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Hoa Hakananai'a Easter Island Statue

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Last broadcast on Sat, 10 Jul 2010, 00:30 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).

Synopsis

Episode image for Hoa Hakananai'a Easter Island Statue

This week Neil MacGregor is exploring the sophisticated ways in which people connected to gods and ancestors in the Middle Ages. He is looking at religious images from India, France, Mexico and Turkey.

Today - in the last programme of the second series - he is with one of the most instantly recognisable sculptures in the world: one of the giant stone heads that were made on Easter Island in the South Eastern Pacific Ocean. These deeply mysterious objects lead Neil to consider why they were made and why many were ultimately thrown down.

What was the Easter Islanders understanding of their gods and their ancestors? Steve Hooper, an expert on the arts of the Pacific, and the internationally renowned sculptor Sir Anthony Caro both respond to this monumental work of devotion.

Producer: Anthony Denselow.

Broadcasts

  1. Fri 9 Jul 2010
    09:45
  2. Fri 9 Jul 2010
    19:45
  3. Sat 10 Jul 2010
    00:30

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Duration

15 minutes

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