A researcher has offered a new theory for the mystery of
Easter Island’s stone heads, arguing in a recent study that carvers believed
they helped the growth of crops.
Soil tests of the Rano Raraku quarry, where almost all the
island’s more than 1,000 Moai monoliths originated, found that the area was
ideal for agriculture, according
to a news release from the University of California, Los Angeles. The
quarry’s soil is rich with nutrients, thanks to a local fresh water source and
the quarrying process itself, and contains evidence of the cultivation of crops
such as banana, taro and sweet potato.
Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue
Project and UCLA’s Rock Art Archive, has led a team studying two Moai excavated
in Rano Raraku. Both statues were found upright, though almost completely
buried, supporting her theory that the indigenous Rapanui builders intended
them to remain in the quarry.
“This study radically alters the idea that all standing
statues in Rano Raraku were simply awaiting transport out of the quarry,” Van
Tilburg said in the UCLA release. “That is, these and probably other upright
Moai in Rano Raraku were retained in place to ensure the sacred nature of the
quarry itself. The Moai were central to the idea of fertility, and in Rapanui
belief their presence here stimulated agricultural food production.”
The monoliths are hundreds of years old, with the statues
Van Tilburg and her team are working with estimated to have been built by or
before A.D. 1510 to A.D. 1645.
Van Tilburg’s theory, which includes an understanding of the
ancient Rapanui as intuitive farmers, is a contribution to an ongoing debate
over the history of the island’s population. One common but controversial
theory is that a population decline occurred due to the people’s
overexploitation of natural resources before the arrival of European explorers,
according
to the University of Hawai’i.
However, research conducted by the university in 2017
suggested that the Rapanui adapted to their harsh environment, constructing
gardens to grow crops despite nutrient-poor soils.
Van Tilburg’s study sheds further lights on the population’s
agriculture – and its connection to the Moai.
“Our excavation broadens our perspective of the Moai and
encourages us to realize that nothing, no matter how obvious, is ever exactly
as it seems. I think our new analysis humanizes the production process of the
Moai,” Van Tilburg said in the UCLA release.
Source: NBC Los Angeles