Walking Monolith: " Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island) is known for its giant stone monoliths, or moai. These moai sat on top of great stone platforms, built all along the coast, where they stood facing inland and looked after the people. The statues represented venerated dead chiefs and were part of an ancestral cult. All moai were carved from one quarry in the extinct volcano of Rano Raraku. The earliest carved statues were smaller and different in shape from the classic stone monoliths which were first carved between AD 1300 and 1400.

From AD 1200 to 1650 the peoples of Easter Island carved out more than 800 stone monoliths ranging in height from 1 to 21 meters. How could these statues be carved using only crude stone picks? And, how were these statues transported to the coast? Heyerdahl believed the oral tradition and commissioned a group of local Rapa Nui men to carve and erect a statue. Oral tradition also claimed that the statues had walked across the island. In 1986, Heyerdahl brought the Czech engineer Pavel Pavel to the island and together with the locals they made a statue walk again. By pulling ropes attached to the statue, it moved forward in a wiggling motion or nekeneke, which is the unique Rapanui word for this way of walking." Click on this link to learn more about Easter Island: http://www.netaxs.com/~trance/rapanui.html