Day 3 – They walked to their place

If you think of Polynesia, you think of white beaches with palm trees and the sun that burns on your skin. None of this, of course, on a volcanic island ... you would think. But today we begin our day on a white beach under waving palm trees... but in the pouring rain ....

Anakena Beach is where it begins today for us, and where it all started for the Rapa Nui. Because this is where the explorers with King Hotu Matua in the lead, came ashore with their canoes and where they saw that it was a good place to stay. The royal family has always lived in this idyllic place. It is not so idyllic today. Since yesterday evening it started to rain heavily. We have come first to the north side of the island against our better judgment, hoping for dryer weather. It is not pouring out yet. The royal village is protected by beautiful moais with a pukao on their heads. They are beautifully preserved under the influence of the sand and the seawater.

Taking pictures is a tragedy in this rain. I'm going to have some work with it to make something of it. Normally we would have come here in the afternoon, with an hour to swim or to rest in the shade of a palm tree. None of that today. Swimming is what we do just by walking on the beach.

From here we go to the site of Te Pito Kura, where the largest statue ever was erected on an ahu (the religious platform where the moais are standing on). The statue is about 10 meters high and weighs about 80 tons.

The moai itself lies in pieces before us. And that will not be the last statue we will see like this. On this site the sacred stone can also be viewed :  ‘the navel of the world’ as the first inhabitants called their island.

This stone was brought by the king himself. Just up the coast is Ahu Tongariki located, where no less than 15 moais are standing on one ahu, the largest ahu ever found on Easter Island. The restoration of these statues took place in the 90’s. These statues were also hit by a  tsunami in 1960, caused by the largest earthquake ever (in Chile, you know) which caused  the ahu to be pushed inland. One of the 15 statues weighs 86 tons and is the heaviest ever found moai. The 15 moais are to say the least, impressive.

Then it is up to Akahanga where there are a lot of moais lying on the ground. A real war field. And this may well be the case. The fallen down and broken moais were perhaps a greater mystery than the function of the statues themselves. One of the most common theories and probably the correct one is this: for a time the Rapa Nui people lived of the land and the sea. The king had his island bequeathed to his six sons, so six tribes emerged on the island. The population grew. Around 1600 there were seven or eight thousand people on Rapa Nui. All those people needed wood for houses, heating, canoes and for transporting the statues. An ecological crisis arose. Because of the shortage, Rapa Nui tribes began to loot each other. And due to the chaos that resulted from it, the island was never reforested. In 1722, when the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen arrived here on Easter Sunday (the discovery of Easter Island), he saw the statues, but found no more trees. In 1774, the English explorer James Cook reported that many statues were broken and fallen, possibly they were beaten by the locals of their platforms. A kind of iconoclasm. Aparently  the ‘mana’ stored in the statues needed to be freed. That supernatural power had to restore the fertile land. Another theory is that the ‘holy' statues of the rival clan were broken to hit them in their souls. In any case no statue was left standing on Easter Island. In the wake of this battlefield, the moai culture was replaced by that of the birdman.

This afternoon we visit the volcano crater Rano Raraku. The moais were probably made as from the 11th century. All statues are monolithic and are carved out of volcanic rock, that is to say from compacted volcanic ash, which can be found near the volcano crater Rano Raraku, where 394 moas are found. The quarry is still full of unfinished statues.

Although people often think that they are stone heads, the moai are actually torsos with disproportionately large heads. Along the torso, the arms are hanging with the hands lying on the belly. The hands have remarkably long nails.

Because the statues  are not finished in the quarry and there are examples of each stage of the production, we get an idea of ​​the production process. First, a sketch of the statue is made in the stone, then the block is cut with only a small piece that remains fixed  to the quarry. After the statue has been finished by the sculptors, the piece is disconnected just before it is transported to the ceremonial sites. At the site the eyes are laid in with white coral and pupils of obsidian. Yes, they had eyes. Some statues wore as already mentioned a pukao.

Next riddle, how were the statues transported?

The last survivors of the Rapa Nui culture talked about stories they heard from their ancestors in which it was told that the statues themselves walked to their altars. Foolish of course.

The most common theories are the following:

The states were bound lying on a sled, this sled was made of logs in the form of a ladder, which was then pulled over the ground.

The statues were tied to tree trunks and to move them, the whole tree trunks were used as rollers. The statue was dragged lying. With a construction of rope and two trunks the statue was lifted a bit and moved a few meters.

The statues were moved upright. At the head three ropes were attached and three teams rocked and rotated the statue. If this was done in the right rhythm, the statue (through the round bottom) could be moved. Perhaps the latter is what is meant by the survivors ‘that the statues walked themselves to their place’...