Rapanui, Easter Island
Statues That Walked
Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island
Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, 2011, West Slope 996.18 Hunt
Hypothesis - Moai are multipurpose. They provide roosts for seabirds, safe from rats, and provide a little food and fertilizer (collects on ahu platforms?). Moai are "personalized" to be claimed by individuals or clan groups.
Hunt/Lipo studies in 2001
- p002 rolling hills, less than 1 MY old
p004 Te Pito o te Henua, "navel of the world" or end of the world
- p004 double-hulled canoes soon after 1200AD, against prevailing winds and currents,
- p004 tacking four times further than straight-line distance, 12500 miles from Raritonga, 30 to 100 men and women
- p005 63 square miles, 14 mi E/W, 8 mi N/S
- p005 chief Hotu Matu'a, found island by following seabirds to their nests
- p005 taro, breadfruit, coconut, yams, bananas. sugarcane, tumeric, kava, chickens, maybe Polynesian rats (Rattus exulans)
- pigs and dogs did not make it to islands
- p006 1722 Dutch Jacob Roggeveen Easter Sunda 1722 (treeless. 3000 healthy people)
- p006 1770 Spanish
- p007 1774 James Cook 700 destitute people
- p008 1786 La Perouse
- p009 1914 Katherine Routledge
- p009 1955 Thor Heyerdahl and Wulliam Mulloy
- p010 Heyerdahl putative AD 1680 event, hypothetical ecocide, then Diamond
- p013 Anakena Beach (middle of north shore) putative landing site
- p015 Excavating beach, found human evidence (charcoal, bones. obsidian) AD 1200, then root mold casts below, no humans
- p019 Millions of giant palms when first settlers arrived
p021 Dutch saw distant woodlands, 1868 Palmer saw Jubaea palms in 1868
- p022 1977 John Flenley dates change to 1500, 1999 Mann and Rankin erosion and forest loss between 1280 and 1650
p027 Steve Athens theory: Polynesian rats ("prodigeous climbers") ate seeds and nuts (like Lord Howe Island)
p038 Manavai small rock-wall enclosures, 1 to 6 feet high, protect crops from wind and conserve moisture and nutrients, enclose 6.4 square miles
- p043 1996 Joan Wozniak lithic mulching
- p048 Hans-Rudolph Bork: more than a billion stones massing 2 million tonnes,
- islanders travelled 8 aggregate million miles over 500 years (not much! That's 40 miles per day summed over all islanders
- p057 El Camino de los Moai