Historical
Do the Easter Island Heads Really Have Bodies?
Author: Pedro MartĂnez
The statues, whose traditional name is moai, were carved from volcanic rock between A.D. 1100 and 1500 by ancient Polynesians. They range in size, with the tallest reaching 10 meters. Although their significance is still somewhat of a mystery, the moai are thought to have been representations of the indigenous peoples' ancestors. Moai statues were built to honor important people who had passed away. They were placed on rectangular stone platforms called ahu, which are tombs for the people that the statues represented. The moais were intentionally made with different characteristics since they were intended to keep the appearence of the person it represented. There are around 1000 statues, up to 86 tons tons in weight and 10 m in height, though average is around half of that. 95% of the moais were carved from the volcano of the island. This location was chosen since it consists to a great extent of tuff, which is what the moais from this volcano consist of. Tuff is compressed volcanic ash and is easy to carve, which was necessary since the natives had no metal to carve with, but used only stone tools; the so called toki. One of the biggest Easter Island mysteries is how stone age tribes could succeed in transporting 50+ ton moai statues kilometers across hilly terrain. There are several transportation theories, some of which are more generally accepted than others The mysterious statues of Easter Island, there are hundreds of ancient and huge statues that are located along the island, carved stone that protect the island located in the Pacific, according to an e-mail that shows the ravages on the site. The e-mail, which was introduced in mid-2012, contained stunning photographs of Easter Island, where they show us that archaeologists were in the process of digging up the bodies of statues that were gradually buried 500 years ago by erosion. There was a certain confusion on the part of the public, since the photographs that were shown in the mail were of some more ancient excavations, according to the investigators and excavators of the heads. Nevertheless; some of the most famous heads have been discovered on the slopes of a nearby volcano, of which they have had body, but rather torso. There are statues that have body but are not very common. The new excavation work is intended to document for the first time the complex carvings found in the buried bodies of the statues, which have been protected by the weather for their burial. In addition, the project will help preserve the ancient monoliths. 15