Moai of Easter Island
The account
Almost a thousand giant statues on an isolated island in the Pacific, with no trees or pack animals to move them.
What investigators found
The Rapanui said the moai "walked." In 2012, researchers showed that, with ropes and rocking, a few people can make a replica "walk" upright.
The story
Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is one of the most isolated inhabited places on the planet, in the middle of the Pacific, more than 3,500 kilometers from Chile. It is home to almost a thousand moai, giant statues of volcanic stone, some more than 10 meters tall and weighing dozens of tons.
The moai were carved by the Rapanui people between the 13th and 16th centuries, almost all of them at the quarry of the Rano Raraku volcano, and moved for kilometers to ceremonial platforms by the sea. With no wheels and no pack animals, how did they do it? The question fueled theories of help from outside.
Rapanui oral tradition said the moai "walked." In 2012, researchers Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo showed that a few people, with three ropes, can rock an upright replica and make it move forward as if it were walking. The answer had been in the legend all along.