The Mystery of Easter Island's Walking Statues

On the shores of a tiny, windswept island, seven statues patiently gaze out over the open seas. In the distance, a tiny speck appears, bobbing up and down in the restless ocean. Slowly the speck becomes three and, finally, the three specks turn into three ships, fighting their way through the pounding waves. It would be interesting to know who was more surprised – the seven statues seeing really big and impressive canoes for the first time, or the crew aboard the three ships, coming across this small island that, up to that point, no-one knew existed, and being greeted by locals dressed in bright colours and, looming up behind them, really big stone heads.

Ever since that fateful Easter Sunday in 1722, when Dutch Admiral Jacob Roggeveen came across the tiny piece of land he very creatively named Easter Island, the Western world has been captivated by the giant statues, called moai, that can be found all over the island. Roggeveen himself only stayed for one day, he was looking for a continent, Terra Australis, not another island, but his visit was the first of many visits to come. Today, thousands of tourists flock to the island to see the enigmatic moai, and researchers have spent years trying to figure out the secrets of the great statues with limited success. Sadly, much of the history of the islanders, known as the Rapanui, and the story of the walking moai, had been forgotten by a people that was nearly wiped out by the multiple disasters that befell them. And, through all that, the moai have stood, patiently watching the story of the island unfold. They’ve seen it all, they know all the secrets, but like most ancient gods, they have no intention of sharing.

The Grand Moai

What makes the Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as it’s known by the locals, so unique are the statues. Close to 1000 statues, of different sizes, have been found standing, or lying down, all around the island. Through archaeological excavations and conservation efforts, some of the fallen statues have been returned to their platforms, but most of them are still buried up to their shoulders leading to the mistaken belief that they’re nothing more than heads.

On average, a moai can weigh up to 80 tons and stand around 10 meters (32.8 feet) tall. However, the largest moai found to date, ‘El Gigante’, weighs around 150 tons and stands an impressive 20 meters (65.6 feet) with the smallest moai only standing at 1.13 m (3.7). Some of the moai also wear a “pukao” on their heads. The pukao is made from a soft red stone and shaped like a hat and probably represents some kind of headdress or perhaps a topknot.

The moai all appear to be male, though a handful of female moai have been found, with an oversized head and similar facial features: a long, sloping nose, deep set eyes with a narrow mouth and a very prominent chin. The news that the statues had bodies took the world by storm in around 2012; however, it wasn’t quite the grand discovery that the media made it out to be – archaeologists studying the statues have known about the bodies since around 1914. The statues have been standing around the island for hundreds of years, so most are still buried in rocks and sediment which both hid, but also preserved, the bodies.

It’s not the full body though; it’s just the torso and two arms. Apparently, the statues didn’t need legs to walk.

Each statue sits on a stone platform called an ahu, and an ahu can contain up to a dozen statues. The ahu is a raised, rectangular platform made with large worked stones and a ramp paved with beach pebbles. The area in front of the platform is usually leveled. So far, around 360 of these platforms have been found. Research suggests that construction of these megalithic platforms probably started around the 13th century. The largest ahu found to date, and probably the most photographed of the lot, is the Ahu Tongariki which contains 15 moai. The statues stand with their backs to the ocean, looking inland, towards the people who made them. One exception is the seven moai on the Ahu Akivi – legend goes that they face the ocean to help lost travellers find their way.

Around 95% of the statues were carved at the Rano Raraku quarry, an extinct volcano, from the volcanic tuff – a porous stone formed from solidified ash. The native islanders didn’t have metal and the tuff, being a soft stone, would’ve been easier to work with their limited stone tools – basalt picks known as toki. The Ranu Raraku Quarry is home to statues in various stages of production which gives us a good idea of how these statues were carved. There are also several completed statues still waiting patiently in the quarry for transport that will never arrive.

Each statue was probably commissioned by a specific person or group and carved by a team of stone workers working under a master carver. They would start by quarrying a large, rectangular block, first carving the front and sides of the statue, gradually separating the back from the quarry rock. Once the basic figure was carved out, the master carver and his assistants would add some of the details.

When this was done, and the statue was separated from the quarry rock, it would be moved downhill and placed upright in a hole so that the master and his little helpers could finish the rest of the detailed work and the back of the statue. Finally, the statue was ready to move to its new ahu.

Eyeholes would only be carved once the moai arrived at its destination. Placing the pukao on the head became part of the process much later – it seems that the idea to put hats on the massive statues only started around the 15th and 16th century. These headdresses, with a diameter of up to 2m (6.5 feet) and weighing up to 12 tons, were quarried from the red stone at the Pruna Pau quarry before being moved to the statues to give them a chic new look. Once the hat was on and all the final details carved, eyes of coral would be added, finally turning the moai into an arinja ora, or a living face, and the process would be complete.

Despite the small size of the island, and the fact that a little over a thousand moai have already been found, new moai are still being discovered. The most recent was found in February 2023 in a dry lake bed. The sculpture is smaller than other statues on the island, but it was an exciting moment for researchers who believe there could be even more moai lying around the river bed waiting to be uncovered.

Why this little guy was in the lake in the first place is a bit of a mystery. However, moai loves company and apparently tend to travel in packs so where there’s one statue, there’s probably more, and archaeologists can’t wait to go find the rest.

The Story of the Statue Builders

Who first settled the island is one of the many mysteries of Rapa Nui. The small island, only around 163.6 km2 (63.2 square miles), lies in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, 2000 km (1240 miles) from the islands of southeastern Polynesia, and around 3600 km (2200 miles) away from mainland Chile, in South America. That’s a long way to paddle a canoe. While some argue that it’s unlikely that early navigators and seafarers could’ve covered such vast distances without precision instruments, the Polynesians were amongst the world’s most skilled seafarers, so they probably wouldn’t have had any problem finding their way to Rapa Nui as it became known.

When exactly they arrived is also still up for debate, but it appears that once they arrived at their new home, they remained there in complete isolation. No-one ever returned to the mainland, and no-one from the mainland dropped in for tea. Excavations at Anakena beach, in the Rapa Nui National Park, show signs of early settlement in the form of charcoal, tools and even bones.

The researchers doing the excavations figured that this might’ve been the original settlement. These finds were dated to around 1200, suggesting that this was when the first people arrived. However, a 1977 study analyzing pollen claims that deforestation started as early as 800 CE which meant the new inhabitants arrived 400 years before Anakena beach became home to a small settlement.

Jo Anne van Tilburg, founder of the Easter Island Statue Project, also feels it’s unlikely that the original settlers only arrived in 1200 considering that the locals were already building platforms by the 1200s and there are signs of crop intensification, which would suggest that the Rapanui had been around for a while by that time.

One thing that has researchers scratching their heads is how exactly the new settlers knew where to find the small island. It seems unlikely that a group of people loaded some canoes and just struck out blindly into the wide ocean hoping to find land. However, if you ask the native Rapanui islanders, they have a pretty good idea of how it all went down.

Benedicto Tuki, an islander who has since passed on, claimed to be a descendant of the island’s first king, Hotu Matu’a, and his grandmother was the last queen of the island. According to tales told to him, Hotu Matu’a brought his people from Hiva, an island in the Marquesas, due to the fighting there. He arrived on the island with seven different races, who then became the seven different tribes of Rapa Nui.

Hotu Matu’a knew where to go because his tattooist and priest, Hau Maka, had seen the island in a dream and described it in great detail. Hotu Matu’a decided that this island was the ideal home to settle his people and set sail in canoes, loaded with people, food, water, plant cuttings and animals – everything a group of settlers would need to survive. They sailed across the seas for two months before finally arriving at Anakena Bay, finding the island exactly the way the tattooist saw it in his dream.

However, this is just one version of how the islanders came to the island. Other stories tell of seven explorers sent out by Hotu Matu’a to find the island. Like many island cultures, the Rapanui history was passed down from one generation to the next in the form of stories and songs, so it’s not surprising that the stories evolved.

We story-tellers love to add our own spin to each tale we tell.

However they got there, the island the new arrivals found themselves on was beautiful and rugged, but without the abundance of natural resources you would usually expect to find on a tropical island. The soil is still not well-suited to agriculture, and fresh water is scarce as the island has no permanent fresh water streams. Unlike most other islands, there are also no large coral reefs off-shore and no lagoons.

However, despite these limitations, the Rapanui still managed to grow some staples like yams, sweet potato and sugar cane, and while they couldn’t feast on shellfish, the fishing around the island is pretty good, so they probably had enough food to go around. At first, all was well.

There are two versions of what happened to the Rapanui people. One is a cautionary tale of what happens to the environment when people start getting greedy and over-populate, and over-work, their land. Easter Island sported forests of palm trees for thousands of years, possibly as many as 16 million trees some standing 30 meters high.

However, there are barely any trees on the island today. When people first arrived, they needed fire to cook and they needed to clear land for farming which led to large parts of the forests being chopped and burned down to clear the land. Once they started building the moai and ahu, they needed timber for construction and, possibly, for moving the statues.

Of course, once the trees were gone, the soil eroded, the birds packed up their stuff and set off for distant lands, or just died out, and without trees to build shelter and, more importantly canoes for fishing, life on the island became difficult and soon the population was faced with widespread starvation.

However, some researchers feel that this isn’t an accurate portrayal of what happened on the island. Humans can be very destructive, we’ve proven that many times over, but researchers Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo weren’t convinced that the settlers alone could’ve caused so much damage so quickly. The discovery of rat bones might solve that mystery. When the people arrived, they brought with them the Polynesian rat – either as a food source or unintentionally in the form of ratty stowaways.

With an unlimited food supply in the form of delicious palm trees and no natural predators, other than those pesky humans, it was a rat heaven. With rats munching down on the seeds, and eventually the new saplings, it became impossible for the palm forests to regenerate. Add people chopping down trees and rapid deforestation becomes inevitable.

The reports by early European explorers seemed to support this version of events. In Roggeveen’s reports of the island, the moai were still standing, and he estimated the population to be around 8000. When Capt. Cook arrived in 1774, he reported that there were no trees over 10 feet tall, and he estimated the population to be around 700.

In 1821, Capt. Thomas Raine, sailing out of Australia, reported that the inhabitants of the island swam out to meet the ship and there wasn’t a canoe in sight thus confirming reports of a lack of seaworthy canoes. However, these early accounts aren’t always reliable. Only 12 years after Cook’s visit, another explorer, Jean-Francois de la Perouse estimated the population of Rapa Nui to be between 2000 and 3000 people.

So, either Cook or De la Perouse had a bit of trouble with numbers and counting.

The picture of the Rapanui destroying their land, with a helping paw from the rats, was accepted for many years, but how true is this really? Archaeologists love to disagree about things, and some state that the island population might’ve been up to 15 000 or even 20 000 people at its peak. However, the poor soil and lack of fresh water would’ve been limiting factors, so a population explosion is unlikely – the population probably remained steady at 3000 people from the mid-1300s until the arrival of the Europeans in 1722.

Recent research also suggests that the deforestation happened gradually, not overnight, and there’s even evidence that attempts at reforestation were made. However, even with the trees gone, the people adapted to their environment, and were still healthy, happy, and, according to some research, still building ahu, and moai to stand on them, by the time the Europeans set foot on the island. Once the Europeans arrived however, things started going downhill fast as the population was decimated by diseases like small pox and the slave trade.

Instead of taking photos and buying souvenirs, the Europeans simply bagged the locals to sell on the slave markets. By 1877, the once proud people had been reduced from 3000 to 111.

A few articles claim that the people who built the statues have all vanished, and what happened to them is a big mystery, but that’s not true. The Rapanui is a resilient people and today the population stands at around 2000 native Rapanui out of a population of 7000 people living on the island. Based on their oral traditions, we know the Rapanui who built the statues was a complex society with chiefs, priests and aristocracy, but also a people who took great pride in their work.

Many of the lower caste became master craftsmen, carvers, divers and canoe builders in their own right. Many of the crafts, song and dance of the great statue builders are kept alive by their descendants, so, much like the statues, the people lived through some difficult times, but they’re still very much alive and kicking.

The Big Question: Why Were the Moai Made?

Carving and then moving the huge moai took some time, so it stands to reason that if you’re going to be making very large statues, you probably have a very good reason, right? Unfortunately, we’re not sure what that reason was, but, as always, we have some theories.

Throughout history, large statues have often had some kind of religious or ritual purpose. According to Roggeveen, when he arrived on the island in 1722, he found the native islanders praying and performing rituals to honor the moai. He noted in his ship’s log that the people of the island didn’t appear to be carrying weapons, which must have made his colonizing heart beat a little faster, but, instead, they appear to rely on their gods or idols, standing along the sea shore in great numbers, for protection.

Like many other ancient cultures, the Egyptians comes to mind, the Rapanui believed their chiefs and rulers were descended from gods. After death, the chief would again reach divinity. The statues were meant as temporary housing for the spirits of their ancestors to keep the spirits safe until an apartment opens up and they can move on to the next plane. Either that, or the statues were meant to capture the spirit, and keep it safe, so that it could continue to help the tribe.

Archaeologists have discovered human remains at some of the ahu which further supports the idea that these were sites for death rituals. This is also why statues needed to resemble humans as they were used to honor the dead. Instead of just remembering their revered ancestors, the people wanted a physical image to represent each chief. So, the theory goes, the moai are the faces of the dead ancestors.

The first statues were smaller, but eventually, they started getting bigger. This could be due to mana, an important concept in Rapanui beliefs. Mana is a sacred and spiritual power that comes from divinity and is channeled to the people from those who are descendants of the gods themselves. It’s the divine life force, the source of energy responsible for fertility of the earth and seas. So, researchers believe, a larger statue meant the chief who ordered it had more mana. The chief next door saw this and, in a classic case of keeping up with the Joneses, decided to make an even bigger moai to have even more mana and power and so on leading to some of the huge moai standing, and lying, around the island today. Another theory suggests that since the statues had religious significance, any disaster that befell the island was met with a bigger statue. A disastrous crop failure led to an even bigger moai to honor and please the ancestors and gods so that they would provide a better harvest next time.

However, anthropologist Carl Lipo doesn’t believe that the statues represent ancestors. The statues are very generic and while the features are exaggerated, the statues don’t seem to have specific defining features, like you’d expect to find on a statue carved to honor a specific person – think of the Greek and Roman sculptures of important figures like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar or the Egyptian statues of pharaohs. There are also no ahu or statues found on top of hills, a place where you’d expect a monument to be built, especially if it’s supposed to be symbolic.

Another possible explanation is that the statues were competitive in nature considering the variety in size. According to legend, there were originally seven tribes, but today there are about 36 different clans on the island. With a variety of culturally distinct and separate clans or tribes, the statues could’ve served as status symbols – essentially the ancient equivalent of a fancy new car, a big house, or, in South Africa, a tennis court in your back yard.

The larger the statue, the more resources, especially in the form of labor, went into making it proving that a particular tribe was flourishing. If you can afford to spare men to carve statues instead of farming or fishing, you’re doing very well indeed!

Considering the limited resources on the island, you’d expect conflict; however, there isn’t much evidence for prolonged and particularly lethal warfare. There are no fortifications on the island, and while skeletons with clear signs of injury have been found, these injuries were rarely lethal. So perhaps the islanders were smart enough to realize their small population couldn’t sustain extended warfare and, instead of killing each other by the hundreds, they engaged in territorial displays by building more and bigger moai than the tribe just down the road. Personally, I think trying to make better art than the other fellow is a far more civilized form of warfare, and the Europeans should’ve been taking notes instead of selling the locals into slavery.

Carl Lipo, however, believed that the moai were used as landmarks of sorts indicating where to find valuable resources. After mapping the exact locations of the moai, Lipo and his team discovered that the moai were often located next to important resources like workable land for agriculture, fresh water, or good fishing spots. However, for the most part, the statues were found close to a fresh water source suitable for humans.

Fresh water is an incredibly valuable resource on the island as the island has no permanent streams and there’s no real evidence that the natives relied on the lakes as the lakes and springs were sitting atop volcanic cores. They were hard to reach and far away from settlements, so it’s unlikely that they were used as a steady water supply. Rainfall was unpredictable, and when it rained, the rain would drain into aquifers.

The groundwater would then seep into caves and appear in streams on the coast. Lipo and his team first noticed these freshwater streams on the coast when they saw horses drinking from what appeared to be the ocean – as we all know, drinking sea water is a bad idea and horses ain’t stupid, so they probably weren’t drinking the sea water which is how the researchers discovered the brackish streams that provided the locals with drinking water, according to historical records. Some of the ahu were found without an obvious fresh water source close by, but historic wells indicate that the locals would make a plan to get water and dug wells.

Considering the time and effort involved in carving a statue and transporting it, the statues were probably not used as markers to indicate ‘find your fresh water here’. However, fresh water is vital for drinking and farming, so it would make sense that these spots would be considered important, and possibly even sacred, making it an ideal spot for a moai, the embodiment of a sacred ancestor. The ahu and moai found near fresh water sources might also have been used to show that it belonged to a specific tribe or clan. In true competitive fashion, the size of the moai, or perhaps some of its features, would indicate the quality of the water; the better the quality, the higher the status and the bigger the competitive advantage.

However, it’s possible that the moai were more than just religious icons and served a practical purpose, perhaps without the islanders themselves being aware of it. According to a study by Jo Anne van Tilburg, the moai was believed to improve agriculture which made them critical to food production. Van Tilburg’s team, which includes geo-archaeologist, Sarah Sherwood, has spent around five years studying two moai excavated at the Rano Raraku quarry, on the eastern side of the island.

The statues were found upright, one on a pedestal and another in a deep hole, suggesting that they weren’t awaiting transport to a new location. The researchers also found crescent shapes and other figures carved into the backs of the statues and a carved human head was found resting against the base of one of the statues. It’s possible that these statues were meant to stay where they were, in the quarry, and served a ceremonial purpose, possibly to ensure a good harvest because, as it turns out, Rano Raraku was also very productive farmland.

After testing soil samples, it became clear that the area around the Rano Raraku quarry was producing foods like banana, taro and sweet potato. Sherwood believes the soil at Rano Raraku is probably the richest on the island and is also adjacent to a fresh-water source which made the land ideal for farming. The quarrying of the statues seemed to have further boosted the fertility of the soil.

Where other soil on the island was being eroded away or leeched of elements necessary for plant growth, the small fragments of bedrock raining down from the constant quarrying and carving of the statues provided the soil with elements like calcium and phosphorous which is vital to agriculture. The combination of small bedrock fragments and fresh water created a perfect feedback system providing the soil with water and natural fertilizer. Similar research done by Mara Mulrooney found that the Rapanui people would place basalt pebbles, cobbles and boulders in the mulch gardens they kept for cultivating yams, sweet potato and other crops.

The stones would trap moisture and the boulders protected the plants from the wind, but the weathering of the rock also allowed minerals to leech into the soil, boosting nutrient levels and thus improving yields. In a good example of the divine used to explain science, the Rapanui farmers probably didn’t realize it was the minerals from the rock shards leeching into the soil improving their harvests, rather ascribing the great harvest to divine intervention.

Unfortunately, much of the Rapanui oral tradition has been lost, and while we have many theories, even the descendants of the Rapanui still living on the island today don’t know why exactly the statues were made. Making large idols containing the spirits of your ancestors and placing them near valuable water and on fertile land, inadvertently making the land more fertile, seems like the most likely explanation. However, I quite like the idea of people making big statues to show superiority rather than making spears and killing other people.

The End of the Moai

Jacob Roggeveen and his crew reported that, when they arrived on the island in 1722, the statues were still being used by the locals for rituals and religious practices. However, when James Cook arrived in 1774, he found the giant statues in ruins. If the moai was such an important part of Rapa Nui culture, why did the islanders stop making them? While the moai standing on their platforms were still in use by the time the first Europeans arrived, archaeologists believe that the moai carving practice reached its peak by the 1500s, however, from the 1600s, things started going in a different direction.

According to a local Rapa Nui historian, one of the possible reasons for the end of the moai was the deforestation of the island. Dwindling resources meant the islanders were spending more time building and cultivating specialized rock gardens and gathering what limited resources they could get their hands on, leaving less time for carving and transporting the huge statues all over the island. On top of that, if they needed logs to transport the moai, the lack of trees would’ve made the transportation much harder or even impossible. If the population further declined due to a lack of resources, the Rapanui people simply wouldn’t have had the manpower necessary to continue carving and moving the great moai.

Alternatively, deforestation and a lack of resources could’ve led to societal collapse. With the resources on the island dwindling, the people were starving. As one researcher pointed out, when you make idols, you’re going to create the ideal.

The early moai were thinner, but the later ones had great curved bellies. The people were starving, so they made their idols big and fat. When they finally ran out of resources, they not only stopped carving the moai, but even toppled their idols, perhaps thinking that their ancestors had abandoned them or in anger, as an act of taking the power away from the ancestors who weren’t willing to help their people.

Eventually, people started killing each other for what resources remained. Obsidian spear points found in a layer of subsoil would seem to support this theory, and even among the islanders themselves, there are tales of cannibalism and general carnage; however, the islanders don’t seem to think any less of their ancestors - after all, it was desperate times and all that.

Later years also saw the rise of the Birdman cult. Rapa Nui doesn’t have a whole lot of mammals or reptiles, and by the time the island was properly deforested, the only thing in abundance was sea birds, probably nesting on safer, offshore rocks and small islands. So, eventually, as is the nature of all cultures and their beliefs, the Rapanui began to consider the birds as more sacred and decided that, rather than stone statues, their ancestors were keeping an eye on them from above, in the form of feathery friends.

With the ancestors moving from stone statues to birds, there was no longer a need to carve statues for the spirits of the ancestors to reside in. After all, their new homes came with wings and spectacular views.

It’s possible that those still praying to the moai, as reported by the early Europeans, were just the last of the moai cult, stubbornly clinging to their stone idols while the rest of the islanders had given up on the moai and had turned their gazes to the skies and were following the Birdman cult. Not all the moai were toppled intentionally. Some may have fallen down due to an earthquake while many fell over due to neglect or other environmental factors once the focus shifted to birds. By the mid-1800s, not a single statue was still standing.

The Walking Statues

While many of the moai made it to their final resting place, nearly 400 statues are still awaiting transport at the Rano Raraku quarry. That means that only a third of the statues reached their final destination. We’re not sure why so many of the moai never left the quarry. Perhaps moving the large stone statues just wasn’t that easy.

Moving the giant heads without breaking the detailed features, like the nose and lips, would’ve been quite the challenge, and some broken statues lying at the bottom of slopes indicate that transport didn’t always go smoothly. So how exactly do you move a stone statue weighing a couple of tons if you’re not Egypt and you don’t have the manpower?

If local legends are to be believed, the statues simply walked. The word ‘neke neke’ in the Rapanui language literally means ‘walking without legs’ and, according to the stories, that’s exactly how the statues moved. Those who possessed mana, or divine power, could command the moai to walk from the quarry to their final home.

According to legend, only a select few people had enough mana to make the statues move, either by commanding them or by reciting magical chants. One myth tells the story of Tu’u-ko-ihu, a popular chief and powerful man whose mana was so great that, when he told the statues to walk, they not only walked but walked to places of their own choosing, deciding for themselves where they wanted to spend eternity. Another tale claims that the greatest god of the island, Makemake was the one who commanded the statues to move.

If you couldn’t get a hold of the great chief or the great god, all was not lost. Priests could chant the statues into place. However, if the priests stopped chanting, the statues stopped moving.

Some of the statues never made it because an evil spell halted their march, leaving them stranded by the side of the road. Evil spells were also used to topple the standing statues. Apparently, there was an old woman, working as a cook for the sculptors, who had enough mana to command the statues to walk.

When the image-makers, as they were called, refused to share their meal, she ordered the statues to fall down. Moral of the story – don’t mess with the cook! However, it seems that the statues could only walk after dark.

That must’ve been quite a sight and probably not something you’d want run into unexpectedly on a dark and lonely night.

For some inexplicable reason, scientists don’t want to accept the theory of statues walking around the island in the dark and they have some more practical theories to explain how the statues were moved. One theory suggests that the statues were moved by rolling logs or possibly using wooden sleds pulled with ropes, similar to how the blocks were moved for building the Great Pyramid at Giza. Jo Anne van Tilburg and her team managed to move a 10 ton replica, using a sledge moved with eucalyptus rollers, and a team of 60 people. This is certainly a plausible method, but 60 people are still a lot if you have a small tribe.

However, according to a study done in 2012, the old legends might have some truth to them. Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo decided to give the story of walking statues some consideration. Unlike the ancient Egyptians, the islanders couldn’t spare too many people to carve and move statues – cultivating food and finding water were far more important to the people’s survival. So, what if they walked a statue from the quarry to the ahu by rocking the statue from side to side in the same way you would move a fridge?

Based on the breakage patterns of the statues that didn’t quite make it from the quarry to their final home, it became clear to the researchers that the moai were standing upright before they fell which meant they weren’t being pulled along vertically on rollers and sledges. The base of the unfinished statues in the quarry, as well as the ones lying by the sides of roads, was wider than those sitting on an ahu. The unfinished statues also lean forward by around 17 degrees, so the center mass is positioned just over the rounded front bottom edge.

This allows the statue to roll from side to side. However, leaning so far forward means they wouldn’t have been able to stand by themselves, they would tip over. Lipo theorized that the statues were modeled on how people walk.

Essentially, you rotate your hip and fall forward, so the Rapanui designed a statue that did the same thing – it would rotate and fall forward, moving step by step. Even the paths on the island seemed to support this theory. After studying the paths leading from the quarry to the ahu all over the island, the team concluded that the concave paths were designed that way to make it easier for the statue to walk.

The moai was probably guided using ropes by a team on either side of it and a small team behind it to steady the movement. Walking the statue would require a much smaller team than dragging it on a sled. Once the moai arrived at its ahu safe and sound, the final touches would be added and the base reshaped to adjust the center mass, allowing the statue to now stand upright without assistance.

However, the statues weren’t the only things that needed moving. When hats became all the rage in the world of statue fashion, the heavy pukao needed to be moved from their quarry to the statue. They were a lot smaller, the largest only reaching a diameter of around 2m, so moving them might’ve been tricky, but not impossible. Getting the headdress onto the statue’s head was a different story.

One way they could’ve done this is a ramp-and-rope technique known as parbuckling. A rope would’ve been tied around the pukao, or hat, and people would’ve pulled it up a ramp towards the top of the head. It would probably have been easier to pull than push.

Research showed that it’s perfectly feasible for around 15 people, or fewer depending on the size of the pukao, to pull the pukao up a ramp and place it on top of the statue’s head. Unfortunately, due to time, weather erosion and other factors, the hats have long since fallen off and only a few of the excavated moai can now be seen sporting their fashionable red hats.

Of course, where you find amazing feats of human engineering, you find aliens. According to Erich von Daniken, who studied the Egyptian Great Pyramids and the giant geoglyphs in Peru, the work is too detailed to have been done with stone tools and was done by aliens. A small group of aliens found themselves stranded on the Easter Island, though how they managed to do that is unclear, and in an attempt to signal their alien buddies looking for them, they built these huge stone statues with distinct human features and placed them all around the island.

Because if your alien comrades are looking for you, they’re going to be looking for large human heads. That makes perfect sense.

Conclusion

Perched on their platforms, or half-buried beneath the ground of Rapa Nui, the moai still keep a watchful eye on their people. They may have been replaced by a Birdman cult in the distant past, so I’m thinking they’re probably not fond of birds, but today they’re the objects of a new kind of worship. Despite not being the easiest travel destination to reach, they have visitors aplenty. They may no longer be considered the source of fertility for agriculture, but they’re still looking after their island, and the people on it, by luring tourists and the money that comes with them – not something the birds are doing, am I right?

We’ll probably never know why exactly they were built or how they were moved, but I like to imagine these large statues, lumbering across the island, slowly making their way to their platforms to settle down and spend eternity in contemplation. Who knows, perhaps they are still walking on the darkest nights when no-one is watching, bestowing mana on their people and trampling a few seagulls on the way.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the moai statues?

The moai are giant statues found on Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui. They are known for their large, oversized heads and similar facial features, with most appearing to be male. There are nearly 1000 statues of varying sizes scattered around the island.

How were the moai statues moved?

The exact method of moving the moai statues is still debated, but theories include using wooden sleds and rollers, and a more recent study suggests that the statues were ‘walked’ by rocking them from side to side. Local legends also speak of statues walking due to divine power.

What is the significance of the pukao on the moai statues?

The pukao is a red stone hat or headdress worn by some of the moai statues. It was added later in the statue-making process and is believed to represent a headdress or topknot. The pukao was quarried from red stone at the Puna Pau quarry and could weigh up to 12 tons.

What is the ahu and its purpose?

The ahu is a stone platform on which the moai statues sit. It is a raised, rectangular platform made with large worked stones and a ramp paved with beach pebbles. The ahu serves as a base for the statues and can contain up to a dozen moai. Around 360 of these platforms have been found on the island.

What is the theory behind the deforestation of Easter Island?

The deforestation of Easter Island is attributed to a combination of human activity and the introduction of the Polynesian rat. The islanders cleared forests for farming and construction, while rats consumed palm seeds and saplings, preventing forest regeneration. This led to soil erosion and a decline in resources.

What is the Birdman cult and its relation to the moai statues?

The Birdman cult emerged later in Rapa Nui history, focusing on sea birds as sacred entities. This shift in beliefs led to a decline in the construction and veneration of moai statues, as the ancestors were believed to reside in the birds rather than the stone idols.

How did the Rapanui people adapt to the environmental challenges on Easter Island?

The Rapanui people adapted by developing specialized rock gardens for agriculture, using basalt pebbles and boulders to trap moisture and improve soil fertility. They also relied on freshwater streams and dug wells to access water, despite the island’s limited resources.

What is the significance of the Rano Raraku quarry?

The Rano Raraku quarry is the primary site where nearly 95% of the moai statues were carved. It is an extinct volcano with porous stone formed from solidified ash, which was easier to work with the islanders’ stone tools. The quarry contains statues in various stages of production and completed statues awaiting transport.

What is the concept of mana in Rapa Nui beliefs?

Mana is a sacred and spiritual power in Rapa Nui beliefs, channeled from divinity to the people through their chiefs and rulers. It is the divine life force responsible for fertility and is believed to be represented by the size and grandeur of the moai statues.

What happened to the Rapanui population after European contact?

After European contact, the Rapanui population was decimated by diseases like smallpox and the slave trade. By 1877, the population had been reduced from around 3000 to just 111. Today, the population stands at around 2000 native Rapanui out of a total of 7000 people living on the island.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: The Mystery of Easter Island’s Walking Statues
• Hero image source by thegetty / openverse, cc0.