History’s Mysteries
Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, the famed islet over 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile, is known for its hundreds of giant stone figures, or moai.
The island’s iconic sculptures have become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but historians still question how the statues, weighing several tons each, were moved about the island without modern machinery.
More perplexing still: How did those heavy stone hats end up atop the statues?
In a study published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers posit that islanders relied on a technique called “parbuckling,” a simple maneuver of using ropes and ramps to move the massive stone hats known as pukao, some weighing as much as 25,000 pounds, miles and miles to don the moai’s heads.
“Parbuckling was a simple and elegant solution that required minimum resources and effort,” said Carl Lipo, an anthropology professor at Binghamton University.
Researchers believe the parbuckling theory matches the physics of the feat, as well as the archaeological record, Popular Science reported.
And with a simpler theory in play as to how islanders raised the statues – parbuckling requires fewer than 15 people – scientists believe they played a social or even economic role in society, dispelling some theories that they were used for war.
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