Ritual of Stone

Easter Island - Te Pito O Te Henua - "Navel of the World": For seven centuries, they worked the compressed volcanic ash of Rano Raraku crater. Seven centuries of shaping stone in their father's images. Seven centuries of separating tuff from caldera, tree from root, present from past. Seven centuries of muscling moai from stoney wombs to earthen altars among the high cliffs and low island coastlines. Seven centuries of ever larger and more massive tributes to a pattern laid down by long-dead ancestors. Seven centuries of the Ritual of Stone... How did it end? Why did it ever begin? What can it teach us today?