Comments on: Easter Island statues walked?

By: Petr Klimovic

Petr Klimovic — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:50:00 +0000

Look on wikipedia to Mr. Pavel Pavel. He is doing it in eigthies with Thor Hyerdal. So no. We know how they do it. It is not mystery. It was done in eighties.

By: Rosin Ffield

Rosin Ffield — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 20:54:00 +0000

Good observation! i was to post link to the same article. What these people don’t want us to know is that the ancient peoples had pretty amazing methods of altering gravity and matter. The world is full of proof of that. For example–the insanely HUGE Baalbeck monolith stone.
Cheers!

By: awjt

awjt — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 11:02:00 +0000

Yeah, where’d the old Easter Islanders get all that rope, huh? And big leather straps? Riddle me this.

By: yamaplos

yamaplos — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 04:00:00 +0000

There was a Czeck University professor who did this in the 70s. With his team he made a concrete repro of an Easter Island statue, and ”walked” it in Prague. There was documentary made, of which 16mm film copies were distributed worldwide as part of Socialism agitprop. I rescued that movie (with, alas, only one other one) when the Czechoslovakia embassy closed in La Paz, Bolivia, and all their cultural stuff was thrown away. I still have it there – I hope I can bring it to the US and find someone who could transfer the content and share. Oh well, probably unsurmontable copyright issues, so that will be lost, maybe forever…

By: sean

sean — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:00:00 +0000

I wonder who the first guy was that said, “I think I’ll carve a gigantic head and move it over there”.

By: sean

sean — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:00:00 +0000

He must have been a good talker to get all the other guys to help him

By: pjcamp

pjcamp — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 02:59:00 +0000

Apparently, they walked blindfolded.

Must have been Pirate Day.

By: sean

sean — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 02:56:00 +0000

That’s because the heads come out on Easter Island, the bodies are buried in the earth, and the feet come out on the other side in Pakistan.

By: Noctilucent Studios

Noctilucent Studios — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 02:28:00 +0000

Two things: Most people don’t know that the Easter Island “heads” are actually full bodies that extend into the ground. There is an unknown language that is written in glyphs on the backsides of some of the statues. This language is found in 2 places on earth. One is here on Easter Island. The other is near Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan, almost the exact opposite side of the planet. Weird, weird story.
http://redicecreations.com/ul_img/17287easterislandstatue.jpg

By: Scratcheee

Scratcheee — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 02:15:00 +0000

I once did this with two sections (connected) of sidewalk that I couldn’t have moved any other way by myself, while clearing my backyard for a new patio. It worked really well.

I learned the technique from aliens who had landed in my yard the week before. Interestingly, they were dressed like Egyptians.

By: Vengefultacos

Vengefultacos — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 00:30:00 +0000

Great! Now my dreams will be rife with Easter Island statues chasing me while chanting “heave! ho!”

By: darrrrrrn

darrrrrrn — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:06:00 +0000

I think the eureka moment for this idea came when someone was maneuvering a fridge into position.

By: fredh

fredh — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 22:48:00 +0000

http://youtu.be/elrmuzsf-Dw

By: sam1148

sam1148 — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:45:00 +0000

One does not simply walk into Easter Island.

By: fnc

fnc — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:44:00 +0000

“We’ve found a way to restore a long dead local industry!”

By: Editz

Editz — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:44:00 +0000

Zardoz speaks to you…

By: Pip_R_Lagenta

Pip_R_Lagenta — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:34:00 +0000

What is this, some kind of miniature version of climate change denial? It’s so tiny and cute! Can we keep it? Huh? Can we keep it?

NO, SON. IT WILL GROW UP TO BE SOMETHING HIDEOUS, AND IT WILL TRY TO KILL US ALL. HERE! SHINE THE LIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE AND SCIENCE UPON IT. SEE! IT EVAPORATES WITHOUT A TRACE.

Neat! Let’s do it again! Let’s do it again!

NO, SON. IT IS BEST TO LEAVE IT UNDER ITS ROCK. IT IS CRUEL TO POKE IT.

O.K. fine. Be that way.

By: Funk Daddy

Funk Daddy — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:18:00 +0000

Pip makes no statement regarding the manner of deforestation, only the clear fact of the occurrence.

I haven’t seen any accounts that cast the natives as irresponsible. Nor serious accounts that attribute deforestation to any one cause. I find it comical that you discount what oral history there is in a paragraph about conveniently casting the natives as anything.

By: Funk Daddy

Funk Daddy — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:03:00 +0000

No assumption, the forest, and deforestation, are evidenced by the pollen record, which coincides with the oral history of both the end of trees and the end of statue carving.

Are you trying to negate the islanders oral history or the pollen record when you assert that Eddie is making a chain of assumptions?

By: nvlady

nvlady — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:45:00 +0000

Even if that is just an exercise, it was an awesome one in human orginization! That was a wicked cool video.

By: hymenopterid

hymenopterid — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:38:00 +0000

Well, there is the idea that the rats wiped out the palms because they ate the fruits. Quite frankly the idea of a fast breeding non native species seems like a faster way to kill off native flora than through human harvesting. Nobody knows why the trees are gone. Nobody has ever found a roller. We have no evidence that the deforestation was caused by logging. There is no evidence of any sort of massive logging industry that would be required to process that much wood.

It’s just a popular hypothesis. It’s popular because it puts everything into a neat and tidy didactic narrative that conveniently casts the natives as being irresponsible stewards of the land. We’ve all heard the same story about how there are no trees on Easter Island because the natives cut them down, but how many people actually address that story with a critical eye? Where is the evidence that these two variables are even related? How much of this is just westerners repeating popular stories? We have no written records of their history. The fact that their culture has been decimated by disease and famine means that there is not much of an oral history left either. So what the heck are we basing this hypothesis other than sheer ethnocentric arrogance?

By: stasike

stasike — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:28:00 +0000

This was invented quite a few years ago by Czech engineer from Czechoslovalia – Ing. Pavel Pavel. He was even invited to the Easter Island by Thor Hayerdal to demonstrate this technique. You need much fewer people for this technique that with rollers and the ground doesn’t have to be so perfectly level.

Statues can lean 6 degrees. So they manufactured them with 6 degree forward lean. On level ground it was leaning forward, on 6 degree incline it was upright on 12 degree incline the statue was leaning 6 degrees back. On the top of the hill they turned the statue and backed down the downcline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Pavel

By: Funk Daddy

Funk Daddy — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Regularly placed postholes are reputedly along the paths of the Moai, were these used as anchor points the force required to move the statues up the grades present on the routes is less than the force required to move them without anchor points on level ground. Given the sophistication required to carve industriously I seriously doubt that cantilevers were beyond the scope the ancient islanders.

By: Wordguy

Wordguy — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:13:00 +0000

This is exactly how the ancient Egyptians moved the front of the Sphinx monument into position. Except for one time a rope broke and the Sphinx toppled forward, breaking off the nose. True story.

By: Pip_R_Lagenta

Pip_R_Lagenta — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:11:00 +0000

Nonetheless, rollers could not be made out of trees after there were no more trees, whether the trees were destroyed to make rollers or not.

By: Scott Laird

Scott Laird — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:06:00 +0000

(Disclaimer: I used to work with one of the archaeologists involved)

The NG article is really sparse on details–go read The Statues that Walked. It covers the deforestation, general environmental/ecological/economic issues on Easter island, and so forth.

By: hymenopterid

hymenopterid — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 18:58:00 +0000

I guess if you assume they used rollers, then you would have to assume that there was a forest for them to make the rollers out of. And because there is no forest on Easter Island, then they must have cut it down to make all the rollers! Because humans never cut down forests for reasons other than moving statues.

By: Pip_R_Lagenta

Pip_R_Lagenta — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 18:38:00 +0000

Heh! I can’t help thinking how painfully ignorant these guys are! The statues were made before the island was denuded of trees. You know, the kind of trees that someone could use to make rollers. This information has been available for decades. I am surprised that these fools could figure out how to turn on a camera, as basic research seems to be beyond them. (The lesson here, of course, is that I should never post comments on an empty stomach.)

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 18:33:00 +0000

Don’t tell me what I can’t do!
–John Locke

By: BombBlastLightingWaltz

BombBlastLightingWaltz — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 18:31:00 +0000

Weirder yet, why is Persephone perched a top the Capitol building in Washington D.C. ? (back in 1845 Pope Pius IX said something about Immaculate Conception and the U.S. decided against Virgin Mary and settled on Persephone who, according to lore, is also I. C. . That and she is the queen of Hades. lol