the oral traditions of the people of the Peruvian and Bolivianhighlands, especially around Lake Titicaca, which spoke of the charactersknown as Kon Tiki and Viracocha. Most scholars agree that these twocharacters were one and the same, and in fact another interpretation of thename is in fact Con Ticci Viracocha. According to "History of the Incas" by Pedro Sarmiento De Gamboa, "Thenatives of this land affirm that in the beginning, and before this world wascreated, there was a being called Viracocha. He created a dark worldwithout sun, moon or stars. Owing to this creation he was namedViracocha Pachayachachi, which means "Creator of all things." And when

he had created the world he formed a race of giants of disproportionedgreatness painted and sculptured, to see whether it would be well to makereal men of that size. He then created men in his likeness as they are now;and they lived in darkness.

Depiction of Con Ticci Viracocha used by Thor Heyerdahl on his sail

Viracocha ordered these people that they should live without quarrelling,and that they should know and serve him." As men became bad, hedecided to punish them; he turned them into stone, into things, and some

were swallowed up by the earth and others by the sea. A general floodwhich they call uñu pachacuti, meaning "water that overturns the land",came over them. "They say that it rained 60 days and nights, that itdrowned all created things, and that there alone remained some vestiges ofthose who were turned into stones, as a memorial of the event, and as anexample to posterity, in the edifices of Pucara, which are 60 leagues fromCuzco.""He lived amongst men, and he taught them many arts. He it was, as thepriests of those who were here before the Incas say, showed men how tobring streams of water to their crops, and taught them how to build terracesupon the mountains where crops would grow. And when the bird that criesout four times at dawn cried out, and the light came upon the cross he hadset up, Viracocha went from amongst men. He went down to the sea, andhe walked across it towards the west. But he told those whom he had leftbehind that he would send messengers back who would protect them andgive them renewed knowledge of all he had taught them." (11)The timeline of Viracocha’s departure from the mainland of SouthAmerica, the departure point most often believed to have been northernPeru in the area of the present town of Tumbes, is completely, unknown,lost in the fog of time. However, it would have been prior to the existenceof the Inca, which most accounts give as being about the year 900 AD,when they were forced to leave the Tiwanaku area, near lake Titicaca inBolivia, and found Cusco, which was to become their capital city. (12)Contrary to the romantic stories written about and perhaps by the Inca,whereby their creator god Viracocha raised their progenitors, MancoCapac and Mama Occllo from the waters of Lake Titicaca, or sent themdown from heavenly or celestial realm, the Inca were in fact chased out ofthe Lake Titicaca area by the tribal Aymara people.The two locations at the lake which would have been probable homelandsof the Inca, or more specifically their ancestors, since Manco Capac isregarded as being the first true Inca ruler, are the Island of the Sun, nowlocated in the Bolivian half of Lake Titicaca, and Tiwanaku, 11 miles

inland from the southern shore of the lake.

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