It may be that the only other place on earth is Easter Island. The
most remote inhabited place in the world, this barren speck of land boasts
over 500 gigantic, long-eared stone statues called Moai. There are curious
connections between the Andes and Easter Island. For as long as we know,
Easter Island has had the potato and the totora reed, both of Andean origin.
In the oldest legends, Easter Island was called "The Navel of the World."
Cuzco was called the same.
Thor Heyerdahl explored the island in an ongoing effort to prove his theory
that people came to Easter Island from the East, sailing the prevailing
currents. He believed that the walls there of the Andean style were not
built by those who carved the Moai, but by an earlier civilization.
A study of underwater topography and plate tectonics suggests to some a startling possibility.
Look at a map of the Pacific ocean floor just off the
western coast of South America. There is an underwater ridge that connects
to the coast of Peru at the fabled Nazca Plain. From there it extends out
in a jagged line to Easter Island. These two locations are at the opposite
edges of the Nazca Plate.
(From the NOAA map Measured and Estimated Seafloor Topography.)
(From a USGS
map.)
The Nazca Ridge is on the Nazca tectonic plate. This plate is sliding under the South American Plate. As this happens the edge of the Nazca plate pushes under the South American plate, lifting it's edge. This is usually a smooth and steady subduction, but a global catastrophe of Noachean magnitude would call off all bets.
The most-accepted current scientific model for earth change today is uniformitarianism. According to this model, geological changes are now and always have been a gradual process. This theory is being challenged by the proponents of catastrophism, which posits that sometimes sudden and dramatic changes occur on our Terra-not-so-firma. (The pummeling that comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 gave Jupiter in 1994 gave Catastrophism a good boost.)
There is ample evidence that Lake Titicaca, now at an elevation of 12,500 feet above sea-level, was once at sea-level. I am suggesting that the Nazca ridge, or part of it, might once have been above sea-level. This would have provided a partial landbridge between Easter Island and South America.
The Nazca Plain, which is directly inland from the juncture
of the Nazca ridge and South America, is as strange as Easter Island. It
is covered with a jumble of lines and drawings so huge that they can only
be comprehended from the air. Many theories have been proposed to explain
these markings, but none of them that I know of have taken underwater topography
into account. Both the markings of the Nazca Plain and the statues of Easter
Island seem the work of peoples possessed. Could it be that these extraordinary
efforts are the reaching-out of those whose ancestors' connection had been
severed?
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