The easter island statues mystery
For many decades, people's minds have been preoccupied with the mystery of Esther Island, a remote piece of volcanic soil far away in the Pacific Ocean, but our planet hosts thousands of this isolated island. Did they serve any specific purpose? Where did its creators come from and where did they disappear? Well, to know the answer, read this blog to learn all the facts about Esther Island.
What is Easter Island?
Rapanui is the name first given to Esther Island by the inhabitants of chile's territory located in the South Pacific, and so far you can easily consider it one of the most remote places on the world map, it is located 1,200 miles from Pitcairn, its closest neighbor. Chile itself is 2,300 miles west, the only means of transportation that can take you there is the plane if you want to reach this destination point, you will need to spend five hours on board from Santiago Chile to Easter Island, the island is only 63 square miles, and includes 887 huge stone statues.
Here are some facts you might not know about Easter Island.
The statues bearing the name 'Boy' began carved between the 13th and 15th centuries, you can easily recognize the statues of Rapanui thanks to their strange faces, where they have long wide noses, rectangular ears chin, heavy eyebrows and deep eyes, and it is strange that the nostrils curl the way fish hooks work.
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| "Noses of Easter Island statues " |
At first, people thought the statues were made up of only their heads, but surprisingly it turned out that there were whole bodies attached to the heads, which were discovered during excavations in May 2012 where the bodies were hidden underground. The statues are very long, 33 feet larger and weigh 90 tons, but this was not the record discovered on the island, but according to scientific calculations it should have reached 70 feet high and weighed about 297 tons.
The heads of the statues visible from the first site still make up 3/8 of the size of each statue, with the arms carved on the bodies in different positions.
Most of the 834 statues out of 887 were carved from a difficult material called tuff, which is actually compressed volcanic ash. Strangely enough, all but one group face the entrance, which means that their backs face the ocean.
Perhaps the reason for this is the belief that the statues were protectors of villagers in the area, which is why they ignored their settlement, the only statues that do not fit this pattern can be found in 'AHU AKIVI', a sacred place for the people of Rapa Noi. There is a unique statue on the island and it is the only statue found in kneeling mode named 'Kotori'. Scientists believe that the statue depicts an ancient singer similar to the place taken by people at the Roy Festival, the head of the statue was raised very high and you can even notice the beard of Kotori, which looks more human-like than other statues. Its small size and the unusual materials from which the statue was made of the red pushstone 'Bona' are the things that make it stand out among the rest.
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All these facts are quite interesting, aren't they? There's a lot of puzzles we're going to uncover.
People are wondering how statues of such a huge weight have been distributed all over the island! When Europeans first arrived on the island in 1722, they found a small number of locals ranging from 1.5 to 3,000 people. There have certainly been many theories about how to move statues, and one of the most famous of these theories among puzzle lovers is the belief that the statues were created and transported by aliens, But even if you like this theory, we regret to expose its falsehood, the stone from which the statues were built originates from the island itself, where the birthplace of most of the material was a dormant volcano located in the northeast of Esther Island and not another planet, challenging the mystery surrounding the way the inhabitants of Rapa Noi were able to move the statues researchers by not allowing them to retreat in the 1980s, and some decided to recreate a statue and verify that it could be moved. They were only using tools that could be available to indigenous people, it seemed impossible to do so but shortly thereafter an American archaeologist succeeded in transporting a copy of ten American tons. Several decades have passed and another group of Americans have come, and scientists have proven that the islanders can tie ropes, turn huge statues and move them with a walking motion. They supported their theory by training to move a full-size replica of 330 feet using this method.
But what about the remaining question? How can a small number of residents create such magnificent and multiple landmarks?
How many people consume a lot of seafood and fish on Easter Island?
Knowing these numbers, you can see that there were enough people to create stone masterpieces but what happened to them and why they disappeared? Initially it was thought that the cause of this decline in population was an environmental aspect, as the indigenous people cut down large forests and palm trees, providing spare space to move the statues as well as agriculture, which they thought would grow again quickly enough. It was a misleading concept as environmental degradation led to hunger and this in turn led to wars and cannibalism nowadays, and this theory proved to be wrong. First of all, it seems that the people of Rapa Noi are very talented agricultural engineers who deliberately enriched the fields with volcanic rocks, in fact, another research showed that people had been living on the island for centuries and that the population began to decline only when the Europeans began to visit, so the most realistic explanation is that South America carried out very tragic raids in the hunt for slaves, and hesitated on the island throughout the nineteenth century, and was taken half the indigenous people away. Many European merchants brought to the island new diseases from which the local population was not protected, leading to the deadly decline of the nation that gave the world a miracle like the mystery of Esther Island.
