S1-E38: Easter Island: Carvings from Nowhere

Podcast 17 September 2025

Easter Island, March 1774. A scorched land, stone giants, and people living in the fading shadow of something greater than themselves. When Captain Cook's men explore the island’s interior, they find more than potatoes and carved wood—they uncover questions that history has never fully answered.

In this episode of Voyage2Go History, we walk with Forster, Sparrman, and the sailors through barren fields and volcanic hills in search of life, shelter, and meaning. They meet a king painted white, are offered sugarcane by strangers, and watch as women swim to the ship in silence, bartering scraps of dignity for foreign cloth.

In the shadow of giants: On a windswept morning in 1774, Cook’s men stand before the moai of Hanga-Te-Bau—monuments carved from memory, guardians of a forgotten time. – Click on the image to listen to this episode on YouTube.

And then there are the carvings: finely shaped human figures and a dancer’s wooden hand, made from trees that no longer exist on the island. Are they remnants of a vanished civilization—or merely driftwood myths? The moai, still towering over the coast, give no answer.

What happened here? Why are there so few women? Why is the island filled with memory—but emptied of voice?

Carvings from Nowhere is a story of loss, endurance, and echoes in stone.