Out in the middle of the Southern Pacific Ocean, a remote, somewhat difficult-to-reach volcanic island can be found jutting out of the sea featuring over a thousand of these oversized stone statues. Pretty much everyone is familiar with the Eastern Island Statues, but up until very recently, nobody had a clue how they got there, who constructed them, and what their purpose was.
While most people know it as Easter Island, the mysterious island is also known as Rapa Nui. The statues also have another name that you might not be familiar with. The stone monoliths that have been dutifully watching over the island’s landscape for centuries are called Moai.
Their existence has long been considered to be a marvel of human engineering and ingenuity, but for longer than we would have liked, their meaning had been a source of great mystery. If you’ve ever been curious about the ‘who, what, how and why’ of the famed Easter Island sculptures, this is one video that you’ll want to pay to attention, because in the next several minutes we’ll be discussing how The Mystery of the Easter Island Statues Has Been Revealed.
Agricultural Fertility Symbols
According to a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science conducted by Jo Anne Van Tilburg, the director of the Easter Island Statue Project, the Easter Island statues served a very specific purpose.
Van Tilburg claims that the ancient Rapa Nui people had teams of carvers working around the clock at the behest of the elite ruling class to create more than 1,000 Moai because their community believed that they were capable of stimulating agricultural fertility and thus increasing critical food supplies.
In their groundbreaking study, Van Tilburg and her esteemed team of co-researchers worked alongside geoarchaeologist and soil expert Sarah Sherwood. The research team believes that they found rock-solid – pun intended – scientific evidence that confirms that long-suspected purpose thanks to the findings of a carefully carried out study of two specific Moai that were excavated a little over four years in the area known as the Rano Raraku quarry on the eastern end of the island.
Van Tilburg’s recent analysis honed in on the two monoliths that reside inside the inner region of the quarry. It’s known that this region is the origin point of close to 95 percent of all of the island’s 1000+ Moai. In-depth lab testing of various soil samples taken from this area has revealed the presence of foods such as taro, sweet potato, and bananas.
Van Tilburg has said that the analysis conducted by her research team shows that beyond just serving as a rock quarry and place where the statues were carved, Rano Raraku was additionally the site of a highly productive agricultural operation.
Van Tilburg further stated that their excavation broadened our perspective of the Moai and has encourage us to realize that nothing – regardless of how obvious we think it is – is ever just as it appears. She went on to opine that her team’s new anaylsis of the statues has humanized the production processes that went into their creation.
Van Tilburg has been working with the Easter Island statues and Rapa Nui people for three-plus decades. Her ambitious Easter Island Statue Project has received the support of UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. One of the institute’s colleagues, Tom Wake, has analyzed small animal remains from the site where the excavation took place. In addition to her role with the ongoing project, Van Tilburg additionally serves as the director of UCLA’s Rock Art Archive.
In collaboration with local community members, Van Tilburg has been given the honor of leading the first legally permitted excavation of the Moai of Rano Raku since 1955. One of the foremost members of her team, Cristian Arevalo Pakarati, a renowned Rapa Nui artist, serves as the project’s co-director.
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Fertile Soil
Sherwood says that at least in the long term, the soil found at Rano Raku is some of the richest on the island. When coupled with a fresh-water source that can be found at the quarry, it would appear that the simple practice of quarrying by itself helped give a boost to the soil’s fertility and as a result increased food production in the surrounding area.
The type of soil occupying the earth in the quarry is very rich in clay. It’s been disccovered that it was created by the workers as they quarried down into deeper rock and carved out the Moai. This clay-rich soil was the result of the local bedrock, known as lapilli tuff, being weathered away through human interaction.
Sherwood is a distinguished professor of earth and environmental systems at a school in Sewanee, Tennessee, called the University of the South. She joined Van Tilburg’s Easter Island Project after meeting another member of the project’s team at a geology conference.
At first, Sarah Sherwood wasn’t looking for anything remotely to do with soil fertility in her research, but out of sheer curiosity and habit, she decided to conduct some fine-scale testing of several samples that were brought back from the quarry.
After those initial sample’s results came back, Sherwood says she had to do a double take. The soil tested remarkably high for things that she never would have suspected would have been there. A couple of minerals that the soil tested high for included phosphorous and calcium, which as you may or may not be aware, depending on your grasp of agricultural knowledge, are crucial elements that facilitate plant growth and are essential for high yields.
Sherwood noted that everywhere else on Eastern Island, the soil had been rapidly worn out. It had eroded and was leached of the minerals that are needed to feed plants. But lo and behold, at the quarry, with it’s constant influx of bedrock fragments created by the quarrying process, there was this perfectly balanced feedback system of water, nutrients, and natural fertilizer.
Sherwood further stated that it appeared as if the island’s indigenous people, the Rapa Nui, were extremely intuitive about what to grow and how to plant multiple varieties of crops in the same area so that they could maintain consistent soil fertility.
The stone-carved Moai that Van Tilburg’s research team excavated were upright in place when they were discovered. One Moai was sitting on a pedestal while the other was unearthed deep inside a hole, which seems to indicate that they were likely intended to remain there.
Van Tilburg was quoted as saying that her team’s study radically altered the idea that the Moai in Rano Raraku were intended to be transported out of the quarry at some point. She went on to say that the Moai she studied and, more than likely others that have been discovered upright in Rano Raku, were retained in place so that they could continue to ensure the sacred nature of quarry.
Since the Moai were evidently central to the Rapa Nui’s idea of fertility, it was no doubt their belief that their presence alone stimulated agricultural food production.
Centuries-Old Mysteries
According to Van Tilburg’s research team’s best estimates, the Moai found in the inner quarry were probably raised by or prior to 1510 to 1645 AD. The two Moai that Van Tilburg and her team excavated had been almost entirely buried by rubble, debris, and soil. Her team chose these two statues for excavation after closely scrutinizing historical photos that mapped out the entirety of the Rano Raku inner region.
Van Tilburg has worked intrepidly to establish strong and productive connections with the local Rapa Nui community. The Easter Island Statue Project’s field team is comprised of local workers under the mentorship of professional geologists and archaeologists.
The team’s collective efforts have resulted in the creation of an enormous, detailed archive as well as a comparative database that has documented bythis time more than 1,000 sculptural objects created by the Rapa Nui people, including of course, the Moai.
Easter Island was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1995. The majority of the island’s most sacred sites have been protected within the Rapa Nui National Park.
While the massive stone figures found on Easter Island have long baffled explorers, researchers, and archaeologists for centuries, it’s wonderful that we’re finally starting to learn why the statues are where they are and what their purpose was. It feels like one of the world’s biggest mysteries has finally been cracked.
And while the secret of the Easter Island Moai might no longer be that mysterious, what we’ve discovered in the process of excavating and researching them has only given us a greater appreciation for the ingenuity of the people that created them, the Rapa Nui.
It’s awe-inspiring that people almost a century ago, without the aid of computers, power tools, or the vast wealth of agricultural knowledge that we now have at our fingertips, were able to figure out not only how to create these mesmerizing stone sculptures, but also do so in such a way that it aided in increasing soil fertility and agricultural production.
Never shall we ever look back at people from long ago as being in any way, shape, or form, ‘primitive’. If anything, their intuitive grasp of how to coexist with nature is something that we could all stand to learn from.
You’ve heard what we have to say, now we’d love to hear from you. Did you know that the Easter Island stone statues were used as tools to boost soil fertility and farming yields? And were you aware that they were created by a group of indigenous people called the Rapa Nui? Let us know in the comments.
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As always, thanks for watching and happy travels!