Scientists make Easter Island statue walk

Is the mystery about how the gigant statues were moved finally sovled? Researchers Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo haved tested a new theory that suggests how ancient Easter Islanders may have used ropes to "walk" the moai to their platforms. This video from National Geographic was published on YouTube 21st June 2012.

According to National Geographic`s article, Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer whose Pacific expeditions helped ignite the world’s curiosity about Easter Island, thought the statues had been created by pre-Inca from Peru, not by Polynesians. Erich von Däniken, the best-selling Swiss author of Chariots of the Gods, was sure the moai were built by stranded extraterrestrials. Modern science—linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence—has proved the moai builders were Polynesian but not how they moved their creations. Researchers have tended to assume the ancestors dragged the statues somehow, using a lot of ropes and wood. “The experts can say whatever they want,” says Suri Tuki, 25, José Tuki’s half brother. “But we know the truth. The statues walked.” In the Rapanui oral tradition, the moai were animated by mana, a spiritual force transmitted by powerful ancestors.

Watch an animated movie on National Geographic`s website introducing 5 theories about how the gigant status were transported.