Mysteries of the Moais
Most people are drawn to Easter Island by the moai, the stone statues that have puzzled and intrigued outsiders since the first Europeans arrived there over three centuries ago. These squat, minimalist figures with oversize heads are believed to have been the crowning glory of a family shrine, standing on an ahu—or stone platform—beneath which ancestors were buried and transmitted their mana, or power, to the living family chief. They most likely overlooked the settlements that erected them.
Most of the moai were carved at the Rano Raraku quarry in the east of the island, where many can still be seen at different stages of completion. That, in itself, was a mammoth task, with only stone tools to chisel the statues laboriously out of the volcanic hillside. It was, however, nothing compared to transporting the finished statues to their ahu. Oral tradition used to claim the moai "walked" to their destination, but most archaeologists believe they were either dragged on wooden platforms or rolled along on top of tree trunks. It's not clear how they could have been moved miles without damaging the statues en route, though the eye sockets were not carved until they arrived at the ahus.
Once the moai arrived at their ahu, how were they lifted into place? In 1955, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and a team of a dozen men were able to raise the single moai on Ahu Ature Huki in 18 days. In 1960 archaeologists William Mulloy and Gonzalo Figueroa and their men raised the seven moai at Ahu Akivi. They struggled for a month to lift the first, but the last took only a week.
Both teams used the same method—lifting them with a stone ramp and wooden poles. This technique would be unwieldy for lifting the larger moai, however. It also fails to explain how the pukao, or topknots, were placed on many of the heads.
Why were the moai subsequently toppled? The reason posited by some is that creating them required a tremendous amount of natural resources, particularly wood, and as these were depleted, family groups that had once worked in harmony began to squabble, attacking the source of their opponent’s mana—their moai.
That, at least, is the theory put forward by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. If that is the case, the moai are not only Easter Island’s glory but, as the island was deforested, the cause of the decline of the civilization that created them. But, in a way, the moai are still serving their original purpose. Mana meant prosperity, and the moai continue to bring this today in the form of tourism.
It is unlikely that any additional moai will ever be stood back up. Archaeologists, such as Sergio Rapu, are looking at the possibility of leaving them where they are and using digital platforms to show both past (moais upright) and present (moais toppled) without damaging the statues.
