ANDREW COLLINS:
Easter Island
is in eastern Polynesia
within the Pacific Ocean.
And what it's most famous for
is the many hundreds
of huge stone statues
of these human forms,
oversized human heads
with bodies that are
almost always partially
buried beneath the ground.
The local name
of these statues is Moai.
And these statues would seem
to represent deified ancestors.
They're manufactured
from local volcanic rock.
In size, they can be as much
as 30 or more feet in height.
And they can weigh
anything up to 80 tons apiece.
PAUL BAHN: The Moai
are enormous blocks of stone.
And they moved several hundred
of them from the quarry
quite some distance
to the platforms
around the edge of the island
and there have been
many theories over the years
as to how they were moved.
The first theory is thought
that they must have been
dragged horizontally on sledges
or rollers or something
of that kind.
On the other hand, many people
including myself would say
we think it's more likely
they were moved vertically.
It would be very dangerous
to lower a standing statue
down to the ground, then drag it
for how many miles and then have
to raise it again
at the other end.
GIORGIO TSOUKALOS:
The idea that the trees
were cut down at some point
falls by the wayside
because wooden rollers
would not be able to support
the weight
of some of these statues.
So you have to wonder,
how were these Moai
transported back in the day?
HUGH NEWMAN:
So there were traditions
of something called mana
on Easter Island,
which is a spiritual power...
(thunder crashes)
...which was supposed
to be imbued, actually,
into the stone Moai themselves
and some of the traditions,
uh, describe them walking from
the quarry to their platforms.
TSOUKALOS:
So one has to wonder if mana
was some type of
extraterrestrial technology
that allowed these stones
to be levitated into place.
