Easter Island discovery sends archaeologists back to drawing board

www.physorg.com...

Quote from source:
Archaeologists have disproved the fifty-year-old theory underpinning our understanding of how the famous stone statues were moved around Easter Island.

Fieldwork led by researchers at University College London and The University of Manchester, has shown the remote Pacific island's ancient road system was primarily ceremonial and not solely built for transportation of the figures.

A complex network of roads up to 800-years-old crisscross the Island between the hat and statue quarries and the coastal areas.

Laying alongside the roads are dozens of the statues- or moai.
The find will create controversy among the many archaeologists who have dedicated years to finding out exactly how the moai were moved, ever since Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl first published his theory in 1958.

Heyerdahl and subsequent researchers believed that statues he found lying on their backs and faces near the roads were abandoned during transportation by the ancient Polynesians.
But his theory has been completely rejected by the team led by Manchester's Dr Colin Richards and UCL's Dr Sue Hamilton.

Instead, their discovery of stone platforms associated with each fallen moai - using specialist 'geophysical survey' equipment - finally confirms a little known 1914 theory of British archaeologist Katherine Routledge that the routes were primarily ceremonial avenues.

So basically we have no idea how they moved these massive stones around the island. For how advanced we are it is kind of funny that we have no idea how these 'ancient' people moved their massive blocks around that would be difficult for us to move.

I always liked easter island so I wanted to share this article with the rest of you and get some opinions on how you thought they could have moved them.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

Easter Island is and will remain to be a captivating subject.
My theory on how they were able to move and erect these massive stone figures is a simple one.
They didn't have a bunch of scientists standing around telling them it was impossible.

"It all makes sense: the moai face the people walking towards the volcano."

"The statues are more frequent the closer they are to the volcano - which has to be way of signifying the increasing levels of importance."

I never knew this. Thanks for the post.

The article however doesn't seem to give any new information. Only that they should have considered insight from 100 years ago? At least people are there trying to still "figure it out".

It's an unusual article for being definitive without the substance to support the conclusion. 'Primarily' doesn't rule out the use of the routes when moving the moai. The point appears to be that the routes aren't 'solely' for transporting moia.

The article mentions the frequency of maoi closer to the volcano as culturally significant i.e. they are higher in number through intent. Again, this isn't necessarily the correct conclusion. Perhaps numbers are higher due to it being easier to transport a monument a shorter distance? As difficulty and distance increased...numbers diminish. Possible?

I'm not saying they are wrong, but there seems to be a lot of discussion to be had before claiming anything has been 'disproved' on Easter Island. Certainly, the article raises questions.

reply to post by predator0187


"using specialist 'geophysical survey' equipment"?

For anyone who is interested, this is apparently the site of the company who provided said equipment. Thought others might want something a little less ambiguous than the above statement.

METCO Services, Inc.



[edit on 5/12/2010 by Mad Simian to fix grammatical error]

[edit on 5/12/2010 by Mad Simian]

Ing. Pavel Pavel proved at Eastern island that it is possible to move pretty fast these huge monuments by group of 16 people equipped with leader and ropes.

hello. I have seen chariots of the gods the 1972 version. Its beautifully shot,no presenter to get in the way.the monuments are the stars here. the narrator reaches a lot and Im not sold on the ancient aliens theory but am fascinated by it.

So on the easter island section it shows parts of the islands I have never seen before. the statues are humungus,and I always believed they were just heads.Yet beneath the ground some statues have full bodies.its amazing. One statue however is different from the rest. It is on its knees.and its hands (appear ) to be bound behind its back.thats just my take on it. It looks like its a different race to the other statues. has this been discussed here before?

Also wasnt it an awful lot of intensive labour to make so many statues from this rock hard stone and move them with limited resources on an island.So Im guessing it wasnt ceremony or homage to gods but a sign? to say we were here at this time maybe they have astronomical allignments like the pyramids like hancock and beauvoul suggest? Maybe theres a code to their postions, Or they built them there before a great catachlism that they knew would come and feared it would destroy most of humanity.,maybe they came o easter island for the purpose of building them.is it a high point that could avoid a major flood?

so back on point,what Im asking is really was the statue that looked different than the others ever discussed here?

and fell fee to comment on the other stuff.
thanks

This doesn't do anything to disprove how the stones were moved. Moving such stones is not very hard. About a decade ago, some scientists actually decided to ask the locals if there were stories about how the heads were created and moved and they found they did have such stories. When they tried doing the same themselves, using some local labor and the same cutting and moving techniques as told to them by the locals, it took something like 30 guys only 30 days to cut and move a single stone head.

There's no mystery in my mind about how the heads were made. Locals have known all along how it was done, it's just that the likes of Von Daniken and others who came after him never bothered to do any good research and ask the locals how it was possible. Given the amount of time the Rapa Nui civilization flourished, the number of stone heads on the island could have been easily created in that time-span.

sorry if I wasnt clear in my post. I dont believe in the alien intervention totally. I think some people assume these people were like cave men,or somewhat less intelliget than we are now. Just because they didnt have ipods and labtops. They had their scientists and engineers too which probably were respected more.they had their thinkers,people who were inspired and invented. the theory of we couldnt do it today ( I dont know if thats true)isnt great cause we dont send a lot of time thinking about it.If we had to do it today(Using the technology of the time) not as an experiment for discovery channel but if it drove us if it was essential to our beings.If our greatest minds in all fields worked together to solve it. we could probably figure it out. necessity is the mother of invention.We are probably thinking from a different perspective. no doubt they had the greatest minds working on it,

I cant make my own thread here cause Im new so I apoligise if it seems Im hijacking the thread.But it is on topic and I have to start somewhere,but sorry anyway man. Im really interested in your theories on the staue which differs from the rest which appears to be on its knees.The pic is on my pictures section but Im trying to copy and paste it but I cant seem to do it.


about the locals stories and the experiment that proved it could be done..is that documented,what tools they used.and what techniques? Id love to see that.if you theres something online.

I am in the thought that the roads were multipurpose roads and were used for cerimony and transportation of the heads. Then again there is nothing to say that the transportation of the heads wasn't a ceremony in itself. So both theories could be right and they could even be synonymous with each other.

Hey Guys I think I solved the mystery....

www.youtube.com...

This article is confusing.

So there are statues next to a road, people used to think that the statue had been abandoned next to the road, but now they think they were purposefully put there.

What bearing does that have on if the road was used to move the statue or not If you want to put a heavy statue next to a road why wouldn't you use the road to move it

I also don't understand this quote

“The truth of the matter is, we will never know how the statues were moved,” said Dr Richards.

Well the exact minute detail might not be known but we know what raw materials they had at the time, we know how strong human beings are, we know relative strengths of different materials. What exactly is the big mystery? I think we can be pretty sure they didn't use a teleportation machine.

Originally posted by Angrybadger
about the locals stories and the experiment that proved it could be done..is that documented,what tools they used.and what techniques? Id love to see that.if you theres something online.

It's documented, with video of the guys working on the heads, moving them and everything. I've seen it on TV two or three times - maybe it was NOVA or Discovery Channel, can't remember where. Last time I saw it was a few years ago. The study/experiment itself was done at least a decade ago, maybe more.

It's well within the technological abilities of the Rapa Nui of that time. They were quite advanced, especially for a people who were so isolated from the rest of the world. It's only the lack of resources on such a small island that eventually brought them down. Who knows what they could have become had they been in a larger, more resource rich location.

The Islanders dieing because they cut all the trees down is a myth. The islanders survived this period (although in fewer numbers) through reforming their social structure to deal with the lack of resources They were eventually killed through venereal diseases bought by foreign sailors who then sold the island to a sheep farmer and moved the last survivors somewhere else

A French sea captain who brought the two French missionaries to the island, Jean-Baptiste Onéxime Dutrou-Bornier, returned in 1868 and gradually bought up land in exchange for trivial gifts. Dutrou-Bornier built an elaborate wooden house, proclaimed himself lord of the island,

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