The Mystery of Easter Island

About the Podcast.


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The Mystery of Easter Island is based on the life of ethnographer Katherine Routledge. In the early 20th century, Routledge made a pioneering visit to Easter Island — one of the most isolated places on Earth, some 1,200 miles from the nearest inhabited island and more than 2,000 miles from the nearest large land mass.

The series follows Katherine Routledge as she travels from England, spends more than a year on Easter Island, and then travels back home — where, celebrated, she struggles with incipient mental illness and to recreate the sense of purpose she felt on the island. Routledge made significant progress in unraveling the enigmas of Easter Island’s forgotten culture, its undeciphered language and its famous stone “giant heads” (actually entire bodies, either partially buried or toppled).

In the 6 episode first season, the podcast explores some broad questions:
  • What were the opportunities and limitations of intelligent women in the early 20th century?
  • To what extent can “outsiders” understand a “foreign” culture, and why is it important to try?
  • What is it like when you discover your truest sense of connection in the most isolated place on Earth?

Routledge, who struggled with bouts of paranoid schizophrenia, visited the island between 1914 and 1915 — just as World War I was engulfing Europe. She sailed there when she was in her mid-40s, on an epic journey from England with her husband and a small crew in a ship she commissioned herself. In work that is still cited by scholars, she recorded memories of the island’s elders, attempted to decipher the native language and excavated statues. She became involved in an island revolt for independence, grew estranged from her husband, fended off German warships, and fell in love with her chief interpreter.

Famous in her time but largely forgotten today, Routledge is the source of the myth and understanding of Easter Island. In Easter Island, we feel ourselves going extinct - Easter Island is a culture that has forgotten itself.  Just what do those mysterious heads tell us? 
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Explorer Katherine Routledge


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A photograph by Katherine Routledge of a Moai statue.
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