Easter Island has long been seen as a source of interest among archaeologists who say it could be one of the world’s greatest archaeological mysteries. And now it seems one of the biggest breaks in the mystery has been discovered with dramatic results. In popular culture depictions we generally think of the Moai heads of easter Island as simple statues sitting in a field in formation. Though they are massive, it’s generally thought that the mystery of the stone heads ends where the ground begins. Not so, according to this incredible discovery that suggests everything we know about the Moai may have been wrong and points out that what lies beneath may be the greatest mystery of all.
The Easter Island Project Conservation Initiative is a project that has been building for quite some time underground – literally. The project began digging up around the base of two of the Moai statues in an attempt to discover just what might lie beneath them, and they have discovered that what appear to be simple statues standing in a field may actually be quite a bit more. The statues actually go down deep underground where they are rooted up to fifty feet in the Earth. The bases of the statues are a single massive piece of stone which is inserted into the Earth like a tent spike and covered in previously unseen hieroglyphs. The project, funded by the EISP and the AIA hoped to discover just how these mysterious stone heads have been standing so long, and possibly shed some light on the true scope of the massive building project so many years ago.
The true scope of the Eastern Island Heads is even greater than previously thought, and the statues are scattered throughout the island and have been made world famous by their mysterious stare into the ocean as if to be searching the horizon for signs of life beyond their world. Perhaps in its way the appeal of Easter Island is the same all over the world as we too are a solitary island, Earth in space looking out into the stars for any sign of life outside of other beings with whom to interact – hoping desperately that our own identity can continue to expand and live even after we are done communicating with one another and hoping that there are mysteries in this universe that can be unraveled only to reveal either an ultimate and truly satisfying answer to life’s deepest questions or else another generation of mysteries to uncover and continue uncovering so that the dynamic culture of mankind can continue to grow and expand, holding back the wilderness and broadening the scope of our little island for the entire history of mankind.
The heads of the Moai were as with so many unexplained projects of the ancient world a feat of engineering which we are not currently fully capable of understanding. The heads spread across the island far from the single rock quarry from where the heads were likely carved and carried vast distances before being planted in the ground. And this latest discovery proves once and for all that the heads were only the tip of a massive stone iceberg. And perhaps in time we will discover that these stones were only the beginning of an even greater mystery.