Summary

“The miracle of Easter Island lies in this audacity that drove the inhabitants of a small island, devoid of resources, to erect against the horizon of the Pacific Ocean, monuments worthy of a great people.”

Alfred Métraux

This fact, seen by Alfred Métraux to be a miracle, was for a long time regarded as one of the great enigmas of Easter Island. Indeed, the first navigators and explorers discovered an island almost completely devoid of forest cover, yet whose littoral was decorated with monumental statues.  

Over the years, almost a thousand statues have been found, a large number of which had been transported from their place of construction to the island shoreline where they were erected on stone platforms. The largest of these statues measured thirty-two feet tall and its weight exceeded 20 tonnes. One half-finished statue, found lying in a quarry, measured seventy-two feet long and its weight was judged at more than a hundred tonnes.

How had the islanders dwelling here proceeded to fashion and raise such impressive monuments when they had no wood ? This resource would have been essential for the manufacture of rope, winches and structures crucial to the transport and the erection of their large statues, the so-called Moai.

Recent research revealing the presence of fossilized pollen in the island’s soil now clearly shows that the land had been thickly forested from a very ancient era on until shortly before the arrival of the first visitors. So the elements necessary for erection of the great statues had indeed been available at the time they were erected.