Where is moai statues

After finding no link to the proximity of rock used for tools or for the monuments, they looked at whether the ahu were found near other important resources: gardens spread with stones in which crops like sweet potatoes were grown, sites linked to fishing, and sources of fresh water.

Lipo said he became interested in the latter after he and his colleagues began delving into where those living on Rapa Nui got their drinking water from. However, fresh water passes through the ground into aquifers, seeping into caves as well as emerging around the coast. The results of the new research, published in the journal Plos One , reveal proximity to freshwater sites is the best explanation for the ahu locations — and explains why they crop up inland as well as on the coast. The results, said Lipo, made sense, as drinking water is essential for communities and it is impractical to have to walk miles for a quick swig.

But he says the study also adds weight to the idea that communities competed and interacted through monument building, in contrast to the idea that islanders engaged in lethal violence over scarce natural resources — something Lipo says there is little evidence for.

Indeed, the team is now exploring whether various aspects of the statues such as their size or other features might be linked to the quality of the water resources, potentially offering a way in which a community could show off a competitive advantage to other groups of islanders.

And community and cooperation, stresses Lipo, were crucial in construction of the monuments. There was one group of carvers from which the statues were bought. The buying tribe would pay with whatever they had large quantities of. Examples of trade items would be sweet potatoes, chickens, bananas, mats and obsidian tools. Since a larger statue would mean a higher cost, bigger statues would also mean more greatness for the tribe, since it would be a proof of that the tribesmen are clever and hard-working enough to pay.

Eyeholes would not be carved until the statue reached its destination. A pukao of red scoria stone from the quarry Puna Pau would in later years sometimes be placed on the head of the statue to represent the long hair the desceased had, which was a sign of mana ; a kind of mental power.

The spirit of he or she who had passed away would forever watch over the tribe and bring fortune in life. When the first European ship arrived to Easter Island in , all statues that were reported on were still standing. Later visitors report on more statues that have fallen as the years pass, and in the end of the 19th century, not a single statue is standing.

The most common theory to this is that the statues were overthrown in tribal warfare to humiliate the enemy. An argument for this is the fact that most statues have fallen forward with the face into the earth. Some Easter Island elders still believe this to be the true story. The tools used for carving the moai statues are called toki , and are simple handheld chisels.

They have been found in countless numbers in all excavations at Rano Raraku - particularly around the statues. The highest quality toki are made of hawaiite , which is the hardest kind of rock found at Easter Island.

There is only one place where this can be found - in a toki quarry called Rua Toki-Toki just south of Ovahe at the north side of Rapa Nui. Its scarcity, while still being used for something as central and important as carving moais, made it highly valuable in ancient times.

As the first European visitor to the island in , Jacob Roggeveen reported in his ship log of people praying to the statues:. Only Jacob Roggeveen in has ever reported on someone praying to the statues, which would suggest that the statues were revered until Europeans came. Though, it was common all over the island to recycle pieces of old statues when building new ahu platforms.

This seemingly means that the moais were not seen as holy anymore when the person it represented had been forgotten. There are several transportation theories, some of which are more generally accepted than others. There are many moai statues that fell during transportation to their ahu. Some of these are on their stomach and some on their back. This tells us that the moais were transported upright.

Since the moais are standing in the quarry Rano Raraku, and they are standing when having reached their ahu, upright transportation saved the Rapa Nui people the huge amount of labor of lowering and raising the statues.

But did the voyagers know the island was even there? For that, science has no answer. The islanders, however, do. Benedicto Tuki was a tall year-old master wood-carver and keeper of ancient knowledge when I met him. Tuki has since died. His piercing eyes were set in a deeply creased, mahogany face. There, he could recount the story in the right way. Platforms are called ahu, and the statues that sit on them, moai pronounced mo-eye. As our jeep negotiated a rutted dirt road, the seven moai loomed into view.

Their faces were paternal, all-knowing and human—forbiddingly human. These seven, Tuki said, were not watching over the land like those statues with their backs to the sea.

These stared out beyond the island, across the ocean to the west, remembering where they came from. These moai represent the original ancestor from the Marquesas and the kings of other Polynesian islands. Tuki himself gazed into the distance as he chanted their names. His tattooist and priest, Hau Maka, had flown across the ocean in a dream and seen Rapa Nui and its location, which he described in detail.

After a voyage of two months, they sailed into Anakena Bay, which was just as the tattooist had described it. He tells me this as we climb up the cone of a volcano called Rano Raraku to the quarry where the great moai were once carved. The steep path winds through an astonishing landscape of moai, standing tilted and without order, many buried up to their necks, some fallen facedown on the slope, apparently abandoned here before they were ever moved.

Pakarati is dwarfed by a stone head as he stops to lean against it. Now, as Pakarati and I climb into the quarry itself, he shows me where the carving was done. The colossal figures are in every stage of completion, laid out on their backs with a sort of stone keel attaching them to the bedrock. Carved from a soft stone called lapilli tuff, a compressed volcanic ash, several figures lie side by side in a niche.

When a statue was almost complete, the carvers drilled holes through the keel to break it off from the bedrock, then slid it down the slope into a big hole, where they could stand it up to finish the back. In some cases, the statues were adorned with huge cylindrical hats or topknots of red scoria, another volcanic stone. How that was done is still a matter of dispute. Archaeologists have proposed other methods for moving the statues, using various combinations of log rollers, sledges and ropes.

Apart from oral tradition, there is no historical record before the first European ships arrived.