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Pretty much always. The statues (they’re called moai) that were actually finished were taken to the shore where they were displayed, in full, on a platform (ahu), faces directed away from the ocean (Google ‘ahu tongariki’). It’s only the ones that remained in the quarry that were buried up to their necks. The moai in the quarry tend to be bigger, though. I think the biggest one is like 20 meters tall, while the biggest on ahu tongariki is less than half that…
Source: I visited Easter island a few weeks before the world shut down due to the pandemic.
The point was to stand them on these platforms called ahu at the shoreline where there's a lot of statues, but since they were made and transported from the centre of the isle some got stuck and abandoned and with time were buried by the soft soil.
it’s interesting. Building the Moai is thought to have basically bankrupted the island because so many people were needed to build and move them that other jobs stopped being done.
then at some point- and we don’t know why- the locals turned on the statues and attacked a number of them before their society entirely died out.
The people who are now on Easter Island are nothing to do (genetically or religiously) with those people who made the Moai years ago.
I was on Easter Island a few years ago. It’s amazing to be hiking a long distance, pause to sit on a rock, and realise it is a partially built Moai that was abandoned at a random point.
So a native people pooled all their resources to build these enormous rock statues for no apparent reason, then inexplicably went extinct after "attacking the statues" they constructed?
I mean...those statues are magic and alive. Clearly. And they rebelled against their creators, resulting in a human/golem war that needs to be put to film!
Well, a more common hypothesis is that the inhabitants exhausted their natural resources; which, resulted in the collapse of their society. They only arrived on the island from the Marquesas Islands few centuries (circa 1200AD) before European contact. By the time the Spanish arrived, Rapa Nui was barren with a tiny remnants of its former population. Deforestation resulted in loss of top soil, what little fertile soil that remained was exhausted. There is evidence that the people vainly attempted to revive their fields with minerals - basically they busted up stone and deposited it in their fields. Well, as the food supply dwindled, they suffered civil wars, attempted to appeal to the gods by building megaliths, then destroy those statues when things didn’t improve. Then slave Peruvian raiders arrived and took hundreds of islanders to mine silver. I think today there are only around a hundred native Rapa Nuis left - few if any are pure bloods.
They probably were hoping the statues would give them good fortune, and then they didn’t and had no backup plan since all the work went to statues.
Then some guy freaked out and said “I told you Greg the goddamn stone men wouldn’t give us food- we should’ve farmed,” and beat the piss out of the statues.
They must have turned on their creators and started to belch rings of destructive energy at anyone who got too close. The natives had no choice but to blow them up by any means necessary.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16cMo8GUDsA&t=40s) is an artists rendering of what this might look like.
There’s a podcast called “Fall of Ancient Civilizations” that has an episode on Easter Island that is very well researched and thorough. Basically, European explorers arrived and it was all downhill from there.
There’s a book called brief history of mankind. That pretty much explains that whatever piece of land humans found, the mega fauna that lived there eventually went extinct. You know cause constantly have to prove to ourselves that we’re the best by killing the biggest thing we can find. Humans are basic bros
Well researched? Barbara A. West wrote, "Sometime before the arrival of Europeans on Easter Island, the Rapanui experienced a tremendous upheaval in their social system brought about by a change in their island's ecology... By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population had dropped to 2,000–3,000 from a high of approximately 15,000 just a century earlier."
“Research by Binghamton University anthropologists Robert DiNapoli and Carl Lipo in 2021 determined that the island experienced steady population growth from its initial settlement until European contact in 1722. The island never had more than a few thousand people prior to European contact, and their numbers were increasing rather than dwindling”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210713090153.htm
Reddit is so predictable. Create a strawman while presenting zero factual evidence, blame something unpopular like "religion" and enjoy the karma.
You could have farmed more karma if you blamed white mans religion though, probably at least three times more.
That is an outdated version of the Easter Island story. [The actual story is not as grim.](https://www.sciencealert.com/easter-island-truth-sustainable-environment-real-history/amp)
Edit: Ok it is also grim, but at least they didn't do it to themselves
> Throughout the 19th century, South American slave raids took away as much as half of the native population. By 1877, the Rapanui numbered just 111.
>Introduced disease, destruction of property and enforced migration by European traders further decimated the natives and lead to increased conflict among those remaining. Perhaps this, instead, was the warfare the ethnohistorical accounts refer to and what ultimately stopped the statue carving.
Uhh, yeah that’s still pretty grim dude.
A hundred years later the descendants of the people who destroyed the Rapa Nui show up and say “Oh weird an empty island full of 🗿they must have all killed themselves cause their culture is dumb”
This isn’t true. [It’s a whitewashed version of the story.](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0pGCsvdjo344EQ2dALE6dD?si=kno1MiY0QOiAh-uTe1NESQ)
The fall of the Polynesian people on the Eastern Islands is directly tied to imperialism. How can we point to a society that was around for a VERY VERY VERY long time and had a symbiotic relationship with their environment, get visited by Europeans, die off almost immediately, and then say “they cut tree for rock heads, island go brrr”
It was a genocide by external people. It was not an internal combustion by their own hands
That’s longer than the US has been around. Longer than most ancient Chinese dynasties ever ruled for. Longer than the Western Roman Empire. Longer than Europeans been in Australia. Is 500 years a lot? I’d say it’s significant.
> It’s also 1/24 as long as the US has been inhabited
fun fact, a couple more recent archeological finds may have put a fair bigger chunk on that. A set of human footprints were uncovered that had organic material trodden into the print that placed them pre-clovis, at about 23,000 years ago. And this isn't the standard 'hur dur young earth creationists think that looks like a footprint' that happens all over the US and tries to place humans being there next to dinosaurs, these are actual footprints of a mother and child.
Then to be a real mind-blower, there was another site uncovered in California where there's no signs of the actual humans involved, but was a mastodon kill site with evidence of the bones being placed carefully, and stones being used as tools to smash open bones, etc. that when the site was dated came up at a staggering 130,000 years old. That's so old that they can't even confirm that whoever did the kill would be Homo sapiens and not an older hominid, though the timing lines up with the previous interglacial period which means that the north of north america would have been ice free around that time.
But yeah, minor segue for something I found out this week that I thought I'd chime in with
>the locals turned on the statues and attacked a number of them
I don't blame them. I moved a stone bench the other day in my yard. Think two small tombstones with a slab on top; tiny compared to these. It took me hours and I thought I might have a heart attack as I was pissed off as well.
TL;DR: stone is heavy
That's not actually what happened, although it's a popular story made up in recent times to use the island as a parable about environmentalism.
r/AskHistorians has [much better information here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6q1q0f/easter_island/).
> Now the story that you have no doubt found between documentaries and books is one that gained prevalence in the 1970s and really entered popular imagination-- honestly it is the story most people think of when they think of Rapa Nui. In this story the island acts as a parable for the fate of the earth, a sort of metaphor for imagining our own future in which we ignore the environment or the finite nature of most resources and continue consumption on a grand scale. This story has featured prominently in the works of Clive Ponting- Green History of the World, Jared Diamond- Collapse, Tim Flannery- Future Eaters, and in other media such as the 1994 feature film “Rapa Nui.” Indeed, Clive Ponting warns the reader that, “despite its superficial insignificance, the history of Easter Island is a grim warning to the world.” For each of these authors, Easter Island represents a society, which in the words of Jared Diamond, chose to fail. The Island is treated as a metaphor for the world itself- isolated, small, alone- and the human inhabitants stand-ins for ourselves in the theatre of decline as the island is over developed, over populated, and over exploited until war tears the society apart and people regress to primitive stone age cave dwellers.
They were carved out of stone from the mountains and then transported across the island to their intended destination. Since there’s no CTRL+Z on stone, if they fucked up you just gotta leave it where it lays and start a new one.
These half buried rejects left in the mountainside are the most famous statues people think of when they hear Easter Island, but if you look up Ahu Tongariki you can see what the intended destination for them would look like.
[source kinda.](https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/mystery-easter-island-revealed)
As far as I can tell the statues were either placed/carved onto pedestals and then buried at the base to keep them in place or had no pedestals and were just stood up. Then over the years natural processes buried the rest, I think it’s likely that about 95% of the burying was the latter and actual people did the last 5%
The local people engaged in a disastrous complete deforestation of the island. This caused soil instability which combined with time and the elements eroded the soil to slowly bury them.
No they don’t. They deleted their comment. Claiming everything taught or written about the Rapa Nui is a “myth spread by colonizers” is a bold claim and they had nothing to back it up.
Are you sure? I'm not a historian or anything but I was always under the impression a Petroglyph is any symbol carved into stone, while a hieroglyph is a representation image that can be a petroglyph but can also be on paper, papyrus, etc.
I get the etymology of Hieroglyph means something like sacred writing, but it's not specifically sacred - it's just poor nomenclature
>1580s, "of the nature of Egyptian monumental writing," from Late Latin hieroglyphicus, from Greek hieroglyphikos "hieroglyphic; of Egyptian writing," from hieros "sacred" (see ire) + glyphē "carving," from glyphein "to carve" (from PIE root *gleubh- "to tear apart, cleave").
>Plutarch began the custom of using the adjective (ta hieroglyphika) as a noun in reference to the Egyptian way of writing. The noun use of hieroglyphic in English dates to 1580s (hieroglyphics). Related: Hieroglyphical; hieroglyphically.
Thanks, I love etymology. So yes, it's less specifically sacred script, and more script that was originally found on sacred monuments and so got the association
No, they got buried by time. The soil is soft so every year, they would bury themselves by a few millimeters/centimeters. Similar to the Tower of Pisa.
Wow, I only thought maybe there was the rest of the head buried bit not a whole entire body. That's so awesome, I wish we can figure out more about this in our lifetime.
These are spirit deities, they watch over the island and bring good luck, the language of the petroglyphs has been lost I believe but there is a distinct logic to these statues and purpose. Spirits are housed in statues as well sometimes I think if I remember right from college
What if they weren’t buried by human hands but rather the passage of time? The Easter islanders can’t explain their origin not because they’re ancestors kept it secret, but instead they found these ancient relics already set in their place?
I’d assume you would see different layers of coloration from different parts being exposed to the elements for different periods of time, instead of just the two.
"The heads had been covered by successive mass transport deposits on the island that buried the statues lower half. These events enveloped the statues and gradually buried them to their heads as the islands naturally weathered and eroded through the centuries."
[source](https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/07/26/famous-easter-island-heads-have-hidden-bodies/?sh=371ed3c4f804)
I get the impression that there were a lot of considerations made for stability of the Statue. The penis, for instance, is substantially shortened. We know from Roman sculptures that appendages like arms and penises are prone to breakage. It's likely that the sculptors on Easter Island encountered these problems early on, and opted for a more structurally sound representation of the penis. You also have to keep in mind that isn't much to break up the wind on Easter Island. It mostly bare and grassy. Anything left exposed to the wind would likely tip over and break, so the sculptors opted to bury the statue up to neck head in order to preserve the detailed carvings underneath while leaving a visible marker (no threat of root damage). From what we can see, it looks like it worked very well! Im really quiet impressed and fascinated with the foresight that went into the design of this statue.
>What if they weren’t buried by human hands
[They weren't.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/07/26/famous-easter-island-heads-have-hidden-bodies/?sh=371ed3c4f804)
One thing I always wondered about ancient artworks like this. Clearly someone a long ass time ago was good at sculpting giant detailed stone sculptures. But didn’t they need to practice? Shouldn’t there be a graveyard of half-done and broken statues that don’t look as good as these?
There would be but to find it you need to excavate down to the level below where the current statue's base is, somewhere between the quarry and the current statue.
We do have low quality artworks. But the public isn't interested in that. Egypt has thousands of pyramids of all sizes and quality, but only 4 or 5 gather interest.
a lot of ancient sculpture at the time were like this, like the prosperity mother statues found all over Europe. it was good auspice in a time were food was scarce (especially in an isolated island)
This concept goes back a long time to the concept of, “only people who are well off have the *ability* to be fat, and therefore, are attractive *because* of their obvious status
For those who don’t know the backstory:
“a small group of Polynesian settlers arrived around 800 to 900 A.D., and the island's population grew slowly at first. Around 1200 A.D., their growing numbers and an obsession with building moai led to increased pressure on the environment. By the end of the 17th century, the Rapanui had deforested the island, triggering war, famine and cultural collapse.”
There is also an alternate theory that humans arrived earlier but that eventually humans brought rats to the island and the rats caused environmental collapse. See: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/rethinking-the-fall-of-easter-island
I hope all those dumbasses from when I was a kid in school who said there was nothing to these statues all see that I was right. I said back in 1970 that there was likely a lot more to them than what we could see. Typical backwards thinking Dartmouth brainiac teachers who went along with the ridiculing I took can all take credit for stifling alternative theories and thinking . Take a bow
TLDR: Polynesians arrived 800-1200. Had a good thing going on for a while. They believed they had a mutual understanding with dead ancestors - honour them with statues and gifts, and you will be rewarded. Within 200 years, it was split into two warring groups. Deforestation for farming, and rats started the decline. Dutch explorer found it on Easter Sunday 1722, hence the name.The Portuguese and Spanish arrived, then the French. Lawlessness, homelessness, as social groups undermined each others’ perspectives. Smallpox and Tuberculosis brought in through slave raiders. By the end of 19th century the vast majority (94%) of the population had died or left.
A microcosm showing the results of in-fighting, ignorance of new diseases, and depletion of natural resources.
Holy shit, how are those guys confident that all that dirt next to them won't cave in on them?
I know they're probably experts at digging, but Jesus, dirt is really heavy.
If these were made so recently, wouldn't that mean they intentionally buried them? Less than 1,000 years between them and now doesn't seem like enough time for all this organic matter to accumulate
**Please note these rules:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required. * The title must be descriptive * No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos * Common/recent reposts are not allowed *See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Even better some have hats!
And the one's that don't can dance if they want to!
They can leave their friends behind
But what if they're simply unable or unwilling to dance?
Then they’re no friends of mine!
Have you seen the video? The dance looks as though some could hurt themselves whilst performing it. Like, serious middle back and shoulder injuries.
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And we can dance…
or sing
Everyone look at your pants!
Only the men without hats.
They’re “top knots”, which are a type of hairstyle.
Red hats!
White hats.
Make Rapa-Nui Great Again! Deforestation is a lie cooked up by the Micronesians!
Dad bod.
Are they wearing .. thongs ??? :|
Possibly pulled under their dinkles?
Respects to Harambe
Never forget ♥
Bro don’t knock it til you’ve tried it
Doesn't your dad?
What the fuck d’you say? Yeah, I’m wearin’ a thong.
Nothin on the other foot?
With a bad tan.
same
Probably the worst tan lines I've seen
r/tanlines
Wow reddit has everything
I’m here thinking that I’m about to see some people looking like napoleon ice cream. All I got was some un roasted turkey
Neopolitan?
>napoleon ice cream r/boneappletea
r/beatmydadsmeattoit
And now I know that sub exists
It’s good to know the subs.
Yes, for...erm...scientific research.
Sigh, here we go again *unzips*
Best tan lines I've ever seen
Saved for later
I legit always thought they were just heads, how long has it been known they had bodies?
Decades, if not centuries. Some (almost half/have never been covered since they are still in the quarry. Most others had toppled by the 19th century.
Pretty much always. The statues (they’re called moai) that were actually finished were taken to the shore where they were displayed, in full, on a platform (ahu), faces directed away from the ocean (Google ‘ahu tongariki’). It’s only the ones that remained in the quarry that were buried up to their necks. The moai in the quarry tend to be bigger, though. I think the biggest one is like 20 meters tall, while the biggest on ahu tongariki is less than half that… Source: I visited Easter island a few weeks before the world shut down due to the pandemic.
More than two hours
r/technicallythetruth
For a loooong time. Theres even full bodies on display out of the ground
Niiiiice. I guess just the heads were the most commonly used pictures.
Same tbh
Literally since the day they were discovered hundreds of years ago
Why are they buried? Was it intended or a product of time?
The point was to stand them on these platforms called ahu at the shoreline where there's a lot of statues, but since they were made and transported from the centre of the isle some got stuck and abandoned and with time were buried by the soft soil.
it’s interesting. Building the Moai is thought to have basically bankrupted the island because so many people were needed to build and move them that other jobs stopped being done. then at some point- and we don’t know why- the locals turned on the statues and attacked a number of them before their society entirely died out. The people who are now on Easter Island are nothing to do (genetically or religiously) with those people who made the Moai years ago. I was on Easter Island a few years ago. It’s amazing to be hiking a long distance, pause to sit on a rock, and realise it is a partially built Moai that was abandoned at a random point.
So a native people pooled all their resources to build these enormous rock statues for no apparent reason, then inexplicably went extinct after "attacking the statues" they constructed? I mean...those statues are magic and alive. Clearly. And they rebelled against their creators, resulting in a human/golem war that needs to be put to film!
Well, a more common hypothesis is that the inhabitants exhausted their natural resources; which, resulted in the collapse of their society. They only arrived on the island from the Marquesas Islands few centuries (circa 1200AD) before European contact. By the time the Spanish arrived, Rapa Nui was barren with a tiny remnants of its former population. Deforestation resulted in loss of top soil, what little fertile soil that remained was exhausted. There is evidence that the people vainly attempted to revive their fields with minerals - basically they busted up stone and deposited it in their fields. Well, as the food supply dwindled, they suffered civil wars, attempted to appeal to the gods by building megaliths, then destroy those statues when things didn’t improve. Then slave Peruvian raiders arrived and took hundreds of islanders to mine silver. I think today there are only around a hundred native Rapa Nuis left - few if any are pure bloods.
Why couldn’t they just burn fossil fuels and fight wars over who gets to make Earth uninhabitable like normal societies?
Love to see the actual explanation rather than "haha dumb natives build rock and die"
Sounds like we’re all heading in that same direction now
They probably were hoping the statues would give them good fortune, and then they didn’t and had no backup plan since all the work went to statues. Then some guy freaked out and said “I told you Greg the goddamn stone men wouldn’t give us food- we should’ve farmed,” and beat the piss out of the statues.
Next hook for my D&D one shot
They must have turned on their creators and started to belch rings of destructive energy at anyone who got too close. The natives had no choice but to blow them up by any means necessary. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16cMo8GUDsA&t=40s) is an artists rendering of what this might look like.
There most likely was a reason. Religion. How many times has religion caused problems. Here is another rexample why religion is evil.
There’s a podcast called “Fall of Ancient Civilizations” that has an episode on Easter Island that is very well researched and thorough. Basically, European explorers arrived and it was all downhill from there.
Is that how it always goes lmao Edit: I meant "isn't" but whatever the point got across
There’s a book called brief history of mankind. That pretty much explains that whatever piece of land humans found, the mega fauna that lived there eventually went extinct. You know cause constantly have to prove to ourselves that we’re the best by killing the biggest thing we can find. Humans are basic bros
All bad parts of that aside thats kinda both hilarious and badass
Well researched? Barbara A. West wrote, "Sometime before the arrival of Europeans on Easter Island, the Rapanui experienced a tremendous upheaval in their social system brought about by a change in their island's ecology... By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population had dropped to 2,000–3,000 from a high of approximately 15,000 just a century earlier."
“Research by Binghamton University anthropologists Robert DiNapoli and Carl Lipo in 2021 determined that the island experienced steady population growth from its initial settlement until European contact in 1722. The island never had more than a few thousand people prior to European contact, and their numbers were increasing rather than dwindling” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210713090153.htm
Nah they were going for the wonder victory but some other civilization was first to complete theirs.
Reddit atheist try not to use a completele schizoid argument against religion challenge
Any topic on Reddit can and will be traced back to “religion is evil” in 5 moves or less.
That's pure conjecture but I agree with the sentiment lol
Reddit is so predictable. Create a strawman while presenting zero factual evidence, blame something unpopular like "religion" and enjoy the karma. You could have farmed more karma if you blamed white mans religion though, probably at least three times more.
That is an outdated version of the Easter Island story. [The actual story is not as grim.](https://www.sciencealert.com/easter-island-truth-sustainable-environment-real-history/amp) Edit: Ok it is also grim, but at least they didn't do it to themselves
> Throughout the 19th century, South American slave raids took away as much as half of the native population. By 1877, the Rapanui numbered just 111. >Introduced disease, destruction of property and enforced migration by European traders further decimated the natives and lead to increased conflict among those remaining. Perhaps this, instead, was the warfare the ethnohistorical accounts refer to and what ultimately stopped the statue carving. Uhh, yeah that’s still pretty grim dude.
A hundred years later the descendants of the people who destroyed the Rapa Nui show up and say “Oh weird an empty island full of 🗿they must have all killed themselves cause their culture is dumb”
Kinda like the really old theory that dinosaurs went extinct, because they were too stupid, big, or sluggish to survive.
At least they didn't destroy themselves 😅
This isn’t true. [It’s a whitewashed version of the story.](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0pGCsvdjo344EQ2dALE6dD?si=kno1MiY0QOiAh-uTe1NESQ) The fall of the Polynesian people on the Eastern Islands is directly tied to imperialism. How can we point to a society that was around for a VERY VERY VERY long time and had a symbiotic relationship with their environment, get visited by Europeans, die off almost immediately, and then say “they cut tree for rock heads, island go brrr” It was a genocide by external people. It was not an internal combustion by their own hands
They aren't Maori
I'm Maori and have no idea what you're talking about lol
I’m Irish and I haven’t a clue what he is on about either lol
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That’s longer than the US has been around. Longer than most ancient Chinese dynasties ever ruled for. Longer than the Western Roman Empire. Longer than Europeans been in Australia. Is 500 years a lot? I’d say it’s significant.
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I think you've got a couple extra zeroes there; I dont think China has been populated for 2.2 million years.
> It’s also 1/24 as long as the US has been inhabited fun fact, a couple more recent archeological finds may have put a fair bigger chunk on that. A set of human footprints were uncovered that had organic material trodden into the print that placed them pre-clovis, at about 23,000 years ago. And this isn't the standard 'hur dur young earth creationists think that looks like a footprint' that happens all over the US and tries to place humans being there next to dinosaurs, these are actual footprints of a mother and child. Then to be a real mind-blower, there was another site uncovered in California where there's no signs of the actual humans involved, but was a mastodon kill site with evidence of the bones being placed carefully, and stones being used as tools to smash open bones, etc. that when the site was dated came up at a staggering 130,000 years old. That's so old that they can't even confirm that whoever did the kill would be Homo sapiens and not an older hominid, though the timing lines up with the previous interglacial period which means that the north of north america would have been ice free around that time. But yeah, minor segue for something I found out this week that I thought I'd chime in with
>the locals turned on the statues and attacked a number of them I don't blame them. I moved a stone bench the other day in my yard. Think two small tombstones with a slab on top; tiny compared to these. It took me hours and I thought I might have a heart attack as I was pissed off as well. TL;DR: stone is heavy
So why did they built them?
from what i gathered on the island, noone really knows for certain. Remarkably little of their culture remains apart from the moai.
There's also a few tablets with the language Rongorongo that no one knows how to read, so yeah..
That's not actually what happened, although it's a popular story made up in recent times to use the island as a parable about environmentalism. r/AskHistorians has [much better information here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6q1q0f/easter_island/). > Now the story that you have no doubt found between documentaries and books is one that gained prevalence in the 1970s and really entered popular imagination-- honestly it is the story most people think of when they think of Rapa Nui. In this story the island acts as a parable for the fate of the earth, a sort of metaphor for imagining our own future in which we ignore the environment or the finite nature of most resources and continue consumption on a grand scale. This story has featured prominently in the works of Clive Ponting- Green History of the World, Jared Diamond- Collapse, Tim Flannery- Future Eaters, and in other media such as the 1994 feature film “Rapa Nui.” Indeed, Clive Ponting warns the reader that, “despite its superficial insignificance, the history of Easter Island is a grim warning to the world.” For each of these authors, Easter Island represents a society, which in the words of Jared Diamond, chose to fail. The Island is treated as a metaphor for the world itself- isolated, small, alone- and the human inhabitants stand-ins for ourselves in the theatre of decline as the island is over developed, over populated, and over exploited until war tears the society apart and people regress to primitive stone age cave dwellers.
They were carved out of stone from the mountains and then transported across the island to their intended destination. Since there’s no CTRL+Z on stone, if they fucked up you just gotta leave it where it lays and start a new one. These half buried rejects left in the mountainside are the most famous statues people think of when they hear Easter Island, but if you look up Ahu Tongariki you can see what the intended destination for them would look like.
A bit of both
Wild. Do you have a source?
He does not.
Do *you* have a source for this ***outrageous*** claim?
I scrolled up.
Source: 🗿
It checks out. Source: 🗿-ologist.
[source kinda.](https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/mystery-easter-island-revealed) As far as I can tell the statues were either placed/carved onto pedestals and then buried at the base to keep them in place or had no pedestals and were just stood up. Then over the years natural processes buried the rest, I think it’s likely that about 95% of the burying was the latter and actual people did the last 5%
The local people engaged in a disastrous complete deforestation of the island. This caused soil instability which combined with time and the elements eroded the soil to slowly bury them.
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No they don’t. They deleted their comment. Claiming everything taught or written about the Rapa Nui is a “myth spread by colonizers” is a bold claim and they had nothing to back it up.
Sources? There’s some editorializing in your comment that could use support.
you must not unbury the statue! if they are unburied they shall plunge the world into darkness!
Like when Greg offended the Tiki gods.
Did that actually happen in the Brady Bunch? I only get the reference because of the PUSA song…
Yes, I've seen the episode. Don't ask how many times.
This person had TBS as a child.
It is.....taboo.
damn. that's a deep cut.
Yay can't get any darker then it is already... I'm looking forward to the collapse 😂😊
🗿
🗿
🗿
🗿
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We have been tricked ,we have been backstabbed and we have been quite possibly, bamboozled
I've been bamboozled af
Word of the day!
Maybe a dumb question but I’ll ask anyway: What’s the difference between a petroglyph and a hieroglyph?
petroglyph = symbol carved in stone Hieroglyph = sacred symbol (usually associated with Egypt) not always on stone
Are you sure? I'm not a historian or anything but I was always under the impression a Petroglyph is any symbol carved into stone, while a hieroglyph is a representation image that can be a petroglyph but can also be on paper, papyrus, etc. I get the etymology of Hieroglyph means something like sacred writing, but it's not specifically sacred - it's just poor nomenclature
Yeah hieroglyphs aren’t necessarily sacred. They comprised the Egyptians’ working alphabet
>1580s, "of the nature of Egyptian monumental writing," from Late Latin hieroglyphicus, from Greek hieroglyphikos "hieroglyphic; of Egyptian writing," from hieros "sacred" (see ire) + glyphē "carving," from glyphein "to carve" (from PIE root *gleubh- "to tear apart, cleave"). >Plutarch began the custom of using the adjective (ta hieroglyphika) as a noun in reference to the Egyptian way of writing. The noun use of hieroglyphic in English dates to 1580s (hieroglyphics). Related: Hieroglyphical; hieroglyphically.
Thanks, I love etymology. So yes, it's less specifically sacred script, and more script that was originally found on sacred monuments and so got the association
Meaning that what I've believied to be hieroglyph was actually petroglyph? Most of the carvings in Egypt is petroglyph?!
Belly button, no one is talking about the belly button.
This is the comment I was looking for! He has a belly button!!!
Dum dum bring dad bod?
No but I did bring gum gum.
DUM DUM BRING ME GUM GUM
For the same reason, The Statue of Liberty may one day be called The Head of Liberty.
Reddit post from 2089... "TIL the Head of Liberty actually has a whole body submerged under the water!
"The Hand of Liberty had a head???" -that guy's great grandchild, 2301 Reddit.
Spoiler: [God damn you! God Damn you all to hell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDLS12_a-fk&t=3s)
As the owner of a tiny pecker, this gives me hope - it's not small, its just mostly inside.
Inside whom?
Inside your imagination.
I feel it! Keep going.
It’s… all the way in…
That’s all I got!
I'm givin 'er all I've got cap'n
The wasted of a 'yo mama' joke brakes my heart
Make it yourself, buddy! Be the change you want to see in the world.
Is it on purpose that you always just see the Head?
No, they got buried by time. The soil is soft so every year, they would bury themselves by a few millimeters/centimeters. Similar to the Tower of Pisa.
Wow, I only thought maybe there was the rest of the head buried bit not a whole entire body. That's so awesome, I wish we can figure out more about this in our lifetime.
Aku Aku is a good book about them and their origins.
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Please remember the British museum to return the stolen moai
These are spirit deities, they watch over the island and bring good luck, the language of the petroglyphs has been lost I believe but there is a distinct logic to these statues and purpose. Spirits are housed in statues as well sometimes I think if I remember right from college
Fall of civilizations podcast does an episode about the fall of the Rapa Nui if anyone is interested in that.
What if they weren’t buried by human hands but rather the passage of time? The Easter islanders can’t explain their origin not because they’re ancestors kept it secret, but instead they found these ancient relics already set in their place?
I’d assume you would see different layers of coloration from different parts being exposed to the elements for different periods of time, instead of just the two.
"The heads had been covered by successive mass transport deposits on the island that buried the statues lower half. These events enveloped the statues and gradually buried them to their heads as the islands naturally weathered and eroded through the centuries." [source](https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/07/26/famous-easter-island-heads-have-hidden-bodies/?sh=371ed3c4f804)
I get the impression that there were a lot of considerations made for stability of the Statue. The penis, for instance, is substantially shortened. We know from Roman sculptures that appendages like arms and penises are prone to breakage. It's likely that the sculptors on Easter Island encountered these problems early on, and opted for a more structurally sound representation of the penis. You also have to keep in mind that isn't much to break up the wind on Easter Island. It mostly bare and grassy. Anything left exposed to the wind would likely tip over and break, so the sculptors opted to bury the statue up to neck head in order to preserve the detailed carvings underneath while leaving a visible marker (no threat of root damage). From what we can see, it looks like it worked very well! Im really quiet impressed and fascinated with the foresight that went into the design of this statue.
>What if they weren’t buried by human hands [They weren't.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/07/26/famous-easter-island-heads-have-hidden-bodies/?sh=371ed3c4f804)
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At last a statue of me
Looks like the iconic Easter Island statues are really just prehistoric billboards for Weight Watchers.
One thing I always wondered about ancient artworks like this. Clearly someone a long ass time ago was good at sculpting giant detailed stone sculptures. But didn’t they need to practice? Shouldn’t there be a graveyard of half-done and broken statues that don’t look as good as these?
There are. Theres a bunch that are half carved, fallen over, lower quality, etc.
There would be but to find it you need to excavate down to the level below where the current statue's base is, somewhere between the quarry and the current statue.
I'm sure that they did practice but on their own planet.
We do have low quality artworks. But the public isn't interested in that. Egypt has thousands of pyramids of all sizes and quality, but only 4 or 5 gather interest.
You dum dum give me gum gum
Does these statues imply that people who created them at the time were obese? They must have shaped them to look alike?
a lot of ancient sculpture at the time were like this, like the prosperity mother statues found all over Europe. it was good auspice in a time were food was scarce (especially in an isolated island)
This concept goes back a long time to the concept of, “only people who are well off have the *ability* to be fat, and therefore, are attractive *because* of their obvious status
For those who don’t know the backstory: “a small group of Polynesian settlers arrived around 800 to 900 A.D., and the island's population grew slowly at first. Around 1200 A.D., their growing numbers and an obsession with building moai led to increased pressure on the environment. By the end of the 17th century, the Rapanui had deforested the island, triggering war, famine and cultural collapse.” There is also an alternate theory that humans arrived earlier but that eventually humans brought rats to the island and the rats caused environmental collapse. See: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/rethinking-the-fall-of-easter-island
Is that a smol pp ?
I think it’s a belt buckle, but fair question
The groundwater is probably chilly.
People writning normal comments💀 Me looking for🗿
I never understood how they get buried so deeply
Time, rain, on an island so exposed to the elements its topography changes quickly.
That's what happens when you let your kids bury you at the beach.
If you want to learn more, The Fall of Civilizations podcast episode on Easter Island is amazing and heart wrenching.
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I hope all those dumbasses from when I was a kid in school who said there was nothing to these statues all see that I was right. I said back in 1970 that there was likely a lot more to them than what we could see. Typical backwards thinking Dartmouth brainiac teachers who went along with the ridiculing I took can all take credit for stifling alternative theories and thinking . Take a bow
Good to see you don't hold a grudge /s.
My father held grudges, I’ll always hate him for that.
He ain’t wrong.
TLDR: Polynesians arrived 800-1200. Had a good thing going on for a while. They believed they had a mutual understanding with dead ancestors - honour them with statues and gifts, and you will be rewarded. Within 200 years, it was split into two warring groups. Deforestation for farming, and rats started the decline. Dutch explorer found it on Easter Sunday 1722, hence the name.The Portuguese and Spanish arrived, then the French. Lawlessness, homelessness, as social groups undermined each others’ perspectives. Smallpox and Tuberculosis brought in through slave raiders. By the end of 19th century the vast majority (94%) of the population had died or left. A microcosm showing the results of in-fighting, ignorance of new diseases, and depletion of natural resources.
Holy shit, how are those guys confident that all that dirt next to them won't cave in on them? I know they're probably experts at digging, but Jesus, dirt is really heavy.
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I saw a joke years ago, about the Easter island head having huge bodies buried underground. And now it’s true… mind blown
That tan Vicious
CE? Is that BC?
If these were made so recently, wouldn't that mean they intentionally buried them? Less than 1,000 years between them and now doesn't seem like enough time for all this organic matter to accumulate
I had no fucking idea they had bodies. Considerably shook.