Easter Island seems to be a small speck on the map of the Pacific Ocean. Separated from the continents by thousands of nautical miles, it still preserves traces of an ancient culture full of mysteries and inexplicable phenomena. Many researchers have tried to find reasonable explanations for the mysteries of the volcanic island, but there are still more questions than answers to them.
Easter Island was discovered by the Dutchman Roggeven at the beginning of the 18th century on Easter Sunday, hence its name. The main question that puzzled researchers: where did people come from on this tiny piece of land? Legendary traveler Thor Heyerdahl suggested that the island was inhabited in the 9th century by immigrants from Peru, who crossed here by boat or raft. To confirm his version, Heyerdahl made a similar journey himself. However, some evidence suggests that the settlement of the island took place much earlier, and the islands of Western Polynesia were the birthplace of the first settlers.
Despite the considerable distance from the rest of the world, the inhabitants of Easter Island had their own developed writing system, which to this day cannot be deciphered. The found tablets with inscriptions resemble pictograms with images of astronomical symbols, animals and people. Scientists have noted the similarities between these scripts and Chinese characters, which are rather difficult to explain.
The most important mystery of Easter Island is the mysterious stone statues that are abundantly installed along the coast. These figures, the so-called moai, were carved by ancient craftsmen from volcanic rock using stone tools. You don't need to be an expert to understand that it is very difficult to carve huge massive statues in this way. But it is even more difficult to explain how several hundred heavy figures were moved to the coast.
The most common hypothesis is that the ancient craftsmen used logs as rollers, slowly rolling multi-meter sculptures from the place of their manufacture to the coast. However, the locals keep legends that the stone giants came from the depths of the island themselves.
The original version of the independent travel of the statues around the island was put forward by the Russian researcher and inventor Gennady Ivanov. He suggested that the center of gravity of the sculptures was deliberately located in such a way that under the influence of the wind they, swinging on their slightly sloped "sole", could indeed gradually move themselves in a given direction. Was this the way it actually happened? Alas, the silent moai keep their secret securely.
