Quarry Quarry

The quarry that the moai were “mined” from was at the volcano Rano Raraku, over on the east side of the island.

We visited it now a week ago (but I’m still catching up wih the blog entries).

The moai were all carved out of the compacted volcanic ash at Rano (meaning “volcano”) Raraku. From there they were transported all over the island, to be placed on their ahus. There is still debate over just how that was done.

The early theories was that they used huge logs made of the native palms as rollers and/or sledges. However, the legends were that the moai walked. There have been recent demonstrations of that possibility, including this National Geographic Special (sorry, available only in the US) showing how they could have been moved upright by rocking them back and forth.

The Rapanui even have a word for this, “neke-neke”, so that is highly suggestive. There are also signs of roads that the statues traveled over.

Here’s the view approaching the side of the volcano.

Approaching Rano Raraku

[On all of these pictures, you can click on them for larger versions.]

You can see some moai sticking out of the hillside, seen from near the entrance. For some reason, many of them were left behind. Nobody knows if they were deliberately left there, or if they just hadn’t gotten around to moving them when the whole moai reverence stopped.

When we entered, there was a hawk waiting for us on one of the fallen moai. (It’s a little hard to see since a tree is right behind it.)

Hawking a Fallen Moai

I’m pretty sure the hawks are not native—I just don’t see how they could have gotten to Easter Island. Here’s another view of the hawk.

Hawksbill Station

As you may have noticed from my other blog entries, the moai come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. This one (one of the more famous ones) has a pretty long nose.

Machi and Moai

That’s Machi in the background.

All of the trails were “improved”, but not too bad to walk on barefoot. It was also easy enough to walk on the grass next to it when necessary.

Here’s one of the statues that is not fully extracted, with the carving interrupted. I’m trying a different technique in this picture: a 3-D flicker effect. I took two shots from slightly different angles and then merged them into an animated gif. The flickering should produce a three dimensional feel to the photo.

3-D Look

The material here at Rano Raraku is a consolidated volcanic ash. It’s pretty hard and pumice-like (but fine to walk on), but harder rocks like basalt and obsidian can work their way through it with a bit of effort, and that is what the Rapanui did.

Here we see the Alvarado family (with Machi and Lucas barefoot) checking out the moai.

Lucas, Machi, and Virginia

The following photo was taken by Alan Bruens. You can see where a statue was extracted vertically.

Moai Extracted

There’s another partially extracted statue that is on its back coming out of the rock wall.

One of Us has a Big Head

This is one of the larger ones.

The trail along Rano Raraku heads east and around the front. Suddenly, you round a bend and this greets you.

Tongariki from Afar

That’s Tongariki, which we visited Among the Moai. It’s about a kilometer away and I love the way it shows up. You can see how it sits in the low spot between the Rano Raraku volcano and the volcano at Maunga Pu A Katiki on the Poike Peninsula.

Back to the moai at Rano Raraku, here’s Alan looking the best in a crowd.

Three is Not a Crowd

And finally, here’s the whole group of us, with a moai backdrop.

The Three Barefooteers and . . .

There’s Virginia, Machi’s wife, and then of course, The Three Barefooteers. I guess that makes Lucas D’Artoegnan.