Easter Island seems to be a small speck on the map of the Pacific Ocean. Being separated from the mainland by thousands of nautical miles, it still stores traces of an ancient culture full of mysteries and inexplicable phenomena. Many researchers have tried to find reasonable explanations for the secrets of the volcanic island, but so far there are more questions than answers to them.
Easter Island was discovered by the Dutchman Roggeven at the beginning of the 18th century on Easter Sunday, whence its name came from. The main question that puzzled the researchers: where did people come from in this tiny piece of land? The legendary traveler Thor Heyerdahl suggested that the island was inhabited in the 9th century by immigrants from Peru, who crossed here by boat or raft. Heyerdahl made a similar journey himself to confirm his version. However, some data indicate that the settlement of the island occurred much earlier, and the islands of Western Polynesia were the birthplace of the first settlers.
Despite the considerable distance from the rest of the world, the inhabitants of Easter Island had their own developed script, which to this day cannot be deciphered. Found signs with letters resemble pictograms with images of astronomical symbols, animals and people. Scientists note the similarity between these letters and Chinese characters, which is rather difficult to explain.
The main mystery of Easter Island is the mysterious stone statues, abundantly installed along the coast. These figures, the so-called moai, were carved by ancient masters from volcanic rock using stone tools. You do not need to be a specialist to understand that it is very difficult to carve huge massive statues in this way. But it’s even harder to explain how several hundred heavy figures were moved to the coast.
The most common hypothesis is that ancient craftsmen used logs as skating rinks, slowly rolling multi-meter sculptures from their place of manufacture to the coast. However, local residents keep the legend that stone giants came from the depths of the island themselves.
The original version of independent travel of statues around the island was put forward by Russian researcher and inventor Gennady Ivanov. He suggested that the center of gravity of the sculptures was specially positioned so that under the influence of the wind, they, swaying on their slightly sloping “soles, ” could actually move gradually in a given direction. Was this really the case? Alas, silent moai securely keep their secret.
