{"id":10224,"date":"2019-08-13T15:08:24","date_gmt":"2019-08-13T15:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/the-failure-of-the-moai\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T00:46:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T00:46:24","slug":"the-failure-of-the-moai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/the-failure-of-the-moai\/","title":{"rendered":"The Failure of the Moai"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Failure of the Moai<\/strong><\/h1>\n


Testimonials and legends confirm that there were difficult times.\u00a0 Juan Tepano, a major source for Routledge, Macmillan Brown and Metraux, told them that when he was young the old people spoke of the \u201cfailure of the overthrown statues\u201d.\u00a0 He also remembered a story about when the Moai (statue) Paro at Ahu Te Pito Kura on the northern coast, which according to tradition had been the last one erected, was taken down.\u00a0 \u201cA Tupahotu woman was killed and eaten by the Tu\u00b4u people. Her son showed his devotion to her by shutting up in a cave more than 30 people who were from the place where the crime was committed.\u00a0 The Moai was also a victim of this battle.\u00a0 Great ropes were tied around his neck and vengeful warriors pulled on them to throw the statue to the ground.\u00a0 The enormous structure fell face forward.\u201d

But not all Moai seem to have been brought down intentionally and violently during tribal wars.\u00a0 In various excavations, older platforms were found buried under more recent constructions, some of which were rebuilt up to eight times in periods dating between the 13th Century and the 17th Century.\u00a0 It has been seen that some of the platforms were used over a relatively short period of time of no more than two or three generations, then were dismantled by rather complicated methods and partially reused in new platforms.\u00a0 The archaeologist Jos\u00e9 Miguel Ramirez thinks that, due to the need to adjust to new critical situations that arose in each period, the platforms were transformed.\u00a0 In some of them chambers were built in their interior to receive the bones of the dead, a practice which replaced the more ancient practice of cremation due to the lack of firewood from deforestation.<\/p>\n

Clearly there was an ecological crisis, but it didn\u2019t necessarily cause the destruction of the platforms or the overthrow of the statues.\u00a0 It did, however, mean the end of megalithic construction, the production of the giant statues.\u00a0 No new Ahu-Moai (platforms with statues) were made after the 18th Century.\u00a0 Those statues which were left in the quarry of Rano Raraku don\u2019t seem to have been intended for platforms, but possibly were being made to convert the extinct volcano into a new sacred center, perhaps as part of the cult of the \u201cBird-Man\u201d which lasted for 200 years, from approximately 1680 until the arrival of the Christian missionaries in 1864.<\/p>\n

The proof is in the different styles that characterize the giants distributed throughout the Island and those which remained in the quarry, the appearance of cave painting, essentially in the service of the god Make-Make, and the development of the ritual of Tangata Manu, or bird-man.<\/p>\n

The big question still remains : What really happened that the production of the Moai stopped seemingly from one day to the next and was then slowly replaced with a cultural and religious change?

The history of Polynesia is an enormous puzzle with many pieces still to be found.\u00a0 It is not enough to peer into the scarce memories of the elderly Rapanui.\u00a0 The oral tradition of the Waitaha, a pre-Maori Polynesian tribe in New Zealand, also speaks of the failure of the statues on Easter Island.\u00a0 According to this tale, the statues of Te Pito o te Henua, the sacred isle of their ancestors, were made to placate the wrath of Ruaumoko, the terrifying god of the lands and seas.\u00a0 When this story was told to 81-year-old Papiano Ika Tuki, the last resident of the old leprosarium, he answered with difficulty : \u201dNot Ruaumoko \u2026 Uoke.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Uoke is certainly an ancient god of Easter Island mythology, presented as the god of devastation.<\/p>\n

Great devastation could have occurred. The report from the 1975 Spanish speleological expedition, \u201cOperacion Rapa Nui\u201d, confirms that Rano Aroi could have erupted in the 4th<\/sup> Century.\u00a0 Oscar Gonz\u00e1lez Ferr\u00e1n, a geologist from the Universidad de Chile, claims that only some of the ruins belong to the period of tribal wars while others are a consequence of giant tsunami waves.<\/p>\n

It seems that Uoke did his job well and the tribal wars helped him along.\u00a0 The result is that the Moai didn\u2019t fulfill their destiny to protect Rapa Nui\u2026 they failed and they fell.<\/p>\n

Featured Reports:<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Failure of the Moai Testimonials and legends confirm that there were difficult times.\u00a0 Juan Tepano, a major source for Routledge, Macmillan Brown and Metraux, told them that when he was young the old people spoke of the \u201cfailure of the overthrown statues\u201d.\u00a0 He also remembered a story about when the Moai (statue) Paro at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":60,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archeology"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Failure of the Moai - moeVarua Rapa Nui Rapa Nui, Easter Island<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Polynesian history is a great puzzle that lacks many pieces to discover, discover why the failure of loa moais\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/the-failure-of-the-moai\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Failure of the Moai - 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