"For a start, who were they, these long-dead hewers of stone? Did they come from Polynesia on the west, or South America on the east? Or both? No one knows. And when? The experts offer dates from the 7th century to the 16th, a more than ample leeway. No one knows. But the further we go into the mystery, the darker becomes our ignorance. What were the statues? Were they gods to be worshipped? Or tutelary deities? Or a strange form of lares et penates? Or monuments to their ancestors? Or stylized portraits of historic figures? Or art? No one knows. And when they were finally standing on their massive pedestals, what rituals, what ceremonies, what offerings did the islanders provide? No one knows. Boards, inscribed with an ideographic script, have been found, and there are beautiful and elaborate petroglyphs strewn about the island; scholars have pored over them for decades, trying to decipher the signs and thus learn the language. What did those people want to say to us? No one knows."