Teacher Lipo and his associates had actually formerly shown through speculative proof that the big statues’strolled’ from their quarry to ritualistic platforms utilizing an upright, rocking movement, challenging a theory that the statues were moved hitting the deck on wood gadgets.

“Once you get it moving, it isn’t difficult at all– individuals are pulling with one arm. It saves energy, and it moves truly rapidly,” Professor Lipo stated.

“The tough part is getting it rocking in the very first location. The concern is, if it’s truly big, what would it take?”

“Are the important things that we saw experimentally constant with what we would anticipate from a physics viewpoint?”

To check out how a bigger statue may move, Professor Lipo and Dr. Hunt developed high-resolution 3D designs of the moai and determined unique style functions– broad D-shaped bases and a forward lean– that would make them most likely to be relocated a rocking, zig-zagging movement.

Putting their theory to the test, they constructed a 4.35-ton reproduction moai with the unique ‘forward-lean’ style.

With simply 18 individuals, they had the ability to transfer the moai 100 m in simply 40 minutes, a significant enhancement over previous vertical transportation efforts.

“The physics makes good sense,” Professor Lipo stated.

“What we saw experimentally really works. And as it grows, it still works.”

“All the qualities that we see about moving enormous ones just get increasingly more constant the larger and larger they get, since it ends up being the only method you might move it.”

Contributing to the assistance for this theory are the roadways of Rapa Nui.

Determining 4.5 m broad with a concave cross-section, the roadways were perfect for supporting the statues as they moved on.

” Every time they’re moving a statue, it appears like they’re making a roadway. The roadway belongs to moving the statue, “Professor Lipo stated.

” We really see them overlapping each other, and lots of parallel variations of them.”

“What they are most likely doing is clearing a course, moving it, clearing another, clearing it even more, and moving it right in specific series.”

“So they’re investing a great deal of time on the roadway part.”

“Nothing else presently describes how the moai were moved. The obstacle to anybody else is to show them incorrect.”

“Find some proof that reveals it could not be strolling. Due to the fact that absolutely nothing we’ve seen anywhere negates that.”

“In truth, whatever we ever see and ever considered keeps reinforcing the argument.”

“Our research study likewise honors individuals of Rapa Nui, who accomplished a huge engineering task with minimal resources.”

“It reveals that the Rapa Nui individuals were extremely clever. They figured this out.”

“They’re doing it the manner in which follows the resources they have.”

“So it actually provides honor to those individuals, stating, take a look at what they had the ability to accomplish, and we have a lot to gain from them in these concepts.”

The group’s paper was released in the Journal of Archaeological Science

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Carl P. Lipo & & Terry L. Hunt. 2025. The strolling moai hypothesis: Archaeological proof, speculative recognition, and reaction to critics. Journal of Archaeological Science 183: 106383; doi: 10.1016/ j.jas.2025.106383