There's no Internet on Easter Island

One of our readers has gone to Easter Island and it seems that there is no Internet there.   It made us look closely at this island and we found some disturbing facts including the time when the natives turned to cannibalism.

Cannibalism is very much still alive today despite being considered repulsive by the vast majority of societies.

There are, however, areas where eating human flesh is ingrained in tradition and a part of the culture.

People turn to cannibalism for a number of reasons, ranging from religious ceremonies to an extreme, desperate need.

Whether legal or otherwise, the practice continues and it is said that there are nine hot spots in the world where cannibals can dine among friends.

Easter Island is the most isolated piece of inhabited land in the world. A speck of volcanic rock only about twice the size of Manhattan, it lies roughly 2,250 miles northwest of Chile and 1,300 miles east of Pitcairn Island (of Mutiny on the Bounty fame). When, as most scholars believe*, the first Polynesian settlers arrived from the west about the middle of the first millennium A.D., they found a pristine tropical island. Covered in a palm forest, it resounded with the cries of 25 or more species of nesting seabirds and at least six land birds. Though its soils were low in nutrients, the island bore a wide coastal plain well suited for cultivation of the taro, yam, sweet potato, and other crops these pioneers brought with them and which became their staples.

Getting back to our reader, who we will not name, it must be said that if we do not hear from him again we will know what may have happened to him.