Author Archives: Steve Walker

About Steve Walker

Once a tech in-house PR type, now professional photo/videographer and recreational drone pilot. Violinist. Flautist. Occasional conductor. Oenophile.

Easter Island 2 – The making of the moai

1 Reply

28th March 2018

The lunatic idea behind Stonehenge (“Hey, let’s make a monument of 25-ton stones! And just to make it fun, let’s transport them from 150 miles away!”) seems to have found some resonance in Easter Island. All of the moai, wherever they ended up on the island, were made in a single place, Rano Raraku, and then, somehow or other, transported to their final platform. How? “No-one knows.” But there’s an engaging theory, for which read on.

Rano Raraku is effectively a quarry, fairly high up among the island’s hills.

As you walk through it, the first impression you get is that of heads sticking up out of the ground, and the first descriptions of the moai, such as the one which excited Jane’s curiosity when she was a child, were “the heads of Easter Island”.

It took a while for archaeologists to realise that these were actually just the tops of full statues that were buried. And then it became clear that the moai were actually fashioned in place. The shape was hacked out of the rocky ground (“the ground” is formed by compressed volcanic ash named tuff, sometimes erroneously called tufa). The moai shape was started lying on its back on the slope, and then, as parts of it were completed, the ground was hacked out from beneath it and it was gradually raised upright so that the completed moai was standing in its own depression. What has happened in the picture above is simply that the depressions have been filled in over the centuries.

Evidence for this can be seen higher up, where a moai is just being started.

Look carefully just to the left of centre of the picture, into the cavity hacked out of the stone, and you should be able to make out the chin and nose of a moai that’s lying on its back.

There’s a mystery moai at the quarry called “Tukuturi”, unique in that it’s in a kneeling position

and unusual in the shape of its face, which is less stylised than the ones typified in the Tongariki 15 that you can see in the background.

One legend is that it represents a master moai craftsman, and it’s erected to keep watch over the work being done in the quarry. As usual, “no-one knows”.

So, that’s the story of the statues. But what about the other key part of some moai, the “Pukao” – topknots?

These are made from a different, red-cloured stone, called scoria, which is much less dense than tuff. This rock was mined in a different place on the island, called Puna Pau.

You can tell that the material is easier to work than tuff from this stone.

This is not some mysterious symbolic shaping; it’s the work of a shepherd, who hacked out a cavity to shelter from wind and rain!

So, it’s known where the pukao were made – here’s a pit where some were in progress when work stopped:

What is less clear is (a) how did the islanders get the pukao out of depressions such as this?, (b) how were they transported to the platforms? and (c) how were they placed on top of the moai? As usual, “no-one knows”.

What is known is that completed pukao featured a depression which matched the top of the head upon which it was to sit. We know this from another location on the island, Vinapu.

This is an inverted topknot, revealing the depression. You can see that it will not have sat foursquare on a head – in fact the topknots sit slightly forward on the heads.

Vinapu, by the way, is the site which demonstrates most clearly the amazing stoneworking skills of the Easter Islanders. There are two platforms, both of which show astounding precision in the way that stone was carved in order to align exactly.

You literally can’t get a sheet of paper between the stones, so precisely are they carved. This is workmanship akin to that found on the Inca Wall at Cusco which we (apparently) will see later on in the trip – keep an eye out for the blog post on that – but experts cast strong doubt that there was any explicit cross-fertilisation from Inca culture. There is also a legend that the Islanders found a way to make stone soft, so that it could be manipulated just like cheese. But, as usual, “no-one knows”.

The final part of the puzzle is – how the hell do you move a stone statue that weighs several tons? We know that they were made in one place and then moved to their final destination, and, as usual, there are several theories about how it might be done, but “no-one knows”. Our guide Malena told us of the words of one old woman who asserted that the moai “walked – two steps a night”. This sounds preposterous, but there’s actually a video of this being done with teams of men on either side making a replica (10 ton) moai sway from side to side, while a team from behind stopped it falling forward. In this way, the moai “walks”:

And another thing: assuming that this works (and recent ground scanning techniques have uncovered trails radiating from Rano Raraku that look like they may be tracks along which the moai may have been moved), how did they get the damn’ things up on to their platforms, sited accurately on their stone plinths?

That’s right: “no-one knows”.

For the continuation of this story, and what happened to the moai culture, read the next post – click here.

Easter Island – 1: mystery history

1 Reply

27th March 2018

It’s a long journey to Easter Island from Patagonia – a couple of hours on a plane from Puerto Montt to Santiago, then five and a half from Santiago to Easter Island, via a longish stopover; thank heavens for Starbucks, which provided Earl Grey Tea, WiFi and plenty of places to charge the various mobile devices.

The main reason for including this huge diversion in our odyssey was Jane’s desire to see the Moai – the Easter Island statues – which has been with her since she saw a photo approximately like this one as a child.

Rano Raraku

We travelled on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner which was pretty comfortable, but the disembarkation was slightly surreal, as we got off the back of the aeroplane and took a relatively long walk across the tarmac to the terminal.

But our baggage arrived safely, and our guide Malena was waiting to take us to our hotel, the Taha Tai, which was very close by.

The next day, Malena treated us to day one of a sightseeing and history tour. A Belgian chap we chatted to during our travels from Bariloche was scornful about Easter Island, saying it was “too commercial”. Mind you, he was scornful about a lot of things. Tourism is of huge importance to Easter Island’s economy and it’s quite a small island, so fitting in all the people and all the things to see whilst preserving the integrity of what’s there to be seen means that you sometimes feel you’re on something of a production line. It’s tourism à la TCP/IP; instead of big coaches descending on places with vast numbers of tourists, you get a large number of smaller vehicles dispensing tourists in packets, which reassemble at place after place. (And, yes, there are many retail opportunities to buy souvenirs and other tat; but I didn’t feel that it detracted from the overall experience.) And, for that reason, it’s important, I believe to be guided around the island. The official tour guides tend to have routes around the various sites and sights which enable them to tell the story of the island so that it unfolds over the course of a stay.

So, Malena started off telling us the history of the island, which is quite bizarre, and many parts of it are shrouded in mystery; the answer to many “why did such-and-such happen” or “what about this-or-that” is “Nobody knows”. I commend the Wikipedia entry to you. The island is famed for its moai, statues of a size up to monumental of male figures. When that famous oxymoron “western civilisation” first found the island (on Easter Sunday, 5th April 1722, hence the island’s name), as far as we know, all these statues were upright, as they were by 1770, when the Spanish arrived. James Cook arrived from England four years later and noted that some statues were toppled. They were all toppled by the time of arrival of French missionaries in the 1860s. So they were gradually, and, it seems, systematically toppled, but no-one really knows why.

Another mystery concerns deforestation. At one stage, during the moai culture, the island was a jungle of palm trees (not coconut palms – if you see one these days, it’s imported). And all of the palm trees were systematically, patch by patch, destroyed. Why? “No-one knows”. One theory asserts that this loss of palm trees, and therefore the means to escape the island in boats, gave rise to the Birdman culture – you’ll have to read about that in a later blog – but all is speculation about why the moai culture disappeared and why the Birdman culture replaced it.

One of the main reasons for the loss of historic knowledge is that the island’s population dropped at one point to 111 individuals, with the rest being wiped out by slave trade, western disease such as smallpox and tuberculosis and other such occidental delights. Many people were removed from island by Peruvian slave traders in the 1860s, despite this being illegal. An attempt was made to repatriate slaves; but no-one knew who came from where, so the island was repopulated rather randomly by people who “looked polynesian”.

A statue represents a village elder or other important person after death. The statue is erected on a stone-built platform, alongside others that may be there, as a symbol of the continuing power of the elder to protect the village, as the moai all face the village. One theory goes that with the arrival of western visitors, disillusion set in and the statues were toppled in anger. One thing is clear – it was human activity and not some natural catastrophe; the reasons for this are the timespan, as the toppling spanned several decades, and the direction of fall, which is always forwards, on to the face.

There are some 887 moai on the island. Most platforms are ruined and feature toppled moai, which are archaeologically interesting, but photogenically rather dull, particularly since the national park rules tend not to let one get in really close to explore interesting angles.

There are, famously, several platforms which have been reconstructed. The one with the largest number of the largest moai is called Tongariki

There are 15 moai, the tallest being 9 metres tall and weighing in at 88 tons.

 

You’ll notice that one, the penultimate one to the right above, has what’s locally called a “topknot” – maybe represents a hat, but no-one knows – but it’s certain that some moai had this and also all had coral-and-stone eyes inserted in the eye sockets to give them distinctive eyes. Nearby this reconstructed set of moai are three things of interest: a collection of topknots that putatively fitted them

(in the background, by the way, is the quarry where the moai – all of them, for the entire island – were made (see my next blog post); and a small number of moai heads, which were just lying around on the site, putatively the remains of previous very old, decayed and replaced moai.

(the one on the right looks a bit like ET, don’t you think?); and a single, stand-alone statue (the travelling moai) which has been used in exhibitions around the world.

The next stage on our trip involved visiting the site of the quarry where all of the moai on the island were made; it was very interesting, and you can see my next blog post for details. But also, before the day ended, we visited one more site, Anakena, which featured another set of restored moai, including several with topknots. Note that the topknots seem to be towards the front of the statue. This will become relevant in a later post.

All in all it was a fascinating day, with some of the history and culture of the island revealed as an ongoing story. We heard more – oh, so much more! – on our second day, and there’s also a lot to tell about the quarry where the moai were made, which you can read in the follow-up to this post – click here.

In transit 2 – Bariloche to Puerto Varas

1 Reply

24th March 2018

Our time at the very swanky Llao Llao Hotel was all too short, and so we embarked on the next stage of a transit which would eventually take us to our next major segment of our South American odyssey, a couple of days in Easter Island. But Tierra del Fuego to Easter Island is a major schlepp, and so we did in sections, taking in some popular tourist sights en route, as described in part 1. Some more sights awaited us in the second part of the transit, as we travelled from Barioche to Puerto Varas. This is a well-established tourist route, having first been undertaken in 1913 and, notably, by Theodore Roosevelt in 1916 (it was apparently Roosevelt who, basing his knowledge on the recently-established Yellowstone National Park, suggested that the areas surrounding this route be set up as a national park before modern life could damage it too much; and so it came to be, in around 1927). We had catamarans and buses instead of sailing boats and wagons, but essentially the route we travelled was the same; and we had a guide called Eduardo to explain to us what was going on, which was occasionally reassuring.

We started in Puerto Pañuelo, which is conveniently located a few hundred yards from the Llao Llao Hotel.

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on

The boat took us to Puerto Blest, which is very scenic, but not very photogenic (WALP Factor 8, but all rocks and forests), so people spend a lot of time feeding seagulls.

where we joined a very short bus ride to go to Lago Frias, a volcanic lake. At the end of Lago Frias is the Argentinian end of the border, where passports are checked and you have a chance to see a replica of the motorbike that Che Guevara rode across the Andes back in the days before Andrew Lloyd Webber became a national hero.

The border crossing is a multi-stage process. At the far end of Lago Frias, the Argentinian border staff leave the boat before anyone else is allowed to, so that they can set up their computers and so forth in a hut beside the above bike and another small hut selling snacks. They check passports and then get back on the boat to go back home, as did our Argentinian guide, to be replaced by a Chilean guide called Victoria. She and the ongoing passengers then board a bus, which grinds its way up a rough and winding track to the actual border. A few hundred metres further on, there’s a photo stop to see a local volcano named “Tronador”, or “Thunderer”, so-called because of the noise that the glaciers make as they break up.

We were very lucky with the weather, as we could actually see something. Given that this area receives on average three metres of rain (yes, ten FEET) every year, and that it rains some 228 days a year on average, I think we got privileged access.

After this, the bus grinds on to the Chilean border, at a small village called Peulla, where everyone has to get out and open their luggage so that Chilean border guards can check that you haven’t brought anything illicit in. Once again, I had an agony of indecision as to whether to declare all four of the cameras I had with me, but decided not to; and the customs officer couldn’t have shown less interest in my luggage, which made this a good decision.

Peulla is a lunch stop with a choice of two local hostlelries, one of them being a hotel where we had grilled fish with vegetables (Jane) and fried fish and chips (me). We ate in the hotel’s conservatory, which featured a rather novel idea – a sprinkler (arguably a length of hose with holes in it) cascaded water on the transparent roof, and the sunshine through this made rather lovely patterns in the room itself.

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on

There’s one more boat trip after lunch, which takes the journey on to Petrohué. This is the longest ride, but features nice views of another volcano, called Puntiagudo.

(translated: pointy tip) which looks a little like a local version of the Matterhorn, and another volcano, called Osorno, which I would think that many people would think was Mount Fuji, if they didn’t know better.

After this final boat ride, you take the last bus journey, 50km journey into Puerto Varas. However, the excitement doesn’t dim, even at this late stage, as there’s one final tourist attraction to visit, and time presses. In fact we cut things so fine that we had to sneak round the side of the visitors’ centre to get in to see the Petrohué waterfalls. I’m very glad we made it, as this is a splendid sight.

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on

And our vulcanological insight was further enhanced on the last kilometres into Puerto Varas, with views of Calbuco, an active volcano which has erupted, and violently, as recently as 2015.

Puerto Varas is a pleasant town. We stayed at the Hotel Cumbres, which styles itself as the best hotel in Puerto Varas, and I see no reason to gainsay this. We had only one day there, and so, since the sun was shining, we decided to go for a wander around. Before we did this, though, we saw an astonishing morning mist on the lake (Llanquihue).

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on

There’s little to make Puerto Varas out as exceptional (the hotel receptionist couldn’t when pressed, suggest a single thing worth visiting), but it’s a nice town, with the colourful buildings that we’ve seen elsewhere in Chile and Argentina.

and the same rather alarming approach to electrical wiring.

It’s called the city of roses, for good reason

and has, at one end, a hill which has been pressed into service as a park, named after a significant founder of the city, a German called Bernardo Philippi. One can climb the 500 feet to the top, where there is a giant cross, which is illuminated at night.

So, this was our transit, from Bariloche to Puerto Varas via Petrohué

Tomorrow we’re off to Puerto Montt, to fly to Easter Island via Santiago. I’ll report in from there in due course – stay tuned!