Stone me if Easter Island needs another statue

Some years ago, I visited Easter Island. Aside from the relentless wind and astonishing frequency of rainbows, the most striking features of the place are the moai, or the giant, ancestral stone statues dotted about the island. Everywhere you go on its one road, you see them. Some are lying down, some tilting and half-buried, others standing starkly against the sea, frowning inland at their disappeared makers, while others lie, still unfinished, in the quarry.

There are no signs, few fences or entry tickets and precious little preservation or supervision. This makes for a rather magical tourist experience, but I’m not sure it’s the best example of heritage conservation. You might think, therefore, that however dubiously it came to be there, the fact that just one of these statues resides in the British Museum, where it is seen by millions each year and cared for by wellfunded archaeologists, is rather fortunate.

That, at least, is the view of the mayor of Easter Island’s only town. Neither the island nor the Chilean government has the resources to preserve the statues, Pedro Edmunds Paoa said this week, and there are hundreds of the things lying uncared-for in their original home. One, returned to the island from Buenos Aires a few years ago, is now a favourite peeing post for the island’s vast stray dog population.

Go figure: ancestral moai are dotted all over Easter Island

None of this seemed to matter to the Chilean delegation that visited London recently in order to groan about the British Museum’s one, prized stone moai and demand its return. “We are just a body. You, the British people, have our soul,” said the tearful governor of the island. A Chilean lawyer argued the one in London is “unique” because “it was never exposed to the elements”… unlike the hundreds of others lying on the island.

The British Museum’s moral claim on the moai isn’t, of course, primarily about how it’s preserved. It’s about cultural heritage belonging to all of humanity. But it would be nice if nationalistic or tribal appeals to ownership of ancient artefacts could also, now and then, give a nod to reality.

Disaster! Or dream come true? A sweet factory in Westönnen, Germany, unleashed a flood of chocolate this week after one of its tanks burst. The ton of molten chocolate quickly froze solid in the wintry air, blocking off a road and forcing locals to call in the fire brigade. Two dozen brave firemen tackled the Schokolade-berg with blowtorches and shovels. Surely it would have been quicker and kinder to make use of the area’s child population?