A select few of Easter Island ’s elephantine head have an especially strange option of headwear . Just a handful of these famous volcanic - rock dudes have a red “ hat ” placed on top of their headspring . Not only are these hats made out of a red Harlan Fisk Stone from a stone pit on the other side of the island , they also seem to have been add after the statues were erected .
So , how and why did these 12 - tonne ( 13 - gross ton ) “ pukao ” hats get up there on top of a 4 - meter ( 13 - animal foot ) statue ? After years of reflection , archaeologists from the Pennsylvania State University think they ’ve finally cracked the grammatical case .
" quite a little of people have come up with ideas , but we are the first to come in up with an idea that uses archaeologic evidence , " Sean W Hixon , a graduate student in anthropology at Penn State , said in astatement .
The islandwas first inhabited in the 13th century by Polynesian mariner . Within decades of landing there , they spent the next two centuries forging these gargantuan sculptures out of volcanic tuff . expert still argue about it , but it ’s now by and large accept that these monolith were move from the target with a rock move , kind of like how you would move a refrigerator except using rope . This quarry , however , is over 12 kilometers ( 7.5 miles ) away from the red scoria quarry that the pukao lid were forged from .
As detail in theJournal of Archaeological Science , their inquiry reassert that the hat were put on the statue after they were erected , most likely after being rolled in raw formfrom the quarry to the statues and then carved on site . They argue this because uncarved crimson scoria Isidor Feinstein Stone can be find en path to the statue from the quarries .
Ramps must have then been used to get the 12 - MT hats up to maneuver level . However , photogrammetry and high-pitched - tech three-D imaging spotlight pitting on the stem of the hats , powerfully suggesting they could not have just been pushed up the ramp on their base , otherwise , the easygoing - rock grooves would be rub off .
alternatively , the researchers indicate the pukao were rolled up large ramps to the top of a remain firm statue using a parbuckling technique , a tried - and - essay method of shifting heavy loads that employs the help of forget me drug looped under the object . Thanks to rotational leverage , this allows you to hoist heavy objects up ramps with relative comfort . The researchers work out that this whole process would require fewer than 15 hard prole .
Why they move to all this sweat , though , rest ill-defined . Most researcher understandably trust the hats were used to distinguish between statues or signify the power of a peculiar statue . One thing ’s more certain : placing the hats was no small task , so they must have held some really cryptic significance .
