Original subtitles

Tonight, a remote island that's mystified humanity for centuries. Home

thousand giants.

Among the great wonders of the ancient world.

They are very strange, otherworldly, and found nowhere else on Earth.

Like Stonehenge, these statues are instantly recognizable.

But what's more interesting about Easter Island are the secrets that we have yet

to unravel.

But it's not just the statues that are shrouded in mystery.

It's also the people who live there, known as the Rapa Nui.

When Europeans get there, they were just sort of blown away. Could this have

been achieved by the people that are living there? It doesn't seem possible.

What continues to intrigue people is the question why.

Why in the world are the top theories surrounding the mysteries of Easter

Island? Some claim the Moai are the embodiment of people that have passed

The Rapa Nui people cut down too many trees.

and things began to spiral out of control from there. Some say that the

were fending off starvation by eating the flesh of other survivors.

How and why were those astounding Easter Island statues first built? How were

they moved into place? And what happened to the people who made them?

April 5th, 1722, Easter Sunday.

Dutch explorers are sailing across the South Pacific in search of Australia

they spot land on the horizon.

The ship's captain, this Dutch explorer, Captain Rohevin, comes across this bit

of land in the South Pacific and he realizes very quickly that this is not

Australia. This is much smaller. It's only about 14 miles long.

Didn't even show up on the map.

It's incredibly remote.

It's 2 ,200 miles off the coast of Chile. The next coast, it goes back in

middle of the vast Pacific.

Upon first glance, he's thinking, oh, it's just this barren spit of land. But

the crew of Rahabin's ship starts to notice smoke rising from the island.

Islanders sail out on canoes to greet the explorers.

Frights about these people.

in his long.

They're very friendly. They have astonishingly white teeth.

They've got these very unique hairstyles.

Now, the captain, he starts to realize this island is unlike anything that he's

ever encountered before.

Europeans were just sort of blown away by what they saw.

They come there expecting to find native people maybe scrapping out a living.

And you're struck instantly about how is this possible? How could...

Anyone has made any of these statues, much less hundreds of them, on such

It doesn't seem possible.

The islanders call them Moai.

They're found nowhere else in the Pacific and nowhere else on Earth.

These 1 ,000 statues that mostly are dotted along the landscape on the

region basically represent human...

on the island, that the islanders made these heads and moved them as such. The

reality is that all of the heads that we see are parts of full statues that have

torsos and arms and bellies, but those parts are buried.

There are a variety of Moai out there, some that are very tiny, others that are

almost seven stories tall.

Their sizes, although they range in how big and fat they are, the more average

size is about 14 to 15 feet tall and somewhere around 10 to 20 tons in

So we have this contrast between a plate about these marbles that are these

statues. He writes, quote, These stone figures caused thunder, for we could not

hope that people had been able to erect them.

The Dutch explorers sail off after a few days, but...

They're left with a lot of unanswered questions about the island's

and more specifically, why they built these incredibly massive stone giants.

I think that what intrigues people and what continues to intrigue people is the

question, why?

Why in the world did they do this?

The answer to that riddle may lie deep within the island's past.

Native people who live on the island today don't call it Easter Island.

That's a name that was given to them. Their own island now they call Rapa Nui.

It's also the name of the people, language that people speak. So there are

Nui people speaking Rapa Nui on Rapa Nui.

The more traditional name, which goes back further in time, is Te Pitu o

Tehenua, which could be interpreted as the center of the world or the end of

world.

Many experts believe the island was first settled by ancient Polynesians

thousand years ago.

Yet, considering just how remote Rapa Nui is, oral tradition tells us that the

island's founder, Hotumatua, lived on an island called Hiva.

Hiva was said to be located in the Marquesas Islands, about 2 ,300 miles

northwest of Rapa Nui.

...type of natural disaster.

And Hotumatua was very worried for his people, so he convened his council, and

one of the individuals was Haumaka.

And Haumaka goes and has a sleep, and as he closes his eyes and falls asleep,

his soul leaves his body.

And his soul starts to an island, teeming with... mammal species around

tons of trees, and how Maka says, this is an island for our chief.

While we have this incredible legend, some people believe that they actually

have found the island by accident, and that this particular place would have

looked very different than it looks to us today.

Upon discovery, Polynesians would begin to transform this natural environment

into...

a cultural or agricultural environment that would then suit their needs.

Rapa Nui people had a great benefit before they got to the island. They were

already architects and engineers.

And as they get to the island that has all this amazing stone type, it all

together.

Still, much of the island's ancient past is murky at best.

Most of our knowledge about the past, about the Rappanui, usually come from

traditions that are passed down, songs, dance.

And that's the reason why it's difficult at times using just that evidence to

understand the past.

Whenever we see these types of construction projects that we know are

intergenerational and are massive on a social scale, we have to ask the

question, what is the meaning?

Clearly, the scope, the amount of work that went into making these statues

that they're important and they're worth our investigation.

Most would argue that Moai represent deified ancestors.

And the way that you can honor your ancestors is to build something out of

that'll last forever, that'll stand there, that will protect you.

According to oral history, The Moai are not just representations of the dead

ancestors, but it is also said that those dead ancestors might actually

the Moai.

When Dutch explorers first land on the island, the statues seem to be wearing

hats, and they also observe that the islanders seem to pray to them.

There is evidence that many of these Moai were originally either painted or

dusted red.

Red is considered to be a sacred color in the Polynesian culture.

The eyes are very important pieces.

They're recessed in, and the reason why is because they would inlay pieces of

coral with either red scoria or black obsidian, and these would give the

ancestors the aringa ora, or the living face.

The Rapa Nui believe that the moment that the white coral and the black

glass is inserted into the eye socket of the Moai.

It is in that moment that the spirit of their ancestor dwells in that stone.

But of the hundreds of Moai on the island, only seven look out to the sea.

Some historians have noted that some of the Moai are facing towards the

Marquesas Islands, which could be the homeland.

of the island's inhabitants, which are about 2 ,000 miles away.

The rest of the statues, however, are facing inward.

They're facing inward. They're not facing toward the sea.

So one might think, oh, maybe they're there to be sort of guardians of the

people, to ward off dangers that might approach from the sea. And so the

conclusion is more that they're there not to ward off... but maybe to protect

have a relationship with the people on the island.

The Rapa Nui also believe the Moai possess a divine power called mana.

According to the Rapa Nui, the larger the Moai, the more mana it possesses and

the more spiritual power it has.

While there is clearly something spiritual,

associated with the Moai on Easter Island.

Some scientists have speculated that because of their placement on the

there could be something much more going on.

It's been more than 300 years since Dutch explorers first set foot on Easter

Island, but these towering Moai statues guard their deepest secrets.

Clearly the Moai have great significance to the Rapa Nui people.

Why else would they have spent valuable time and resources carving over 1 ,000

of these figures?

Certainly they mean something.

But historians have yet to really unravel what that true meaning is.

One question that one can ask when you go to the island, we'll put Moai in the

places they...

You don't find them all across the island. They're not the places that

show off what you've done in the most obvious fashion. So it's kind of a

Like, why would they have done it there and not other places?

While we believe that Moai serve a very simple reason as well, this includes

demarking one of the most important resources on Rapa Nui, which is water.

Rapa Nui.

is a volcanic island made from these three volcanoes that emerged.

It's very porous. It's fractured rock. It's ash and other kinds of things. In

fact, even when it rains today, it'll rain for hours, and minutes later, the

surface will be dry.

There's very few sources of water that are on the surface.

When rain falls onto the island, it immediately goes into the subsurface.

To act, the Rapa Nui take advantage of the island's unique geology.

Rapa Nui's not Fiji.

for example, or Hawaii, where it has its own rivers, streams, waterfalls, and so

on. Rapa Nui has water that's rainwater, basically, stored in craters or stored

sometimes in caves.

Early European visitors thought that the Rapa Nui drank seawater. They weren't

drinking seawater.

They were actually drinking fresh water at low tide.

There's not a lot of water sources on the island.

But one of the key ones would be where water is seeping out after heavy rains.

The caves move the water through to the coastal areas.

And once the salt water tide goes out, the fresh water comes in. And what the

Rapa Nui did was build these things called puna or wells. And they would put

huge slabs of stone to block the salty water to let the fresh water fill it up.

and then they would use all their bottle gourds to fill up their water that they

would need.

Easter Island has these two large volcanic craters, and when it rains,

craters fill up with all of this rainwater.

The problem is that these lakes are pretty far away from where the island

inhabitants live, so it's not possible for all of them to go and access fresh

water from these lakes.

With fresh water in short supply, maybe the Rapa Nui found a way to keep track

of this precious resource.

Fresh water is very limited and a key resource for the communities.

So you have to center your community around those water places.

So when we compared the presence of moai relative to the places where fresh

water is emerging, overwhelmingly those locations were tied to fresh water

sources.

So perhaps there is a practical use for the Moai, that not only were they

spiritual, but they somehow marked for the Rapa Nui people where the water was

located.

2022.

Wildfire ravages Easter Island, but from the ashes, a new clue emerges.

After the fire, officials from the island were inspecting areas of the fire

what had happened in the dry lake bed.

They discover a new moai.

The moai was found lying on its side in the mud. Now, this moai was only about

five feet tall, but unknown.

Elders of the Rapa Nui, they had no clue. They had no recollection about

five -foot -tall moai.

A statue where no one had ever thought there was a statue, that no one ever

recounted, no history of it ever being mentioned by anyone's ancestor, was

suddenly found.

Sort of remarkable.

For several hundred years, the lake was thought to be ten feet deep.

And yet, this five -foot -tall moai just appears at the bottom of the lake. So,

was it intentionally placed underwater?

How was it moved to this location? Why would it be positioned in this

spot?

That becomes one of the bigger questions. What is the purpose of this

moai being found at the bottom of this lake?

While we've studied the island in much detail over the past 150 years, with

of different crews going there for lots of different reasons, there's a lot that

we simply don't know yet.

For hundreds of years, researchers have been trying to uncover the sonic statues

and the people who built them.

Some say that in order to understand the legend and the origin of the Moai, you

have to go back even further and try to understand the origin of the Rapa Nui in

the Marquesas Islands.

He is compelled to move his people from the Marquesas Islands to this new island

in the South Pacific based on a wise man's dream.

But perhaps it is possible that there are other factors at play here, ones

go beyond the scope of human imagination.

There's a natural tendency to wonder how the construction and transport of these

statues is possible given the basic technology that consists of stone tools.

You look at these things, you think, well, how could such a few, small number

people with such limited technology...

possibly have crafted these gigantic things and moved them.

According to oral tradition, the Moai were carved by a highly skilled group of

artisans. But some theorists suggest that there had to be a more advanced

culture involved in their creation.

The idea that giant monuments... like the ones found on Easter Island, were

built by aliens is called the ancient astronaut theory.

It suggests that an advanced race of beings came from another planet and is

responsible for building enormous monuments around the world. Great

the Sphinx, and other giant monuments.

Ancient astronaut theorists told that aliens are able to access Earth.

through interdimensional portals that are connected to very specific places on

Earth that is connected to an electromagnetic activity that's called a

vortex.

Easter Island supposedly sits on top of one of these vile vortices, which

allowed this ancient race of aliens to transport themselves to this location

to make contact with the Rappanui, construct these statues, and then move

into place.

What's really interesting is that all over the Marquesas Islands, which is

those seven outward -facing moai are looking, there are several figures of

sky god, Tiki, who look very alien -esque.

And what's even more compelling is that there is a very similar figure on Easter

Island.

People who ascribe to this ancient astronaut theory point to a central and

important figure in Rapa Nui religious culture, Makemake, who is the supreme

being. He's the creative force.

There are rock carvings all around Rapa Nui, known as petroglyphs, that depict

Makemake and his very distinctive extra -human features, such as a very

large beak -like nose.

That these non -human features are really proof that the Rapa Nui had

encountered some alien civilization that had a very advanced form of

engineering. When we see these megalithic structures all over the

have to wonder how did an ancient civilization, using only primitive

pull it off?

Naysayers will argue that this is actually a civilization that are also

skilled engineers, and they do indeed have the imagination, have the tools,

the ability to create these gigantic works of art. But others still maintain

that only a highly advanced civilization could be responsible for creating these

very intricately designed gigantic statues' own image.

There's another question that perplexes researchers to this day.

How on earth were these colossal statues, some weighing nearly 200 tons,

into place?

These massive moai, many of them multi -ton rock figures, were

moved as far as 10, 12 miles, depending on the route they took.

This is absolutely phenomenal.

These massive...

Colossal statues were moved to every part of the island.

Legend has it, what made the Moai move was the chief's spiritual energy, or

mana. Oral traditions do suggest that the Moai could have been commanded to

by the chief from their original place of creation within this quarry all the

way across the island to their final rest.

...moved these giant Moai. And the answer is very simple.

They walked.

The islanders even recount the story of a chief named Tuukowihu.

And in the song, he knows how to make the Moai walk.

In fact, there's a word for a walking statue called neke neke, which is

without bending your leg.

The oral tradition says the Moai are walking. They're not on their back or on

their stomach. They have to be up.

and moving.

So now this is in the 80s. This idea of how the statues moved really starts to

dominate the archaeological community.

Everyone wants to try to figure this out.

Pavel Pavel, a Czech engineer, was really intrigued by this idea that they

have been moved in a standing position and built some replicas in

and showed that it was possible for a statue to be moved in an upright

And he also replicated that experiment on the island in the 1980s, where he

an actual statue in an upright position and, by a series of ropes, rotated it

back and forth, sort of swivel fashion, and he could make it move forward out of

a kitchen to another, sort of tipping it back and forth and shuffling it along.

And the statue was moved in this way, over flat ground in a slight incline.

And he was able to do it rather well for short distances.

But the Rapa Nui had a much more difficult path to tread, upwards of 12

over challenging terrain.

One thing that I find fascinating was the creation of the Araote Moai, which

translates to the Moai Road. It almost looks like a spider web leaving the

quarry with all of these individual roads where most likely the land was

leveled. and rocks were put on the side of these roads.

You can imagine going along, pulling one of these massive structures on a system

of ropes, and you could see, almost in your mind's eye, a figure walking.

But Powell's experiment was conducted on a flat surface, which did not account

for the very rough and rugged terrain between the quarry and their ultimate

destination on the island.

Many places on the Moai roads, it's undulating. It goes up and down.

You can't walk a Moai going downhill.

You'd have to switch your strategy.

From looking at construction methods that are used by other ancient

civilizations around the world, there is certainly more than one way to move a

giant piece of stone.

Easter Island's colossal Moai statues have been an enigma since the day

explorers first laid eyes on them, more than 300 years ago.

Researchers have spent years on this remote Polynesian island trying to

understand what the Moai meant to the people who created them.

But an even more intriguing mystery is how the Rapa Nui people moved these

statues into position.

Some believe the answer can be found not on Easter Island, but halfway across

the world at Stonehenge.

Stonehenge is this incredible ancient structure that was created around 5 ,000

years ago. You've got 100 stones, some of which are 30 feet tall and weigh

45 tons. Very similar to the Moai statues on Easter Island.

So how did the builders of Stonehenge?

move these giant stones.

A group of researchers in 2016 believe that they may have cracked the code.

What this study found is that it's relatively easy to transport stones even

size on this sludge system that can be moved very rapidly.

You move about 10 feet in five seconds.

On the Polynesian island.

of Tonga, there's this massive stone structure that is similar to the

at Stonehenge.

Ha Ha Maunga a Maui is made of coral slabs that are tons and tons of

weight. And these Polynesian folks, we know they're already moving large stone.

Unlike the Rapa Nui of Easter Island, the Tongans preserved a pretty detailed

record as to how they moved all these coral slabs into place. And what we

discover... if this was done through an ingenious mix of a sledge and rollers.

Despite their islands being thousands of miles away, one historian believes this

information could unlock the mystery of how the Moai were moved.

In 1998, Dr. Joanne Van Tilburg, who's the head of the Easter Island Statue

Project, she decides that she's going to test out this Tongan method of using a

sledge and rollers on a 10 -ton concrete replica.

Van Tilburg is very clever. She realized that the same techniques that they were

moving statues with were the same techniques they were using to move their

canoes. The canoe ladder concept came up, and that is basically a ladder that

you can slide an object up and down over great heights sometimes.

So we attached the statue to a canoe ladder, and we set it...

on the rollers that were attached to the frame.

I was standing at the top of the platform, and they were moving this

this platform, on this frame that we had made, so fast up there that I had to

jump off because I was afraid I was going to get run over.

It worked like a charm. It was fabulous.

It worked on inclines. It worked across flat surfaces.

It just worked.

Now, would it work with a statue double that size? I don't know. We haven't

tried it.

But I bet it would.

Van Tilburg's work ultimately shows us that a small group, maybe 50 to 100 Rapa

Nui men, could move a statue, we'll say 10 miles in less than a month.

That's not that hard. That's doable.

And there's probably other techniques that even made it easier.

But skeptics point to a number of problems with this theory.

It's possible that 15 ,000 trees were needed to move 1 ,000 moai.

When Easter Island was settled, we know that there was a vast forest there with

trees perhaps as tall as 90 feet.

And the question then becomes, as the civilization progresses and they move

agriculture and trees begin to be felled for the cultivation of fields, would

there have been enough lumber for a system of movement like this?

The amount of manpower needed to build the tracks and move the Moai into

position is also in question.

Some studies show to move a statue with your team, you may need an extra 200

,000 calories per group, per day.

So you can imagine then another job of that chief is to make sure he has enough

calories and resources for his movers and carvers and specialists.

Regardless of their transportation to their final location, we know that...

process would have created a hardship for the Rapa Nui people, and we have to

ask ourselves the question, what kind of sacrifices might have to be made by the

Rapa Nui people to make this project possible?

When the Rapa Nui people first settled Easter Island many centuries ago, they

built a thriving civilization.

But by the late 1800s, their tropical paradise has become unrecognizable.

We have survived from 19th century years describing the devastation on Easter

Island. The nation is dying out. The island and the Moai are essentially

abandoned. The trees are all gone. The quarries are full of half -finished

statues. It is clear that something catastrophic happened.

Many fascinating questions about this mysterious island remain.

Perhaps the most puzzling of all, what happened to the people?

The Rapa Nui success, somewhere by the 1400s to the 1500s, there were

no fewer than 12 ,000 people living on East Drylands.

Other estimates go to 17 ,000 and maybe 25 ,000.

We see maybe 200 years later.

There's maybe 3 ,000, 2 ,000 people on the island.

In 1877, a Chilean anthropologist does an inventory and counts

111 people living on Rapa Nui.

Easter Island should be a paradise.

But by the late 19th century, it is.

rocky and barren and the moai have been toppled over and the rapids are living

inside of lava tubes.

The Rapa Nui created some of the most significant cultural art of any age.

Could that creation have actually sown the seeds of their own demise?

It's worth remembering that Easter Island is very isolated.

They're consuming the resources that are available to them only on that island.

There are no supply ships coming in. There are no extra resources being

produced. So once those resources are depleted, there's going to be a definite

impact on that civilization.

Many experts suspect that for the Rapa Nui, cutting down so many trees to

transport the Moai proved catastrophic.

By cutting down trees...

Faster than they regrow means eventually you're not going to have any trees left

on them. And then as you cut down the trees, you lose soil productivity,

to famine and the lack of food.

And if you don't have trees, then the Rapa Nui cannot create these sort of

larger canoes to go out and fish.

And all of this would become stressors.

There's no place for birds to nest.

There's no shade for plants that grow in the shade, and there's no wood for

basic human needs like fires.

In 2005, Jared Diamond publishes the book Collapse, which builds on a claim

as populations continue to grow, eventually they reach a tipping point

island can no longer support their people.

The fact that the Rapa Nui believe that the Moai contain the spirits of their

ancestors

And then you see this abandonment of the Moai, that they're toppled and

basically left, shows the shift in their priority of the civilization, that

they're looking more towards basic survival than they are the most

cultural artifact they left the world with.

And as historians discover, things go from bad to worse.

Some archaeologists point to a layer of subsoil which has spear points in it

that indicate a sign of warfare.

But if you take a look at the Rapa Nui, it's that the Rapa Nui were fending off

starvation by eating the flesh of other survivors.

There is a documented history of cannibalism in Polynesian culture.

We see stories and taunts. If you want to really insult someone, you say, ah,

I'll have the meat of your mother between my teeth and I'll clean it out.

Other stories will say, ha, I'm going to use your femur as a fish hook so I can

catch fish using you.

So this idea of cannibalism, it's imbued in Polynesian cultures.

The oral history suggests that The inhabitants of Easter Island really did

whatever they had to do to survive, even as the island itself started to die.

But not everyone agrees with this collapse theory.

The idea that the Rapa Nui civilization imploded on itself is compelling, but

it's also contested, considering that by the time...

Europeans arrived to the island in 1722. We have records that show that the Rapa

Nui are still building the Moai at that time.

Whatever happened to the Rapa Nui at this time, it didn't look like it was

fatal.

The people of Easter Island were once members of a thriving society, capable

creating some of the most iconic statues on Earth.

Then... Something horrible happened, decimating the population until there

little more than 100 people left, and we still aren't sure why.

One theory is that the Rapa Nui started cutting down way too many trees on the

island, and that's what caused so many things to start spiraling out of

But there's another idea that suggests that it wasn't the cutting down of

but something much smaller and more invasive that brought the Rapa Nui to

knees.

When the Rapa Nui came to Easter Island, we don't know exactly when or how, but

the Polynesian rat came with them.

In most settings, rats weren't stowaways. They were actually brought on

for a variety of reasons.

One, you can eat them.

But one of the key things about rats is using their meat and their tails for

fishing.

Very important, that rotation of a rat tail in the water brings the fish to

attack.

Rapa Nui would have been a haven.

For rats.

And besides humans, the rats have no natural predators on the island.

On an island with abundant food in the palm nuts, rats can double

their population every 47 days.

That means that within about three years, you would have tens of millions

rats. Evidence that the Rapa Nui were actually trying to plant new trees and

reforest, but they're waging war against a growing rat population, making that

very difficult.

So the combination of people chopping trees down for crops combined with rats

impacting the nuts likely meant the demise of the palm forest over the

pre -contact time.

Now, new evidence suggests a different timeline for the population's downfall.

There is a study on seven sites.

on easter island and found that the repinui continued to make moai

150 years after it was previously believed they had stopped

early explorers were filled with awe when they first eyes on those stone

sentinels but they triggered the downfall of the repinui the viceroy of

sent two Spanish ships to Easter Island in 1770, the Santa Rosalia and the San

Lorenzo, and essentially claimed Easter Island for Spain.

So after the Spanish came and went, Rapa Nui was rather well known on the maps

and the charts.

Some of the ships would stay for a day or two, and the Rapa Nui people saw and

encountered quite a large number of ships from then on. The Rapa Nui didn't

it at the time, but... The increasing number of European men arriving at the

island brings with it something that the Rapa Nui had never encountered before

and something that they have no defense against.

With the arrival of the European, we see the introduction of multiple diseases,

smallpox especially, and that really decimates the culture.

The Rapa Nui faced.

After the Europeans in the 1700s, we see the whalers come to Rapa Nui.

And one of the things that the whalers were also looking to do is something

called blackbirding.

It's basically taking slaves.

They would go to the beach. They'd put a silk sheet down.

They'd put a variety of artifacts.

And when the Rapa Nui people went to gather them, they'd hit them over the

They'd enchain them, and they would throw them inside the boats. And they

bring them all throughout the Pacific to work the sugar cane field.

By 1862, these slave traders capture probably more than 1 ,000 islanders and

take them away.

By 1877, they're on the island.

To have seen these people create a civilization of such magnitude and such

spectacular accomplishment.

to see that deteriorate and disintegrate over just 1 ,500 years.

The story of Easter Island and the Rapa Nui is... Others find hope

in the Rapa Nui's resilience and creativity.

They were able to organize themselves and invest in interactive ways that made

them sustainable despite the fact they dealt with limited resources and

incredible shortfalls, challenges that they had to go through.

It's a really remarkable case of survival that I think we have a lot more

learn from.

Easter Island's colossal moai stand as silent sentinels, guarding mysteries as

impenetrable as the volcanic rock from which they were carved.

Nearly 300 years after Europeans first set foot here, the world is still trying

to solve the riddle of these enigmatic giants and the people who built them.

But as rising sea levels, fire, and torrential rains continue to threaten

island and its moai, many fear its secrets may never be known.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.