For many years it has been supposed that the inland moai of Easter Island were simply those giant monoliths that did not make it to the coast. Either too heavy to move further or broken by the arduous journey using pulleys, they were simply abandoned.
A new team of academics from the United Kingdom have come up with an alternative suggestion – and perhaps the moai are finally to give up their last secret. The monoliths, it is now argued, played a pivotal role in the island’s road system and were left in their places much more specifically than the old consensus ever suggested.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
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The real mystery is how the UCL's convoluted "new" theory about something that anybody who knows anything about Easter Island already knows is all over the internet (mind you, these are the same people who would have you believe they "discovered" the meaning of the statues' red scoria topknots/headdresses). The quarry and the roads were sacred & offerings were made there to insure that things ran smoothly, on that we agree. What's ridiculous is their claim that the statues on the roads weren't going anywhere; those statues do NOT have the cavities where you can inlay a set of eyes; the statues were receptacles for the spirits of deified ancestors and eyes were placed on the them for ceremonies after they had been raised on the ahu platforms--the eyes enabled the spirit to enter the statue turning it from moai (statue) into an Aringa Ora (living face). The statues on the roads and at the quarry were the "newest" ones, made for closer-related ancestors and just 100 years ago people still remembered many of the statues' names and who they were made for. After statue-carving ceased and when the ahu platforms were being destroyed, some people started to make offerings to the statues that remained on the roads and at the quarry beseeching their ancestors for help when, in a twist, they felt abandoned by the gods. I guess serious researchers don't get published as much because they don't go around claiming scientific "breakthroughs" every year. I agree with the team that the main question isn't how, but why and I applaud the team's highlighting the spiritual side of things, but they seem to have gotten so carried away with it they've let it affect their better judgment.
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