The stone heads found on Easter Island are among the most intriguing mysteries in the world, and the last five years of excavations at this archeological site have revealed new, convincing evidence that finally connects huge stone figures with the quality and fertility of the land.
On the famous island of Rapa Nui, archaeologists have discovered 887 statues known as moai, although it is suspected that there are about a thousand of them, and each weighs about 12 tons. It has long been believed that statues have only heads, but archaeologists have found bodies beneath the earth's surface during previous projects.
Moai statues are made of monolithic stones, volcanic tufa and are carved on the edge of the Rano Raraku volcano, where there are the most of them, close to 400 in a row. Hundreds of them were transported from there and placed on stone platforms along the perimeter of the island. Slightly less than 100 statues remained unfinished, indicating that the quarry was suddenly abandoned.
About 300 statues were laid on the ground, and the rest were lined up along the roads along the island. The statues are very similar in appearance, but they are of different dimensions, most often up to three and a half meters, and the highest is as high as 21 meters. The masses of these largest statues exceed one hundred tons.
Almost all of them have very large heads, which make up three-fifths of their bodies and to which the greatest attention was paid during construction.
These statues represent real stylized human heads, on which the whole is convex, and pieces of coral are polished in the eye sockets, the nose is long and the cheeks are smooth.
The statues have existed on the island since the first Europeans arrived there, but most were torn down during later clan conflicts.
By the way, the island of Rapa Nui, which is one of the most isolated and lonely on Earth where people live, has not been known for thousands of years, and it was discovered on April 5, 1722 by the Dutch navigator Jakob Rogeven.
As Easter was that day, the island was named Easter.
It is located in Polynesia, in the South Pacific Ocean, about 3,700 km west of Chile, it is of volcanic origin, and until 1888 it did not belong to anyone, and then it was annexed to Chile.
The new research, the results of which were published in the journal Archaeological Science, dealt with two statues that are still in the quarry from whose stone all the stone statues were built.
Researchers believe that these two statues were intentionally left in the quarry, and not that they remained because they were not moved in time, and some even believe that aliens helped in the construction.
Many mysteries and unknowns are associated with moai statues, and given their enormous weight, as some weigh over 10 tons, it is believed that extraterrestrial technology was used to make the transport.
By the way, moai statutes date from between 1000 and 1600, but the most accepted theory is that they were carved 500 years ago by the inhabitants of the Polynesian islands and made as stone symbols representing ancestors or prominent dignitaries.
Finally, I will post a video about these mysterious Moai statues.
I send you a big greeting! I hope you enjoyed the story of the amazing statues.
Your @MarijaJak
29.11.2020.
The statues are really stunning. Worth seeing and reading about them.