Introduction on On September 12 1940 a French boy named Marcel led some friends into a cave near their village to look for lost treasure But when the light of their lamps hit a particular wall they found something greater than any treasure colorful paintings of deer horses and oxen The boys told their teacher He called in an expert who found that the paintings were 17,000 years old Mystery words outcrops rock formations that stick out of the ground 4
Hidden Worlds The story of the Lascaux Caves is an example of rediscovering something hidden This book will show you other hidden places all around us There are tunnels that allowed soldiers to sneak past the enemy and abandoned towns that were once full of people Perhaps places became hidden because they were abandoned and forgotten Perhaps they were deliberately hidden Or perhaps they were hidden because even though they were visible they were almost impossible to reach Such hidden worlds can give us a better understanding of the visible world around us Monasteries in Metéora Greece were built high on rocky outcrops 5
Island of STATUES Easter Island is one of the most isolated places on Earth It is 1,290 miles 2,076 km away from its closest neighbor But when the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen arrived in 1722 he found a remarkable sight only Only 3,000 people lived on the island But gazing over the landscape were hundreds of giant stone heads The statues were up to 30 feet 9 m tall and weighed up to 80 tons 73 metric tons The islanders called these statues moai They used them to worship their ancestors But how could so few people have created them Well we now know that only a century before Roggeveen arrived the island had been home to far more people 6 Mystery words ancestors early individuals from whom someone is descended
Collapse of an Island From about 1250 to 1500 A D the Easter Islanders carved a total of 887 moai But they were so busy making statues they didn’t grow enough food They cut down all the trees to make rollers to move the statues Wars broke out among them as they fought over food The island’s population fell sharply as people left The moai were simply left in place gazing out over their empty lands Mystery File GREAT BURDEN Some historians think the moai led to the collapse of the Easter Island civilization Carving the statues took a lot of time Without being looked after the land could not support all the people Eventually many people left the island Some moai were set up in rows on stone plat forms 7
