UCLA archaeologist digs deep to reveal Easter Island torsos

UCLA Newsroom ^ | May 30, 2012 | Cynthia Lee

[Aliska]

As the director of the Easter Island Statue Project — the longest-continuous collaborative artifact inventory ever conducted on the Polynesian island that belongs to Chile — Van Tilburg has opened a window on one of the greatest achievements of Pacific prehistory on one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world.

She and her team of resident Rapa Nui have spent nine years locating and meticulously documenting the nearly 1,000 statues on the island, determining their symbolic meaning and function, and conserving them using state-of-the-art techniques.

After spending four months over the last two years excavating two of the statues and posting the results of their digs on the project’s website, Van Tilburg was surprised to discover that a large segment of the general public hadn’t realized that what they knew only as the Easter Island "heads" actually had bodies.

[Aliska]

Spotted on Coast 2 Coast website top left featured articles with linked video on youtube.

[facedown]

Explorer Thor Heyerdahl excavated this Easter Island statue in 1954-55. The UCLA project is the first, legally permitted archaeological project in the quarry since Heyerdahl's dig

[Aliska]

ping SunkenCiv

[BenLurkin]

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[GnuThere]

That’s fascinating - I would love to see those moai. A bit of a haul to get there.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Aliska. Glad I'm not alone in remembering that these "discoveries" are not new.

[rdl6989]

Thanks for posting.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

[llevrok]

The archaeologists have dug for months to no end. They should have quite when they were a head.

[dhs12345]

Don Martin had some theories.... a man ahead of his time....

http://i.pinimg.com/736x/a1/6f/12/a16f122c482c886774cf42197759c248.jpg

http://www.donmartinwebsite.com/images/b1.jpg

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Nifty! What happens when we use a giant feather duster on Stonehendge? Earthquakes?

[Gay State Conservative]

A visit to Easter Island is on my bucket list.

[RedMonqey]

https://jimsworldandwelcometoit.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/hom85.jpg

[exDemMom]

Did the ancient sculptors stand the statues on the ground, with them sinking over time? Or did they bury the statues halfway originally?

[publius911]

A visit to Easter Island is on my bucket list.

Hope you have a big boat...

[LeoWindhorse]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK5V4x6Fx_A

[Fred Nerks]

I didn’t know...might be interesting to read:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Group_of_Easter_Islanders_Outside_the_Church_Door,_The_Mystery_of_Easter_Island,_published_1919.jpg

THE MYSTERY OF EASTER ISLAND PUBLISHED IN 1919

A Group of Easter Islanders Outside the Church Door, Mana Expedition, Easter Island

Date between 1914 and 1915
Source Katherine Routledge: The Mystery of Easter Island, 1919

[dhs12345]

Cool.

[BenLurkin]

Awesome