00:00 (rock music)
00:02 Scientists finally discovered the truth about Easter Island.
00:10 For many decades, people's minds have been occupied
00:17 with the mystery of Easter Island,
00:20 a remote piece of volcanic soil
00:22 far away in the Pacific Ocean.
00:24 But our planet hosts thousands of such lonely islands.
00:28 What is so particular about this one?
00:30 The mystery is concealed not on the island itself,
00:34 but the giant stone statues covering it.
00:36 Who created the world-famous huge stone heads?
00:40 Did they serve any specific purpose?
00:43 Where did their creators arrive from?
00:46 And where did they disappear?
00:48 Well, it seems the answer is finally just around the corner.
00:52 Watch this video and satisfy your curiosity,
00:55 learning all the truth about Easter Island.
00:58 Remember to give us thumbs up.
01:00 We work to make your life brighter.
01:02 What do we know about the island itself?
01:09 Rapa Nui, which is the name given to Easter Island
01:20 by its first inhabitants, is the territory of Chile
01:24 and is situated in the Southern Pacific Ocean.
01:27 And it is so, so far that you can easily consider it
01:30 one of the most distant places on the world's map.
01:33 It lies 1,200 miles away from Pitcairn,
01:38 which is its closest neighbor.
01:39 Chile itself is 2,300 miles away to the west.
01:45 The only transport that can take you there is a plane.
01:49 If you want to get to this destination point,
01:51 you will need to spend five hours on board
01:54 flying from Santiago, Chile to Easter Island.
01:57 The area of the island is just 63 square miles,
02:03 and such, let's admit, a tiny territory,
02:06 is home to 887 huge stone statues.
02:10 Here are some interesting facts
02:17 you might not know about them.
02:22 The statues carry the name Moai.
02:24 They started to be carved at some point
02:26 between the 13th and 15th centuries.
02:29 Rapa Nui statues are easily recognized
02:34 thanks to their peculiar faces.
02:36 They have long noses, wide chins, rectangular ears,
02:41 heavy brows, and deeply set eyes.
02:44 It is quite curious that the nostrils
02:48 curl in the way fish hooks do.
02:50 (gentle music)
02:53 Firstly, people thought that the statues
02:57 were made up only by their heads,
02:59 but surprisingly, it turned out that there are full bodies
03:02 that are attached to the heads.
03:04 It was discovered during excavations in May 2012.
03:10 The bodies were just hidden underground.
03:12 In fact, the statues are very tall.
03:18 The biggest one is 33 feet tall and weighs 90 US tons.
03:23 But that's not the record.
03:25 One statue unearthed on the island was incomplete,
03:28 but according to scientific calculations,
03:30 it had to reach 70 feet in height
03:32 and weigh about 297 US tons.
03:36 Still, the heads of the statues,
03:41 visible from the first sight,
03:43 make up 3/8 of each statue's size.
03:46 As for the arms, they were carved against the bodies,
03:49 resting in different positions.
03:50 Most statues, 834 out of 887,
03:59 were carved from the material called tuff,
04:01 which is, in fact, compressed volcanic ash.
04:05 Curiously, all the statues, except one group, face inland.
04:11 It means their backs are turned to the ocean.
04:14 Perhaps the reason for that was the belief
04:16 that the statues were the protectors of the villagers.
04:19 That's why they overlooked the settlement.
04:22 The only statues not fitting into this pattern
04:25 can be found at Ahuakivi,
04:27 a sacred place for the people of Rapa Nui.
04:29 There is a unique statue on the island.
04:36 It is the only statue which was found in a kneeling position.
04:39 Its name is Tukuturi.
04:44 Scientists believe that the statue depicts an ancient singer.
04:48 His position resembles the one people took at the festival of Rui.
04:52 The head of the statue is lifted quite high,
04:54 and you can even notice a beard.
04:57 Tukuturi looks much more human-like than the other statues.
05:00 Its smaller size and the unusual material the statue is made of,
05:05 red punapua stone,
05:06 are the things that make it stand out among the rest.
05:13 All these facts are quite intriguing, right?
05:15 Keep watching. There are several mysteries to unravel.
05:19 People keep wondering how the statues of such huge weight
05:26 have been distributed all around the island.
05:29 What is more, when Europeans first arrived at the island in 1722,
05:34 they found a small local population,
05:37 just between one and a half and three thousand people.
05:40 How could it correlate with the hundreds of statues on the island?
05:44 Surely, there had been numerous theories about how the statues had been moved.
05:48 One of the most popular ones among the lovers of mysteries
05:52 was the belief that the statues had been created and moved by aliens.
05:56 But even if you like this theory, we are sorry to debunk it.
06:00 The stone the statues were built from originates from the island itself.
06:04 The birthplace of most of the material was an extinct volcano
06:08 situated in the northeast of Easter Island and not another planet.
06:13 The mystery surrounding the way Rapa Nui people could move the statues
06:18 challenged the researchers, not letting them back off.
06:22 In the 80s, some of them decided to recreate a statue
06:25 and check the possibility of moving it around.
06:29 They were to use only the tools that could be available for the Aborigines.
06:33 It seemed impossible to do.
06:36 But a bit later, an American archaeologist succeeded in moving a 10 US ton copy.
06:44 Several decades passed, and another group of American scientists
06:48 proved that the islanders could tie ropes encircling the huge statues
06:52 and move them with a walking motion.
06:55 They backed up their theory with practice,
06:57 moving a full-sized replica for 330 feet using this method.
07:06 Actually, their idea can explain why Rapa Nui folklore
07:10 states that the statues were walking with the help of magic.
07:13 It explains the way the statues were transported to their designated places.
07:19 But what about the remaining question?
07:21 How could a handful of inhabitants create such magnificent and numerous monuments?
07:27 A new study has been conducted recently to specify the maximum number of the inhabitants
07:32 in the heyday of the island's civilization.
07:35 The results arrived, and they were quite unexpected.
07:38 It turned out that as many as 17,500 people could comfortably live on the island.
07:45 At least 19% of the land could be covered with the fields of sweet potatoes
07:50 that used to be the main source of food for the population.
07:54 What is more, the islanders consumed quite a lot of seafood and fish.
07:59 So, knowing these numbers,
08:01 you can see that there were enough people to create the stone masterpieces.
08:06 But what happened to them?
08:07 Why did they disappear?
08:10 At first, it was believed that the reason for such a decrease of the population was an ecocide.
08:16 The natives cut out large forests and palm trees,
08:20 making spare room for moving the statues around as well as agriculture.
08:25 They thought the trees were going to grow back fast enough.
08:28 It was a misleading concept.
08:30 The deterioration of the environment resulted in hunger,
08:34 and this, in turn, led to wars and cannibalism.
08:38 Nowadays, however, such a theory has been proven wrong.
08:42 First of all, Rapa Nui inhabitants seem to be very talented agricultural engineers.
08:48 They deliberately fertilized the fields with the volcanic rock.
08:52 In fact, another research has shown that people had been living on the island for many centuries,
08:57 and the population only started to decrease when Europeans began visiting.
09:03 So, a much more realistic explanation is also very tragic.
09:08 South American raids in the pursuit of slaves frequented the island throughout the 19th century.
09:14 Half of the aborigines were taken away.
09:17 What is more, European traders brought to the island new diseases,
09:21 which the locals hadn't been protected from, and introduced enforced migration.
09:27 It led to the fatal decline of the nation that presented the world
09:31 with such a miracle as the mystery of Easter Island.
09:34 Have you heard these facts before?
09:39 Share your opinion and ideas in the comments below.
09:42 Hit the like button below the video and click subscribe to join us on the bright side.
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