Day 2 of our Tour was by far my favorite. We started at Rano Raraku, which is the quarry from which all of the moai were carved. There are so many of them just strewn about, seemingly abandoned. Many of them are "walking" down the hillside. Why were they abandoned? It's clear some broke in the moving process, but others look perfectly intact.
All of the moai are buried to some degree. assumingly by dirt eroded from the cliffs above. This particular moai that the boys are sitting in front of was excavated in 2010, and it's amazing to see photos from that. Under these floating heads are entire torsos, arms, and hands, exactly like the other raised moai around the island. And the carvings you can see are amazing. So intricate. This moai was reburied to protect it from further erosion.
Here you can see a moai still in it's carving cave, almost like Snow White waiting to be woken up. All of the flat rock faces above it are places were other moai were carved out. There are more than a 1000 moai around the island. That's an unbelievable amount of rock shifted to accomplish such a feat.
This next picture is not the nicest to look at, but I took it to try and show how dang steep the cliffs were above the moai we were looking at. How in God's name did they manage to get the moai down in a controlled manner after they were done being carved? These things are on average 30 feet tall and weighed 10-12 tons. An unloaded semi-truck tractor (not including the trailer) weighs 12.5 tons in comparison. Gravity would be both friend and foe here; easy to get things moving, but easier to lose control and have a moai avalanche. But most of the moai we were looking at on the hillside were intact, not smashed to bits, so they had a method to get them down safely somehow.
In the picture below, directly behind our guide's head is the torso of the largest moai found on the island. Follow that torso up and you can see the moai's chin and nose. It is called Te Tokanga (El Gigante) and is almost 72 feet long and weighs around 150 tons. These guys had big plans!
Here is an aerial shot of him.
More moai left in their carving niches. Why were they left half finished? Our guide believes something cataclysmic happened that caused the alien race working on these guys to suddenly leave and abandon everything. Sadly, the real reason is probably something more tragic (more tragic than a cataclysmic event? jaja) like famine, war, or disease. It's hard to work on art when your basic needs aren't being met. This is one of the reasons why people believe the Rapa Nui suffered a societal collapse, even before the Europeans showed up, but no one can say for sure. So many questions.
From Rano Raraku, down the hillside you can see Ahu Tongariki which we would visit next.
A fallen moai with his brothers at Ahu Tongariki standing in the background. This is me attempting to be artistic with photography. But just like all my jokes, I feel the need to explain myself, which ruins it, jajaja.
This moai is the only one found to date in a kneeling posture. You can see his legs and feet tucked under his little booty. The story from our guide was that this man was walking with his son along the cliffs above, and the son fell and died. So they carved this moai to commemorate his grief and sorrow. Does beg the question though of why did the Rapa Nui chose to carve all of the other moai in exactly the same posture? Yeah there are differences in height, size, and facial features, but they are all standing erect with their arms at their sides, hands on their bellies framing a loin cloth. Why not spice it up a bit? They carved a thousand of these things, but this guy is the only one that has legs, let alone is in a kneeling posture. I guess gods aren't suppose to kneel.
Since Drew and I were being surrounded by so many conspiracy theories, we decided to come up with our own. This is a view of the other side of Rano Raraku. All of the moai we saw still in their carving niches and on their way down the hillside were on the southwest side of this volcano crater. But the southeast side of the crater is gone and is nothing but shear cliffs, while the other side is sloping and rounded, like all of the other internal volcano craters are (by internal I mean not along the coast to be affected by the sea). Our theory is that these cliffs are the direct result of the Rapa Nui carving the 1000 moai. They needed to shift an ungodly amount of rock to carve that many of those things, what else would have caused this? The second picture is from google maps with the terrain showing, and I think it looks pretty convincing, like a bite taken out of a donut. Well, I have no formal education in geology nor anthropology, and I researched this and thought about it for all of 5 minutes, so therefore I must be right. It's not an opinion, it's a fact! 😉
The second stop of the day was Tongariki, which is the grandest ahu, I think, on the island. It has 15 moai of varying heights and facial features arranged with their backs to the sea and facing the quarry we just left. Apparently all of these moai had been toppled but then also dragged much farther inland when a tsunami hit, date unknown, but they had to be moved quite far to be rebuilt. It's also impressive to think about how far the moai were moved originally to get from the quarry to their final resting place. At least here it seems plausible, because the quarry is within eye site of the ahu. But there are many other ahus on literally the complete opposite side of the island, which is miles away. Like 10 miles away or more! How did they move these colossal statues 10 miles or more with no help? One theory is that they rolled the moai on logs, hence the deforestation. Another theory is that they "walked" the moai upright by tying ropes to top of the moai and having three teams of pullers, forming a triangle. The two teams in the front would get it to rock from side to side while the 3rd team off the back would keep it from toppling forward, which is it's natural inclination, with the big belly and all. The only reason I am aware of this theory is that Drew and I watched a documentary about this before our visit. Seems highly error prone to me. No wonder there are so many moai scattered around the island that have crashed and burned. Here a link to a clip which shows a team of scientists testing the "walking" theory. It is almost eery to watch: https://youtu.be/YpNuh-J5IgE?si=mMiavipzPe-poiIJ So it is possible to "walk" them, but could you imagine doing that for MILES???? Wowzer.
There was one moai off to the side, closer to the entrance of Tongariki and not on the ahu, that we could get really close to. This particular moai was borrowed by the Japanese for a decade of show and tell back in Japan in exchange for a crane that was used to raise most of the moai and is still used at the marina today. It's hard to tell in the picture because it is so dark, but this moai had pupils, so it made his eyes look VERY expressive. Almost sad. Definitely moving.
No comments:
Post a Comment