{"id":69620,"date":"2019-05-17T14:19:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T18:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.tablethotels.com\/en\/?p=69620"},"modified":"2023-03-29T10:52:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T14:52:53","slug":"easter-island-enigma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.tablethotels.com\/en\/2019\/05\/easter-island-enigma\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter Island Enigma"},"content":{"rendered":"

For centuries, explorers and archaeologists have tried to solve the riddle: how did Easter Island\u2019s tiny population build the massive, big-headed stone statues known as moai? And how did they move them?<\/em><\/h4>\n

The ancient moai<\/em> statues of Easter Island are as vexing as they look. Numbering in the hundreds and reaching up to 30 feet and 80 tons, there\u2019s no surviving blueprint for their construction or how the huge carvings were moved from the quarry, miles inland, to the coast. The mythology, passed down through the oral tradition<\/a> of the indigenous Rapa Nui, says the statues \u201cwalked.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was a less-than-acceptable explanation for the Europeans who landed in the 18th century. \u201cWe could hardly conceive how these islanders, wholly unacquainted with any mechanical power, could raise such stupendous figures,\u201d wrote<\/a> Captain Cook, surprised to find such a small community among such larger-than-life craftsmanship. Typically, his questions said more about him than any reality of the place.<\/p>\n

When it comes to explaining the mysteries of Easter Island, that\u2019s something of a pattern.<\/p>\n

\"Moai\"
Moai statues average a height of 13 feet and a weight of 14 tons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Popular Theory: Population Collapse<\/h3>\n

In 2005, Pulitzer winner Jared Diamond wrote the book on Easter Island. If you\u2019re hoping to draw a line from Easter Island to our own struggles with climate change, this is your theory \u2014 a handy blueprint for what happens when you fail to preserve your environment.<\/p>\n

In Diamond\u2019s bestseller, Collapse<\/em>, the author made an irresistibly allegorical argument that the original Polynesian settlers were almost entirely to blame for the collapse of what must have once been a magnificent, much larger community. In their need for farmland, firewood, and possibly devices to move the moai statues, they stripped the forest bare. Once the forests expired, so did several species of edible birds, so did the wood for boats, and so did their ability to fish. The soil eroded and the crops wasted away. The society devolved into vicious infighting and cannibalism.<\/p>\n

It was, according to Diamond, \u201cthe clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, this theory is still used by columnists<\/a> to illustrate the dangers of what happens \u201cwhen a people\u201d \u2014 either the Rapa Nui or the the modern global community \u2014 \u201cdamages the environment that sustains it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"William
The artist, William Hodges, joined Captain Cook’s voyage to Easter Island in 1772.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The New Research: A Different Story Entirely<\/h3>\n

Some archaeologists deny the theory of population collapse entirely, saying that interpretation of Easter Island makes a massive assumption.<\/p>\n

In 2016, archaeologist Carl Lipo told Ars Technica<\/a> that there\u2019s no evidence any grander population once lived on Easter Island at all, and that Diamond and the like argue \u201cthat there must have been 10,000 or 20,000 (or 30,000!) people, not because of the archaeological record or any direct evidence of demography but from the assumption that the statues must have required huge populations.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Lipo, the population remained around 3,000<\/a> until the arrival of Europeans, when it eventually dwindled to just 110<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Likewise, modern researchers don’t blame deforestation on a greedy, overextended society. Instead, they blame rats. Along for the ride with the original settlers of the place, Polynesian rats would have reproduced exponentially with no natural predators, feasting on tree seeds. While excavations show the human inhabitants made the rats a steady part of their diet, they couldn\u2019t stop the inevitable.<\/p>\n

Instead, they battled the difficult terrain in an effort to create sustainable farming, ate what they could, and supported their own relatively small population in what the researchers call<\/a> \u201can unlikely story of success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Moai
The moai are said to represent ancestors and chiefs. With few exceptions, they all face inland.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Reassigning Blame: From Civil War To Slavery<\/h3>\n

As for stashes of obsidian littering the island, seen as evidence of widespread warfare, Lipo doesn’t see that as evidence of weaponry, but of agriculture \u2014 pointing to the shape of the artifacts as too wide and worn to have been used for effective warfare. And as recently as 2018<\/a>, researchers showed that tools used to build the moai all originated from a single stone quarry. It’s not definitive, but it hints that the Rapa Nui may have been \u201ccooperating and sharing information\u201d at the precise time they were said to have been killing and eating one another.<\/p>\n

As Lipo put<\/a> it, the tale \u201cthat\u2019s been told about these populations going crazy and creating their own demise may just be simply an artifact of [Christian] missionaries telling stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, they had their own motive for blaming any devastation on the Rapa Nui.<\/p>\n

Without a doubt, the arrival of Europeans heralded devastating disease, slavery, and clashes among the surviving islanders. In one powerful refutation of old narratives, researcher Catrine Jarman writes<\/a> that “perhaps this, instead, was the warfare the ethnohistorical accounts refer to and what ultimately stopped the statue carving.”<\/p>\n

\"Easter
Easter Island in all its glory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Finding Common Ground: It Probably Wasn’t Aliens<\/h3>\n

Recent research has brought the population collapse theory more and more into question. But it\u2019s no wonder it became such a compelling answer to the island’s mysteries.<\/p>\n

After all, before Collapse<\/em> hit the shelves, you may have picked up Erich von Daniken\u2019s book, yet another perspective on Easter Island that lingers in the popular consciousness. On something of a lifelong mission to prove that the pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge have extraterrestrial origins, he theorized that stranded aliens built the moai as an S.O.S. to their compatriots.<\/p>\n

So, yes. All the easier to believe a compelling climate change parable when your other option is ancient aliens.<\/p>\n