The bizarre giant heads of Easter Island, called Moai, are so famous that one can’t hear the island’s name without thinking of them. There’s even an emoji for the Moai! 🗿🗿🗿, which were, on average, 13-32 feet tall and 14 to 86 tons in weight! The island, Rapa Nui, is called Easter Island elsewhere since Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen arrived on Easter Sunday, 1722.
In recent times, we learned that these huge monoliths are not merely heads but have whole bodies buried beneath the soil over time.
As with many other ancient monoliths worldwide, one wonders how people managed to do it at all. (Particularly with nothing but stone tools.) The feat of creating and distributing around 1000 Moai led the first European visitors to conclude that there must have been a relatively large civilization on the island at one time. But when they arrived in the 1700s, only about 2-3,000 people resided on the 14-mile by 7-mile isolated Pacific island.
When the Europeans saw the tiny island was inhabited, that in itself was a surprise. But when they saw all the statues, they were left wondering.
“From their perspective, it would have taken thousands and thousands of people in order to construct and move these gigantic monuments,” said one of the study authors, Dr. Carl Lipo, in an interview. “This surprising island still invites a lot of new investigations to figure out what happened there,” he continued.
New Study of Easter Island Rocks
Given what we know now, the first explorers would no doubt have been even more amazed by what they found if they knew many statues were mostly buried below ground! Most likely, they would assume many thousands more people would have been needed to create the Moai!
However, a new study using shortwave infrared satellite imagery and empirical data concludes that the population of the island was always a small one with limited resources.
Therefore, all the narratives about Easter Island once having a great population were never true. And so, that makes it even more astounding that these enormous monoliths, thought to date to 1,100 and 1,500 CE, were apparently the work of a small number of people.
Rock Gardening on Easter Island
Although the island is world-famous for its rock statues, the researchers focused on crushed rocks used for agriculture. The new study examined rock gardens using shortwave infrared satellite imagery (SWIR) and “machine learning” algorithms, a subset of AI. In this manner, they could analyze the entire island to find signs of past rock gardening activities.
Gardening with crushed rocks was a solution to growing in soil that was low in nutrients and exposed to constant salt spray from the sea. To improve the soil, the Rapa Nui composted with plant waste and crushed rock mulch to provide minerals.
After examining satellite imagery with AI, the researchers discovered only about 180 acres of land where rock gardening was going on. It wasn’t nearly as much as would be expected if there had been a large population. Such an area would have the potential to feed only about 3,000 people, about the same number reported when Europeans first arrived.
Why Are the Trees Gone?
Interestingly, similar gardening practices by indigenous peoples of the Amazon may have even helped establish the rainforests in ancient times. But on Rapa Nui, the trees were eliminated. In the pursuit of improving the soil, they cut down trees until they ran out. (Introduced rats may also have destroyed the trees.)
According to Lipo, one of the study authors, removing the mostly palm trees wasn’t necessarily harmful to the inhabitants. Counterintuitively, he suggests it helped them survive. Since they relied heavily on farming sweet potatoes, they needed all available space to grow them, he argues.
“The opposite is true from what is typically claimed, that the loss of the forest is actually a transformation into a human-supporting landscape,” Lipo said.
Overall, the Rapa Nui managed to live in a relatively sustainable way, living “within the boundaries of the capacity of the island up until European arrival,” he said. Unfortunately, things rapidly fell into decline after they showed up. At that point, people even started toppling the Moai. Sadly, new diseases and invasions by slavers from Peru almost eliminated the previously adaptable inhabitants.
“Easter Island is a great case of how populations adapt to limited resources on a very finite place, and how they did so sustainably,” Lipo said.
Video by Newswise with Dr. Carl Lipo:
The Symbolic Meaning of Toppling Moai
Certainly, seeing the the Moai fall would have been a tragedy in itself for the Rapa Nui. The word mōai translates to “so that he can exist.” According to one source, each statue was symbolic of the living spirit of the ancestors watching over the tribe and bringing them good fortune. Atop the statues, a red stone called a pukao represented the hair, “a sign of mana; a kind of mental power,” according to Easter Island Travel.
According to Rapa Nui natives, moving the statues required mana and making the statues “walk.” There are numerous hypotheses from outsiders about how they moved the statues into place and then often placed large red stones balanced on their heads. But as with the ideas about a prior large civilization these ideas may not stand up, so to speak!
Video by Easter Island Travels:
Myths About Easter Island
You’ve probably heard many stories or myths about how the Rapa Nui people supposedly destroyed Easter Island’s environment. One idea is that the obsession with creating Moai led to their downfall.
“Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is often used as an example of how overexploitation of limited resources resulted in a catastrophic population collapse,” the study abstract states.
To transport the monoliths made of volcanic rock called Tuff, they needed to roll them on logs, some believed. In the end, they deforested the entire tropical paradise. (Trees were also needed for seagoing canoes.)
Another hypothesis is the Polynesian inhabitants used “slash and burn” agriculture that eventually left the land barren. In the new study, agricultural practices were likely a big part of the deforestation process. But it was ultimately the arrival of outsiders that caused the fall of the population, as well as the Moai.
Below, you can see a video showing what people have long thought about the civilization collapse on the island.
Video by Weird History:
Featured images: Easter Island Moai via Wikimedia Commons, By Dennis G. Jarvis – Chile-03207- Ahu Nao-Nao, CC BY-SA 2.0