Posted on 10/07/2022 5:26:03 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Fire has damaged Easter Island's iconic megalith statues known as moai. An unknown number of the nearly 1,000 stone-carved statues were affected.
Ariki Tepano, director of the Ma'u Henua community in charge of management and maintenance at the UNESCO heritage site Rapa Nui Natural Park, said the damage is "irreparable and with consequences beyond what your eyes can see."
"The moai are totally charred and you can see the effect of the fire upon them," Tepano said in a social media post.
The city of Rapa Nui said in the post that the site is closed to visitors while investigations are underway to assess the damage.
Chilean Cultural Heritage Undersecretary Carolina Perez Dattari tweeted that fire swept through the World Heritage Site on Easter Island.
More than 247.1 acres, including the moai sector, were hit by fire affecting "one of the major archaeological sites," the city of Rapa Nui said in a Facebook post.
The statues, created by the Rapa Nui people between 1400 and 1650, are considered to embody the spirit of a prominent ancestor with each one considered to be a living incarnation of the person.
According to a UNESCO description of the Easter Island site, "A society of Polynesian origin that settled there c. A.D. 300 established a powerful, imaginative and original tradition of monumental sculpture and architecture, free from any external influence. From the 10th to the 16th century this society built shrines and erected enormous stone figures known as moai, which created an unrivaled landscape that continues to fascinate people throughout the world."
“A society of Polynesian origin that settled there c. A.D. 300 established a powerful, imaginative and original tradition of monumental sculpture and architecture, free from any external influence. “
Well not exactly.
This is interesting,
“The statues, created by the Rapa Nui people between 1400 and 1650,...”
because
Native Americans and Polynesians Met Around 1200 A.D. - “Ioannidis and colleagues sampled DNA from 166 inhabitants of Easter Island. They determined that admixture between Native American and Polynesian peoples didn’t occur here until around 1380...” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/native-americans-polynesians-meet-180975269/
I see upi omits the volcanic cause of said fire
Sounds like a fund raising scam to me.
So no fires ever since the 10th century.
Can we see the damage up close? No, “the site is closed to visitors while investigations are underway to assess the damage.”
If we could see them up close. Well, Rapa Nui Natural Park, said the damage is “irreparable and with consequences beyond what your eyes can see.”
Ok I’ll donate a couple of Mr. Clean erasers.
They are volcanic rock statues, they will do fine, lol
B.S. Only the surface was charred.
As if there never were fies on that island before.
I smell an attempt at grant money to “restore” the rocks(wash soot off”
Millions, maybe billions!!!
Did someone bring his EV? Musta got the batteries wet.
The journalist, who wrote the story, failed to say the stones were stained by soot from the fire. I wonder if the soot can be pressure washed?
Thx, will ping later.
Russian smokers just never learn.
Thanks nickcarraway. Is that some kind of a bust? /rimshot
The other GGG topics added since the previous digest ping, chrono sort:
thank you. As for ‘irreparable’ damage. Basalt rock is even harder than granite, if I remember my college geology course correctly, thus not much to repair other than the soot to wash off. And the rain will take care of that over a few years.
[snip] All but 53 of the more than 900 moai known to date were carved from tuff (a compressed volcanic ash) from Rano Raraku, where 394 moai in varying states of completion are still visible today. There are also 13 moai carved from basalt, 22 from trachyte and 17 from fragile red scoria. [/snip]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai
“carved from tuff” Hopefully that compacted ash will be tough enough to survive a few hundred more years after being singed a little by less than volcanic temperature grass fires.
Rain water and a few hundred years might wash these babies down...
To think if McLean had lived he would have been cancelled for “blackface” in MASH.
The article is written in the typical uninformative half assed manner so the following is my interpretation of what the author and the caretaker are trying to say.
Erasers and power washing would result in the same damage that is the concern.
The pictures of moai we see generally appear to be naked rock and obviously grass fires dont damage basalt. What most people dont know and the author doesnt bother to explain is that these were once painted and traces of the paints are still on many of the moai.
Which parts were painted, why those parts were painted certain colors and what that means, what was used as pigment for those paints, etc, are all important to those continuing to study the moai. Soot would potentially burn off and stain out what is left of the paint on the exposed ones.
Yes, many are buried and much can be learned from those but as with any study of the past there can be changes in beliefs that would effect styles and methods over time that would lead researchers to be able to eventually better determine the phase in which each was made.
The loss of paint would then require even more guessing and interpretation on the part of researchers making it less factual and even more based on assumptions which is a problem in a field that is already based on a lot of SWAG and dogma.
aren’t those statues made of stone?
It’s “totally” too dramatic ... duh.
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