Easter Island Research Paper

Words: 284
Pages: 2

On Easter of 1722, a Dutch admiral named Jacob Roggeveen discovered the small Polynesian island he later named Easter Island. Nearing the shore, admiral Roggeveen was astounded to see huge stone figures on raised platforms with long ears
The island was peopled by two distinct groups: those who had long ears (stretched to hold wooden plugs) and regular-eared people. With this revelation, visitors to the island was able to imply that the statues had been made by the long eared people.
There has been much conjecture about the method used to raise these huge monuments from their prone positions. The islanders had no heavy wood with which to create lifting equipment, yet they had able to erect hard lava sculptures weighing up to 50 tons and standing as tall as 40 feet. In 1956, Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian archaeologist, enlisted twelve island men to show how the objects could have been lifted. Though it took 18 days the men raised a 20-ton statue from where it lied using only muscles, poles, and stones
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Asked to reveal the secret, islanders insisted that the statues had walked under their own power, not by someone else! Some researcher, however, came up with the explanation that the statues could have been rocked, side to side while being pulled by a rope (similar to the way in which we might move an upright refrigerator). The effect would have been that the statues appeared, from a distance, to be walking! However these unusual statues came to stand guard on Easter Island, they provide a tantalizing mystery to students, researchers, and other inquiring