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[MYSTERY TUBE] The currently solved mystery of the Moai statues of Easter Island In the middle of the Pacific, the lone Easter Island was by itself for a long time without any humans on it 700 A.D., the first to habitat this area were Polynesia's great adventurers When the Polynesians first set foot on this island also called Rapa Nui, it was a blessed island with 20 million palm trees The settlers burned trees down for farmland and developed the island No matter how much was reclaimed, this huge island was always fertile and always gave back like a mother They thrived for a long time, increased in population and had wars to write down their own history Even until 1700s, this Island was a mysterious island and also the sea route of death to Europeans Easter day of 1722, Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggeveen, found Easter Island after mistaking his way to Australia He described this island as so: 'I had mixed feelings of fear that I was swept by high tides and the happiness that I found a new island, and I looked for lowland Then my crews and I lowered the anchor and got off the ship There were hundreds of huge stone statues around the beach, and they stimulated archaeological curiosity and wonder Each statue was mostly 4m tall and 14 tons heavy, but there were few large ones that were 12m tall and over 80 tons heavy' Jacob Roggeveen and his crews who found the statues of Easter Island were in big shock For some reason, they hurried to leave the island after a while The crews who safely arrived at Australia spread news about the mysterious statues of Easter Island The news sailed across the sea and got into the ears of European explorers Unknowingly, Jacob Roggeveen, the discoverer of the Easter Island, brought disaster to this island The Polynesian settlers used slash-and-burn farming method to create a farming field. They continued this method for a long time, but palm trees still prospered, and the ecosystem was in a cycle However, as rats came through the European ships, everything changed This island had no predators of nature and had plenty of food, it was only a matter of time for a pair of rats to increase to millions Also, palm tree seeds were great food for the rats The rats got rid of the trees quickly, and the island without trees was submerged by the wind and rain, and the stratum fell apart and weakened It only took little time for the huge Easter Island to become barren The nature could not be restored anymore here The population and seabirds slowly decreased, and as the number of birds decreased, the trees couldn't receive guano, an essential fertilizer, so the vicious cycle continued After Jacob Roggeveen's explorers, many explorers got to this island from Europe, where they head magical stories about it Europeans and South Americans who arrived with guns, along with new diseases and starvation, caused Easter Island to become the island of death at a fast rate After Europeans discovered this island, the productions of statues stopped The reason for keeping the statues at the beach was to get rid of the invaders, but the natives of the island didn't revere the statues anymore They thought that if their ancestors gave up on them, they thought they should give up of those So for 200 years, along with Peru's slave merchants, Dutch, Spanish, and British expeditions kept invading the island to knock over the statues and destroy them, and they also massacred and captured the natives as slaves The mother-like island became lifeless Polynesians were helpless in front of guns, the corpses piling up from all the killing and starvation were eaten by rats, and only bones were left Easter Island that had population of 12,000 in 15th century, tragically reduced to 111 in 1877 This island was once again was erased from people's memories for a long time But in 1947 after the last ship departed, Norwegian explorer, Thor Heyerdahl, went for expedition to Polynesia with Kon-Tiki ship That was 200 years after the first discovery of the island Thor Heyerdahl wrote on his diary: 'The island with depressing and bizarre atmosphere had more than 2000 starving people, had more than 2000 starving people, and I even witnessed cannibalism The statues placed on the beach signified that there was once a great civilization here, but that civilization no longer seemed to exist' To find out how they made the statues and moved them, Thor Heyerdahl's crews began investigating After a short time, they found out that they were all made of tuff, which was vastly found in the center of the island Tuff is a soft rock made from volcanic ashes, so they were relatively easy to carve The tools used to carve them were axes and chisels made from basalt which was a lot harder Including the statues that were incomplete and the ones damaged and thrown away during transportation, there were more than 1,100 statues The bigger mystery than the reason for making them was 'How did they moved these around the island?' The natives told the crews that the statues magically walked from where they were made to the site of installment, which was from old stories There were few songs that involved 'Walking Moais' They were to give rhythm and beat for working, like ship songs In Rapa Nui language, they had an expression 'neke neke' meaning 'walking without legs' There were old stories, but it's a mystery how statues were actually moved from where they were made to the beach and were placed in a 11km big triangular island which was 22km wide just like guards in line None of the theories could convince everyone After the Heyerdahl explorers till now, most people thought that the statues were moved on a sled on long logs by sliding This theory was logical, but it couldn't satisfy everyone It was only in the year 2000 that Charles Love, an archaeologist and anthropologist from Wyoming, came to Easter Island for research Along with the crew, he had a wide investigation on the way from where the statues were made to the beach They removed all old the mud and dust to reveal the original roadbed The roadbeds were in U-shape They resembled modern curved roads Due to the findings of Charles Love's research group, a flaw was found in the sled theory When going down the rounded roads, the logs would have been broken due to weakened load-bearing capacity of the center of the logs To use sled and logs, the road had to be flat, so Love's finding led to consider other possible ways Then in 2011, two men went to Easter Island to test their theory in the middle of the road They were California State University's archaeology professor, Carl Lipo, and archaeologist/anthropologist who professionalized in studying Pacific cultures, Terry Hunt Terry Hunt was interested about the story that said the statues magically moved by themselves from where they were made He asked a native called Leonardo Haoa Pacomio to demonstrate him 'neke neke' The old man spread his arms to the side, and with his all parts of his body including legs stuck together, he moved 2.5cm each by shaking his body like a penguin, Pacomio resumed normal position and explained that the movement describes that word He asked back by saying, "Who on earth would walk like that?" Lipo and Hunt turned their focus to the U-shaped road with the broken statues Those statues were mostly found on steep roads On downhills, the statues were facing down, and on uphill, the statues were facing up They were moved looking straight, so it support their theory that they were unstable on steep roads They also found difference between the standing statues and the broken ones The latter had rounder bodies like bowling pins They also found out that the thrown away ones had D-shaped bottoms The back of the statues were the flat part of the D, so they were rounded on the front Simply put, compared to the statues taking their positions, the center of gravity of those was way lower, so they waddled, and because their bottom is curved, when stood straight, they were slightly slanted forward When Lipo and Hunt's replica of the statue arrived at Easter Island in early 2012, the experiment was ready They divided 18 people into 3 teams one team tied ropes around the head, and the other two teams tied the ropes at the bottom When the bottom rope teams made the statue 'walk' by twisting the statue, 'walk' by twisting the statue, the third team pulled from the head to move it forward After a few trials and errors and adjusting the ropes' location, they began moving The statue 'walked' 100 meters in 40 minutes along the road with deep marks When Lipo and Hunt considered the skill of people who were trained to do this, they assumed that it was possible for the natives to move the statue by 1km in a day After the statues reached the destination, their bottom parts were carved then by carving and painting eyes, they looked 'alive' The body was also was carved in natural lines Lipo and Hunt's theory was welcomed in the field of archaeology, but it also received many criticisms But their theory matched the old stories explaining how the huge statues were moved The round roads, thrown away statues and their relation to the standing statues It's the only theory to explain those in detail The "rolling logs" made with palm tree trunks that were weak and had holes inside would have been crushed by the weight of statues, so they won't work Polynesians made the statues walk so easily All mysteries of this island is now solved A mysterious island to Europeans, a nature-rich island to Polynesians, this island is now an island of death in the sea route of death The natives of Easter Island are currently demanding independence from the international community The main reason being the economical difference between Chile immigrants and natives As Easter Island's Moais became famous, tourism there bloomed. so Chile immigrants came to the island to start businesses They used their capital to build large stores and paid the government to run business The crops sold by these stores were not domestic but imported The famous Moais are also made and sold by the Chile immigrants The natives could not pay the government for land They could only sell crops grown by them in small shops next to the stores of Chile immigrants They sold Moais and traditional items made by themselves, but Chile immigrants' stores overpowered them They are struggling at living as their Moais don't sell either For the recent few years, tourism at Moai Island increased by several times, but the natives grew poorer Recently, the Hitorangi clan occupied the hotel which was built on lands stolen during the rule of Pinochet government The Chilean police ruthlessly subdued them, and 25 people were injured After 6 months, the Chilean police dragged out every last occupier and arrested them It was still an interesting island to ask for peace even though it's now a barren land with nothing left The island's disaster's main cause was interest itself [If you enjoyed watching, please like and subscribe]