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(C) Photo by Sheela Sharma
Three teams, one on each side and one in the back, maneuver an Easter Island statue replica down a road in Hawaii, hinting that prehistoric farmers who didn't have the wheel may have transported these statues in this manner. The experiment was led by archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo and is reported in the July issue of National Geographic magazine.
Did Easter Island's famous statues rock, or roll? After doing a little rocking out themselves, researchers say they're sure the natives raised the monumental figures upright, and then rocked them back and forth to "walk" them to their positions.
Their findings mesh with a scenario that casts the Polynesian island's natives in the roles of resourceful engineers working with the little that they had on hand, rather than the victims of a self-inflicted environmental catastrophe.
"A lot of what people think they know about the island turns out to be not true," Carl Lipo, an archaeologist at California State University at Long Beach, told me today.
Lipo and University of Hawaii anthropologist Terry Hunt lay out their case in a book titled "The Statues That Walked" as well as July's issue of National Geographic magazine. Their story serves as a counterpoint to a darker Easter Island saga, detailed in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," a better-known book by UCLA scientist-author Jared Diamond.
Two scenarios
In Diamond's scenario, Easter Island's society is portrayed as one that chose to fail through overpopulation, conflict and deforestation. Polynesians colonized the island as far back as 1,600 years ago, and cut down forests of palm trees as part of a slash-and-burn strategy that led to intensive farming, soil degradation, conflict, cannibalism and massive depopulation. By the time the Europeans arrived in the 18th century, Easter Island's society was on the ropes.
The island's statues, known as moai, play a significant part in this scenario. Diamond relies on the findings of other researchers who say the monoliths, weighing as much as 90 tons, were dragged into place by hundreds of islanders, using downed trees as sleds, rollers and levers. Rival chieftains recruited whole tribes to erect monuments to their glory. The broken statues found along the island's path were a testament to the stone-carving society's final failure.
Recent excavations are revealing new discoveries about the towering statutes of Easter Island. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown speaks with Jo Anne Van Tilburg, archaeologist and director of the Easter Island Statue Project, about the findings from recent excavations.
Hunt and Lipo take a different view: The way they see it, Easter Island was never that great a place to live. "It was never verdant, and there were never very many people on the island," Lipo said.
In this scenario, the Polynesians settled on the island about 800 years ago — and brought rats along with them. The settlers ate the rats, but because the rodents were an invasive species with no other natural predators, they took over the island and feasted on palm nuts, hastening the pace of deforestation. The population remained relatively stable for centuries, but when the Europeans arrived, the islanders who were there fell victim to diseases that their immune systems couldn't fight.
(c) Photo by Sheela Sharma
Archaeologists Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt stand in front of a full-scale replica of a stone statue from Easter Island. Their research into Easter Island's past is featured in the July 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Hunt acknowledged that, "from a biodiversity standpoint, it was a catastrophe." But he said the farming methods used by the ancient islanders were designed to make the best of a bad situation. Rocks were piled up to create circular garden plots known as "manavai," and crops were planted within the circles. Nutrients would quickly leach out of the soil, but fresh rock was pulverized and added to the soil as a mulch.
"They were able to engineer their lives in a way that was really stable and sustainable," Lipo said.
The statues play a different role in the two scientists' alternate scenario. They said it wouldn't take all that many people to move the statues if they were raised up vertically and then rocked down the road. Taking on the task would have helped blow off steam, and might have served as a kind of social glue, Hunt said.
"You're actually putting a lot of your effort into the process of moving a statue rather than fighting," he told me. "Moving the moai was a little bit like playing a football game."
Trial by transport
After "The Statues That Walked" came out, Diamond sharply disputed the conclusions reached by Hunt and Lipo, declaring on climate expert Mark Lynas' blog that they were "considered transparently wrong by essentially all other archaeologists with active programs on Easter Island." Diamond addressed the debate in detail, including the idea that the statues could have been moved vertically.
"This seems an implausible recipe for disaster," Diamond wrote. "Imagine it yourself: If you were told to transport a 90-ton statue 33 feet high over a dirt road, why would you risk tipping and breaking it by transporting it vertically with all its weight concentrated on its small base, rather than avoiding the risk of tipping by laying it flat and distributing its weight over its entire length?"
Lipo and Hunt had their own counter-rebuttal published on Lynas' blog as well, and the debate over the historical record depends on sophisticated interpretation of radiocarbon dating tests, pollen analysis and tooth marks on palm nut shells. But the part about the horizontal vs. vertical transport? That could easily be tested.
UCLA's Jo Anne Van Tilburg had previously shown that the horizontal method was workable, as long as you had lots of laborers and logs. Lipo and Hunt set up their own experiment: They built a 5-ton moai replica, with the weight distributed as it was in a real statue. Then they tied ropes around it, raised it up using a crane, and got ready to let it stand free.
They could immediately see that the statue would fall forward if the crane relaxed the tension on the line. Hunt said he and Lipo were just about to walk away in disgust when the crane operator slipped a 2-by-4 under the front edge of the statue and had it standing. "As soon as we saw this, Carl and I said, 'Of course! This makes perfect sense!"
An experiment on Easter Island, chronicled for a TV documentary, shows how the statues could have been "walked" to their locations. Watch the video on National Geographic's website.
National Geographic
National Geographic's iPad presentation on the Easter Island statues, part of the July 2012 issue, shows how the vertical-walking method might have been employed centuries ago.
The researchers found that the statue's fat belly produced a forward-falling center of gravity that facilitated vertical transport. A crew of as few as 18 people could use ropes to rock the statue back and forth, and forward. (In comparison, Van Tilburg's team used 60 pullers.) The vertical-transport trick worked with four rope-pullers on each side, plus 10 people to pull on the statue from behind, as if they were holding back a dog that was straining forward on a walk.
"It's really unnerving and beautiful, all at the same time," Hunt said.
Of course, a 90-ton statue is bigger than a 5-ton statue, but Hunt found that the technique was scalable. "With the physics of the taller statue, you have greater leverage," he told me. "It almost gets to the point where you would have to do it that way."
'We're not failures'
The statue-walking experiment alone doesn't prove that the entire scenario put forward by Hunt and Lipo is true, but it's consistent with the claims in the islanders' oral tradition that the statues "walked" down the road in ancient times. It also provides an alternate explanation for the ruined statues that littered the roads: When you lose control of the ropes, that's what happens, and you don't have any good way to move the broken pieces.
So did the statues rock, or roll? The debate over the two scenarios surrounding Easter Island's past could well continue for generations. But it's clear which scenario is preferred by the islanders themselves.
"The young people ... they're celebrating. I don't think there's any other word for it," Hunt said. "One came up to me and said, 'It's so important for my generation to know we're not failures.' That brought tears to my eyes."
More about Polynesia:
- Yes, the Easter Island heads really do have bodies
- Rat DNA helps trace Pacific migrations
- Ancient fashion explains snail mystery
Hunt and Lipo are scheduled to discuss "The Statues That Walked" at the National Geographic Society's headquarters complex in Washington on Thursday. The presentation is sold out.
"The Mystery of Easter Island," a Nova-National Geographic special focusing on the research conducted by Hunt and Lipo, is scheduled to air on PBS on Nov. 7.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Wow , over 1,000 of them ....
And some are about 33 feet tall weighing about 90 tons ....
How remarkably productive they were ....
As we look around today , we see many relatively new tools to help us with most types of really hard work ....
I think they should have a competition with our modern equipment , like small cranes , chipper hammers , drills , grinders and buffers to create about ten or so identical statues as fast as they can ....
Not to belittle those who created those statues , but to honor them in duplicating what we found an interest in ....
Always good different cool stuff on "The Cosmic Log" ....
Thanks Alan Boyle ....
No doubt this is how the Pyramids were slid into place.
Maybe ....
I wasn't there .... "LOL"
Well I was (in a previous life) and it sure as hell wasn't fun to lay them bricks. Talkin' 'bout a backache!
I don't think I saw this in the article but these bits of info are interesting:
http://sacredsites.com/americas/chile/easter_island.html
I wonder if any of the statues still have the capstones.
"LOL"
Always good to see you Darrah ....
Maybe the Egyptians had modern day type cranes to build the Pyramids ....
And once they were done , they melted them down knowing that those in the future would think that they built the pyramids by hand and manual labor keeping the joke on us .... "LOL"
I was working at a friends house a while back Darrah and was pretty sore from working and told my friend how achy I felt ....
They said , do you want "Aleve" ....
I said , no , I think I'll stay .... "LOL"
Wow Darrah , what an intense link ....
Good find ....
I have a hard time understanding cannibalism though , even if they felt the need to do so ....
I think I would eat earth worms or something first ....
Silly guy. LOL
The crops inside the circle of the statues may have been for the gods too. You know, trying to appease the gods with gifts of food? I think the Mayans did that but evidently the natives of Easter Island didn't offer human sacrifices. Maybe I missed that part if they did. Archaeologists would have been able to tell from the bones. A lot of the workers might have been slaves like the Egyptians used to work on the pyramids. They were so many statues. It's amazing what ancient civilizations could achieve and we're still guessing how they did it all. Whatever it was, there was definitely a lot of determination involved. It had to be extremely important.
Did you read this in the link?
Occam's razor. Aliens did it.
Darrah, Some of the Moai did have capstones that I saw when I visited the island. Course you need to realize that everything you see there now is reconstructed by the locals. The most capstones were located at the moai area on Anakeena beach.
I am in awe at the brain power and imagination of the those is the great past. Example: in Italy, stopped off in Genoa many MANY years ago and they have buildings that have been up forever (for them) and there are carvings that still exist, looking new, on the top front of the bldg. The precision, artistry and steady hands were amazing! I was in absolute awe. That and got to see Christopher Columbus' house where he was born and raised (it was really small and the ceiling was very short). By the way his name was Chistopho Columbo for those curious.
Yeah right!!!!! How primitive minds come up with primitive answers ........
To be honest ... they have no clue ... just conjectures ... and conjectures are all these idiot writers need to turn them into facts ....
Let me see ... they had the power of levitation ... no wait ... that's beyond our powers ... so it cannot be!
Yikes ... go write in a cave .............
And Disabled ... I'm in awe of Christopher also ... we are talking about the person that discovered land that already had people on it ... right???? And the Christophers after ... that came and robbed and destroyed whole nations .........
In awe ... right!
What I find much more interesting is the fact that people lived on Easter Island at all at this time. Easter Island is over 2000 miles from South America, 1200 miles from Pitcairn Island (the nearest inhabited island ). The initial settlement of this island is estimated to be 300-1200 BCE. These people and the others that settled the islands in the Pacific were able to settle islands from one side of the Ocean to the other. We're talking about people in row boats traveling at least 1200 miles to a place they didn't even know was there. That to me is just as amazing as the mystery of how the statues were created and placed.
Very soon the entire Earth will be like the Eastern Island: overpopulated, it's natural resources exhausted, and people resorting to cannibalism to survive. Oh... and with huge monuments erected to our glorious chiefs littering the landscape...
Haha I like this.
I think some people are missing the breadth of the debate in the article here.
Amazing what a society can achieve when not addled with TV, XBox and internet posting boards.
max- it's Easter Island...
so cool how this new finding backs up their old legends of the statues walking
It seems that this theory on how the statues were moved is supported by the oral traditions of the islanders. Why other archaeologists are so quick to dismiss this is beyond me. I think it is nothing more than the fact that they can not admit that they may have been wrong in their original conclusions. It is a sad thing when personal pride overrides academic considerations and new evidence.
We would have a lot more information if the missionaries didn't go about destroying any evidence of their past when they arrived. The Rongo Rongo tablets were all but destroyed. These are a written record with hieroglyphics on wooden tablets they had. Most were burned. I've seen 2 of them, but I don't believe there are more than twenty in existance today. No one knows how to interpret them today. The ones I saw were one in a museum on Easter Island. The other was in a musuem of indigenous tribes in Santiago, Chile. This museum is awesome. Easter Island is a territory Of Chile.
It wasn't aliens after all :)
That damn human ingenuity is always getting in the way of a good Ancient Alien theory.
Puma Punku.
At the very least, it proves that our assumed history of early man is woefully incomplete.
Having worked in construction for thirty years I know it's far easier to move something that weighs 5 tons than something that weighs 90 tons. Don't get me wrong, the people of Rapa Nui really had to have it together to live and succeed on that island. But the only way to tell how they moved one of those rocks is to move a 90 ton one.
It was aliens I know because the kidnapped me 3000 years ago
Ditto on the ancient aliens debunking; we might have to put Erich Von Däniken on suicide watch...
And those folks doing the History Channel nonsense might need to find other sources of income if similar common-sense ideas become widespread...
I believe it was also Thor Heyerdahl who "discovered" ways in the which the statues were raised in the first place, i.e. by use of levers and strategically placed stones...
Good stuff...
It's a shame the way they made the roped and blindfolded statues march down a dirt road, no doubt jeering all the way.
I love the illogic of these experiments. They all go like this: I can move a moai like this; therefore, this is how they moved them. Oral tradition is suggestive, but not definitive. What were their roads like? Did they have them? How did they move them off road or manuever them on a hill? This reminds me of the "scientific" papers that discuss the color of dinosaurs. We perpetually underestimate human ingenuity when materials are limited. There are probably as many ways to move a Moai as there are ways to make a shank in prison. There takes a certain amount of hubris to suggest that the idea that you thought of that actually works (under idealized conditions) is the way it was done. They use a nice flat surface and then move it a short distance. Try doing this across uneven terrain on a slope. Does it still work? Hmmm. I think this pattern of producing "evidence" is the result of the grant-writing process. It goes something like this: 1) minimize the ingenuity of older cultures. 2) assume that modern technology always is most efficient, 3) omit evidence from your grant proposal that doesn't conveniently fit your data, 4) exaggerate the claims of others to make their hypotheses seem unreasonable (build up a good set of straw men). Add your ideas to the pile.
There is strong archaelogical and cultural evidence that they cannibalized and that the population was very much higher than 800. Where does this fit into this scheme? Hunt is ignoring a lot of archaelogical and ecological evidence to fit his square peg into a round hole. Rats have been introduced on many islands but they didn't cause the wholesale destruction of the entire forest. He needs to explain why rats could manage to do this single-handedly on this island but not others otherwise, the finger is still pointing at anthropogenic causes. The amount of comparative ecological studies on the effects of rats on different Polynesian islands could really enlighten things here, but not enough research has been done in this area. The palynological evidence also points to much greater biological diversity. Here's a crazy idea: they used multiple means of moving the statues in place depending on the terrain, labor force available, size and shape of the moai, and materials at hand. When prisoners have all day to think about how to make a shank with toilet paper, a plastic spoon, and a newspaper, they come up with 45 different ways to do it. When an Easter Islander is constrained by the changing resources of a single island, I'll bet they come up with 45 different ways to try to move a moai. Some of the failed methods are probably the ones along the ground. The moral of my long-winded post is plausibility does not equal cause.
Seems like some people have just got too much time on their hands ( and money to waste ).
Rocking the rocks. That rocks.
Hehe. I could even see neighboring tribes making a competition out of it, with teams racing to see who could walk their statue further in a given period of time.
Yeah, but where did they get the rope, huh? THE ALIENS GAVE IT TO THEM!
But seriously, that video of the replica statue "walking" was very cool. The Statue's That Walk. Where have I heard that term before? Is that one of the legends of Easter Island or something? I know I've heard that term before, but I can't remember in relation to what?
Thanks Alan, that was very interesting.
Barlow,
This was a small scale experiment. All you have to do is find out how many times 5 goes into 90 then multiply that number by the number of people it took to move a 5 ton stone and you have your answer.
Exactly. Leave the aliens out of this one.
It really does make more sense to rock/ walk the statues. IMO, the test done by Lipo and Hunt (and students) prove it.
Maybe the statues served a couple of purposes. I suppose someone has pointed this out, but besides the crops, the natives would have been religious and possibly carved the statues to represent their gods they prayed to. It's happened in other ancient civilzations. Evidently they knew what they were doing so it could be that they tried both techniques and found that walking the statues worked better.
There's something to be said for oral hsitory being passed down so the natives were bascially telling the story of the gods/stones walking.
I can't wait to read Lipo and Hunt's book. I'll be looking toward the National Geographic article too.
Great job and article!
I visited the island about 15 years ago as a tourist. If I recall correctly the statues are representations of past ancestors of each family. Most were placed on an raised area called an ahu where their dead were buried. It was believed when the social collapse came that feuding families knocked over the others family Moai as an attack against that family.
That's kind of what I think they really are ....
Types of monuments representing individuals ....
Fathers , group leaders , ects. ....
Like tomb stones of some sort ....
Moais are rolls royces, skyscrapers, tombstones, and cathedrals rolled into one. I'm so glad that we have learned not to build unnecessary monuments to ourselves at the expense of a sustainable environment. It would have been silly to repeat the mistakes of the past.
logical positivist ....
All cemeteries are types of monuments ....
Maybe they used one technique and maybe the other. Maybe they were smart enough to use both depending on the size of the Moai being placed. The 800 year difference in the placement of the people's is a bit disturbing. I would have thought carbon dating would have pin pointed the arrival time on the island more accurately. Either way, it is an awesome display of engineering.
The image that comes to my mind is of a couple of people moving a large chest of drawers...are they moving it across the room? Rocking. Are they moving it up or down a flight of stairs? Rocking won't work - tip it over and slide it.
This is truly fascinating. I would have to say that lotz of civilations in the last 5000 years accomplished incredible physical structures, gravesites etc. This probably was very important to bonding sucessfully as a group. The thing is,many of these dissappeared forever. We have so many more tribes now. Will humans ever learn to cooperate for the good of all??
If Countries would STOP trying to KILL off other peoples Religions or Beliefs, we would know how the Ancient peoples did EVERYTHING....
But every time there is a war, the winning Country starts to demolish and ruin all Records of those peoples....
I appreciate cultural diversity but sometimes cultural and religious traditions really are stupid and can sometimes be dangerous. We tend to give a free pass to some traditions simply because we are trying to be PC. Just to drop a troll bomb, how about these cultural traditions: female circumcision, male circumcision, religious beliefs on not using condoms in HIV ravaged parts of the world, being allowed to kill your wife if she commits adultery. Not all cultural practices are good simply because they have persisted for a long time and not all of them are worth keeping in the name of diversity or religion. In fact many really bad ideas and human behaviors have managed to keep themselves alive only because they purport to be of religious significance or support cultural diversity. I would argue that reasons of either--religion or cultural diversity alone are not good enough excuses to keep bad ideas around (and bad I define as constraining another's personal freedoms when it doesn't infringe on your own or causes bodily harm or death to someone that would otherwise not suffer if the the "tradition" weren't carried out or the belief didn't exist).
This doesn't prove they did that when they were made..its just a simple idea of todays thinkers..which is always wrong!
To be honest..I believe thousand of years ago when they were made they slid them on coconut oil and seal oil and whale flubber even.....my idea is just as good as their guess!
Except that you haven't shown it to work yet.
and Flubber was a Robin Williams movie
I still think Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" offered the best theory for Easter Island: that the statues were moved by utilizing wood rollers - which used precious resources on the island - which is why the island is stripped of all natural resources. Of course, after all tree resources were wasted on the "glory" of the statues, people died or had to leave due to dwindling food and water supplies which were disrupted from the deforestation of the entire island. Makes sense, and is a poignant thought in point of today's societies. Really Easter Island, and so many other civilization mysteries are no mysteries at all - people merely stripped their areas of available resources and then were left with the option of either leaving or dying of starvation or lack of clean water.
Why would they need to deforest the entire island? Couldn't they just use the same 40 or so logs over and over again? Moving them from the back to the front as the statue rolled of it?
Why is mankind deforesting the entire planet? Do we really need that much toilet paper? Do you recall how the late great Kurt Vonnegut describe mankind in three words. Exploit, Consume and Excrete.
Actually I visited the island a few years back and there is a very large trench that has the remains of massive fires that were burnt in the trench. It was believed at one time there was some sort of war between two groups and the trench was a barrier between tribes. It has been suggested that maybe the second group weren't Rapa Nui, but South Americans?
Thor Heyerdahl believed much of the Pacific was settled from the South Americans spreading across the Pacific. The Kon-Tiki was his proof. While his theory was mostly proven to be his theory looking for facts and proved false, I'm not sure they have decided as to who the two groups were.
JakeIAm, ...Just a thought,...The soft wood logs might have had poor mileage. And, how much of a forest would it take to fire two thousand, or more, terracotta Chinese warriors?
really?-
going with the deforestation thing, how is it ok now to completely waste paper now that people are using so much less because of the internet? all the paper barons start bitching, and now every major city has at least one free newspaper, something someone's gonna read for thirty seconds and then throw on the ground...
Meme want gumgum..no gumgum no meme.
From the movie of 1927..Palin Lost in Alaska
Easter Island is still an amazing sight to see. I can remember watching specials about it on PBS and reading about the island in my grandma's National Geographic magazines.
National Geographic is the best gift that you can give a child when they are around eight or nine. Don't give them a game system give them a subscription to National Geographic......then give them the game system and point them in the direction of a video game development school.
You don't need to go to school to learn video game development. Most people got into it just messing around with the tools. Get them a decent computer with a good graphics card, pirate photoshop and 3ds max if you can't afford it, and point them in the direction of the Unreal engine. Those schools are a rip off and do nothing but make their private owners richer.
Thanks for the smart insightful thoughts "dwighthuth" and I agree to point them, not push, do not limit the direction as the direction can be many.
I'll never forget the first time I had and read my first whole National Geographic magazine. It created a boundless interest to explore the world. Reading this magazine has always brought a smile and satisfaction for me.
Thinking of the Egyptians limestone's of the pyramids being moved in the manner described in this article, each stone would have to have a "fat" stomach and a rounded bottom to "walk". Unless they finished each one off square, it wouldn't fit this hypothesis.
You could easily test the idea simply by turning a few of the icons over on their side to see if their bottoms are 'scrapped' and worn in a pattern that indicated 'bottom walking 90 ton behemoths' or flat rolled if no signs of wear. What's so hard about that?
The legend says the statues walked to their place and it is demonstrated that they DID, indeed walked to where they stand today. the omision of people , ropes and coordinated pulling realeasing and holding tight on a rythmic dance that animated the walk is just a matter of why legents are magic and misteries interesting and so apealing. then, allow your imagination fly and believe the bermuda triangle is true, aliens are real and Jesus walked on water, but do not ask to know the truth for the trick will shatter your dreams because mysteries are beautiful as they are.
Hooray Science!
Always ....
There is a reason great things were built at times when there were lots of people, but not lots of heavy machinery. Slaves.
When you can force thousands of people to work for free, there is very little cost to building things. The more expensive the labor, the fewer monumental things are built. It's not worth the expense.
Even a hundred years ago mankind built things that we can't/won't build today. As labor and regulatory costs rise few will invest in huge projects.
I'm not advocating forced/cheap labor, of course. I'm just pointing out that we sometimes glorify monuments of the past but forget the human cost involved.
Today's world isn't all that different, but instead of building great things, we build wealth for our masters, albeit the average worker today is a lot better off than the workers of centuries past.
When we found out humans had "rights," no one wanted to build monoliths anymore.
lmao! seriously? you wasted space for this? now now surely you could've made better use apologizing for countless efforts to edit things? What was that tabloid newspaper.... msnbc?
Looks right to me since the oral history of the islands moai indicates they "walked" to their resting places.
Its partly a science question, partly engineering. In principle, moving a ninety ton statue, and moving a five ton statue (same scale) might be the same. I vote with the engineer above, who said "It aint the same!", and you want to prove you can move a 90 ton statue that way, then do it! Even then, just showing that you can, doesn't mean they did it that way! So, check the bottoms of at least a few statues, for signs of wear. Oh, and the idea aint all that earth shaking. Its how we all move tall, heavy objects, isn't it? Don't we "walk" them?
As for the "ancient tribal wisdom stuff", our experience is that "eye witness testimony" (the basis for all oral history) is notoriously unreliable. Three people watch the same event, you end up with a dozen different stories, about what actually happened, told by those three people, at different times. "The gods walked"? Absolutely no way to tell from the legend, whether it happened that way, or not. Check the statues' feet!
They could have built a sled to move them and place them where they were found.
It seems they are forgetting that the replica is only a replica of the top portion (the head) the statues are actually much taller. Only the heads are visible, the bodies go down very deep into the ground.
I'm no engineer but it would have taken a massive coordination effort and a hundred more rope lines to "walk" a 90 ton statue down the trail than what it took to prove their theory with a 5 ton replica. For that matter it would have been much easier to roll the statue on its side using ropes to pull it in one direction and ropes on the other side to "slow its roll" on a slope. They could have lashed split logs along the length of the statue to give it a rounder log shape to allow it to roll easier. This would have spread the 90 ton weight over more surface area and certainly more stable than trying to "walk" it and control that massive weight with ropes. Anyway I'm not at all sold on their walking statue theory - too many "potholes" for the statue to get stuck in!
I'm sure that if the natives had TV and internet and smart-phones, then none of these statues would have been put into place, let alone carved.
Give people a lot of time and they will come up with some wonderous things.
Give them an anonymous place to comment and they will spew crap.
(of course, moving huge statues might have been their way of wasting time)
I find modern scientist both disappointing & amusing as can be. Guy walks upon an island sees a giant stone carving & asks the native "how did it get there?", "how did it get there?" the native mused humorously, "well it walked there".
And after the natives said "it walked there" the scientists tried to figure out how it rolled there. There is still a language barrier that covers the years of time. But sometimes the simple explanation is the answer, Occam's Razor.
Of course, Merlin flew Stonehenge monoliths to Salisbury plain, just as in legend. ;-)
A Maoi and an archaeologist walk into a bar...
hey wait a second, I always thought these were carved out of the rock while laying flat,,,so they would have to stand them up first to rock them,,,, so how did they do that? And if they fell over when rocking them what then? Seems more logical to drag or roll them from their origional position. Why not tie logs around the statutes in a way to make them round and just roll them?
Because these guys have PHD's
They had races...the lossing team was dinner!
Funny...................................................not so funny!
Why invent such a complicated, far-fetched explanation for something so simple? A tractor beam from any Earth-faring UFO would have no trouble at all moving those status around.
Great theory; however, the mock up they used was only the top half of the statue. Many were full statues buried from the waist down.