Rock 'n' Roll: Does this cunning technique help explain how the mysterious Easter Island heads 'walked' to their resting places?

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Easter Island - the land where giant stone heads gaze distantly at the sea - is both a fascinating conundrum and a wonderful microcosm of a society which moved to a new land, accidentally destroyed the ecosystem, and then eventually destroyed themselves.

Legend and tells us that the ancient monuments, which range in height from four to 33 feet, were dragged into place from a distant quarry by Polynesian settlers, who sailed a thousand miles across the Pacific in canoes around AD800, before almost instantly embarking on their campaign of building the mysterious monuments.

But one thing has always led to debate: how exactly did the tribe move the 'moai' - some of which weigh more than 80 tons - to their final destinations without the benefit of modern technology.

Just taking my head for a walk: Three teams, one on each side and one in the back, manage to maneuver an Easter Island statue replica down a road in Hawaii

Just taking my head for a walk: Three teams, one on each side and one in the back, manage to maneuver an Easter Island statue replica down a road in Hawaii

The 10-foot, 5-ton replica of an Easter Island 'moai' dances down the road, guided by teams on each side and behind it

The 10-foot, 5-ton replica of an Easter Island 'moai' dances down the road, guided by teams on each side and behind it

Archaeologists Carl Lipo of the University of California State University Long Beach (left) and Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii stand in front of the replica

Archaeologists Carl Lipo of the University of California State University Long Beach (left) and Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii stand in front of the replica

The descendents of the Polynesians are adamant the stones walked to their resting places. But a new study, presented by National Geographic, suggests the Polynesians had some help from a little rock 'n' roll...

Researchers have tended to assume the ancestors dragged the statues somehow, using a lot of ropes and wood.

But islanders maintain something very different: One, Suri Tuki, says: 'The experts can say whatever they want. But we know the truth. The statues walked.'

Perhaps the islander's viewpoint is right - as it arguably matches with the 'vertical walking' method.

The clue is in each statue's fat belly - which produces a forward-falling center of gravity that helps with vertical transport.

And, with just a few ropes, a team of 18 people could rock the statue back and forth, each time inching the statue on just a little bit more.

Four rope-pullers would be on each side, with ten people pulling the statue up from behind, which has been compared to holding back a dog which is pulling at a leas.

Volunteers built a replica model, and dragged it across the countryside of Hawaii, slowly moving the giant head towards its final resting point.

The researchers do not offer their experiment as proof that this scenario is true - but point out it fits with the islanders' oral tradition that the statues 'walked' down the road.

The also point out that the broken stones which litter the walkways of Easter Island lead credence to their theory - that these are the remains of stones which fell by the wayside.

There are no reports of moai building after Europeans arrived in the 18th century.

By then Easter Island had only a few scrawny trees. In the 1970s and 1980s, though, biogeographer John Flenley of New Zealand’s Massey University found evidence—pollen preserved in lake sediments - that the island had been covered in lush forests, including millions of giant palm trees, for thousands of years. Only after the Polynesians arrived around A.D. 800 had those forests given way to grasslands.

Jared Diamond drew heavily on Flenley’s work for his assertion in Collapse, his influential 2005 book, that ancient Easter Islanders committed unintentional ecocide.

The originals: The ancient carved heads on the island of the South Pacific - which give rise to so many theories on their construction

The originals: The ancient carved heads on the island of the South Pacific - which give rise to so many theories on their construction

from the July edition of National Geographic magazine

The information and images in this article are from the July edition of National Geographic magazine

They had the bad luck, Diamond argues, to have settled an extremely fragile island - dry, cool, and remote, which means it’s poorly fertilized by windblown dust or volcanic ash. (Its own volcanoes are quiescent.

When the islanders cleared the forests for firewood and farming, the forests didn’t grow back. As wood became scarce and the islanders could no longer build seagoing canoes for fishing, they ate the birds.

Soil erosion decreased their crop yields. Before Europeans showed up, the Rapanui had descended into civil war and cannibalism.

The collapse of their isolated civilization, Diamond writes, is 'the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources' and 'a worst-case scenario for what may lie ahead of us in our own future.'

The moai, he thinks, accelerated the self-destruction. Diamond interprets them as power displays by rival chieftains who, trapped on a remote little island, lacked other ways of strutting their stuff.

They competed by building ever bigger statues. Diamond thinks they laid the moai on wooden sledges, hauled over log rails - a technique successfully tested by UCLA archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project - but that required both a lot of wood and a lot of people.

To feed the people, even more land had to be cleared. When the wood was gone and civil war began, the islanders began toppling the moai. By the 19th century none were standing. Easter Island’s landscape acquired the aura of tragedy that, in the eyes of Diamond and many others, it retains today.

  • These images, and elements of the article, are from the July edition of National Geographic magazine