Posted on 05/12/2010 2:03:18 PM PDT by decimon
Archaeologists have disproved the fifty-year-old theory underpinning our understanding of how the famous stone statues were moved around Easter Island
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.
The statues, say the Manchester and UCL team just back from the island, merely toppled from the platforms with the passage of time.
"The truth of the matter is, we will never know how the statues were moved," said Dr Richards.
"Ever since Heyerdahl, archeologists have come up with all manner of theories based on an underlying assumption that the roads were used for transportation of the moai, from the quarry at the volcanic cone Rano Raraku.
"What we do now know is that the roads had a ceremonial function to underline their religious and cultural importance.
"They lead from different parts of the island to the Rano Raraku volcano where the Moai were quarried.
"Volcano cones were considered as points of entry to the underworld and mythical origin land Hawaiki.
"Hence, Rano Ranaku was not just a quarry but a sacred centre of the island."
The previous excavation found that the roads are concave in shape making it difficult to move heavy objects along them
And as the roads approach Rano Raraku, the statues become more frequent which the team say, indicated an increasing grades of holiness.
"All the evidence strongly shows that these roads were ceremonial - which backs the work of Katherine Routledge from almost 100 years ago, " said Dr Sue Hamilton.
"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."
She added: "What is shocking is that Heyerdahl actually found some evidence to suggest there were indeed platforms.
"But like many other archaeologists, he was so swayed by his cast iron belief that the roads were for transportation he completely ignored them."
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NOTES FOR EDITORS
Routledge and her husband arrived at Easter Island in 1914, to publish her findings in a popular travel book, The Mystery of Easter Island in 1919.
Geophysical surveys are used to create subsurface maps by passing electrical currents below the ground and measuring its resistance.
High quality images are available.
Drs Hamilton and Richards are available for comment
For media enquires contact: Mike Addelman Media Relations Officer Faculty of Humanities The University of Manchester 0161 275 0790 07717 881 567 michael.addelman@manchester.ac.uk
Sandrine Holt
“making me believe the heavy objects pushed down the road made the road concave.”
The friction to overcome would be enormous........
Tractor beams, magnetic sky hooks, mass displacement projectors, pychkokinetic thought regeneration, Vicks Vspo-Rub. Not too sure about the traactor beams, though.
Ball bearings with a cage.
This particular stone is in Lebanon....approximately 1300 tons........or, 2.6 million lbs.
The biggest mobile cranes in the world can't come close to this.....ropes? An exercise in just how far will they stretch before snapping.
Like the other guy asks....what am I talking about....have no freaking idea.....levitation might fit Occam's Razor.
2 parts to a (circular) cage? One leapfrogging the other.
A circular cage would be stable in a concave road, depending on just how concave.
2 parts to a (circular) cage? One leapfrogging the other.
A circular cage would be stable in a concave road, depending on just how concave.
Due to the concave nature, the old tried and true theory of logs laid dow to roll the statues along would work, you’d be snapping then in two.
Correction: wouldn’t work
And I saw a documentary where some eccentric guy tried to raise a Stonehenge-like megalith (downsized a little but still large and extremely heavy and dangerous). He just used some levers and timbers and sticks. His son helped him. It took a few days to get it upright. But this was just two guys and they were able to handle this multi-ton awkwardly-shaped stone. Shows it's possible to chuck these things around if you're not impeded by modern machinery and engineering degrees. But I don't know what I'm saying either.
A simple machine for which we have lost the concept?
Personally, I blame Doctor Who.
What if it was pulled? Wonder if they used water like a sluice?
Well, megaliths are a little different than obelisks, a point I remember from this particular documentary. Mainly, obelisks will break easily due to the mass distribution, unless standing upright. But your point reminds me of something else: would ancient Brits really build something like Stonehenge just to use as some sort of calender, to know when to start planting crops? It seems there would be easier ways. But, who knows what they were thinking?
Here he is on youtube
Someday the archaeologists from another civilization will be excavating and deliberating about our culture. And some of them will say, “These ‘Americans,’ as they called themselves—surely they did not build these massive hundred-story structures of glass and steel just to pursue commercial activities. They must have had some religious purpose.” Then they’ll write b.s. doctoral dissertations theorizing about the purposes of our skyscrapers and imagining our religions. Especially the sacred, mysterious rites of the religion called “football.” That’ll really perplex them.
It suggests that what was used on the concave road was not logs, but round stones used like ball bearings.
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