The mysterious legend of the ‘Easter Island heads’
The ‘Easter Island heads’ are famous worldwide but also mysterious. Who made these stone statues? How were they transported? What do they represent?
Image: The iconic statues are known as Moai | Shutterstock.com
Despite being one of the world’s most remote inhabited locations, Easter Island has achieved an impressive level of worldwide fame. This is doubtless largely due to the iconic ‘Easter Island heads’ dotted across the Pacific island’s landscape.
The term ‘Easter Island heads’ is actually a misnomer. In truth, these statues also include bodies. Nonetheless, the heads are certainly large in relation to the bodies, many of which are also buried to the shoulders. This has contributed to the myth that the Moai (as these statues are known) are pretty much all-cranium.
In any case, the origins of these stone sentinels remain shrouded in mystery. Who built them, and why? How were they carved and eventually put into place? We at Sky HISTORY are eager to explore many common theories — and assess whether they stand up as well as the Moai themselves.
What do we know about Easter Island’s history?
In the Sky HISTORY series Truthseekers, experienced historians — including Dr Fern Riddell and Dr Karen Bellinger — have endeavoured to find out when the Moai were built. The historians’ research has uncovered quite a few intriguing theories…
Two dozen wooden pieces inscribed with glyphs were produced on Easter Island. This type of script could theoretically tell us much about the history of the island, but has never been deciphered.
On the plus side, stories and songs about this history have been passed down through generations of the islanders, otherwise known as the ‘Rapa Nui’. This Polynesian name has been used to refer to not only the island’s people but also the island itself.
According to legend, Polynesian king Hotu Matu’a took his people to the island after an adviser to the king dreamed of its existence. However, regardless of whether this story is true, historians have not identified any reliable written record of when Polynesians first arrived on Easter Island.
When were the Moai built?
There have been various theories as to when Easter Island was first settled. In the 1940s, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl believed that the initial settlers came from Peru around 500 AD. To try and prove his theory, he built a raft from native Peruvian materials and used it to sail from Peru to Polynesia.
Many of the Moai statues sit on stone pedestals known as ‘ahu’. On an expedition to the island in the 1950s, Heyerdahl noticed that the ahu stonework resembled that of Inca structures in Peru. This appeared to bolster his theory, but genetic and linguistic data suggests that the earliest settlers hailed from Polynesia rather than Peru.
Furthermore, radiocarbon analysis implies that the island was not colonised until about 1200 AD. This supports the general consensus that the Moai were built over the next few hundred years. Indeed, many of these sentinels were reportedly standing when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen set foot on Easter Island in 1722.
How were the Moai made?
There are more than 900 Moai statues on Easter Island. The exact number is not known, as more and more have been discovered over the years, meaning that yet more might still remain hidden.
Of the known Moai, almost all are carved from tuff, a type of rock comprising solidified volcanic ash. Making a Moai statue would entail drawing an outline on the rock wall before chipping away the rock surrounding this outline.
How were the statues transported?
It was long believed that the Rapa Nui felled trees to use as rollers. Completed Moai would be placed on logs which would subsequently be rolled, enabling the statues to be transported to their intended destinations relatively smoothly.
By the 18th century, when Europeans first arrived on the island, they found it almost entirely devoid of trees. This fed the conviction that the Rapa Nui caused their civilisation’s own decline by committing ecocide.
However, more recent scholarship challenges this theory. The shrinking of the island’s woodland is now largely attributed to rats who arrived with the island’s early Polynesian settlers and ate tree seeds and saplings.
The Rapa Nui claimed that the Moai simply walked to their final positions. Modern research has since proved it possible for workers to walk such a statue by pulling ropes tied to it. Doing so can produce a rocking motion that pulls the Moai forward.
What do the Easter Island heads represent?
British explorer Captain James Cook visited Easter Island in 1774. The Rapa Nui informed him that the Moai represented their former high chiefs.
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