Moai

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Ahu Tongariki, restored in the 1990s

This is about the statues of Easter Island, for the seamount see Moai (seamount)

Main article: Easter Island

Moai or "Moˀai" are monolithic human figures carved from rock on Rapa Nui / Easter Island, mostly between 1250 and 1500 CE. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku the main Moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on Ahu (platforms) which were mostly at the islands perimeter. Almost all have overly large heads three fifths the size of their body. The Moai are the “living faces” (aringa ora) and representations of chiefly, deified ancestors.[1] Sitting on their Ahus with their backs to the sea, these statues were still gazing across their clan lands when European first visited the island, but most were then cast down during conflict between different clans on the island.

The production and transportation process required significant intellect, use of resources, and creativity, and is considered a remarkable feat of human endeavour.[2] The tallest moai erected, "Paro", was almost 10 metres (33 ft) high and weighed 75 tonnes (74 Imperial tons, 83 short tons) [3] the heaviest erected was a shorter but squatter moai at Ahu Tongariki which weighed 86 tonnes; while one unfinished sculpture would have been approximately 21 metres (69 ft) tall with a weight of about 270 short tons.

Map of Easter Island using Moai to show locations of Ahus

Description

The Moai are a giant form of statues that are widespread across Polynesia, there is some evidence that ever larger Moai were carved during the islands statue building phase. Almost all follow a minimal style with overlarge heads (a three to five ratio between the head and the body), simplified torsos, arms almost blurred into the body, hands meeting below the navel and usually no legs.

Rano Raraku Moai buried to their shoulders

Though Moai are whole body statues, they are often described simply as "heads". This is partly because of the disproportionate size of most moai heads, and partly because from the invention of photography until the 1950s the only Moai standing on the island were the statues on the slopes of Rano Raraku, many of which are buried to their shoulders. Some of the "heads" at Rano Raraku have been excavated and their bodies seen, and observed to have markings that had been protected from erosion by their burial.

Material Properties

Tukuturi at Rano Raraku, this is the only kneeling Moai and one of the few made of red scoria.

All but 53 of the 887 moai known to date were carved from tuff (a compressed volcanic ash) from Rano Raraku, where 394 moai and incomplete moai are still visible today (there are also 13 moai carved from basalt, 22 from trachyte and 17 from fragile red scoria[4]).

Characteristics

Eyes

Moai at Ahu Tahai, this Tuff Moai with Pukao was re-erected and restored with coral & red scoria eyes by the American archaeologist William Mulloy

In 1979 archaeologist Sonia Haoa discovered that the deep eye sockets were designed to hold coral eyes with either black obsidian or red scoria pupils. Once the broken fragments of white coral were found to fit together to form an eye many previously uncategorised finds in the Easter Island museum were re-examined and recategorized as eye fragments. Replica eyes have been constructed and placed in some statues.

Pukao topknots and headdresses

Main article: Pukao
File:Moai and Esmeralda.jpg
Moai with pukao and replica eyes on Ahu Ko Te Riku in Hanga Roa, with Chilean Navy training ship Buque Escuela Esmeralda behind.

Some Moai had Pukao on their heads, these were carved out of red scoria, a very light rock from a quarry at Puna Pau.

Markings (post stone working)

When first carved the surface of the Moai was polished smooth by rubbing with pumice. Unfortunately the easily worked Tuff from which most moai were carved is also easily eroded, and today the best place to see the surface detail is by looking at the few Moai carved from Basalt or at photographs and other records made by archaeologists of Moai surfaces protected by burial.

Those Moai that aren't too eroded typically have designs carved on their backs and posteriors, the Routledge expedition of 1914 established a cultural link [5] between these designs and the islands tattooing tradition which had been repressed by missionaries half a century earlier. Until modern DNA analysis of the islanders and their ancestors this was a key scientific proof that the Moai had been carved by the Rapa Nui and not by a separate group from South America.

At least some of the Moai were painted, Hoa Hakananai'a was decorated with red and white paint until 1868 when it was removed from the island.

History

The statues were carved by the Polynesian colonizers of the island, mostly between circa 1250 CE and 1500 CE.[6] In addition to representing deceased ancestors, the moai, once they were erected on Ahus, may also have been regarded as the embodiment of powerful living or former chiefs and important lineage status symbols.

Completed statues were moved to Ahu (ceremonial platforms) mostly on the coast. Then erected, sometimes with red stone cylinders (pukao) on their heads. Moai must have been extremely expensive to craft and transport; not only would the actual carving of each statue require effort and resources, but the finished product was then hauled to its final location and erected.

The quarries in Rano Raraku appear to have been abandoned abruptly, with a litter of stone tools, many completed Moai outside the quarry awaiting transport and almost as many incomplete statues still in situ as were installed on Ahus. In the nineteenth century this led to conjecture that the island was the remnant of a sunken continent and that most completed moai were under the sea. That idea has long been debunked, and now it is understood that:

  • Some statues were rock carvings and never intended to be completed.
  • Some were incomplete because when inclusions were encountered the carvers would abandon a partial statue and start a new one [7] (Tuff is a soft rock with occasional lumps of much harder rock included in it).
  • Some completed statues at Rano Raraku were placed there permanently and not parked temporarily awaiting removal [8]
  • And some were indeed incomplete when the statue building era came to an end.


Ahu Akivi, the furthest inland of all the Ahus.

Craftsmen

The moai were either carved by a distinguished class of professional carvers who were comparable in status to high-ranking members of other Polynesian craft guilds, or alternatively by members of each clan. The oral histories show that the Rano Raraku quarry was subdivided into different territories for each clan.

Transportation

Early European drawing of moai, in the lower half of a 1770 Spanish map of Easter Island

It is not known exactly how the moai were moved across the island but the process almost certainly required human energy, ropes, and possibly wooden sledges and/or rollers; as well as leveled tracks across the island (the Easter Island roads). Oral histories and current science currently support the theory that the main method was that the moai were "walked" by a rocking process. (Pavel Pavel and his successful experiment[9] showed that only 17 people with ropes are needed for relatively fast transportation of moderately small statues and suggest this technique could be scaled to move larger statues as well).

Since the island was treeless by the time the Europeans first visited, the movement of the statues was for a long time a mystery; pollen analysis has now established that the island was almost totally forested until 1200 CE. The tree pollen disappeared from the record by 1650 and the statues stopped being made around that time.

1722 - 1825 the toppling of the Moai

Between the 1722 Roggeveen visit and 1838 all of the Moai that had been erected on Ahus were toppled, leaving few Moai standing apart from the partially buried ones on the outer slopes of Rano Raraku. Oral histories indicate that this was part of internecine conflict among the islanders rather than earthquake or other cause. Moai were usually toppled forwards to have their faces hidden, and often were toppled in such a way that their necks broke. Today about 50 moai have been re-erected on their Ahus or museums elsewhere.

Removal

Disembodied moai fragment, at the Pavillon des Sessions in the Musée du Louvre, Paris

Eleven or more moai have been removed from the island and transported to locations around the world, including six out of the thirteen Moai that were carved from Basalt. They can be seen in:

Belgium

Britain

Chile

France

New Zealand

USA

Unconfirmed

Preservation

The Rapa Nui National Park and the moai are included in the UNESCO world heritage list of 1994, and consequently the 1972 UN convention concerning the protection of the world's cultural and natural heritage.

The EISP (Easter Island Statue Project) is the latest research and documentation project of the moai on Rapa Nui and the artifacts held in museums overseas. The purpose of the project is to understand the figures' original use, context, and meaning, with the results being provided to the Rapa Nui families and the island’s public agencies that are responsible for conservation and preservation of the moai.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ http://ioa.ucla.edu/eisp/rapanui/rapanui.htm
  2. ^ http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/715
  3. ^ New Scientist, 29 July, 2006, pp. 30-34
  4. ^ VAN TILBURG, Jo Anne. 1994. Easter Island: Archaeology, Ecology and Culture. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. page 24
  5. ^ Katherine Routledge (1919) The Mystery of Easter Island ISBN 0-932813-48-8 page 220
  6. ^ Steven R Fischer The island at the end of the world. Reaktion Books 2005 ISBN1 86189 282 9
  7. ^ Katherine Routledge (1919) The Mystery of Easter Island ISBN 0-932813-48-8 page 181
  8. ^ Katherine Routledge (1919) The Mystery of Easter Island ISBN 0-932813-48-8 page 186
  9. ^ Thor Heyerdahl, Arne Skjølsvold, and Pavel Pavel The "Walking" Moai of Easter Island
  10. ^ http://ioa.ucla.edu/eisp/history/historyframe.htm
  11. ^ http://thelope.com/archive/2006_04_01_archive.html

References

  • Grant McCall (1995). "Rapanui (Easter Island)." Pacific Islands Year Book 17th Edition. Fiji Times. Retrieved August 8, 2005.
  • Thor Heyerdahl, Arne Skjølsvold, and Pavel Pavel The "Walking" Moai of Easter Island. Retrieved August 8, 2005.
  • Kathy Pelta (2001). Rediscovering Easter Island. North Minneapolis, USA:Lerner Publications. ISBN 0-8225-4890-9.
  • Rupert Matthews (1988). Ancient Mysteries. East Sussex, England:Wayland. ISBN 0-531-18246-0.
  • Jo Anne Van Tilburg (2001) "Easter Island." In P.N. Peregine and M. Ember (eds.) Encyclopedia of Prehistory, Volume 3: East Asia and Oceania. New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers with the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University. ISBN 0-306-46257-5 http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/ioa/esip/
  • Katherine Routledge (1919) The Mystery of Easter Island ISBN 0-932813-48-8 - contains details of the Routledge expedition of 1914

27°6′51.23″S 109°21′50.38″W / 27.1142306°S 109.3639944°W / -27.1142306; -109.3639944

External links

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