Easter Island statues walked?

It's long been a mystery how the residents of Easter Island moved the iconic moai statues from the volcano quarry where they carved them to the statues' permanent locations up to 11 miles away. Now, archaeologists suggest that they many not have needed rollers, the basis of one common theory. Rather, the moai may have been engineered for easy tilting so they could have been "walked" to their destinations. "Easter Island Mystery Solved? New Theory Says Giant Statues Rocked"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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http://twitter.com/DerMudeTude Der Müde ‘Tude

In the 70s a documentary crew went to Easter Island, asked the current natives how the statues were done, and the natives showed them, using roller technology readily available at the time the statues were erected.

I guess that wasn’t a good enough answer, huh?
http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy

Meh, rope = more effort and rollers have been demonstrated, including rolling erect as supported with geographic evidence as well.

Then there’s the fact of deforestation occurring at or near such time as the carving stopped.

And if trees are available, rope is a more valuable commodity than rollers.

Sure looks like people just want them to walk, cause wouldn’t that be cool? Like flaking wouldn’t occur with any method of upright transportation? Paint me skeptical
- hymenopterid
  
  Walking would have an advantage over rollers when you had to ascend a grade, because with rollers the amount of effort required to keep the stone from rolling backwards would be enormous. It makes me wonder why they couldn’t have employed a number of moving techniques, each one suited to different terrain. They certainly had enough time to practice their craft.
  - http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
    
    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.
proginoskes

If this is how they moved the stones, I hope they didn’t carve them until they arrived at their destination, and I hope they didn’t drop too many of them. If one of those monoliths fell down while “walking” it, it would disintegrate.
http://twitter.com/bigattichouse bigattichouse

Wonder if you could do the same thing with a square block on edge (so it looks like a diamond on end) to walk the blocks to Giza
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

What, are we completely ruling out sorcery?
- http://twitter.com/jtnix jtnix
  
  Interestingly enough, Session 20 of the Ra Material from 1981 says alien entities used their own sorcery to place these ‘stones’: http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=20&v=e&ss=1 (questions 29 to 31) Apparently they were later carved by the indigs whose later generations rolled their own down to replace ones lost by tsunami and other natural disturbances.
Preston Sturges

I did this with a piece of industrial machinery weighing about 700 lbs, rocking it back and forth until I could get a small block of wood under the side and pivoting it on the small block.

Ultimately though I used wood brace anchors against the foundation or a pickup truck and a large pry bar angainst the anchor to pull on a tow rope. The pry gave at least a 10:1 advantage pulling on the rope. The islanders could have dug small holes as anchors at frequent intervals. This would have worked with rollers also.
Preston Sturges

Who built the Washington Monument? Why does it look like monuments from ancient Egypt? Was it built by ancient aliens?
- Jer_00
  
  Silly – everyone knows that the Washington Monument was built by Freemasons. Who were taught their craft by studying documents left by the Ancient Aliens who taught the Egyptians how to build, of course.
  
  On the other hand – the Luxor in Las Vegas was totally built by ancient aliens.
- BombBlastLightingWaltz
  
  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
- fredh
  
  http://youtu.be/elrmuzsf-Dw
http://twitter.com/jtnix jtnix

Nice theory. The only problem is, it is now estimated that most of the statues remaining in situ are judged to be at least twice as tall as the one in the associated picture above as evidenced from recent excavations by EISP ( see http://news.yahoo.com/easter-island-heads-really-bodies-161705681.html ).
Considering the still buried bases of existing statues are at least the same diameter as the shoulders and some even slimmer towards the bottom, I have a hard time believing they waddled all these massive 10 meter tall, thousand ton statues miles to the coast. Rolled them on logs is more likely as demonstrated here: http://www.eisp.org/category/archaeology/transport/
theophrastvs

i “suggest” that they initially carved the stones into cylinders (possibly with racing stripes) rolled into position and did the rest of the carving in-situ qed ipso fatso carthango delenda est …where’s my degree? [stephen colbert grabby gesture]
http://twitter.com/Epers Eddie Perkins

You know, I always felt the deforestation of the island coinciding with the end of Moai erecting was just a strange coincidence. I’m finally proven right!
/sarcasm
- hymenopterid
  
  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.
  - http://www.youtube.com/user/PipLagenta Pip_R_Lagenta
    
    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.
  - http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
    
    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?
Boundegar

Don’t tell me what I can’t do!
–John Locke
http://www.youtube.com/user/PipLagenta Pip_R_Lagenta

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.)
- Scott Laird
  
  (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.
- hymenopterid
  
  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?
  - http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
    
    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.
  - http://www.youtube.com/user/PipLagenta Pip_R_Lagenta
    
    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.
Wordguy

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.
stasike

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
nvlady

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

Zardoz speaks to you…
fnc

“We’ve found a way to restore a long dead local industry!”
sam1148

One does not simply walk into Easter Island.
http://www.spellingmistakescostlives.com darrrrrrn

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

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

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.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

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
- sean
  
  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.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=749997097 Rosin Ffield
  
  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!
pjcamp

Apparently, they walked blindfolded.

Must have been Pirate Day.
sean

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

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

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…
awjt

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

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.