Easter Island’s Moai

^{Easter Island Moai}

Moai, or mo‘ai, typically refer to the huge human like figures or statues carved from stone that are located on the Polynesian island of Easter Island. They were placed there sometime between the years of 1250 AD and 1500 AD. The Island is located in the South Eastern Pacific Ocean and was annexed by Chile in 1888 as what is called a ‘special’ territory.

Easter Island is best known for the 887 statues / Moai that are found in various places throughout the island. The statues were a huge mystery to early European explorers in 1722 primarily because the statues were so very large. The tallest one erected being 33 feet (10 meters) tall and weighing in at approximately 82 tons.  

No one could initially conceive how the simple island natives could have possibly transported the large figures from the quarries located on the island to where they are erected.  When the theory was first submitted that trees were most likely used as “rollers” to assist in the transportation effort, it was quickly pointed out the there were no trees to be found anywhere on the entire island.

The mystery grew even more when it was pointed out that the quarries where they were constructed displayed the appearance of having been abandoned abruptly; a large number of stone tools were found lying about the site; and several completed moai were outside the quarry still waiting to be transported.

Local folk lore’s oral histories recount how a variety of people were able to use divine power to command the statues to walk.  One of the earliest such accounts tells of a king named Tuu Ku Ihu was able to move them with the help of the native god Makemake. Another legend tells of a local woman who lived alone on the mountain, as being able to “order” the statues about at her will.

Most scholars currently support the theory that the primary method of transport of the moai was possibly attained by "walking" them upright (some assume by using a rocking process), as opposed to laying them flat on a sledge (a method used by the Easter Islanders to move stone in the 1860s) because the sledge process would have required an estimated 1500 people to move the largest moai that had been erected. Then in 1998, it was suggested fewer than half that number (750 workers) could do the job by placing the sledge on lubricated rollers made from trees.

If you’re wondering why a lubricated roller would even be considered as being used on a treeless island, here’s the answer: pollen analysis throughout the island has established that the island was almost totally forested until 1200 AD.  But, for reasons unknown, tree pollen simply disappeared from record sometime before 1650 AD; the statues stopped being carved and transported near that time as well.

The fact is that no one knows exactly how the moai were moved across the island, but the procedure almost certainly required human energy, ropes, and possibly wooden sleds and rollers, as well as leveled roadways across the island; an alternative may require the belief in magic.

Sources …                                                                                               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai                                                http://www.philipcoppens.com/easterisle.html