Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm fair doubting and Chuck reboarding. And you guys know
Speaker 1: that we really love a good historical mystery. It allows
Speaker 1: for so much interesting discussion. I think, a discussion of
Speaker 1: different theories, sometimes compelling one, sometimes less plausible sounding theories,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes just completely lucky out their idea, which
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm glad that we at least get to
Speaker 1: mention those most of the time. But we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about a historical mystery today. And since Judge explorers
Speaker 1: first arrived at Easter Island in the seventeen hundreds, people
Speaker 1: have wondered about the tiny, remote locations. Most startling feature
Speaker 1: the gargantuan carved stone statues called moi, and in the
Speaker 1: past people tended to focus more on how the islands
Speaker 1: people got ar to this really really far out location
Speaker 1: and who built the moai. So, for instance, the Norwegian
Speaker 1: adventure tour hired all of Kantigie fame suggested that Peruvian
Speaker 1: pre Inca came to the island and built these statues themselves,
Speaker 1: and Swiss author Eric von Donnigen even thought that they
Speaker 1: were built by aliens, you know, a classic catch all
Speaker 1: for the most impressive building. Today, though most of these
Speaker 1: questions are answered, interdisciplinary evidence points to the inhabitants coming
Speaker 1: by boat from the Polynesian Islands in the South Pacific,
Speaker 1: so the focus has been more on how these gargantean
Speaker 1: statues were moved and what led to the populations collapse
Speaker 1: pre European contact, and recently new information on both of
Speaker 1: these points has come out questioning the predominant idea about
Speaker 1: Eastern Island's darker history. It's environmental degradation and the MOA.
Speaker 1: I pardon it, but before we give too much away here,
Speaker 1: let's take listen to Candis and Jane's podcast from two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: editor Candis Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane McGrath. Hey, Candis, Jane.
Speaker 1: I think that if I could go any place in
Speaker 1: the world, it would be Easter Island. Really, it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful place. Have you been. I haven't. I've just seen pictures,
Speaker 1: but it looks beautiful. I am kind of obsessed with it,
Speaker 1: and I was looking at videos of Easter Island the
Speaker 1: other day and I stumbled upon this fabulous piece of information,
Speaker 1: and that is that Easter Island has its own marathon.
Speaker 1: And now I love love running long distances. I love
Speaker 1: half marathons and full marathons. And I'm very slow. I
Speaker 1: won't profess to be the first line or even like
Speaker 1: the eight hundred, but I don't think there'd be anything
Speaker 1: cooler than running around the moai of Easter Island. And
Speaker 1: it's not that big of an island. Actually, I was
Speaker 1: looking at it. I mean I saw that it was
Speaker 1: about sixty four square miles and that's about I mean,
Speaker 1: just to see the point of reference, like, it's about
Speaker 1: the same size is Washington, d C. It is itty bitty. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: it is in the middle of nowhere. I think it's
Speaker 1: closest land neighbor. I guess a big land neighbor. I
Speaker 1: think there are other islands smattered around nearby, but not
Speaker 1: too close by would be chilly. And that is about
Speaker 1: two thousand two miles away. That's right. If you look
Speaker 1: at a globe, it looks like just a tiny little
Speaker 1: spook on the globe. And it's fascinating that people were
Speaker 1: able to find it as early as they did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: considering that these are the Polynesians who were not quite
Speaker 1: sure where they came from, and we're not quite sure
Speaker 1: why they left, whether there was some sort of dispute
Speaker 1: the Rows, or whether some got ambitious and wanted to
Speaker 1: start their own colony elsewhere. But because the Polynesians are
Speaker 1: such great sailors and navigators, they were able to make
Speaker 1: it to this island. We know that they sailed and
Speaker 1: wooden boats that were probably lashed together with reeds wrapped
Speaker 1: really tightly like ropes, and they were probably a drift
Speaker 1: in the ocean for about two weeks before they hit
Speaker 1: land Easter Island, and that was around four a d.
Speaker 1: And so you can understand how archaeological evidence can't really
Speaker 1: indicate like what exactly motivated these people because they ended
Speaker 1: up being isolated on this island for so long. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: speaking of isolation, we're not sure how many went the
Speaker 1: first time, and when they arrived at Easter Island, we're
Speaker 1: not sure if they settled there because they had picked
Speaker 1: it and they knew it existed and that was their
Speaker 1: final destination, or if they were so desperate they thinked
Speaker 1: any land that they could have seen, and regardless, they
Speaker 1: actually came very prepared for for being ready to survive
Speaker 1: wherever they landed. Yeah, they had a type of leafy
Speaker 1: green with them to grow. They had sweet potatoes and
Speaker 1: bananas eline. Now, who doesn't love a sweet potato gosh um.
Speaker 1: I think they also had a couple of chickens. And
Speaker 1: again when they pulled up to Easter Island, I just
Speaker 1: I can't imagine how they must have felt, because parts
Speaker 1: of Easter Island were just gorgeous, a very verdant paradise.
Speaker 1: I think that today archaeologists suspect that there may have
Speaker 1: been at one time sixteen million palm trees, just you know,
Speaker 1: an eden in the middle of the ocean. But the
Speaker 1: part that they docked at was a less welcoming landscape.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing about Easter Island, as tiny as
Speaker 1: it is, this little triangle shaped island has very diverse
Speaker 1: landscapes that has white sandy beaches, and then it has
Speaker 1: this very jagged and forbidding cliffs, and it has a
Speaker 1: volcano and volcanoes and palm trees. So who is what
Speaker 1: they thought? But they set to task, and they did
Speaker 1: pretty well. They cultivated the land, and they increased their population,
Speaker 1: and they became a very sophisticated society. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: can see you how it was probably pretty hard at first,
Speaker 1: especially because they brought most of their sustenance with them,
Speaker 1: as we said, and what was actually on the island
Speaker 1: itself before they came there was not much. There were
Speaker 1: there were lizards, maybe an insect um, but but they
Speaker 1: actually had to start from the ground up mostly exactly.
Speaker 1: They were able to hunt dolphins and other types of
Speaker 1: fish in the waters. But it's important to note that
Speaker 1: Easter Island is not just remote as far as people
Speaker 1: go and animals. Like you were saying, there aren't very
Speaker 1: many nutrients in the water, or there weren't at that time,
Speaker 1: and so not much could be sustained. So there were
Speaker 1: birds that would pass over, and some people think that's
Speaker 1: how it got to be such a verdant little paradise,
Speaker 1: is that the birds would bring seeds that they deposited.
Speaker 1: And this is actually a point of contention about like
Speaker 1: how things got there and and um, etcetera, because some
Speaker 1: historians claim, like we're trying to figure out where the
Speaker 1: original people came from, and some historians claim, oh, these
Speaker 1: people came from Chile, obviously, like that's the closest land. Um.
Speaker 1: But when explorers eventually stumbled upon the island, the European explorers, uh,
Speaker 1: a Polynesian on the ship was actually able to converse
Speaker 1: with the people there, and so that's so they were
Speaker 1: obviously speaking of variation on Polynesian. So they think the
Speaker 1: people came from Polynesia. And so we could tell y'all
Speaker 1: about Easter Island all day, and if you don't know
Speaker 1: much about it, you may be saying, okay, sure, So
Speaker 1: it's a tiny little island, things are green, people came
Speaker 1: from nowhere. Great, But the really important thing about Easter
Speaker 1: Island is the mo I, and ultimately the Moi brought
Speaker 1: about the height of the civilization. And then they're very
Speaker 1: very darkest hour and the history of Easter Island not
Speaker 1: just how they got there, because that part is interesting
Speaker 1: in and of itself, but it gets so haunting and
Speaker 1: it really gives me chills every time I think about it.
Speaker 1: These people had a very specific religion and culture, and um,
Speaker 1: their spirituality was manifested through art, you know, storytelling and
Speaker 1: string figures and sculpture. And then they got to Easter Island.
Speaker 1: The volcanoes and the quarries had all of this ash
Speaker 1: that was perfect for making sculpture, and so they made
Speaker 1: these giant heads and they're very stylized looking. If you've
Speaker 1: never seen a picture of them, I would encourage you
Speaker 1: to look at the Easter Island Moi and what people
Speaker 1: usually asso associate with Easter Islands these huge hits huge
Speaker 1: And what I found interesting is that there actually found
Speaker 1: other places, like other other cultures did have something like this,
Speaker 1: but it was the Easter Islanders who actually like they
Speaker 1: had the most sophisticated in the biggest and the most
Speaker 1: incredible ones. Well, and you have to wonder too, I
Speaker 1: think they might have gotten bored and there was a
Speaker 1: sense of competitiveness among them because they would build these
Speaker 1: giant giant heads. And just to give you guys an
Speaker 1: idea average average wise, they could weigh up to eighty
Speaker 1: two tons and stand up to thirty two ft high.
Speaker 1: They were huge. They were just giant heads. They didn't
Speaker 1: have nacks, but they had these really long earlobes and
Speaker 1: they were very stylized, and their features to their long
Speaker 1: noses and their eyes are sometimes ornamented with coral or absitian,
Speaker 1: but they look very phallic and perhaps archaeologists say that's
Speaker 1: because the population was always struggling to reproduce, and they
Speaker 1: were fertility gods. I believe they were. They were so
Speaker 1: they could be phallic in homage to fertility GUIDs and um.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, because the population was so challenge they
Speaker 1: had to inbreed. And so even to this day you'll
Speaker 1: find some Easter Islanders who have six toes on each foot.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting, and I guess it also probably stems
Speaker 1: from the fact that they had a class system even
Speaker 1: within this tiny island. Their population had a class of
Speaker 1: like an upper class and a working class sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and I imagine that contributed to separating how people bread.
Speaker 1: I think so. And when it came to the moi,
Speaker 1: this was such a manifestation of honor and spirituality. I
Speaker 1: think everyone was a participant, no matter the class. I
Speaker 1: don't know that for a fact, but I would assume
Speaker 1: that people would come together and there was a very
Speaker 1: specific process with creating the moi. The artist would start
Speaker 1: in the quarry and start, you know, putting the rock
Speaker 1: together and carving it down and chiseling it, and essentially
Speaker 1: it would be sort of on like a little block
Speaker 1: on the Tommey finished carving it, and they would create
Speaker 1: these deep rivets alongside the block. So finally there was
Speaker 1: just like a tiny little sliver of stone that connected
Speaker 1: the head to the quarry and this was the keel.
Speaker 1: And once they could sever the keel, they would lay
Speaker 1: the head on a series of of logs. We'd imagine,
Speaker 1: and archaeologists are in dispute about how they transported these heavy,
Speaker 1: heavy monoliths. Yeah, and it's it's sort of like the
Speaker 1: stone hinge of Easter Island, because people are historians are
Speaker 1: boggled by the fact how could these people have the
Speaker 1: technology in the in the in the ingenuity, I guess,
Speaker 1: to move these humongous structures. And that's like a huge
Speaker 1: feat it is. And so people either imagine that about
Speaker 1: seventy men got together and pulled them with ropes fashioned
Speaker 1: from parts of trees, or else they laid them on
Speaker 1: a series of logs in which two layers of logs
Speaker 1: to be perpendicular to each other. They'd grease them with
Speaker 1: palm oil and they'd roll them on a platform. And
Speaker 1: I imagine this was such a painsticking process. I think
Speaker 1: that it could take up to two weeks to move
Speaker 1: the MOI important to them exactly. It was very important
Speaker 1: to them because they put such labor into it, and
Speaker 1: their final resting spot were on ahu or platforms, and
Speaker 1: the moi faced inland towards the island. It was obviously
Speaker 1: meant to watch over the residents and to protect them,
Speaker 1: so they put these around the perimeter, right, it's like,
Speaker 1: and so all of these all around the perimeter, we're
Speaker 1: looking inward. Yeah, and it's really interesting. We think over
Speaker 1: the course of five years, about nine hundred of them
Speaker 1: were car and you can see where the artists got
Speaker 1: competitive because there were so many that were left unfinished
Speaker 1: in the quarry and archaeologists found them later on um
Speaker 1: ones that had a flaw maybe, or ones that were broken,
Speaker 1: you know, whether in transit or whether in construction. They
Speaker 1: were just abandoned completely. And they were perfectionists. They were perfectionist.
Speaker 1: This is, you know, how they were expressing their division
Speaker 1: to the gods. And they got bigger over time too.
Speaker 1: They started out more modest, and then there was one
Speaker 1: that they call El Gigante, and it's so big. Of
Speaker 1: course it's in the quarry. No one could possibly have
Speaker 1: moved it. But here in lies the problem with what
Speaker 1: they were doing. Uh yeah, So if we go back
Speaker 1: to how they transported them, they obviously can'd just suggested
Speaker 1: that they were using logs and and it must have
Speaker 1: taken a lot. And obviously they made a lot of
Speaker 1: these moai, So they ended up cutting down a whole
Speaker 1: lot of trees. And this ended up being their huge flaw.
Speaker 1: They're they're huge mistake. You're right, because over time they
Speaker 1: had such an abundance of resources. I think that they
Speaker 1: used it throwing cautious the wind, and today we sort
Speaker 1: of think of trees as the most renewable resource there is.
Speaker 1: But of course, like on that isolated island, they must
Speaker 1: have just used up. No, you're right. When you're living
Speaker 1: in isolation like that, when you use up your resources,
Speaker 1: and no matter how renewable it is, if you're not
Speaker 1: getting any more seeds to plant and you're cultivating the landscape,
Speaker 1: it's over. And that's what happened, because not only did
Speaker 1: they cut down all the trees, but they essentially caused
Speaker 1: all the top soil on the island to wash away
Speaker 1: because the roots were in there to hold it down. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: they were using the trees to make boats to go
Speaker 1: out and fish for dolphins. And purposes. This is especially
Speaker 1: said to me, it's just that they couldn't make boats anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, they couldn't fish because they couldn't make boat
Speaker 1: because they didn't have tree. And what's worse than that,
Speaker 1: not only could they not fish, not only could they
Speaker 1: not grow crops. After they realized that they had destroyed
Speaker 1: their island and all the trees were gone, they didn't
Speaker 1: have anything left to make boats with to flee the
Speaker 1: isand they were prisoners of their own making. And that's
Speaker 1: when things got really dark and really dangerous. Paul started starving.
Speaker 1: Some scholars posit that maybe some may have resorted to cannibalism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. And this is a point of contention because
Speaker 1: some some historians, notably UM Jared Diamond says that these
Speaker 1: Um Islanders resorted to cannibalism after, like other food sources
Speaker 1: dwindled UM and he points to how cannibalism is the
Speaker 1: their oral tradition. The islanders oral tradition is rife with
Speaker 1: with cannibalism and talk of it. And there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of archaeologic archaeological evidence that um human bones were
Speaker 1: found in these pits of of garbage that where these
Speaker 1: are the pits where they threw their their food trash
Speaker 1: and so um. People like Jared Diamonds used this to
Speaker 1: to say, oh, well, they must have resorted to cannibalism.
Speaker 1: Other historians are like, oh, no, there's not enough evidence
Speaker 1: to say that, and we shouldn't say that unless it's
Speaker 1: unless for sure, and they say that maybe you know,
Speaker 1: after people naturally died, they there were rituals that people
Speaker 1: did with people's bones. We know that have and two.
Speaker 1: So at the point of contention, so however you interpret
Speaker 1: these relics of bones, you can look at the things
Speaker 1: that are alongside them that the date to around the
Speaker 1: same time, and you see that this is the first
Speaker 1: time and Easter Island that they've manufactured weapons like spears
Speaker 1: and arrows and things like this, so that there was
Speaker 1: strive between the tribes were yeah, and we know that
Speaker 1: when they came there were very very few of them around.
Speaker 1: The population was somewhere from seven thousand to nine thousand,
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. That was the height of the civilization. It
Speaker 1: was around ten thousand in population then. But then when
Speaker 1: things started declining and population started dwindling, we see that
Speaker 1: people broke off into different clans and essentially they were
Speaker 1: all fighting for the very tiny parcels of arable land
Speaker 1: that were left. And it was very, very difficult to
Speaker 1: stake a claim to this because I think that the
Speaker 1: Eastern Islanders they were respectful of their gods and they're
Speaker 1: respectful of women and children. Even the scholars who point
Speaker 1: the fact that they may have resorted to cannibalism point
Speaker 1: out that women and children never watched this happen, which
Speaker 1: I don't know if that means that men were the
Speaker 1: only ones who resorted to cannibalism if they ate it
Speaker 1: in private, away from women and children, but I think
Speaker 1: that they, you know, they were still trying to hold
Speaker 1: their civilization together, but it got harder and harder, and
Speaker 1: finally there was this cult that rose out of all
Speaker 1: the distress and was called the Birdman cult. And the
Speaker 1: premise was pretty simple. Be the first person to grab
Speaker 1: the egg from a city turned nest and you're gonna
Speaker 1: be the leader for twelve moons. And that may sound
Speaker 1: like a pretty simple feet, but the city turns nests
Speaker 1: are in the highest cliffs on the islands. That would
Speaker 1: involve like a swim and then rock climb and then
Speaker 1: a massive truck back to be the first person to
Speaker 1: have this egg. And if you lost this contest, it
Speaker 1: was all that's off because the losers were typically expected
Speaker 1: to stop themselves with spears. So the Barman cult does
Speaker 1: sound pretty drastic, but through this there actually was a
Speaker 1: rebirth and arable land end and cultivation of crops. I
Speaker 1: think the sweet potato reared its head again, So I
Speaker 1: think it's for tuvers. Yeah, and they were struggling. They
Speaker 1: were they were still struggling to to um an extent,
Speaker 1: and this is when you know, Europeans actually started stumbling
Speaker 1: upon these people and they finally had sort of contact
Speaker 1: and access to the outside world. But this ended up
Speaker 1: causing a lot of harm as well as good um
Speaker 1: because like obviously Europeans come uh with their own diseases
Speaker 1: like that they have become immune to, and so they
Speaker 1: exposed these diseases to the islanders at the time, and
Speaker 1: so that hurt their population even more. And I think
Speaker 1: that when the nineteenth century came around, the population had
Speaker 1: dwindled to only gosh, just a little over a hundred
Speaker 1: maybe a hundred ten Easter Islanders. And not only did
Speaker 1: the Westerners bring their diseases, they also brought their religion
Speaker 1: or ideas. And one of the reasons that it's called
Speaker 1: Eastern Island is because when it was first discovered, I guess,
Speaker 1: just governed by Europeans, was that it was Easter Sunday.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting and throughout the the I guess the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, eventually Christian missionaries did come over and start
Speaker 1: and start converting the islanders um to uh, most of them,
Speaker 1: I guess, and they ended up sacrificing a lot of
Speaker 1: their culture, which is of course necessary when you sacrifice
Speaker 1: um your religion. Right when the Christian missionaries came, the
Speaker 1: exchange for giving up their religion and their culture like
Speaker 1: their storytelling and their their tattoos and there everything else
Speaker 1: was that they learned how to use their land to
Speaker 1: be a ranch essentially, so they had livestock and they
Speaker 1: were able to say, okay, so we have this very
Speaker 1: treeless land. Now that's not good for much, but it
Speaker 1: is good for using as a ranch. And at this
Speaker 1: time the Easter Islanders, I think for the most part,
Speaker 1: they were very wearied with their culture and when things
Speaker 1: had gotten really dark, they turned to the Moai and
Speaker 1: what and rather they blamed them, blame the gods for
Speaker 1: what had befallen them, or whether they realized that it
Speaker 1: was their own very overenthusiastic production of the sculptures that
Speaker 1: brought them down and they started knocking them down, and
Speaker 1: you know, like you said, like, we're not really sure
Speaker 1: why it happened. I remember reading one theory was that
Speaker 1: like when when the population split into different clans, one
Speaker 1: clan would destroy those those statues because they believe those
Speaker 1: were the source of their power of the opposite clans power,
Speaker 1: and so there's all kinds of theories about this, but
Speaker 1: um regardless, it is interesting that they made such amazing
Speaker 1: feats and yet they ended up tearing it down. They did,
Speaker 1: and you can see where they galuged at the eyes,
Speaker 1: the name city and eyes, and they would arrange really
Speaker 1: sharp stones underwear, the head would falls, and then when
Speaker 1: they knocked from the yahoo the head with sever so
Speaker 1: they were in essence decapitating these gods. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: until archaeologists came back and tried to restructure them that
Speaker 1: they were able to rehoist the moai. And I think
Speaker 1: that today the Easter Islanders very much accept that as
Speaker 1: part of their culture. But another thing that they lost
Speaker 1: forever was their language, which was wrong goo, wrong goo,
Speaker 1: and it actually came about from a very dirty trick
Speaker 1: that the Spanish pulled back in seventeen seventy two. They
Speaker 1: came over and essentially they tricked the tribal leader into
Speaker 1: signing a treaty that turned Easter Island over to Spanish control.
Speaker 1: So while that in itself was not diplomatic to any extent,
Speaker 1: it inspired the Easter Islanders to create their own system
Speaker 1: of writing. And so there's still tablets today with wrong
Speaker 1: goo wrong but that exists, and I think Easter Islanders
Speaker 1: continue to carve these little symbols that no one knows
Speaker 1: what it means, because again, part of giving up the
Speaker 1: culture the Christian missionaries was getting you know, ranches established
Speaker 1: and getting their crops re established and essentially surviving. So
Speaker 1: they made that choice. That's interesting that both the introduction
Speaker 1: of writing sort of hurt and helped them sort of
Speaker 1: in a way like, uh, it's certainly a nasty trick.
Speaker 1: Could be like, hey, this is what writing is. Write
Speaker 1: anything on this line and you're sacrificing your island and
Speaker 1: knowingly sort of thing. But if I also brought about
Speaker 1: the faut at the Birdman cult to because the tribal
Speaker 1: leader was able to reassert his power through riding. So
Speaker 1: it's just such an interesting history and the Easter Islanders
Speaker 1: are very very proud of their history. I think that
Speaker 1: today there are maybe around two thousand people on the island.
Speaker 1: Their population is really rebounded. Thankfully they have and they
Speaker 1: have I think joint citizenship with Chile, so they can
Speaker 1: go back and forth. And if you want to go
Speaker 1: to Easter Island, I think that you have to fly
Speaker 1: to Chile first, and then there are flights certain days
Speaker 1: of the week that go out to Easter Island. And
Speaker 1: that's what I mean. It's awesome that Easter Island has
Speaker 1: has um an airport now and so people can come
Speaker 1: and they like archaeologists can study and tourists can can
Speaker 1: find out the rich culture and it's pretty interesting. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they had Chili actually has control over it because they
Speaker 1: annexed it in eighty eight. We should probably mention that.
Speaker 1: But the culture of Easter Island is still alive. The
Speaker 1: people are incredibly friendly and I think that people have
Speaker 1: written that as they've traveled to Easter Island. If hotel
Speaker 1: rooms are booked, you can stay with any Easter Island
Speaker 1: family in their house and they'll happily welcome you. So
Speaker 1: it's just it seems like such a great place to visit.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to go. Mark my words. If I'm
Speaker 1: not dairs, someone comes, shake make please. Okay. So, now
Speaker 1: that we have gotten all of the background on Easter Island,
Speaker 1: Candice and Jane really did talk quite a bit about
Speaker 1: that log roller theory for transporting the meli out of
Speaker 1: the quarry, plus how that heavy use of forest resources
Speaker 1: could have eventually led to the islands environmental collapse. All
Speaker 1: these logs for the statues, no more trees, no more
Speaker 1: comfy island. But last summer, a new study sponsored by
Speaker 1: the National and Geographic Society and engineered by Terry Hunt
Speaker 1: from the University of Hawaii and Carl Lippo from California
Speaker 1: State University Long Beach, suggested a new possible means of transport,
Speaker 1: and that is rocking and rolling, or more simply, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, it's walking. How if you can
Speaker 1: imagine one of these Easter Island statues just taking the stroll. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this walking idea probably sound a little funny, but
Speaker 1: just bear with us. Last summer, the researchers demonstrated that
Speaker 1: a five ton replica could be moved with a team
Speaker 1: of eighteen people using ropes alone, by gently tilting the
Speaker 1: statue back and forth, kind of shimmying it along this road,
Speaker 1: taking advantage of its D shaped base, and it's a
Speaker 1: big belly that allows for for total tilting, so that
Speaker 1: unbalanced aspect of it actually works to their advantage. It does,
Speaker 1: and and something similar was done back in nine six,
Speaker 1: but at that point the statue wasn't allowed to take
Speaker 1: advantage of that big belly and lean forward. It was
Speaker 1: kept completely upright and it just twisted. So instead of
Speaker 1: that shimmying or the tilting back and forth, it was
Speaker 1: just twisting, and that ultimately damaged space. And they figured, okay,
Speaker 1: this is not going to work. To really get a
Speaker 1: good sense of this, it kind of helps if you
Speaker 1: go watch a video and it's easy to find online.
Speaker 1: We watched it before we came into recording, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's kind of great to see one of
Speaker 1: these eyes just moving down the road bit by bit,
Speaker 1: but it is their striking looking. You have to wonder
Speaker 1: how anybody thought of this in the first place. It
Speaker 1: came about when one of Hunt's colleagues, Sergio rapp, who
Speaker 1: who is an archaeologist and a member of the island's
Speaker 1: indigenous population, took Hunt and Lippo to see all of
Speaker 1: those abandoned moi that Candice and Jane mentioned and pointed
Speaker 1: out the seemingly specially engineered features like the D shape
Speaker 1: and the heavy belly, things that could allow these giant,
Speaker 1: upright statues to, like you said, shimmy along the road.
Speaker 1: But if this theory is correct and the moi were
Speaker 1: not moved with logs, that still leaves us with the
Speaker 1: question why was the island's forests so totally decimated well,
Speaker 1: according to a National Geographic article by Hannah Block, Hunt
Speaker 1: and Lippo have also excavated the island's beach and believed
Speaker 1: that in habits arrived much later than earlier believed a
Speaker 1: d and since this would mean the environmental degradation had
Speaker 1: to happen at a faster pace, They've also suggested that
Speaker 1: the trees weren't wiped out through slash and burn farming
Speaker 1: or through rampant sledge and roller construction, but by rats
Speaker 1: grows so Polynesian rats specifically, whose bones litter those same
Speaker 1: trash heats discussed in the older podcast, and they would
Speaker 1: have come aboard the very same canoes that the Polynesians
Speaker 1: arrived in, and the inhabitants would have eaten them. You
Speaker 1: know that Candis and Jane mentioned that they brought chickens along,
Speaker 1: so um. They would have eaten the rats, but protein protein.
Speaker 1: But with no other predators on the island besides the settlers,
Speaker 1: the rat population could have quickly exploded, and the hungry
Speaker 1: rodents could have gone gobbling up all of the palm
Speaker 1: nuts and stopping new trees from growing. Because of these
Speaker 1: forests are very slow growing and if the rats are
Speaker 1: eating everything, you're not going to have any new forests.
Speaker 1: And plus, of course they would also eat things like
Speaker 1: bird bird eggs and further desks of mating the environment
Speaker 1: of the island. Interestingly, Hunt and Lippo take things a
Speaker 1: step further away from Diamond's poor stewardship theory by suggesting
Speaker 1: that the islands people actually had a sustainable society. The
Speaker 1: rats just happened to mess them up really badly. For example,
Speaker 1: just some things that support this, they built stone wind
Speaker 1: breaks to protect crops and soil. They also fertilized with
Speaker 1: ash and rocks from the islands inactive volcanoes, and they
Speaker 1: may have even been peaceful, which is a much different
Speaker 1: idea from the predominant competitive, warring and eventually cannibalistic historical
Speaker 1: telling of the situation, though some archaeologists like Rappoo think
Speaker 1: that this is highly unlikely. I think that they probably
Speaker 1: still did compete over these statues and eventually went to
Speaker 1: war with each other. But I think what I find
Speaker 1: most interesting is that the story works as an environmental
Speaker 1: parable of sorts. Either way. One the diamond theory is
Speaker 1: about land management and resources is the newer idea is
Speaker 1: more about invasive species rats coming and messing everything up
Speaker 1: for you and by a diversity and how fragile it
Speaker 1: can be on on island like this. And what's neat
Speaker 1: is is that both of those theories do still tie
Speaker 1: into very timely topics today. I think it is neat,
Speaker 1: although I was thinking about a lot. I know, I
Speaker 1: wish we didn't have problems with them, but yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: And one more point, in case you're wondering, walking the
Speaker 1: moi does not look easy. It's dangerous, but possibly to
Speaker 1: the theories credit, there are loads of dropped moi on
Speaker 1: the road between the quarry and the statues. So and
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, especially if they were kind of a warring society,
Speaker 1: what happened to those poor guys who dropped a moi
Speaker 1: on the road. I didn't even think of that until
Speaker 1: you just set up you'd have to be in big trouble,
Speaker 1: I think. So it was really fun to learn a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the story and find out that
Speaker 1: people are still coming up with new theories about it,
Speaker 1: and that they are so timely and rats are involved it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't really see that one coming when
Speaker 1: I saw headlines about the mo i walked to their positions.
Speaker 1: So anyway, if you want to learn a little bit more,
Speaker 1: we do have the Easter Island article that Candice also wrote.
Speaker 1: This was one of her favorite topics. I think I
Speaker 1: actually updated her when I heard this news too, and
Speaker 1: she was excited to know that that there's new ideas
Speaker 1: about how the mo i got to where they were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I guess we can look forward to
Speaker 1: maybe more updates in the future really see how these
Speaker 1: pan out. But if you have any stories to share
Speaker 1: with us, or any suggestions about this topic or any
Speaker 1: others that you want to hear, you can write to
Speaker 1: us or a history podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
Speaker 1: also on Facebook and we're on Twitter at mist in History.
Speaker 1: And if you want to check out that article, it's
Speaker 1: called how Easter Island Works and you can find it
Speaker 1: by searching on our homepage at www. Dot hot works
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: is that how stuff Works dot com. M M