The Truth Behind The Easter Island Statues

We've all seen them, huge massive statues that show faces carved into large rocks. Most people know them as the Easter Island Heads or the Easter Island Statues, but their technical name are the Moai Statues. Some might think they're ancient too, but that's really not the case. They were carved and built roughly between the years 1400 and 1650 AD, meaning they're around 500 years old and they were carved by the natives of Easter Island, known as the Rapa Nui. Today some of these statues exist inside of museums controversially, thousands of miles from their home, including this one inside the British Museum. There are around 1,000 statues in total, weighing up to a colossal 86 tons. That's roughly 10 to 15 full-sized elephants. But who are the people on the statues and why are they so important? Most of the statues on Easter Island are made from tuff, compressed volcanic ash, which is rather easy to carve, and the natives had the skill and tools to be able to do this. Easter Island itself is a special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, with today a population of around 8,000 people. But of course it's most famous for the monuments. Now the big question, who are the people on the statues? Well they were built to honour chieftains or important people to the community after their deaths. They were in a sense statues depicting the most cherished and loved people. In London today you can walk past hundreds of statues in just one day, depicting people who helped carve the British Empire, culture and history, and the Easter Island statues represent the same concept. The faces are meant to represent people who helped shape the Rapa Nui way of life. Most of the statues sit on the rectangular stone platforms called a'hu, and these are the tombs for the people who the statues are meant to show, meaning they're quite simply grave markers and gravestones, showing who is buried underneath. The faces were carved to try and keep the appearance of the person in the grave beneath too. The larger the statue, the bigger the cost for the tribe, meaning that the more grander statues, or the larger ones, indicated that the person inside the grave was of more importance and greatness to the Rapa Nui people. The statues were not completed until they were in place above the grave. Usually they were walked or rolled to their position. One theory is that rollers were used and that logs with a bit of brute force pulled the Moai statue into position. The walking theory is that stones were pushed in one corner and then pushed in the other corner, which would have looked as if they were putting one foot forward. The walking theory is also known as the rocking method too, and we might use this today for moving a fridge freezer throughout a house, and it did require ropes to do this too. This specific method has been experimented upon, and it has been found that attaching ropes to the head of the statues did allow it to be tilted and moved with ease, with a 5 ton statue being moved by just 30 people. Once in position, the sculptors would finish their work, and they would then carve the eye holes too, and also they would sometimes be finished off with a hat. These hats represented the top knots or the hair tied up in a ball on the head, which was believed to have supernatural powers, and chieftains never cut their hair, as they recognized that the hair had supernatural ability. So the hats do today look very interesting, and they were got into place on the statue through creating a pile of rocks to the side. They then pushed the hat over the piled up rocks until it reached the head, creating in a sense a ramp. As with most cultures and interesting groups of people around the world throughout history, who were left to their own devices, the Europeans had a habit of turning up and ruining and negatively affecting their way of life. The first European visitor to Easter Island arrived in 1722, and he reported in his ship's log that he saw people praying at the statues. Jacob Roggeveen wrote, Although as I remarked, they relied in case of need on their gods or idols, which stand erected all along the seashore in great numbers, before which they fall down and invoke them. These idols were all hewn out of stone, and in the form of a man with long ears, adorned on the head with a crown, yet all made with skill, whereat we wondered not a little. A clear space was reserved round these objects of worship by laying stones to a distance of 20 or 30 paces. I took some of the people to be priests, because they paid more reverence to the gods than the rest did, and showed themselves much more devout in their ministrations. So people were actually seen praying at the Moai statues. It was a place of tranquillity, but then over time, many of the statues were actually toppled. All the statues were standing in 1722, but then as more visitors arrived, statues somehow fell, and some were intentionally toppled over to humiliate the people of the Rapa Nui. Local tribes may have done this in an act of warfare, and most of the statues had fallen forward, with the face sinking into the earth. Now some Europeans did over the centuries, arrive and then, predictably, steal the statues. Who did it first? Well, the British. They in 1868, on board HMS Topaz, a naval frigate, noticed one called Hoa Hakanaiai. This, when spotted, was buried about half its height, and it was dug out and then dragged onto the ship. That statue returned to England, and was offered to Queen Victoria, who then said it should be placed in the British Museum, and still today the statue is on display inside the museum. It has of course been stolen, and the people of the Rapa Nui believe that it should have been returned. This is still an ongoing source of debate, and the museum actually has laws passed saying it should not return any items. So quite simply, the Easter Island statues show the faces of important people who helped the Rapa Nui people form their own culture and civilization. They show former chieftains and respected elders, but many were toppled, probably by hostile tribes, in an act of desecration. Still today many of them are in place, but they may be under threat from weathering, and other issues with the world's weather and climate. This has been History of the World, and I hope you've learned something new. If you have, hit the subscribe button.