DNL : The mysteries of the Easter island

DNL : The mysteries of the Easter island

I’m going to present the mysteries of Easter Island. Before I start with the details, I’m just going to show you where this Chilean island is. As you can see it is in the southeastern Pacific Ocean.

First, we are going to talk about the moai statues.

When thinking about what there is to see on the Easter Island, you will most probably think of the famous Moai statues that are scattered across the Island. Looking at them you may simply take them for what they are; large stone statues. However, these incredible Moai statues have a lot more to tell us and have been the subject of years of discussions and theories with their hidden secrets and mysteries still being discussed today.

The moais were built in approximately 1400 - 1650 A.D. by the natives of this island also known as Rapa Nui.

Many know them as the Easter Island heads. This is a misconception from having seen photos of statues in the volcano Rano Raraku artitially. Truth is that all of these "heads" have full bodies. There are around 1000 statues, up to 86 tons in weight and 10 m in height

The effort to construct these monuments and move them around the island must have been considerable—but no one knows exactly why the Rapa Nui people undertook such a task. Some persons think that the moai were created to honor and represent ancestors, chiefs, or other important personages. They justify their thinking by saying that they are placed on rectangular stone platforms called ahu, which are tombs for the people that the statues represented. Also by saying that the moais were intentionally made with different characteristics since they were intended to keep the appearance of the person it represented.  Eyeholes would not be carved until the statue reached its destination. They carved them because it was kind of a symbol. The spirit of he or she who had passed away would forever watch over the tribe and bring fortune in life.

The tools used for carving the moai statues are called toki. They have been found in countless numbers in all excavations at Rano Raraku - particularly around the statues. They are made of the hardest kind of rock found at Easter Island.

Nowadays some statues are not standing and it exists theories, arguments and legends to explain that. For example the legend about a woman called Nuahine Pīkea 'Uri who possessed strong powers and made the statues fall in anger when her four children at one occasion had left her nothing to eat. Some Easter Island elders still believe this to be the true story.

One of the biggest Easter Island mysteries is how did the creators of the moai moved the stones across hilly terrain. There are several transportation theories, some of which are more generally accepted than others.

Upright transportation

There are many moai statues that fell during transportation to their ahu. Some of these are on their stomach and some on their back. This tells us that the moais were transported upright. Since the moais are standing in the quarry Rano Raraku, and they are standing when having reached their ahu, upright transportation saved the Rapa Nui people the huge amount of labor of lowering and raising the statues.

Transportation on rollers

The most widely accepted theory is that the statues were standing on some kind of construction that would keep the statue standing, which would roll on logs. With this technique, brute force could be applied and rapid, safe moai statue transportation would be possible. As statues got bigger, huge amounts of lumber would be needed. This would eventually cause deforestation of all thick and straight trees, which then made transportation impossible.

There’s an American archaeologist (Charles Love) who experimented this technique of transportation. He has been able to match a real quick speed that no other moai transportation experiment could.

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