Sunday, 28 September 2014
Nobody knows for sure how the pukau was installed onto a moai's head, it was never glued to the head but merely placed on top. The pukau was made specifically for a particular moai, it could not fit onto any other moai; together they formed a perfect balance so that if the pukau was taken off the moai would also fall because it was off balance. So they cannot figure out how exactly they got the moai to stand on the platform and then transport the pukau on its head, because both is needed for the moai to stand in place, but the popular theory is that the pukau was installed the same way as erecting the moai. The purpose of the pukau is to make the statue look bigger as the demand for bigger statues grew over the years.
The moai stood for about 100 to 150 years. After this, the moai would change colour from yellow to dark brown or black, and lose its features due to erosion. When this happened it would be taken down from the platform, have its eyes removed and destroyed, and broken up into small pieces and made part of the platform or ahu. The bones of the person buried underneath it would be dug up and cremated. It is normal for there to be crematoriums or funeral parlours near an ahu.
So for centuries everything was going along fine. But because the people kept cutting down trees to make boats, there was massive deforestation over the years, and the boats kept getting smaller and smaller because the trees did not grow as fast as they were cut down. And then in about 1600 there were almost no more trees, which meant no more boats, which meant no food. A great famine broke out, people were getting hungry and agitated, and the working class became more and more upset with the ruling class, and finally there was a social revolution. During this social revolution, the working class people toppled over almost all the moais on the island, and destroyed their eyes. The moais were symbolic of the upper or ruling class, so by destroying the moais they were essentially destroying the upper or ruling class. But after centuries of tradition, they were still afraid of the eyes of the moai as it is with the eyes that a person's 'mana' enters a moai, so they destroyed all the eyes. On the island, there is only one moai found with some of its original eye pieces that were capable of being restored, and this is found in the museum. The rest have no eyes, only replicas.
After the social revolution, there was almost 100 years of tribal wars. During this time, it is said that the working class people killed all the upper and ruling class people, and along with them all their knowledge on carving, transporting and erecting moais. The story was that the entire ruling and upper class retreated to a certain place, where they dug a deep trench to separate them from the rest of the community, and every time the people tried to get to their side of the trench, they lit the trench up with fire, and in this way, the general community couldn't get to them. But there was a woman among them who realized that there was way through that was missed by the noble / ruling people, and in the night the general community made their way to the other side. In the morning, some of the common people from across the trench made a show of attempting to cross the trench, and the noble / ruling class people lit up the trench, not realizing that by doing so, they had sealed their fiery fate because now they were trapped by their own fire with the common people who were already on their side of the trench, who shoved them all into the fire. All the noble / ruling class people perished, except one man, or so the story goes. Researches have not been able to find any bones, although they did find a deep trench on the island.
Because only the noble / ruling class people had the knowledge, technique and skill in carving, transporting and erecting a moais when they died, the moais all but died with them. But there was one survivor. The one man who survived went on to marry a woman from the common class and have a family, and his descendant would one day tell Heyerdahl the techniques of erecting a moai. I do love a good story!
After Ahu Akahanga we went to Rano Raraku, the main quarry where all of the moais on the island were carved. There are altogether 887 moais on the island, 288 of which were successfully moved from the quarry where they were carved to their homes around the island. 397 remain in the Rano Raraku quarry in various states of being carved, and 92 were abandoned on their way to their final destinations. Some of the moais that were abandoned became buried in the ground over the years, with only their heads and shoulders above the ground. Expeditions that have dug some of them out saw their bodies in pristine condition, in the yellow hue that were their original colour. But they do not have the technology to ensure that the statues do not erode, so they are left buried until they find this technology and then perhaps one day these moais would be dug out and preserved as they were originally meant to look. The largest moai is in this quarry, known as 'El Gigante' it is about 21.6 metres tall and weighs about 180-182 tonnes. It is believed to have been abandoned at the quarry because they did not have the technology to move such a big statue to its final destination, not to mention the costs of moving it would have been prohibitive. So he remains in the quarry.
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