Abstract

Analyzing two sources – L’Île de Pâques [Easter Island, 1899] by Pierre Loti and Iskusstvo Ostrova Paskhi [The Art of Easter Island, 1914] by Vladimir Markov – the following article shows how the island Rapa Nui is depicted as a relic of past epochs of a geological deep time. The material culture of the island, and especially the so-called moai, occupy a central role in these depictions. In Loti’s text, they represent the material remnants of a megalithic stage of the early history of humankind. Whereas Loti essentially argues for the great age of the moai through the geographical and cultural-historical context of Rapa Nui, Markov instead bases this claim exclusively on the inherent characteristics of the moai, such as their material and their form. The article will show that the evolving aesthetics of deep time conceived by Markov is grounded in the classification schemes of the ethnographic collections in which Markov encountered these objects.