[Thor Heyerdahl's] ability to write for the general reader and to capture the imagination of all who have hidden desires to discover lost information about exotic peoples has endeared him to a public not overly concerned with scientific facts. After all, what could be more exciting than sailing on a raft from South America to Polynesia or dangerous rope descents to secret storage caves to discover small stone sculptures unknown to all who had gone before? These sculptures are the focus of Heyerdahl's new book The Art of Easter Island. The book's title, impressive size, and extensive illustrations excite one's hope that there might be a dispassionate analysis of art from an island that has always been shrouded in mystery…. How disappointing, then, to find that the book is not an analysis of these remarkable objects. Instead, it is a presentation yet again of his evidence in support of his view that Easter Island had direct contact from South America and that Polynesians came to Easter Island only in the final period of the island's history….
[Many] of the hypotheses which he presents here as facts have been challenged by archaeologists using Heyerdahl's own evidence, from Jack Golson in 1965 (in Oceania) to Kenneth Emory in 1972 (in the Journal of the Polynesian Society). These and the works of others, which demonstrate that Heyerdahl's prehistoric sequences can be turned upside down and that Easter Island script is equally likely to be post-European, undermine the whole theoretical basis of Heyerdahl's argument and render many of the conclusions in this new book suspect….
