On Easter Island, there are hundreds of massive Easter Island rocks and statues called Moai. The huge stone figures were carved between 1,250 and 1,000 years ago by Polynesian people who lived on one of the most remote islands on earth. The original inhabitants have no written record that could shed light on why they constructed such enormous monoliths or how they moved them around. But what we do know is that these giant rocks (average weight – 13 tons) were somehow transported over great distances (hundreds of miles) from the Rano Raraku quarry to their final locations all around the island’s coastline. During this process, many stones fell victim to breakage through falling off cliffs; after that, they remain today scattered across some slopes. Just a few of these Easter Island rocks successfully transported to their sites were finally erected upright.
The biggest mystery surrounding the Easter Island rocks is how they moved the giant stones from the quarry to other places? In other words, who took pains to transport all those heavy rocks over such great distances and put them in place. Having no tradition of building pyramids or similar structures, it’s unclear why people have gone through so much effort to construct monoliths requiring so many resources and manpower. There are countless theories on this subject, but none of them seems convincing enough, although everyone has heard something about how the Easter Island rock statues might have been moved around by using log rollers or ramps built up from smaller stones, etc. Unfortunately, none of those theories are confirmed by any concrete evidence.
Another reason makes the Easter Island rocks particularly famous – all these megaliths are decorated with giant stone hats called Pukao. These distinctive headdresses resemble a kind of cylindrical top-knot made from red volcanic scoria. Archeologists have different ideas about what the hats represent, but it’s believed they were symbols of high status or power worn by tribal chiefs during ceremonial processions. However, some researchers also believe that the Pukao are not strictly hats at all, but rather stylized hair depicted in frontal view on heads without any faces attached to them. According to this theory, the statues would depict ancestors of early settlers with oversized heads symbolizing their high social status.
When it comes to how these giant Easter Island rocks were erected, the most widely accepted theory is that people used ramps made of palm trunks and ropes and wooden levers to move them into place. Possible methods of transport wouldn’t rely on rolling or dragging techniques but rather levering up one side at a time with logs acting as fulcrums. This way, by adding more and more rocks or stakes driven under the base of a statue, an ancient Rapanui tribe was able to lift it up little by little until it reached a vertical position. Even so, this remains just a hypothesis based on much speculation because there are no visible traces left behind from such great efforts which have been made to move those giant Easter Island rocks.
