Rapa Nui

  • S1-E37: Easter Island: Latitude of Hope

    First sight of Rapa Nui – Cook’s crew meets the islanders by canoe, with the moai watching from the shore.

    In March 1774, after more than three months without landfall, Captain James Cook and the crew of HMS Resolution reached the lonely shores of Easter Island. What they found was neither the paradise they hoped for nor the savage outpost some had imagined—but a stark volcanic land crowned with silent stone giants.

  • S1-E38: Easter Island: Carvings from Nowhere

    In the shadow of giants: On a windswept morning in 1774, Cook’s men stand before the moai of Hanga-Te-Bau—monuments carved from memory, guardians of a forgotten time.

    Easter Island, March 1774. A scorched land, stone giants, and people living in the fading shadow of something greater than themselves. When Captain Cook's men explore the island’s interior, they find more than potatoes and carved wood—they uncover questions that history has never fully answered.