纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 070复活节岛雕像（2）（在线收听）

This week we've glimpsed some of the variety of gods that people around the world were engaging with about seven hundred years ago, and the objects that they made to get close to them. It's a constant of human history that societies devote huge amounts of time and resource to ensuring that the gods are on their side, but few societies have ever done it on such a heroic scale as Rapa Nui. The population was probably never more than about 15,000, but in a few hundred years the inhabitants of this tiny island quarried, carved and erected over a thousand massive stone sculptures. Hoa Hakananai'a was one of them. He was probably made around the year 1200, and was almost certainly made to house an ancestral spirit. He's a stone being, which an ancestor may from time to time visit and inhabit.

有个主题在人类历史上不论何种社会始终如一，即世人会耗费大量的时间和资源来确保自己得到神的卷顾，但很少有哪个能做到拉帕努伊岛上这样惊人的规模。

岛上居民大概从未超过一万五千人，但在几百年间，他们开采、雕琢并竖起了超过一千座巨型石像。何瓦何卡纳奈阿便是其中之一。他大约制作于公元一千二百年，几乎可以肯定，他是用来给先人灵魂居住的躯壳，是可以让先人时常拜访与居住的石像。