What New Studies Reveal About Easter Island
- christelle
- Jan 21
- 5 min read
In the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, thousands of kilometres from anywhere, lies one of the most fascinating places on Earth: Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. Tiny, remote, and windswept, this island belongs to Chile, yet it feels like a world of its own.
So what makes Rapa Nui so special?
One word: moai.
The Island of the Moai
Scattered across the island are around 887 stone statues, some standing tall along the coastline, others toppled or half-buried, as if frozen in time. These are the moai, massive human figures carved from volcanic rock centuries ago by the island’s original Polynesian inhabitants.
For a long time, historians believed the moai were built by a single, highly organised society working together across the whole island (but new research reveals otherwise. More on this later). The statues were thought to represent powerful ancestors, watching over villages and protecting their people.
But Rapa Nui has never been a place that gives up its answers easily.
How Did the Moai Move?
Source: Phys.org
For centuries, the biggest mystery was not how the moai were carved, but how statues weighing up to 86 tonnes were moved kilometres across the island without wheels, metal tools, or large animals.
Recent research combining archaeology, physics, 3D modelling, and real-world experiments has provided a compelling answer: the moai walked!
Scientists discovered that many statues were deliberately designed with:
A forward-leaning shape
A wide, D-shaped base
These features made the statues stable when rocked from side to side. Using ropes attached to the head, small teams could rock the moai in a controlled zig-zag motion, effectively "walking" them forward while they remained upright.
In experiments, a replica moai weighing over four tonnes was moved 100 metres in just 40 minutes by only 18 people.
Even the island’s ancient roads support this idea. They are:
About 4.5 metres wide
Slightly concave, helping stabilise the statue
A History Shaped by Isolation
Rapa Nui was settled about 1,500 years ago by Polynesian navigators led, according to oral traditions, by a founding ancestor named Hotu Matu‘a. These skilled seafarers crossed the Pacific using extraordinary wayfinding techniques; reading stars, winds, ocean currents until they reached one of the most isolated islands on Earth.
When they arrived, they found an island rich in volcanic stone but limited in resources. Over generations, the population organised itself into clans, each controlling specific territories and ceremonial platforms called ahu. These platforms were both spiritual and social centres of island life.
Ancestors mattered deeply. The towering moai were believed to embody important ancestors whose mana (a powerful spiritual force) protected the living community. Once erected on the ahu, the moai were positioned to face inland, watching over villages rather than the sea.
The statues were carved mainly from volcanic tuff at the quarry of Rano Raraku. Many remain there today, frozen mid-creation, offering a glimpse into the carving process.
Beliefs, Rivalries, and the Birdman Cult
Over time, Rapa Nui society evolved. As resources became more limited and rivalries between clans increased, the island’s spiritual focus shifted.
One of the most fascinating traditions to emerge was the Tangata Manu, or Birdman cult. Each year, clans competed in a dangerous ritual linked to the arrival of sooty terns on the nearby islet of Motu Nui. Champions raced down cliffs, swam shark-infested waters, and retrieved the first egg of the season.
The winning clan’s leader became the Birdman, gaining sacred status and political power for the year. This competition replaced moai-building as the main way to gain prestige, showing that Rapa Nui society was adaptive, not static.
First European Contact and Tragedy
Rapa Nui’s world changed dramatically in 1722, when Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen became the first European to record contact with the island, on Easter Sunday, giving rise to the name Easter Island.
What followed was devastating. European contact brought disease, violence, and later slave raids in the 19th century. Many Rapa Nui people were captured and forced to work in South America, leaving the population on the brink of extinction. Those who survived returned with illnesses that further reduced their numbers.
Missionaries and colonisation deeply disrupted traditional culture, language, and beliefs. Many moai were toppled during periods of unrest, though today they are being carefully restored.
Now, for many years, historians believed Rapa Nui society had started to ''collapse'' before Europeans arrived, due to deforestation, warfare, and overuse of resources. The island was often presented as a cautionary tale of environmental failure.
However, new scientific evidence strongly challenges this idea.
Recent studies of ancient DNA, conducted with the approval of Rapa Nui community representatives, show no sign of a sudden population collapse in the 1600s. Instead of a dramatic decline, genetic evidence suggests the population remained small but stable and even grew steadily over centuries. Researchers found no genetic bottleneck, something that would be expected if society had collapsed.
These findings suggest that Rapa Nui never supported huge populations of tens of thousands, as once believed. Instead, the island likely sustained around 3,000 people, living carefully within the limits of their environment.
Contact Beyond Polynesia
One of the most surprising discoveries of the last decade is that the people of Rapa Nui were not as isolated as once believed.
Genetic studies show that both ancient and modern Rapa Nui people carry Native American ancestry, indicating contact between Polynesians and Indigenous peoples from South America centuries before Europeans arrived. Researchers believe this contact occurred sometime between AD 1250 and 1430.
How did this happen? Scientists suggest two main possibilities:
Polynesian voyagers may have reached the South American coast and returned
Or Native American people may have travelled westward into the Pacific
Either way, this discovery confirms something extraordinary: long-distance ocean travel and cultural contact were happening far earlier (and far more often) than historians once imagined.
This finding is supported by archaeological evidence, such as shared crops and tools, and reinforces the idea that Rapa Nui was part of a wide, connected Pacific world. Not a forgotten island cut off from history.
New Discoveries, New Questions
New moai discovered in a lakebed
Over the last couple of years, scientists have uncovered new evidence that continues to reshape our understanding of Rapa Nui.
A previously unknown moai was discovered in a dried-up lakebed, hidden for centuries beneath layers of sediment. Even now, the island is still revealing statues we didn’t know existed.
New research suggests that rats, accidentally brought by early settlers, may have played a major role in deforestation. By eating seeds before trees could regrow, they may have prevented forests from recovering, meaning environmental damage was likely more complex and less intentional than once believed.
Perhaps most fascinating of all, a recent study published in PLOS One suggests that individual clans, not a single island-wide workforce, organised the building of the moai. Each clan likely carved, transported, and raised its own statues, pointing to cooperation, identity, and local pride rather than total societal collapse.
An Island Still Full of Mystery
Despite decades of research, Rapa Nui continues to puzzle archaeologists as they know this remote island is far from finished telling its story. And that’s what makes it so captivating ;)
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