News.com.au, June 10, 2015
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| Archaeologists dig up the famous statues. Picture: Easter Island Statue Project Source: Supplied |
THERE’S a
lot more to Easter Island’s famous statues than first meets the eye.
A new
series of photographs of the 2012 excavation has emerged that captures the
moment archaeologists dug out the previously hidden stone bodies, discovering a
surprising secret along the way; the monoliths were covered in detailed ancient
tattoos.
The images
have been shared widely on social media, being viewed more than 1 million times
on Imgur.
They show
intricate markings such as crescents, which academics say represent the canoes
of the local Polynesians, the UK’s Mirror reports. Little else is known about
the markings yet.
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| Detailed markings are visible. Picture: The Easter Island Statue Project Source: Supplied |
There are
887 huge statues carved between AD 100 and 1800 — which are up to 10 metres
tall. Members of the Easter Island Statue Project have been excavating the
statues for years, and provided the first photos of their torsos in 2012. This
surprised many, with people believing they only had heads.
“The reason
people think they are (only) heads is there are about 150 statues buried up to
the shoulders on the slope of a volcano, and these are the most famous, most
beautiful and most photographed of all the Easter Island statues,” Jo Anne Van
Tilburg from the Easter Island Statue Project said.
“This
suggested to people who had not seen photos of (other unearthed statues) that
they are heads only.”
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| They are fascinating. Picture: The Easter Island Statue Project Source: Supplied |
In 1919
pictures of the first excavations by the Mana Expedition to Easter Island
revealed that some statues were full sized. The discovery was confirmed in 1955
by the explorer Thor Heyerdahl when his Norwegian Archaeological Expedition
excavated a statue.
Over
subsequent decades the discoveries were gradually forgotten, known by
archaeologists but not by tourists, who began visiting the isolated island in
the 1990s.
They’re discovering
an island that was first settled by Polynesian people who arrived by canoe as
part of a great wave of Pacific colonisation.
Much
remains unknown about the statues — how were they made? How was such a remote
island populated? How were they moved around the island? And what happened to
the society that had resorted to cannibalism by the time Captain James Cook
visited in 1774?
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