Quite a few years ago at a SAA meeting, a fellow delivered a paper and slide 
show on Easter Island that I attended. Having read Aku Aku as a boy, I have 
been a fan of the island all these years. The paper presented evidence for a 
hurricane and Tsunami that ripped coastal soil and pushed it deep into the upland 
several miles and filled to a depth of about three to five meters of 
sediment, palm trees, and rubble. This covered the famous statues up to their necks. 
At the time, I found this premise and hypothesis too incredible to take 
seriously. Then came the Tsunami in Indonesia this past year and geologists explained 
how the surge ripped thousands of buildings into a froth that measured miles 
long, several hundred feet wide, ten meters deep and dropped its load at the 
inland edge of the surge. This same process repeated in Hurricane Katrina this 
past week, as evidenced by satellite photos of Gulfport, Ms that very clearly 
showed how an "artifact soup" of sediment, lumber, and bodies ground into the 
landscape and deposited miles inland. I now see my folly in not accepting the 
premise of the paper delivered on Easter Island. 

Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.