Statues puzzle solved?

Press, 10 February 1986, Page 6

Statues puzzle solved?

By RICHARD BOUDREAX, of the Associated Press (through NZPA) Hanga Roa, Easter Island Researchers have puzzled for decades over how the tiny South Pacific Easter Island could have sustained a population large enough to move the huge, enigmatic stone statues, for which it has become world-famous. Archaeologists and Thor Heyerdahl, the ethnologist who visited Easter Island in 1955 during his celebrated voyage across the Pacific in a reed boat, believe they have discovered the answer. Using just ropes and muscle, 20 Polynesian men were able to nudge and tilt an 11-metre, 8tonne figure across its

ancient altar. Archaeologists who supervised last week’s experiment said it proved the 500 or so Moai sculptures could have been moved from their quarry with far less manpower than previously thought. The largest sculpture weighs 84 tonnes and is as big as a railway freightwaggon. Mr Heyerdahl has been on Easter Island since January 22 to re-examine the stone sculptures and dig for new artefacts to test his theory that the earliest Polynesians sailed west from ancient Peru, rather than east from Asia.

The 71-year-old Norwegian whose book, “Kon-Tiki,” describes his Pacific crossing, said he hoped their experiment

would put an end to all the “crazy theories” about people landing there from outer space to move the gargantuan statues. Mr Heyerdahl had originally held the theory that the statues were dragged on their backs. In an earlier experiment he needed 180 men with ropes to pull a reclining 12-tonne statue atop rolling logs. The new experiment was proposed to him by a Czechoslovak engineer, Pavel Pavel, who accompanied him to set it up. On Thursday, after the dawn sacrifice of a pig, 20 men tied four long ropes around one of the statues, extending two lines from each side of its head and two from each side of its wide belly near the base. As one gang pulling on

the head tilted the statue as far as 30deg. to the right, the other gang pulled the raised left side of the base forward several centimetres. Then they switched ropes and stepped the right side forward.

The idol advanced six metres in less than an hour.

After a luau feast of pork, the movers collected 2000 Chilean pesos apiece, about $19.01 for their labour.

“This shows the huge task of transporting all those statues did not require thousands of people, but simply a bit of intelligence and ingenuity,” said Sergio Rapu, Governor and native archaeologist of the remote Chilean province 2350 nautical miles west of the South

American mainland. With experienced people working in rhythmic movement, he said, those statues could easily move several kilometres in days. Chilean and Norwegian archaeologists who oversaw the experiment said they had also uncovered ancient paths with dirt packed in a way that suggested upright movement rather than the dragging or rolling of the statues.

The statues are thought to date from around the eleventh century A.D. Their meaning and their craftsmen’s trade secrets were lost in a tribal war that ended the construction era a few decades before Europeans discovered the island on Easter Sunday in 1722.