Ara o te, the moai road

Halfway up the side of the Rano Raraku volcano and buried up to their chests, more than a hundred giant statues (Moai) never reached the sanctuary (Ahu) for which they were destined. Carved out of the quarry, they were lowered by ropes to an open pit on the slope where they could be stood in an erect position and finished. There many stayed forever, some buried up to the neck. The American geologist Charles M. Love and his crew excavated sections of the four main roads which served to transport those Moai to the different Ahu, stone platforms located all around the island creating a sacred ring.

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Four roads, each approximately 10 meters (33 feet) wide but with an area of actual use of some 5.5 meters (18 feet) wide, were built to transport the Moai from the quarry at Rano Raraku to their final locations. The length of these roads varies between 1.5 km (not quite one mile) and 20 km (12.4 miles). Some of these roads have side roads going to a specific Ahu. In total, there were probably around 40 km (25 miles) of roads along which 48 statues have been abandoned on the way, a silent testimony to the abrupt end of Moai building,

The road along the south coast is the best one with 29 abandoned Moai. A second road crosses the interior of the Island with two branches heading west and at least 15 abandoned Moai on the way. On a third road which carried Moai to the many Ahu on the north coast, there are another four fallen statues along the wayside. Finally, there is one very short road of only 1 km (about 1,100 yards) which connects the Rano Raraku quarry with the great Ahu of Tongariki and its 15 Moai. Some parts of the roads were originally excavated in the bedrock of the Island, made up principally of hardened lava of a type known as Pahoehoe.

It is thought that entire mountains were scraped away to make the Moai. The lighter volcanic rock can be cut away relatively easily with tools of basalt and obsidian, to give the statues their basic form within the quarry. Later they were removed and half buried to permit their makers to sculpt the details.

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It is not known exactly how they were transported to their final destination. One theory is that the process used tree trunks as rollers. Another theory posits that they were moved by rocking them with ropes. In 1956, Luis Atan, the then mayor of Rapa Nui, demonstrated to Thor Heyerdahl that, with twelve men using only shovels and stones, he could raise and settle a 9-ton statue into its original place on a platform, at Ahu Ature Huki at Anakena.

The American geologist, Charles Love, believes that the statues were moved in an upright position. To test his idea, he made a replica of a statue in concrete and tried to move it on a sledge over tree trunks. A group of volunteers raised the statue by pulling on ropes and then kept up the tension so that it wouldn’t fall over while being moved. The system worked, but in reality only some of the Moai had a base that was sufficiently broad to work under this method of transport.

All the roads were built by excavating and then artificially filling them to level and avoid brusque slopes. In some places, the fill reached down to a depth of 1 meter (more than 3 feet) and served as a dyke to catch the sediment that was washed down by erosion. A great many of these roads have been destroyed during the 20th Century, by livestock ranching, massive forestry plantations in the 1970s and 80s, and by the recent changes in the system of landholding.

Oddly, the roads are not flat; the cross-section shows the characteristic form of a “V” or a “U”. In some stretches, the roads are flanked by rows of rocks. It is surprising to see that these rocks are sometimes not just placed there, but are actually fitted into holes carved into the bedrock. An important detail is that this type of carved support is found in those sections where the road has an ascending incline. Dr. Love is looking at the possibility that these carvings were made to accommodate some type of mechanism which would move the gigantic stones heads over uneven areas where, otherwise, they would have required an enormous amount of energy. There are still important unknown aspects of the system that the Easter Islanders used to transport and raise their mysterious stone statues.

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