Easter Island

A new theory suggests that the giant stone heads might have been "walked" upright along the roads.Until now it was believed that the islanders would have rolled the giant moai statues in to position using logs, but now a new theory is taking hold suggesting that the statues could have been moved along the island"s roads in an upright position. In a practical demonstration of the technique, a group of 18people were able to move a stone head weighing 5 tons along a road using nothing more than a few pieces of rope.The method may help explain why there are so many broken heads left at the roadside on Easter Island, it also helps to add some credence to the legendary tales of "walking heads" on the island.

The startling claim comes from archaeologists Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii and Carl Lipo of California State University Long Beach, whoshowed how as few as 18 people could move a 5-ton statue with just some ropes and hopes.  

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New archaological digs on Easter Island have revealed tall bodies buried beneath the stone heads.While most of the statues on the enigmatic island appear only as heads protruding from the ground, archaeologists have confirmed that most, if not all of them actually have intricately carved bodies buried in the ground below them as well. The statues, or "Moai", are believed to have been built by the island"s inhabitants between 1250 and 1500AD. To date, 887 ofthem have been found."Those statues which are the most photographed are standing in the quarry," said Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project.

"So it’s understandable that the general public didn’t have a clue that those statues had bodies." First Van Tilburg documented the island’s statues and those that have been removed to museums; there are 887 inventoried, though she says the number is closer to 1,000. Then she began the next phase of work to reveal what lay beneath theground -- covered up not intentionally by men, but through centuries of exposure to the environment.  

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The method believed to be used by the inhabitants of Easter Island to move their statues has been called in to question.Up until now it has been widely believed that the inhabitants used a network of roads to transport the enormous stone head statues around the island however new research by archeologists has now suggested that the roads were purely ceremonial and wouldnot have made for a practical transportation system.

British archeologists are rejecting a 50-year-old theory of how Easter Island"s famous stone statues were moved around the island. Easter Island — a special territory of Chile in the South Pacific — is famous for its hundreds of moai, or statues representing deceased ancestors, built by the early Polynesianinhabitants.

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How did the Easter Island statues get their red hats ? Archaeologists now believe that the mysterious headpieces sported by the statues were rolled down from avolcano and are composed of compressed red scoria dust."Archaeologists believe they have solved one ancient mystery surrounding the famous Easter Island statues.

At 2,500 miles off the coast of Chile, the island is one of the world"smost remote places inhabited by people. "

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