The Easter Island Moai
Recent excavations showed these iconic statues have buried bodies, solving the puzzle of how ancient Polynesians moved them using ropes to “walk” them into position. Over 900 moai stand up to 33 feet tall, carved roughly 800 years ago. Archaeologists found their torsos underground during 2011 excavations. Experiments confirmed teams could rock them forward with ropes, moving 10-ton statues over miles. Their creation likely contributed to the island’s ecological collapse through resource depletion.
