Page 5 - Activities

Walking by rocking
According to oral tradition, the moai statues walked to their destination. A literal interpretation of this legend would be that the statues were rocked from side to side, just like you would a refrigerator, to actually make them walk. For this, no wood would be required - only ropes.
There are three main weaknesses with this theory:
● It doesn't explain the disappearance of the trees.
● The statue would fall quite easily during transportation.
● Transportation technique is very time consuming. Considering the
quantity of statues and their distance from Rano Raraku, a quicker way of transporting the statues would be more advisable.
Norwegian explorer T hor Heyerdahl together with Pavel Pavel were the first ones to experiment with this transportation theory and did so with a 9 ton ancient statue in 1986. First they only dragged a statue on the ground, one side at a time. This took lots of time and energy without much result. Later they attached ropes also to the head to be able to make it tilt while turning, and the statue moved with much greater ease.
The second experiment of this theory was performed in July 2012 at Hawai'i by American archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo. A 5 ton replica was moved by a group of 30 people. This experiment received great attention worldwide through a N ational Geographic report.
Gr. 5 Oral Comprehension Readings 5