THE ARCHIVIST

The Archivist Books · Volume 1

The Island That Was Blamed — cover: the title set in gold on a deep black ground, with the subtitle beneath.

The Island That Was Blamed

Complete Ebook + Audiobook Edition

The island was transformed by its people. The people were destroyed by someone else.

£2.50 · ebook and audiobook · no DRM

One purchase includes the complete ebook and the full audiobook. EPUB, PDF, M4B and chaptered MP3 — together, for one price. You never buy them separately.

Not yet on sale. It will be offered here when it is finished and every image in it is cleared. We are not taking pre-orders.

About this volume

For sixty years Rapa Nui has been told as a parable: a people who cut down their own forest, collapsed into war, and left the statues as a warning. It is one of the most repeated stories in popular archaeology, and the evidence for it has been quietly coming apart for two decades. This volume states that story fully and fairly, then takes it apart with dated evidence — and is equally hard on the corrections, several of which are stretched further than their own authors allowed.

What you receive

  • 15,943 words
  • 75 pages
  • The complete text-led edition, 75 pages
  • The full audiobook, 2h 1m, in 20 chapters
  • Every chapter also as a separate MP3
  • A chapter on what the record still cannot say

Every purchase delivers all of this:

  • EPUB ebook
  • PDF ebook
  • M4B chaptered audiobook
  • Chaptered MP3 audiobook
  • Cover artwork
  • Metadata
  • Download and listening instructions
  • Complete delivery manifest

No DRM, no account, no expiry — yours to keep on every device you own, read or listened to.

The film this came from

The documentary carried 2,110 words of narration. The verified research behind it runs to 12,192.

The film remains free and complete on YouTube. Watch it first, if you have not.

The audiobook

The complete book, read end to end in 20 chapters. Every word of the text, in the book's own words.

This audiobook is read by a synthetic voice. It is not narrated by a person, and the narrator is not a character.

Delivered as a chaptered M4B for audiobook players, and as separate MP3 files for everything else.

Sources and rights

Every image states its creator, its collection and its licence. Sources are verified frame-by-frame rather than by name. Generated imagery is disclosed as generated, in the book exactly as in the film.

Our editorial standards →